November 4, 2004: Teamsters and local officers at UPS often want to know if the issue they have grieved has been decided before—and if so, what the decision was. Just as common is the answer “We don’t know.”

Sometimes we are told we should give up on a grievance because the same issue has already been lost in another case.

Now the international union has provided local unions with a compact disk containing arbitration and court decisions.

The digest of cases goes back to 1968, when just a few locals or regions had arbitration in their contracts. Most of the cases in the digest are more recent, stemming from arbitration provisions won in the national contract in the 1990s.
The digest also cites court cases (including NLRB and EEOC) going back to the 1980s.

The next time your local is unsure whether cases have been won or lost, remind them that they can look it up in the IBT digest