March 2, 2009: The decisions from the February meeting of the National Grievance Panel in Ft. Lauderdale are now available online.

Click here to download the decisions.

The UPS National Grievance Committee settles national disputes and grievances that have been deadlocked at both the local and regional levels.

The Package Division has a computerized record of all panel and arbitration decisions. Why don’t they make it available to stewards and members to help with contract enforcement?

The panel will meet two other times this year: June 8-11 in Philadelphia and Oct. 12-15 at the Hilton San Diego Resort and Spa.

TDU will continue to make the docket and decisions available to the rank and file.

March 2, 2009: UPS is destroying full-time jobs that are guaranteed by our contract.

Members are uniting to tell the company: ‘Part-Time America Won’t Work.’

It’s the worst economy in more than 75 years and good full-time jobs are an endangered species.

Our union’s largest freight employer, Yellow Roadway Corporation, eliminated thousands of jobs in February. Many other Teamsters are threatened by downsizing.

In these tough times, our International Union leaders should be working overtime to save full-time jobs. Instead, they’re writing off guaranteed full-time jobs at our union’s largest and most profitable employer: UPS. What is wrong with this picture?

UPS Full-Time Jobs Takeaway

Our Teamster contract requires UPS to maintain 20,000 “combo” jobs—full-time jobs that are created by combining two part-time jobs. Members won these jobs in the historic 1997 UPS strike.

The company is thousands of combo jobs short of the 20,000 required by the contract. And UPS is destroying more every day.

Across the country, management is breaking full-time combo positions into part-time jobs and cutting Teamsters back to part-time pay. UPS is also eliminating full-time jobs by not filling combo positions when they go vacant.

Our map in this issue gives a national picture of UPS’s Full-Time Jobs Takeaway. Click here to view the article, or click here to view it as a map.

Citing loss of volume, UPS is also laying off package car drivers and air drivers. Supervisors continue to do Teamster work including shuttling packages.

Time for Action

Members have had enough. They’ve launched a campaign to demand that the International Union enforce the contract and make UPS create all 20,000 full-time combo jobs required by the contract.

Every Teamster has a stake in this fight. If our union officials won’t take action to protect good full-time jobs when we have unambiguous contract language, then we can all kiss our job security goodbye.

Our union, our country needs good full-time jobs. We can have them at UPS if we just enforce our contract. Few problems in this economy are easy to solve. This is one of them. Let’s work together to make it happen.

March 2, 2009: Many freight Teamsters are concerned about the direction our union is headed in—and they’re getting organized to do something about it.

Concerned Teamsters are traveling to other freight terminals, distributing Convoy, and asking other members to get involved in our movement for change.

Here’s what they’re doing—and ideas for what you can do in your local, too.

“I went out to USF Holland and passed out the most recent issue of Convoy. Members were really positive to get the information—and concerned about the direction our union.
“Freight members in Milwaukee have always been on top of the issues. We have a local union election this year. Now’s the time to get the word out.”
Paul Host, ABF
Local 200, Milwaukee

“I took off work on a Monday and met Teamsters at Yellow Freight in the morning, some car rental locations in the afternoon, and UPS in the evening.
“I think if more members do this, it will gain momentum.
“I met a lot of Teamsters who are fed up with Hoffa—and he’s up for re-election in 2011. If you want change in two and a half years, now is the time to get off your butt and get involved.”
Amadeo Bianchi, Roadway
Local 769, Miami

March 2, 2009: Here’s one way YRC can cut costs: make Teamsters work off the clock.

That’s what Roadway management is trying to do at their West Palm Beach, Fla. terminal.

Pick-up and delivery drivers there have to fill out an Hours of Service log whenever they work over 12 hours.

For years, P&D drivers have filled out these logs on paid, company time. Now a new terminal manager is insisting that drivers fill out these logs after they clock out.

With several Teamsters on layoff, drivers are going over 12 hours two or three times every week. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to fill out the log.

One driver estimates that he has filled out the log over 30 times in the last six months—that’s five hours of work that should have been paid at the Teamster rate.

Drivers are filing a grievance every time they are forced to work on their personal time.

Is your company insisting that you work on personal time? Contact TDU for advice: (313) 842-2600.

March 2, 2009: Jack Cooper, operating as PMT in the West, has lost GM traffic in Los Angeles and Milpitas, Calif. to a nonunion outfit called Harbor Auto Transport. Over half of the drivers working have been laid off.

Los Angeles Local 63’s carhaul BA, Bob Doss, has consistently blamed the workers for not taking big concessions. The company continues to pressure the drivers to take a flat rate concession.

30-Day Notice

Jack Cooper has also royally screwed the owner-operators in Local 63. Management encouraged a number of drivers to buy brand-new trucks less than two years ago, to become “partners” with PMT. Now they have given the drivers 30 days notice of their lease cancellation. They did the same thing in Georgetown, Ky.

These Teamsters are stuck with payments on vehicles that cost over $200,000 at a time when there is no market to sell a car carrier.

They could be forced to take an enormous loss on the investment that management asked them to make.

Doss, their BA, won’t even return their calls for help, leaving the drivers on their own.

With excess capacity in the industry, companies are taking every advantage they can. And shippers are looking to increase nonunion market share. In tough times like this we need a union leadership with a plan more than ever. We don’t have that now.

March 2, 2009: With few carhaulers working, you would think that Jack Cooper would lay off management to bring the number in line with what is needed. In some areas they have, but at a few terminals they practically have one supervisor for every driver working. Before they blame Teamsters and demand more concessions, how about controlling the overhead costs?

March 2, 2009: It’s bad enough that the majority of Teamster carhaulers are not working; now Local 604 reports that an International auditor working for IBT Secretary-Treasurer Tom Keegel has told the local union they should increase the dues of working carhaulers.

St. Louis Local 604 has posted on their website (www.teamsters604.org) a letter from local Secretary-Treasurer John Thyer in response, stating that the local will decline to raise dues. Thyer’s letter reports that after a routine audit, the local was told that carhaulers should be paying dues based on their annual earnings, not on the contract hourly rate. For a carhauler who is working long hours and making good money, this could raise dues to $100 per month or more.

Thanks to Local 604 for blowing the whistle, to help kill this idea.

March 2, 2009: When the International gave Allied the 17.5 percent wage concession, the deal provided that Allied’s Axis subsidiary would become union. Two years later, that hasn’t happened. Nonunion shuttle drivers work the Dearborn Michigan yard. Nonunion drivers pull the traffic. Where’s the union leadership?

March 2, 2009: Teamsters at Oak Harbor are returning to work after standing strong on the picket lines, but the fight for a good contract continues.

Teamsters striking against Oak Harbor Freight Lines in the Pacific Northwest made an unconditional offer to return to work on Feb. 12, and at the end of February they began to close picket lines to reclaim their jobs. But the union and company remain far apart on bargaining.

About 600 Teamsters at 35 terminals in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho walked out on Sept. 22, when the company demanded to gut the contract and benefits, and committed unfair labor practices. The contract expired a year earlier, in October 2007.

The union’s unfair labor practice charges have been upheld by the NLRB. Because the NLRB ruled it an unfair labor practice strike, the company is required to take back strikers ahead of scabs.

The strikers will be working under the pre-strike terms as bargaining continues. But the company and union do not agree on what those pre-strike terms are.

Also, the company has fired 12 Teamsters during the strike on various allegations.

The sides remain far apart, since the company wants to gut Teamster benefits and conditions.

March 2, 2009: UPS is denying thousands of Teamsters full-time job opportunities—in violation of our union contract. Now, working Teamsters are getting together to do something about it.

Article 22.3 of our contract requires the company to maintain 20,000 combo jobs nationally. The company is thousands of jobs short of the 20,000 quota—and is eliminating more full-time combo jobs every day.

Texas Teamsters Take Action

At the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, UPS dissolved more than 100 full-time combo positions in February. Members filed grievances, but got the brush off by Local 767 officials.

Instead of getting discouraged, members got active. They contacted TDU and organized a meeting with TDU Southern Region organizer Willie Hardy.

National Effort to Save FT Jobs

The following day, Local 767 members joined concerned UPS Teamsters from 25 locals on a national conference call organized by TDU. Members on the call launched a national petition drive to press our union to make UPS create all the full-time combo jobs required by the contract.

The petition calls on the International Union to file a national grievance and to conduct a national audit of full-time job elimination.

More UPS Teamsters are planning TDU meetings and petitioning at their UPS buildings. For more information on how to get involved, go to www.MakeUPSDeliver.org, or call TDU at (313) 842-2600.

Part-Time America Won’t Work, but rank-and-file power will. Let’s work together to enforce our contract and make UPS create the full-time jobs that so many Teamsters need.

This month’s Convoy Dispatch centerfold gives a national picture of UPS’s Full-Time Jobs Takeaway. Click here to view the article or view it as a map here.