National Grievance Cases for June

The latest information on the national grievance cases are up and the Teamsters for a Democratic Union aren’t happy:

The decisions are in from the June meeting of the National Grievance Committee in Philadelphia and the results aren’t pretty.  If the National Grievance Committee was a UPS employee it would be fired for poor job performance.

In four days of hearings, the highest UPS grievance body under the contract ruled in favor of the union just four times.  The company won 13 cases outright.  Another 42 cases were deadlocked.  An incredible 78 cases were postponed.

Rights & Resources

The Teamsters for a Democratic Union have a new section on their website called “Rights & Resources.” Check it out.

Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philippines

Over at my blog The Excerpt Mill I quote a passage from a book I’m reading about the Kilusang Mayo Uno union in the Philippines:

By “genuine,” we mean that the KMU is run by its members.  The members are given all information and decide the policies which run the organization.  By “militant,” we mean that the KMU will never betray the interests of the working class, even at the risk of our own lives.  The KMU believes workers become aware of their own human dignity through collective mass action.  By “nationalist,” we beleive the wealth of the Philippines belongs to the Filipino people and that national sovereignty must never be compromised.  The KMU is against the presence of the U.S. bases.

Management Choosing Employees Vacation Times

Recently R, who works as a sorter, came up to me telling me that he received a vacation check and was given a list by one of the supervisors who handles employee’s hours that told him he was to take each of his vacation periods within the next couple of months.  This despite R never having actually signed up for vacation during the March selection period.

Also, another employee, F, told me that he too receive a letter from the same supervisor telling him when he was to take his vacations because he never selected his during the March selection period.  But he said he didn’t mind and wasn’t going to change the dates they chose.  But the fact still remains that UPS management is arbitrarily choosing vacations for its own employees rather than the employees choosing their own vacation times.

According to Article 22 in the Northern California Sort Rider vacation selection is to be done during the four weeks of March and done in seniority order.  When a person chooses their vacation they choose their vacation in-between their seniority dates.  R’s seniority date is in May, so he would choose his vacation weeks in between May 2009 and May 2010.  Section 3 of Article 22 states that:

vacation periods will be assigned at the employee’s choice…

Section 7 states:

Those not signing up in the correct week [of the month of March] shall loose their choice of vacation and must take what is left.

No where does it state that if the employee fails to choose in March will she or he have their vacation assigned to them by management.  It only states that when they do choose their vacation they must only choose weeks that aren’t blacked out (due to other employees choosing those weeks before hand).

When I let this be known to the Night Hub manager he refused to take R’s check back and rescind it and all the vacations arbitrarily assigned to him.  The manager said, “I won’t take the check, just grieve it.”

But after a few more days of bugging management and the division manager they obviously realized that it would be pointless to go through a grievance process as they would automatically lose the case in pre-panel.  So they canceled R’s vacation check and cleared all of the vacations they previously assigned to him.

Lessons

1. Management cannot choose your vacation for you, only you can.
2. If management tells you that you must choose a vacation during a selected time period tell them that they are wrong and that you can choose whatever week is left within your seniority year.

Supervisor Doing Pick-Off Duty

Yesterday E. demanded a shop steward to be present on his PD [1] due to complications he was having with his supervisor.  E, who is a pick-off for his belt, [2] told me that his supervisor was having him load (which he has no problem with) throughout the night; but while he was loading his supervisor was doing his job by picking off, which is in violation of UPS National Master Contract Article 3 Section 7, which states:

The Employer agrees that the function of supervisors is the supervision of Employees and not the performance of the work of the employees they supervise…supervisors…shall not perform any bargaining unit work…

When a supervisor does work the grieved employee can file a grievance and receive double their daily pay rate for the time the supervisor worked.  E stated that last week his supervisor worked three hours so I informed the Building C supervisor that this had to stop (which he agreed) and that E should receive 3 hours of pay at double his daily pay rate (which he said he would look into).

Lessons

1. When a supervisor is doing bargaining unit work (that is, union work) that is in violation of Master Article 3 Section 7 and should be grieved.  Inform your shop steward of this and then if you can’t resolve the situation by getting a fair amount of pay at double your rate within a five day work period then file a grievance immediately.

Notes

1. A PD is a “Parcel Delivery” area in where a group of workers and one supervisor take packages that are being delivered there by a moving belt and then load those packages into trailers.  There are 12 PDs in my hub.
2. A “pick-off” is someone who is next to a moving belt and then sorts the packages that go by it by zip code and then sorts those packages into specific trailers.

Worker With Headaches Forced to Stay and Work

A worker, S, in Building A, who has been suffering from headaches the past four or six months told me that when he has asked to go home due to the severity of his headaches he has been told no by some of his supervisors because his doctor had “cleared him to 100% full duty.”

Some back-story on this guy.  S had been suffering headaches since (I believe) a package fell on his head (or some sort of related work injury) around four months or so ago.  He originally went to the UPS snakes doctors at US Health Works (who should be avoided at all costs!) and they gave him some medication but then released him for full duty.  The medication ended up making him drowsy (he said he felt a little drunk when taking the pills) which is really bad when you are around heavy machinery with moving parts and gears all day.

When he came to me I pointed him toward the union who pointed him to another doctor who he could trust.  Not surprisingly the doctor had S take two weeks off and gave him different medication, which didn’t fully get rid of his head aches but didn’t make him feel drowsy.

So now because he is back at work and is back from paid leave management is forcing him to stay on the job despite him still having severe (but not crippling like before) headaches.

Lessons

1. If you are feeling sick or cannot complete your job you must tell management that you would like to go home right away.
2. If they refuse then tell them you won’t go back to work until you have a shop steward present.  They can’t fire you for refusing to work until they give you a warning in front of a shop steward.  Once your shop steward is there she or he should be able to convince management to send you home.
3. If they threaten your job and really push you then your shop steward should be able to work out some type of compromise until the end of the night.  Immediately, the next day, go to your union and file a grievance.

U.S. Unionism and the Lack of Militancy

Michael Hillard writes about the decline of union militancy in the United States since the 1940s:

A key factor explaining the decline of labor militancy since the halcyon days of the 1930s and 1940s has been American employers’ virulent repression of labor militancy and unions per se that transformed the character of American labor as an institution as well as U.S. workers’ political culture, and made such basic tools of labor militancy as a legal strike a suicidal act.

As well as the decline of influence by the Communist Party USA (not that it would have mattered by World War II due to their shabby politics).

It’s a sad state to be a shop steward and union worker in the U.S. (and frustrating).

Death at UPS

A UPS worker in Jackson, Mississippi, who was cleaning up a hazardous materials mess, was killed when a truck backed up into him and crushed him against a wall.

Injuried Worker Forced to Full Duty in Arm Sling

An update on J’s injury.  J went to a new doctor on Monday morning to get a second opinion and the doctor told him (unsurprisingly considering the amount of pain he was in) that he was not allowed to lift any package or object over 15 lbs. and that he was to do light duty all throughout this week.

J was given papers from the doctor to give to the Night Hub manager telling him of his new diagnosis.  When J. went to the manager to give him his papers however the manager refused to obey what the doctor wrote down and told J to start loading in a trailer and to work on full duty regardless of his injury.

J called me up on his cell and told me of the situation so I got a hold of the main ship steward for my shift, E., whom I need to defer to when he is on the shift (as I’m the alternate steward).  E then proceeded to go to Building A and inform the manager that there was no fucking way that J was going to load and work on full duty when his doctor told him he couldn’t lift over 15 lbs.  E told me there was some back and forth and that the manager did not want J doing light duty at all.  So J ended up sitting in the office all night (while on the clock), which is fine with me, as long as he was getting paid.

E told J to not get upset and that the manager wanted him to get pissed off and use it against him and I told him, latter on, to not redo his injury interview and absolutely not sign any papers that were given to him or to retell his story of how he got injured.

Lessons:

1. UPS management treat’s their injured employees like shit.
2. Never got to the UPS clinic, always seek a second opinion if you have seen the company doctor.
3. Refuse to do any work if you are in pain and injured.
4. Contact you shop steward immediately in situations such as these.

MRI Scans Come Back Negative

J. an employee on my shift got injured recently some time last week. He was standing on top of his “load stand” (a little stepper to help you load boxes all the way to the top of the trailer’s ceiling) when the truck pulled off with the trailer sending him tumbling down.

He went to the UPS clinic’s snake oil salesman doctor who took a MRI scan of his shoulder and elbow. These doctors are notoriously shady, one time I had an employee tell me that one of their doctors told her to ice her foot and be back to work in a few days, but her own doctor found out she actually had a broken toe.

The doctor told J. that he had a slight tear in his shoulder with some fluid build up in his elbow. Which in his terms I guess means he is really really totally fuckin’ screwed!

However, J. was only given a sling for his arm and then released to go back to full-duty for work! He told me he was in pain and he was having a hard time working (guess that sling got in the way!) so I brought this to the attention of the Night Shift manager last Friday night.

There was considerable back and forth between the three of us, with the manager claiming the scans came back negative, but it ended in J. getting light duty (also known as TAW, Temporary Alternate Work) for the rest of the shift on Friday. Luckily J. came to me and didn’t ignore his pain (which is what a lot of folks do, ignore the pain) by trying to work through it or talk to management himself. If I hadn’t been there I’m not sure what type of pressure and lies they would have told him.

He went to the union office today and was hooked up with a lawyer and a legitimate doctor outside the UPS network and it is highly unlikely he will be going back to work.

Lessons:

1. When you are injured UPS will try everything they can to keep you from taking time off of work and collecting worker’s comp from their insurance company, the horribly shady Gallagher Basset. Make sure you always go to a shop steward to inform her or him of your injury.
2. Management will try to take you to their health clinic themselves. Don’t let them do this as this is not allowed. Go on your own or have a friend take you.
3. If you can see a doctor outside the UPS network, if your in the Joint Council 7 region I know that you can go to your local union office and get a list of doctors to see.