People love to talk about agendas. There’s the gay agenda, the conservative right agenda, the liberal agenda and so on. Do you think  that UPS has an agenda?
     I  think UPS has an agenda and I think it comes down from On High and is played out in every center in every building in the country. The UPS agenda these days involves cost cutting. In the past it used to involve service issues, or getting new volume. But today the whole agenda might revolve around reducing operating costs. 
     The March UPS agenda would have had some old familiar songs in it, but a few surprises too. Check out this list and see how much of it was implemented in your center last month. Now I don’t claim to know exactly what the March agenda was but if I did, I think it’d be something like this.

1.  Reduce the overallowed hours by 50%. No more than 15% of the drivers should be dispatched under 8 and that should be reduced to none. No one over 10.5 hours. Anyone going over 10.5 or dispatched under 8 should be reported.
2.  No part time overtime. None. Zero. Zilch. No double shifting.
3.  No overtime for 22.3 jobs. Reduce customer counter paid hours. No OT.
4.  Cut out supervisor use of credit cards.
5.  All uniform ordering has to go through one person and one person only.
6.  Turn off the lights when you aren’t using them.
7. Grievance pay must be preapproved.
8. Cut back on safety spending.
9. This is the good one……….Catch somebody abusing the lunch hour and fire them. That will scare everybody else into stopping their lunch hour abuse.

     These aren’t bad things (until you get to that last one). I’ve always said they need to keep us under 10.5. In fact why not just eliminate all OT for everyone, even the drivers. The part about not being under 8 is a tough one because the time allowances are so screwy. How can you dispatch someone over 8 and keep them under 10.5 if the dispatch is off by 2 hours. That like trying to thread a needle with your eyes closed. 
     But that last one, that’s the good one. They still think we are hosing them on the lunch hour. With all their spy technology, they still think we are hosing them. That’s just madness.