Time is screaming by towards the 2013 contract negotiations. The time to take control of the political scene, that will directly affect the negotiations is screaming by. The time to take control of the Union political scene is also on the near horizon with the election of Teamster National officers.
The scary part is the apathy most UPS people have towards the upcoming contract. Many simply do not vote. Many of the regular voters do not take the time to educate themselves on the issues, or they put other issues ahead of their own livelihood. It is a common theme we play over and over again here on Denver Brown. “Get involved!” “Pay attention!” “Learn the issues!” “Educate yourselves!”
Many drivers just continue to put their heads down, and pretend there is nothing they can do.
The question for many is, “why is 2013 so different?” The difference is a combination of the political climate of the U.S, the economic climate of the U.S., and the competitive climate at UPS. The attempt to regulate Fed Ex the same as UPS is a perfect example of how the competitive climate has changed. Fed Ex’s republican buddies hate the unions, and feel that Fed Ex should be given a leg up in keeping the Unions from getting a foothold. That causes the pressure on UPS to either negotiate away employee benefits in order to control costs at a level comparable to Fed Ex, and also creates the possibility of total Union busting to level the playing field in the small package trades.
What does this mean to you? Give backs during negotiations. Fed Ex drivers function on a much lower wage level than the average UPS driver. Fed Ex employees work with much less job security than the average UPS driver. Fed Ex drivers are forced to contribute on a much higher level for their benefit packages. All of this comes out to the cost of doing business on the bottom line. Do you think it all goes unnoticed by UPS?
Many of you continue to believe the Faux News mentality that the world will be better without the unions. Many of you believe you would do better on your own without the pensions. Many of you believe you will continue to receive your healthcare at the same levels of benefit and cost without someone to negotiate on your behalf. Many of you believe everything you see in the news.
Many of you are in for a rude awakening!
We will go through another major election cycle in 2012. That election cycle will be the indicator of what you can expect in 2013 during negotiations. Many drivers plan to leave prior to those negotiations because they know that costs are in the targets of UPS corporate management. Also with the declining ranks of the Unions, the Teamsters will be less inclined to put their largest dues paying workgroup at risk to striking. Many of you will recall that Bill Clinton was the president during the last strike. Had it been a republican president, we would have been forced to work without a contract, severely weakening the pressure that we brought to bare to save our pensions.
The political climate of the time will have a huge bearing on the outcomes of the negotiations. The outcome of the Union elections will also have a huge effect. Every driver must involve themselves in the process of those elections to get the best, most qualified people in office. Just a side note, the average percentage for voting in the Union elections is 27%. One quarter of you decides for all of the rest. That is apathy at it’s best.
Now is the time, for all good Teamsters, to come to the aid of their own life!
Don’t become your own worst enemy!
Get involved, and vote for your life!
All posts by George
Coming Soon, Tiered Wage System
You can all expect to see a Tiered wage system in the 2013 contract. With the success of the Multi-National Corporations, comes the demise of the next generation of workers. We always called it, “killing the unborn. Here are some of the contracts all ready tiering their wage systems.
Is it Time to Resign?
Are you worried about Peak? Are you stressing about the combination of bad weather, high stop counts, a worthless helper and running in the dark?
Well….. maybe it’s time to resign. I know it’s crossed your mind. It always does at this time of year. Go ahead, do it.
It’s time to resign yourself to doing it their way.
It’s time to resign yourself to doing the job exactly the way UPS wants it done. It’s time to stop working off the clock and start taking your full lunch between the third and sixth hours. 
It’s time to resign yourself to cut out this crap of parking on the wrong side of the street and sheeting in the car and leaving your DIAD in the holder and running up to the house and back.
It’s time to realize that by not using the methods you are risking your job. The company doesn’t feel they have an understaffing problem. They believe they have a lot of drivers who are doing their own thing and not using the methods and wasting a lot of time in the process. Then these drivers complain about over dispatching and long hours.
It’s time to realize that the company is going to come after you to get you to run better numbers and they are going to attack your methods. If your methods are sloppy and they improve your stops per hour with a simple ride along, then you are going to have a lot more problems in the future than you have now. You are going to have the same dispatch but increased pressure to go faster because you demostrated that you could do more using the methods.
Use the methods.
The methods will set you free.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the day from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
A Letter to Denverbrown
Dear Denverbrown:
My name is H…. W……… I am looking for a little help. I have been a driver for eight years. I had fallen into a comfortable routine delivering my route. I never had an absentee problem, and I got along with my supervisors OK. That is until we got this new guy.
He started out riding me pretty hard. He upped my dispatch and when I complained he told me to blow it out my you-know-what. I felt that he was very disrespectful to me. I let the whole thing blow over, but now he treats me badly on a regular basis. One day I finally had enough and I yelled back at him in front of everybody. I used the same language to him that he regularly used to me, but the company fired me for creating a hostile work environment. I don’t think this is fair.
Their policy is supposed to be for everyone yet that supervisor is still here, and I’m not. My feeling is that the company and their policies are hypocritical. My union steward told me I should have filed a grievance under (I think) Article 37 for harassment the very first time I felt threatened by this supervisor. Now I’m the man out and I hear he is still treating people like this.
The thing I don’t get is why the company just lets him go on the way he is. I guess he gets them good numbers because they just let him treat everyone with an iron fist. I always assumed we were in this battle together to make the company successful. Now I find out that the management is only there to make themselves successful at my expense. They just don’t really care about my family, my health, my safety, my future, or me.
After eight years I now see that I should have been more aware of the Union’s function. Unfortunately I had to be terminated to see it. I could have saved myself a bunch of trouble if I had not been afraid to raise this issue with my steward, but he always seemed like a troublemaker and I didn’t want to get that reputation myself. I thought the company liked me.
Now the company has thrown me to the wolves. I’m still hopeful I will get my job back, but I am suffering financially while the decision is made. I see how people become the Union badasses that they become. They are always covering their rear, leaving no stone for the company to turn. Never allowing the company to get anything on them. I always thought these people were just trying to cost the company money, and just had a bad attitude. Now I find out they are truly trying to protect themselves from a monster.
Thanks for listening. I will continue to read Denver Brown so I can stay ahead of the monster.
Sincerely;
H… W………
Getting What You Vote For!
Here it is! The first installment of getting what you vote for. Looky Here!
Job Standards…1943
The July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine offered these Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees:
General experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious.
Get enough size variety in operator’s uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can’t be stressed too much in keeping women happy.
Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive.
Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes.
Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology.
I’m sure that if a woman had written similar standards for dealing with men, she would have had some equally interesting points to make. Unions played a major role in trying to eliminate this kind of prejudice from the workplace.
UPS Drivers May Have Been Biggest Losers in Election
When FedEx wins, UPS loses. That’s you.
High wages and benefits that out distance the competition cannot go on forever. There will have to be parity for UPS to continue to compete. If FedEx wages do not go up, UPS wages must come down. If we have high unemployment going into the 2013 negotiations, will UPS take on the Teamsters again? We had low unemployment and high prosperity in 1997 when the Teamsters enjoyed vast public support for the strike and took UPS to the mat. That may not be the case in 2013. Negotiations begin almost a year before the contract expires. That’s 2012, not that far away. Could you stay out this time for a month? Two months?
I hope eveyone is putting some money aside.
FedEx Among Big Winners in Midterm Elections
WASHINGTON — One of the biggest corporate winners after Tuesday night’s watershed Republican House victories will be Memphis-based FedEx Corp., which can abandon fears that pending legislation will upset its existing labor relations.
“I think they dodged a bullet,” said David Schaffer, a Vienna, Va.-based aviation consultant and former counsel to the House aviation subcommittee.
Schaffer said it’s still possible the lame-duck Congress could pass a new, multiyear Federal Aviation Administration bill, but “I don’t think it could pass with the FedEx provision in it.”
FedEx has deployed an army of lobbyists in recent years and established a public relations campaign to defeat the provision that would have reclassified some FedEx employees under the National Labor Relations Act, allowing them to form local bargaining units that could strike and upset the company’s reputation for reliability.
The author of that provision, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., lost his re-election Tuesday night.
The committee will be chaired by U.S. Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, come January.
Oberstar was FedEx CEO Frederick W. Smith’s nemesis during the height of the public relations struggle last summer.
He accused Smith of “misleading the public” with a campaign accusing rival UPS of seeking a “bailout” with the labor provision.
FedEx spokesman Maury Lane said Wednesday that Smith would have no comment on Oberstar’s loss.
Lane said, “Yesterday’s election results clearly showed that the American people will no longer tolerate special-interest legislative bailouts. FedEx Express will continue to oppose legislative initiatives that do not support marketplace competition and promote reliability in the overnight package delivery industry.”
Both UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters sought the labor language to make it easier for FedEx’s truck drivers and other employees that don’t require FAA certification to organize.
Teamsters spokeswoman Leigh Strope said the union was “very saddened” by Oberstar’s defeat.
“Jim Oberstar recognized that FedEx Express, hiding under the guise of an airline, was wrong and unfair to its work force and the rest of package delivery industry,” Strope said. “The work that he started will be carried on by others who support fair competition and giving workers the right to organize.”
Both sides of the fight spent heavily, but U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who defied his Transportation Committee chairman in voting against the provision, agreed FedEx is now better off.
“I’m sure FedEx is a big winner because, with Republicans in control of the House, that provision would never get through,” Cohen said.
Bartholomew Sullivan, The Commercial Appeal
Peak Punishment
It’s almost Peak Punishment time. It’s time for the company to use and abuse the people that have been their “humper dumpers”, 
The sound of squealing “humpers” can be heard throughout the building, as the company heaps on the stops. Silliness like the “400 club”, and the “Production Club” rears it’s ugly head. Unfortunately many of the “lesser knowledgable” drivers get sucked into the lunacy. Many will be injured, and many will have accidents trying to produce up to the insane levels of expectation.
Any driver that’s been through a few Peaks will tell you, “continue to work at a safe pace”. “Get done what you can get done, and let management worry about their insane expectations”.
Accidents and injuries will still cost you your job, even at Peak. Even the greatest Producers have been fired during Peak for major accidents. Being injured at Peak is the cardinal “no-no”. Once you are injured, management will cop a, “you just couldn’t do it” attitude. You will “forever after” have the reputation of being a wimp, and falling down on the job when the company needed you the most.
It will just be another attack by the “abusive daddy”.
Given the economic, and political climate, the push will be even greater, so prepare yourself.
Do not get sucked in!
Expecting Representation
Most of the time a simple question, or statement, can trigger the system to work in the favor of the driver. The contract provides for the rights of the driver, and sets up a formal procedure to be followed to address the driver’s issues with the company. Many drivers simply do not avail themselves of their rights. OF course when the issues build to overflowing, the drivers will often attack the Teamsters for not being there to represent them when they have problems. They will often bad mouth the Union to their fellow drivers, sending the message that the Teamsters are useless, and they are paying dues for nothing.
All they had to do was open their mouths and ask!
Many of the drivers just think they can live a passive life, where anyone, and everyone, will simply jump forth and take care of them, without the driver having to put forth any effort at all. The driver sees everything vividly in their own mind, and they assume that the guy next to them, or the steward, or the Business Agent, sees things the same way. They project their laziness, and lack of effort onto everyone else, not taking responsibility for their actions, or lack thereof.
When you hear another driver bad-mouthing the Union, ask them a simple question, “Who did you tell about your problems?”. Very often the answer will be management, not the Steward. Very often it will be the Supervisor that told the driver that no one could help him, and he was just out of luck. “Tough crap for having to pay his Union dues”.
Of course they have all been listening to the pundits during the day, telling them how bad the Union is for them, and how the Union is just there to take their money. Another consequence of a lazy mind.
The driver also knows that he or she is the most valuable person in the world, and even without the Union, they would be worth the pay and benefit package they receive. Yes, in fact, many of the drivers are just simply delusional. It goes on day after day. They are their own worst enemy.
The Union is there for your benefit. Demand the representation you deserve, and support the representation you get.
Just remember, no one can read your mind, and you’re not the only person on earth!