One of my least pleasant but certainly most important roles as a steward was to represent a fellow employee who was going through the process of being terminated. I was in a lot of termination hearings over the years and I never saw two alike. But my duties as the Steward were always the same. My most last one was no exception. 
        This driver had been involved in an intersection accident, a tier 3 accident which fit the criteria of a “serious accident” for which you can be discharged without going through the 3 step disciplinary process of warning, suspension and then termination. This driver wasn’t in my center but I was leaving the building late one morning when the shit hit the fan and I was called in to represent him. I grabbed my union book, told my center manager I was going to need help with my air stops and put on my game face. I met my newest friend and we went into the office.
        A Steward has to remember that he is on equal footing with management in any office situation. You have some things that you can do to control the meeting. The first thing I always do is get out my notebook and start writing. I make sure I’ve got a clean sheet of paper, I take names and I note the time and place. If management is being bullish, you can knock them down a peg before they even get started by asking something they don’t expect. “Are you still in this office, I heard you were going to the midnight hub?” That takes the point off their arrow for a minute and gives you a chance to settle in.
        The company has to lay out their case first. If the company just lays out their case then, without hesitation, I take the driver outside and ask him what happened. If management starts right off fishing, asking the driver what happened yesterday, I object. I ask point blank, “Why are we here?” The Steward has the right to know the purpose of the meeting and if that means you and the manager have to step outside and talk first, then that’s what must happen. Then, when the questioning begins again, I call a halt and take the member outside. I tell him what they suspect and get his side of the story. Then I can advise him on what to say and sometimes, on what not to say.
        In this case of the driver involved in the tier 3 accident, I told him up front that this was going to end in his termination. He looked scared. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him it wasn’t over by any means, that we would fight to get him reinstated and that the most important thing for him to do was to take responsibility for his role in the accident. It wasn’t the fault of the setting sun in his eyes, it wasn’t the fault of the 20 year old truck with no power. It wasn’t the other driver’s fault even though they could have stopped but didn’t. Be factual, keep it simple. If the driver is in the meeting and gets a bad case of motor mouth, I take him outside again and tell him that a pause in the conversation does not mean it’s his turn to talk. Look at your hands, look at the walls, look at me, I don’t care what, but don’t feel the need to fill every pause with another explaination. You can say too much. It’s hard to take back something you said, it’s easy to add more later if you didn’t say enough. 
        Meanwhile, I’m taking notes. Lots of notes. That serves two purposes. It slows the meeting down and it gives me a good picture later of exactly what was said. As soon as possible, certainly within 24 hours, I wll go back over my notes and if necessary, write up a summary in a more clear, concise form. That way I can give it to the BA when I turn in my grievance. Note taking is vital to good representation.
        Once all the facts are on the table and it’s obvious the company is going to terminate the driver, I again step outside with my driver and explain what is going to happen. They are going to take your ID. They may escort you off the property and if they do, go quietly, don’t talk about the case, not now, not later. No phone calls to the manager, I don’t care what your wife says, don’t call anyone but me or the Business Agent. I fill out the grievance and I get his signature on it. I leave the “contract article violated” section blank until the company announces what article they are using and then I can take out the grievance and fill it in. Before going back in I punch the grievance in the time clock. I give the grievant my phone number and the phone number of the business agent and tell him to write up a statement. Don’t wait a week, write it up today. You can go over it with the BA and fine tune it later, but write it up while the details of the accident are fresh in your mind. If the termination is for an accident, I urge the driver to take home a copy of the 5 seeing habits and the 10 point commentary. Study them, be able to recite them if called upon to do so at the termination hearing. Don’t talk to anyone about the accident. Don’t call the other driver and try to get them on your side or ask them to write a statement. Be positive.
        The next step is the termination hearing and while this is basicly handled by the BA, the Steward’s role is important here also. I call my grievant every week to make sure he is doing OK. I urge them to file for unemployment. It gives him something to do and a way to maybe get some money. I tell him to wear something nice to the meeting. Keep it simple, no gaudy jewelry, no wild clothes. Look like a driver, not like a person enjoying a vacation. Be polite, not combative. It’s OK to be nervous, this is an important meeting. On the day of the meeting, when my driver shows up, I try to hang with him. Make him feel that he has a friend. It’s not just him against UPS, it’s us. The BA is usually busy and I try to dance between the BA and the driver. Every fired employee will ask you what his chances are. I try to be honest but not overly optimistic. It’s better that he be pleasantly surprised than cruelly disappointed. The hardest part of the job sometimes in being honest.
        In the termination hearing with the business agent, I like to have the member sit between us. I again take notes, I listen, I let the BA do his job. I’m always asked by the BA if I have anything to add and I always do. Sometimes, it’s to remind the company of the hard work the driver has put in over the years and of the cost of training new drivers. I say something positive about the driver sitting so nervously beside me. I try not to be confrontational or cut down the company’s case. I’m not trying to change the company, that battle can be fought later. Then we step outside and we wait. 
        I always feel that the longer the company takes to reach a decision the better. If they are hard set against bringing this guy back, then there isn’t much to talk about. But if we’ve done a good job on the Union side, then they have some fat to chew and the longer they chew the better I feel. It’s a nervous time for the terminated employee. He will always ask how he did. I always say he did real good unless it’s obvious he wasn’t prepared. If he was asked to recite the 5 seeing habits and didn’t know them, then I tell him to get to studying because we will probably be going to panels and he will have another chance. If he recited them but was so nervous he got the order wrong, that’s OK. He did good. We have a chance.
        During this process you learn alot about a driver, his home life, hi
s personality, his feelings about the job. I’ve seen guys who I felt needed professional help and I’ve told them so. I’ve seen guys that loved their families so much and felt so bad about letting them down that it made my heart ache. I’ve seen guys cry and I’ve felt like crying a few times myself. The waiting for a decision is the hardest part because there isn’t anything else you can do. It’s up to the company.
        When we go back in the company may have another question. This is not a time to present new evidence or start an argument. But most often, they begin to present their decision. Within a few sentences you can tell what they have decided. The waiting is over. They announce their decision. If they can’t reinstate the guy, then we are going to panels and the meeting is over. We pick up our stuff and leave. I tell the member what the panel is like, how the tables are set up, to expect a court reporter, what the consequences if we lose. But if they take the guy back, then it’s a happy day. We go outside and enjoy some nervous laughter, we shake hands all around, maybe even hug. I urge him to call home and let his family know. I look outside and the sun is shining and the world is bright. It’s a good day to be a Steward.

     With so much argument about the Employee Free Choice Act going on these days, it seems the whole country is dividing up between Union lovers and Union haters. Union lovers see organized labor as the only thing standing between the middle class and mass poverty. And as Unions shrink in size, so does the American Dream. We may be the last generation in a long line of generations where the kids had a higher standard of living than their parents. Our children will hard pressed to get better jobs and benefits than we have. Even the good Union jobs are taking a few steps backwards these days in wages and benefits. 
     As the automakers stumble and fall, the Union haters are quick to point out that it was the Unions that did them in. “High wages and benefits (the backbone of the middle class) forced the companies into bankruptcy”, they howl, “It was the damn Unions.” These same people who seem to loathe the middle class never point their fingers at greedy corporations. They never accuse the carnivorous CEOs of breaking the back of a once successful company. All they can see are those Damn Unions. 
     Well here is a Damn CEO story. You may have seen it on Yahoo. “Judge orders Scrushy to pay $2.9B to shareholders.” Yes, his name is really Scrushy! Richard Scrushy, the former head of HealthSouth. 
      After reading the following description of Scrushy’s activities and using the same thinking that the Union bashers use, I think we can assume that it is management that’s ruining America. Upper management thugs are masterminding it and their low-level goons are carrying out the destruction. Shouldn’t we treat them with the same repulsion that they have for us.

Circuit Judge Allwin E. Horn, who heard the case in Birmingham without a jury, ruled in favor of HealthSouth shareholders who filed a lawsuit claiming Scrushy was involved in years of overstating the company’s earnings and assets to make it appear the company was meeting Wall Street forecasts.

Horn wrote in his ruling that Scrushy “knew of and participated in” the faked reports filed with regulators from 1996 to 2002. He said the HealthSouth founder also “consciously and willfully” violated his financial responsibilities as CEO.

During the lawsuit trial, an attorney for shareholders, John W. Haley repeatedly confronted Scrushy over what Haley described as obvious conflicts of interest. Among them was HealthSouth’s purchase of 19 acres of land next to Scrushy’s suburban Birmingham estate for $1.9 million, then giving him the land three years later. Scrushy said he got the land instead of a bonus one year.

Haley, sounding incredulous, recounted how Scrushy took an $82 investment in a company that purchased property at a discount from HealthSouth and turned it into a personal profit of about $12 million in four years by leasing the property back to the corporation.

“That’s the way it works in America,” Scrushy said.

Haley, said Scrushy was “a man of substantial means” who earned more than $226 million from the time the fraud began until he left the company in 2005. The fraud cost the company $1.8 billion.

        Have you ever gone into the office to represent a driver and had your manager whip out the calculator and start pounding in numbers. He’ll say this poor slob of a driver is not using the methods and he’s not keeping his nose to the grindstone and he’s costing the center money instead of making the center money. The manager will have a stack of reports to back up his claim: the WOR showing the driver is over allowed; Sparky, showing which stops the driver wastes time at; previous OJS rides showing demostrtated levels of performance and so on.
        But the ultimate hammer is the calculator. If the guy is 2 hours over and that’s at the OT rate of $42.25, then he’s literally stealing $84.50 from the company every day. That’s $422.50 per week. Or almost $22,000 a year. If 50,000 drivers did this, that’s……oh my God, all the profit the company makes!! We can’t afford to have you around, you’re going to bring down the whole company! This justifies a 3 day ride and all future harassment…just look at these numbers! 
        But there is some math that managers never do. How about these numbers. Let’s say this poor slob of a driver comes in every day and spends just 15 minutes in his car before his start time looking for misloads and checking out his Next Day Air. That’s 15 minutes he doesn’t have on the end of his day where it would be paid at the OT rate. That’s one and a quarter hours per week at $42.25 or $52.82. Or almost $2700 a year. If the guy works 25 years, he has given the company $68,000 in free labor by looking over his load every morning for just 15 minutes a day.
        Let’s say he also skips his lunch. That’s 5 hours a week at $42.25, or $211.25 a week. That’s $11,000 a year that the company gets in free labor. Let’s say 20,000 drivers are skipping their lunch everyday. That’s…..well it’s a lot of money every year in free labor that UPS is getting. Then there is the tax savings for them because they don’t have to pay Federal or State tax on that amount. The savings to UPS are huge.
         But managers never do that math in the office. Stewards need to do that math and have it written in the back of their contract book so they can quote it. We can crunch numbers just as well as they can.
        Fight fire with fire.

Some hedge fund managers made over a billion dollars [in 2007]. Hedge fund manager John Paulson, who made a clever bet against subprime mortgages, made close to $4 billion.

How much is 4 billion dollars? If you work as a sales clerk in a retail store, you’d have to work 200,000 YEARS to make 4 billion dollars. If you have a steady $50,000 a year job as a laborer and work for 50 years, in all that time you’d make as much as the hedge fund manager gets in one hour at the office.

4 billion dollars would pay a year’s salary for ALL the public school teachers in New York City.

Yet this money goes to one individual.

When something goes wrong with hedge funds or others in the finance industry, executives still collect their bonuses. But think how much you’ve heard about how teachers’ unions are one of the big problems with education today, standing in the way of efficiency. Think how much you’ve heard about auto workers being the problem in their industry—when they work for decades to earn what this one hedge fund guy takes in in an hour. And at least auto workers produce cars instead of the economic crisis that’s been the major thing to come out of Wall Street recently.

It’s time for the traditional media to take a hard look at their assumptions about profitability and fair wages, to recognize that working people are not the problem.

Main Street

DENVER — Just as voting is set to begin on a new union contract, King Soopers is accusing union representatives of disrupting business and intimidating workers by sending groups of union representatives into stores to talk to workers.

In a complaint filed in federal court this week, the supermarket chain claims the union is sending groups of representatives, many of them dressed in black union t-shirts, into stores to talk to workers on the job and hand out union fliers and buttons, a practice the company said is known as “blitzing.” King Soopers asked a federal judge to step in and stop the practice both for the current round of talks and in the future.

U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn said Friday he would consider the issue during a hearing next Thursday, two days after workers finish voting on the contract. That leaves the union free to keep talking to workers ahead of the vote. Denver area workers are set to vote Monday and Colorado Springs workers will vote Tuesday.

In previous negotiations, Mulligan said union representatives have checked in with store managers and waited to talk to employees on their breaks in the employee lounge. “Union representatives, who are often fellow employees, have a contractual obligation to talk to grocery workers, and we have not had any problems with Safeway and Albertson’s,” union lawyer Crisanta Duran said.

 Lawyers for King Soopers said the aim of blitzing is to disrupt business and intimidate workers and customers.

“While at the facility, defendants have hindered and disrupted operations, threatened, intimidated and coerced employees and staff and the public, and acted in ways that are not peaceful. Defendants interrupt employees who are working, go into non-public areas and pass out union fliers and pins,” lawyers said in the complaint.
7News

Are you smarter than Fox News??

Can you answer this question posed to Jim Cramer on Morning Joe????

I’ll bet you can !!!


                             
                               

This is how Fox News fearmongers about the Employee Free Choice Act.

For usable information about EFCA, watch the next video with Ed Schultz.

        Here are some things you can do to be a better Union member. 

        First off, think of yourself as a Steward. You may not be the real Union Steward in your building or workgroup, but we are all Stewards of the labor movement. Stewards do a lot more than just handle grievances. Stewards can be proactive. An active steward of the labor movement encourages members to support the Union Cause. An active steward is a friend who cares. Everyone wants an active steward on their side. Here are some things you can do to be an active Union member in your workplace. Try out some of these ideas. They are fun.

             Have a MAD Day. Methods Awareness Day. Set a specific day each week, like Tuesday and walk around saying, “The method of the week is parking on the right side of the street. Practice it, master it.” Each week pick a new method. “Three point contact entering and exiting the car.” It’s good practice for the coming of Telematics. The company won’t stop you and you get to talk to everyone. Communication is your best friend as a steward.
             Speak up at the PCMs. Work Denverbrown.com into the conversation at a PCM. You’ll be surprised how hungry people are for information. Or read the key points of an article from the contract, such as Art.3, sec7a. Read the first line. Or Art. 17, the second paragraph. Get in the habit of speaking up, make 30 seconds of the PCM your time. Union time.
             Come in 15 minutes early some day and walk around holding your contract book. People have questions. Have a cheat sheet ready so you can find the articles they have questions about. Write down questions you can’t answer, ask your Steward and get back to them the next day with the answer. Be around, be visible, be the Union.
             Do a printout and pass it out to all your drivers. List important phone numbers, like the Local’s phone number, the pension fund, the health insurance provider, OSHA, the Labor Board, UPS corporate, etc. Include website addresses like Denverbrown.com., TDU, UPSer.com, your Local Union Hall, NABER and others. List your stewards and your business agent. Put on a joke or a cartoon. Don’t slander the company, that’s not a good idea and it will turn some people off. The Union is here to help.
             Bring in a candy bar or some kind of treat for everyone some morning. Dumdums are fun and cheap. They make for some interesting jokes. People love trinkets The company used to give us something for Founders Day. Have your own Founders Day. Say you found a supervisor working and won a money grievance and you wanted to share it. Brotherhood. The company won’t give us anything again for about a hundred years.
             Talk to people about the Employee Free Choice Act. Strong Unions make a strong middle class. Do a Google search and know the websites that promote EFCA and strong Unions. Know how to contact your Congressmen and Senators. It’s not hard. It only takes a few minutes. Get people involved in protecting their own futures. It will pay dividends in the future.  

        These are six fun things you can do as Steward of the Labor Movement to make your presence felt and get to know your brothers and sisters. Your shop steward can’t do it all and he shouldn’t have to. It’s your Union.

You can SPEND ONE MINUTE to help them:

30 seconds to read this.

 

20 seconds to print it out, and leave it by the phone.

 

10 seconds to call governor Ritter’s office.

303-866-2471 

or

1-800-283-7215 

Ask him to sign the lockout bill. They take calls on weekdays, 8 AM to 5 PM.

In 1996, King Soopers and Safeway had a secret agreement. When King Soopers workers voted to strike, Safeway locked out thousands of Safeway workers.

 

Safeway workers did not vote to strike, or even to reject a proposed agreement — they weren’t given the chance. They suddenly found themselves out of a job, on the street, forced by their employer into a strike situation.

 

During current contract talks between the grocery workers’ union and grocery chains, the threat of a lockout once again looms.

 

Governor Owens and a Republican legislature change the law in 1999, taking away protection for locked out workers.

 

The bill on Governor Ritter’s desk would restore the law to what it used to be, giving locked out workers the opportunity to draw unemployment insurance.

 

The companies don’t want that — they’d rather have unionized workers at the mercy of their employer during any job action, helping the employer to lower wages and reduce benefits. Wages of most grocery workers are already near minimum wage(!)

 

In the past, Governor Ritter has supported workers, but he has also vetoed pro-worker legislation. The companies are pressuring him to veto this bill.

 

Please call Governor Ritter early Monday morning, and throughout the week to ask him to sign HB 1170, the lockout bill. Give working people a break.

 

And then please pass this on to friends, family, and co-workers, and ask them to do the same.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) made an announcement last week that the reason the Republicans are losing so badly these days is because of “forced unionism”. He said that especially in the Northeast, good Republican voters are leaving the area to migrate South to avoid labor unions and “forced unionism”. So now Dems outnumber Republicans in these non right to work states.
Is this guy a joke or what??
He doesn’t explain why the Democrats carried North Carolina or Virginia, both considered Southern right-to-work states, in 2008. Nor why other right to work states abandoned the Republican party that year, like Florida, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
The Republicans really need to put a clamp on who’s allowed to speak publicly for the party and who’s not. Statements like this only make the Republicans look stupid.

         Have you ever been accused of solicitation?
 
         Of course, I’m talking about soliciting grievances. UPS management loves to accuse Stewards of soliciting grievances. They act like it’s a felony offense. 
         I used to get hauled into the office regularly and the boss would point his finger at me and growl, “I think you’ve been soliciting grievances.” He’d look real pissed off and imply that I had committed a Cardinal Sin.
        Soliciting grievances is not a Cardinal Sin. In fact, it’s another Right of Union Stewards that is protected under the National Labor Relations Act. You can solicit grievances all day long. In fact, it’s your duty to encourage workers to grieve about legitimate issues — or file it yourself.
        Don’t let management fool you. 

        Solicitation is not a crime.