Don’t let the boss con you! As a Teamster Steward, it’s your job to represent your members — a job that most bosses would like to keep you from doing. Here’s a brief list of some of your rights and obligations.

        You have the RIGHT to grieve about unfair treatment — whether you saw it happen or someone calls it to your attention. Bosses may accuse you of “soliciting grievances,” but don’t be fooled! It’s your duty to encourage workers to grieve about legitimate issues — or file them yourself.
        You have the RIGHT to carry out investigations of grievances, including interviews of grievants and witnesses. Most Teamster contracts provide for investigation on “company time.” For those that don’t, there is often a clear past practice that allows this. But, if not, every grievance must be investigated as thoroughly as necessary, even if it’s on your own time.
        You have the RIGHT to organize and encourage your fellow workers to take action in support of an issue or grievance, so long as it doesn’t take place on work time and interfere with production. The boss can’t stop you from getting people to wear stickers, sign petitions, carry signs, or take similar actions on break or lunch time. (Of course, stickers, buttons and caps can be worn all the time, unless there’s a special reason for a dress code.)
        You have the RIGHT to request the information you need to process a grievance from management. You should put these requests in writing. Management is obligated to respond.
        You have the RIGHT to be present every time a grievance is being “adjusted” or settled. Even if a worker has taken up the grievance on their own, the boss can’t bypass the union when responding.
        You have the RIGHT to stand toe-to-toe with your boss when you’re conducting union business. You can get loud, angry, forceful, and speak your mind during grievance meetings. This is the “Equality Principle” that says you and the boss are equals in grievance discussions.

        All of these rights are legally guaranteed, but they depend on how well you use them. When you do, your members will find their rights are protected, too.

This is Part 3 of Thom Hartman’s discussion of The Employee Free Choice Act.
Parts 1 and 2 can be heard here and here.

Thom Hartman can be heard daily on AM760.

Why Should YOU Fight Like Hell for the Employee Free Choice Act?

      There are a lot of good union people out there who are sitting on their hands while the battle rages in Congress over the Employee Free Choice Act. The legislation was introduced in Congress on March 11.
      The anti-labor community is going full guns to defeat the measure. It’s passage is far from a sure thing, because even if every Democrat in the Senate votes for it, it will still come up 1 vote short of passage.
      And even that scenario is not certain because a couple of Dems are on the fence. One of those is our own new Senator, William Bennet. He was appointed by Gov. Ritter to replace Ken Salazar, who joined the Obama cabinet.
      Every Union member at UPS ought to be on the phone every day to Bennet’s office in Wash. D.C. telling him he needs to support the working class. It’s that important that the Free Choice Act pass. It’s that important to YOU.
      Now I know a lot of UPSers who would ask, “Why should I care if it passes or not?”.
Well, I’ll tell you why.
      UPS drivers make the best wages and enjoy the best benefit package on the street today. FedEx used to be relative close to us in wages and benefits but they have suffered some take-aways since the economy crashed. Now, UPS drivers are way out in front with raises and free insurance and pension benefits guaranteed into 2013.
      One of the oldest rules of Unionism is that if you outpace the competition in wages then you put your employer at a disadvantage. And the best way to keep the competition at a pay level siimilar to yours is not to reduce your wages to match theirs. The best way is to raise their wages to match yours. And the best way to raise wages at FedEx is get them unionized. And the best chance at unionizing FedEx is the Employee Free Choice Act. 
      So if you want to keep your wages and free insurance and defined benefit pension after 2013, you better get off your duff and get on the phone to your Senators. The battle is happening now. You need to act now.
      The Employee Free Choice Act is you best hope of maintaining your wages and benefits. But it won’t pass if we remain silent. The anti-laborites are not silent right now. They are out to defeat you. Will you allow that to happen?

Contact your elected officials in Washington.

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

The decisions from the February meeting of the National Grievance panel in Ft. Lauderdale are now available online.

Click here to download the decisions from the national grievance panel.

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.

This information provided by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

“The American middle class is on its deathbed. Ordinary folks who put in a solid day’s work can no longer afford to buy a house, send their kids to college, or even get sick. If you’re not a CEO, you’re probably screwed.”

“In his book, Air America host Thom Hartmann shows how the American middle class that was so carefully constructed by our country’s founding fathers has been systematically dismantled over the past quarter-century, and, under the guise of “freeing” the market, replaced by a system designed to line the pockets of the super-rich and corporations.” 

“Hartmann shows that it’s not too late to return to the America our founders envisioned. Democracy requires a fair playing field. It will survive only if We the People stand up, speak out, and reclaim our democratic birthright.”

 
                                                                                                               
                            Part 2 – Thom Hartman –  Discussing the Employee Free Choice Act


                                            

General President Jimmy Hoffa really nails what our position is on trade with China. We are not against China when it comes to trade and manufacturing. We just want a level playing field. Our workers in America have proven that they can compete and win in a global economy when all things are equal. The corporatists don’t care about workers, or the environment, or the world. It’s all a Race to the Bottom Line for them. If it’s profitable then do it. Screw the world, people, Americans, anyone, or anything that gets in the way. Americans stand by and not only let this happen, but stand up and vote against their own best interests in the hope that their lives will get better as a result
   Is Your Life Better Today! Know Anyone That has Lost a Job?
                         Thank Your Local Corporatist!
               

There is going to be a lot of debate very soon concerning the Employee Free Choice Act. 
We need to be ready to argue. We will not win Card Check without a fight.
Are you ready to fight?
This video is part 1 of a 3 part debate. It will help you understand the argument.
I will publish parts 2 and 3 soon.
Thom Hartmann can be heard evenings on AM 760.

It’s important that we grow the company because it makes our jobs and our pensions more secure. But it’s equally important to grow the Union. Many people don’t know how to grow the Union. They think it takes a big organizing campaign to bring in new workers under the Teamster umbrella. But there are many things you can do everyday to grow the Teamsters Union. Here are a few of them.

        First, take your full lunch everyday. We are requiered to take an hour for lunch each day. Every minute you don’t take and choose to work for instead is work that should have been dispatched to another car. Our building dispatches about 300 routes a day and if just 16 of those drivers skip half of their hour  lunch, they have ran an entire route that should have been dispatched and run by anotherTeamster. Don’t let the company reduce our ranks and undermine our power by skipping part of your lunch. Every Teamster on the payroll is another person making our union stronger. 
        Use your 8-hour requests. Each driver in Denver gets three 8-hour requests per month. Our center has 45 drivers. If each one reduced their dispatch by one hour (from 9 to 8 hours), 3 times a month, that’s 135 hours a month or the equivalent of over 3 weeks of work that we could generate just by taking what’s is rightfully ours to enjoy. We could add a driver in our center if everyone used all of their 8-hour requests.
        Refuse to work excessive overtime. We have strong 9.5 language in our contract. Use it. Keep your hours under control and the company will need more drivers to cover the routes that we are running ourselves right now by working 10 to 11 hours a day. Just 8 drivers working an extra hour per day are absorbing a route that another Teamster should be running. Excessive overtime weakens our union and hurts our families.
        Don’t work off the clock. Every time you work off the clock you are giving the company a false impression of how long and how many people it takes to get the job done. Don’t give away precious minutes that someone should be paid for. UPS made $3 billion profit last year, you don’t have to work for free to keep them afloat.
        Stop supervisors from doing our work. Go to your steward every time you see a supervisor working and have him investigate the reason for this violation. Sometimes the reasons are legitimate, sometimes not. If not, then file a grievance. Time slip grievances encourage the company to put on more people. See the next blog entry here for the steps to follow when you see a supervisor doing our work.
        And finally, grow the business. The company consistently refuses to hire more people because the growth is flat. They say it would be bad management to add people when the business isn’t growing. So, grow the business and grow the Union. 

        None of these simple ways to grow the Union require a degree in organizing or long weekends spent talking to unorganized workers. These are things we can do everyday at work to grow our Union. Do your part, grow the union.

        Supervisor working grievances are filed under two articles of our contract; Article 3, section 7 of the National Master Agreement and Article 1, section 2 of the Central States Supplement. Both state that the job of the supervisor is to supervise, not to do the work of the person he supervises. The person who files the grievance gets paid for the hours worked by the supervisor. It’s easy to win a supervisor working grievance.
        You need 5 things. Who, what, when, where and why. Be ready to take notes when you see a supervisor working. 
        First, find out Who. When you see a supervisor working, you have the right to walk up to them and ask them who they are. They should be wearing a name tag. You do not have the right to inhibit the flow of packages in any part of the operation at any time. Be careful not to interfere, but go ahead and get their name. Tell them that they need to stop doing the work of the hourly employees.
        Make note what the supervisor is doing. Is he advancing the progress of the packages? They have the right to pull packages out of the system and audit them at any time, but should return the packages to the same location they pulled them from. They have broad powers when it comes to training and can help an employee being trained in an effort to keep the trainee on schedule. Examples of the work they should not be doing includes driving tugs with packages on them, sending home hourly workers and wrapping up themselves, delivering stops to ‘help’ a driver and shuttling out packages to drivers.
        Put down in your notes when the violation occurred. Note the day and time. Record how long you observed the work being done.
        Be specific on where the supervisor was working. Was he pulling from a box? Which box and which boxline? What center was he in when you observed him driving a tug and dropping off packages? All of this information will be important to your winning the grievance.
        Why? This is often the most important step. Most grievances are won or lost on the question of why. This is where you get your steward involved. Your steward will take the who, what, when and where and go find out the why. The company feels it has a responsibility to its customers to make service at any cost and uses this to justify supervisors working. When the Teamsters don’t show up for work and that shift is understaffed because of it, supervisors will be working and that’s a hard grievance to win. Let your steward find out why the supervisors were working. He can request staffing records and time cards. The investigation into why is the job of the steward.

        It’s not hard to win a supervisor working grievance if you keep good notes. Often, supervisors don’t want to be working and (while they may be afraid to say it) will welcome a grievance to hi-lite their own concerns. Feel free to accommodate them. Contract enforcement is everyone’s responsibility.

For thirty some years I have been involved with the Teamsters Union. I’ve watched the internal political fights, and actually have attempted to make some changes from within. It is very daunting, and scary to the average rank and file guy. You can feel very out of control when dealing with the Union. Even on a local level they can seem very aloof and detached. (Many times they are). In some ways they are absorbed with their own self interest much the way the corporatist’s are. The difference is when you (the rank and file member) slap them, they will at least look your way. Every one of you needs to become involved. The union was created to serve the membership, not be a gravy train for the self serving officer. You can help yourself by reading the information put out by the union both in print and on-line. Get information through the Teamsters On-line. Get opposing viewpoints. There are many, the biggest being TDU. It is the membership that ultimately drives this train. It is your apathy that derails it. Don’t depend on some other guy to direct the path of the Union. It may not go the way you want it to. It is the fear of you, (the rank and file), that forces our Union in the direction it needs to go. You pay for it. It is your Right. Let them know.

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