Category Archives: UPS

Union, UPS

UPS Freight Teamsters Overwhelmingly Approve New National Contract


(WASHINGTON) – UPS Freight Teamsters have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new national five-year master agreement that increases wages, significantly strengthens pension benefits and takes on the issue of subcontracting.

 

The vote, which was 5,195 to 2,094 as of Sunday night, was held at local union halls during the weekend. Participation was 69 percent, which far exceeded the previous ratification vote last June, which was 58 percent. A handful of local unions covering less than 50 members had not reported their results as of Sunday night. Vote results can be viewed here.

 

“UPS Freight members told us their top concerns were pensions and protecting their work, and this new contract addresses those issues head on,” said Ken Hall, Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer and Package Division Director. “Today’s vote reflects the strength of the new agreement. It’s an industry-leading contract.”

 

The new five-year national contract, which covers 13,000 UPS Freight workers, improves and protects wages, benefits and working conditions at a time when most freight companies are making cuts. The contract:

 

• Provides $2.50 in wage increases over five years, making UPS Freight Teamsters the highest-paid in the industry;

• Improves and protects pension benefits;

• Lowers health insurance co-pays while maintaining strong benefits;

• Puts laid-off road drivers back to work;

• Provides the ability for more part-time workers to become full-time;

• Improves and protects vacation benefits of workers serving in the military; and 

• Significantly lowers monthly cost for retiree health insurance.

 

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and “Like” us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

UPS

Former Denver supe still going


From the Commerce City building to the gateway operation at DIA, Denver remembers Jill Schubert.




Jill Schubert, president of district operations, says of the holiday season’s peak time: “It’s controlled madness or controlled chaos. But the key is that it’s controlled.”
Read more..

Union, UPS

Can the Boss Fire Me for facebook? (By TDU)


January 3, 2014: You’re online and so is your boss. What are the Do’s and Don’ts for staying out of trouble?
     Teamsters are using Facebook to share information, sound off, and get organized. Facebook pages like Vote No on UPS Contract, No More Concessions!, Rebuild the IBT and others have helped Teamsters unite the rank-and-file.
     Social media can be a good tool for building union solidarity and for having a laugh. But you’ve got to be smart about what you post.
     If you’re on Facebook, chances are your boss is too. Employers are getting more aggressive about firing employees for posts they say cross the line.
     Can these terminations stick? Arbitrators and the National Labor Relations Board are sorting out this new area of labor law.
     In a series of decisions, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that online conversations between coworkers on the internet have the same protections as face-to-face conversations. And these protections extend to complaints about management and supervisors.
     That means Teamsters can use social media to criticize their employer, management or working conditions as long as they are engaged in “protected, concerted activity.” Concerted activity happens when: 1) employees discuss wages, hours, or working conditions or union or TDU activity together, or; 2) one or more employees voice concern on an issue that impacts other co-workers (safety, for example) or 3) one or more employees discuss lawful union activity.
“My Supervisor’s Crazy!”
     In one case, a Teamster EMT in Connecticut was fired for insulting her supervisor in a Facebook post after the supervisor blocked her from getting assistance from a union rep. The EMT’s facebook post: “Love how the company allows a 17 to become a supervisor.”
     17 is company lingo for a psychiatric patient. In a key fact in the case, other Teamsters posted supportive comments in response. Management took offense and fired the Teamster. The union filed an NLRB charge and the NLRB issued a complaint.
     An NLRB lawyer told the press, “This is fairly straightforward. Whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, it was employees talking jointly about working conditions, in this case about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.”
     The case eventually settled, with the company agreeing to rewrite its social media policy and not to discipline or discharge employees for engaging in discussions about wages and other work issues.


Protections, But Not a Free Pass


Recent NLRB decisions protect the right of employees to complain about their job and their boss. But this does not mean that “anything goes”.


Extreme personal attacks against bosses or co-workers may not be protected. The legal test is whether your post is so “egregious” that it makes your continued employment untenable. Posting racist or sexist comments about co-workers or management is not protected. Neither are violent threats.


Criticizing your employer’s product, service or customers also may not be protected. The issue here is “disloyalty” particularly if you’re comments could hurt the company’s business and are not made as part of a labor dispute.


Posting photos from when you’re on the job may not be protected. It’s one thing to post a photo of an unsafe working condition. It’s another to post a photo from the job that could hurt the employer’s business or image. The photos that recently appeared on Facebook of a prostitute in a UPS driver’s uniform are an extreme example.


Social Media Policies


Many employers are developing social media policies to establish rules for what kinds of posts can lead to discipline.


The NLRB has thrown out social media policies that are so broad that they would prohibit or have a chilling affect on workers’ rights to discuss wages or working conditions. But other aspects of company social media policies have been upheld.


Teamsters have contract protection above and beyond the law, and can use the grievance procedure to defend themselves from discipline if they are accused of violating company social media policy.


How well that works depends on what you are posting, what company policies are, the union’s case and other factors.


Think Before You Post


There is no such thing as online privacy. You should assume your employer could eventually see anything you post online. If they don’t see your original post it could easily be forwarded, tweeted or reposted.


Use common sense. Don’t post photos of your hunting trip if you called in sick. Never post when you’re on the clock, unless you are clearly on break. If you would have to deny saying it if you were confronted by management, then don’t post it.


If you are discussing your working conditions with coworkers, you have legal protections.


If you are posting comments about your employer that could be considered “egregious” or “disloyal” or if you’re posting work-related photos that have nothing to do with the union, TDU or improving wages and working conditions, then you may not be protected.


Use social media to build Teamster unity and solidarity. Share information and have a laugh. But think before you post.

UPS

2013 UPS Next Day Air Snafu




 
By Laura Stevens 11 hours ago



     In the earliest hours of Dec. 24, packages poured into United Parcel Service Inc.’s main air hub in Louisville, Ky. And they were piling up.





     Employees responsible for sorting packages—already deep into a 100-hour week—were furiously getting them ready to be sent on to their destinations at airports around the country. But dozens of other workers responsible for loading those packages into planes to be shipped out were left standing around idle, because the unexpected glut of packages from last-minute shoppers had swamped the company’s air fleet.
     The dearth of planes stranded a large volume of packages in Louisville in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Many of those that did make it out were shipped too late to make delivery trucks’ pickup schedules and were left sitting in warehouses not far from their destinations. By sundown, UPS was forced to tell many Americans that the gifts they had ordered wouldn’t arrive before Christmas as promised.
     The bottleneck was largely in UPS’s air business, which retailers leaned on heavily in the past week as they scrambled to fill down-to-the-wire orders. UPS has a bigger share of retail e-commerce business than FedEx Corp., but its smaller fleet of cargo planes might have been a limiting factor, people in the industry said. UPS said it had added 23 extra chartered aircraft to its year-round operating fleet of more than 237 planes and regular 293 daily charters. FedEx owned 581 and leased 66 as of May 31.
     UPS originally expected to ship about 7.75 million packages in its air network Monday, with about 3.5 million of those sorted at Worldport, as the Louisville hub is known. The facility handles on average 1.6 million packages a day. It isn’t yet known how many packages arrived at Worldport during the last minute crush, but on Christmas Eve UPS said the volume of air packages in its system had exceeded its capacity.
     It is still too early to know what went wrong, UPS said, adding that the company is analyzing the situation.
     Some shoppers also complained of delays with shipments handled by FedEx. A spokeswoman said FedEx “experienced no major service disruptions during this holiday season, and we experienced no major service disruptions in the week before Christmas, despite heavy volume.” She said FedEx is working with customers “to address any isolated incidents.”
     UPS carefully plans how it will handle the holiday peak. Extra resources such as additional cargo planes had been lined up as “hot spares”—company lingo for aircraft that could be fired up quickly in case of a logistics emergency. But it ran into a confluence of factors. Retailers have been encouraging online sales, which have grown much faster than retail sales overall. And retailers likely contributed to the logjam by offering some of their best discounts late in the season in a final push for sales. Many chains dropped prices on the final Saturday before Christmas to levels below what they were offering on Black Friday, according to Simeon Siegel, an analyst with Nomura Equity Research.
     That, coupled with retailers’ promises of just-in-time deliveries, encouraged many shoppers to put in orders at the last minute. People buying from more than 70 retailers including Toys “R” Us Inc. and Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., whose online shipping is handled by eBay Enterprise, were able to place Web orders as late as 11 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 23, a full 24 hours later than last year.
     The result was a surge in online sales shortly before Christmas. UPS had been forecasting an 8% average rise in its daily shipping volumes during the holidays. But online sales in the last weekend before Christmas jumped by 37% from the year before, according to data from IBM Digital Analytics. On Monday Dec. 23, growth in online orders spiked by 63% from the year before, according to Mercent Corp., which works with more than 550 retailers. By comparison, overall sales of holiday goods rose 2.3% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, according to preliminary data from MasterCard Inc.’s Spending Pulse unit.
     To cope, retailers shifted more orders from shippers’ ground delivery to their air networks to get gifts to customers in time to put them under the tree.
     Mercent CEO Eric Best said some of his clients experienced delays.
     “It’s easy to blame UPS, but it’s the retailers that are pushing these next-day shipping offers in the final hours of the shopping season,” Mr. Best said. “Retailers are driving consumer expectations to get stuff they ordered by the next day and the later shoppers wait, the harder it is to predict.”
     The shipping delays at UPS sparked outrage among people who had bought gifts from Amazon.com Inc., Kohl’s Corp. and other online retailers in the days and weeks before Christmas. Many had been swayed by guarantees from the retailers that their packages would be delivered by the holiday.
     Rudy Lai, a finance executive in Union City, Calif., said part of a gift he ordered from Amazon was scheduled to be delivered on Christmas Eve. That morning, the UPS tracking information showed the item had reached Oakland, Calif., and was “out for delivery,” he said. At 5 p.m., he found out that the package “was left in a UPS facility,” according to the information.
     Retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Amazon and Kohl’s have started issuing customers gift cards and refunds for shipping costs and items that didn’t arrive before Christmas. Those retailers are expected to seek reimbursement from UPS or other carriers that had guaranteed arrival times. UPS had made such guarantees for many air shipments during the holidays, though some large retailers may have waived them, analysts said. The company has said it would honor guarantees it made to customers, but it isn’t clear how much the carrier might have to pay.
     Analysts at StellaService Inc., a startup that measures customer satisfaction with online shopping, placed orders for tablets, boots and other gift items at 25 top retailers including Amazon, Wal-Mart and Kohl’s to see if they would receive the gifts in time for Christmas Eve.
     The orders were placed on the last day the retailer guaranteed delivery by Dec. 24, the latest of which was Dec. 23. Out of 75 orders, 12 items—from retailers including Dell, Macy’s, Gap and Pottery Barn—didn’t make it to the analysts’ homes by Dec. 25. Eleven of those items were delivered by UPS.
     UPS handles 50% to 60% of e-commerce orders, according to Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research. And it is an increasingly crucial part of its business. In its 2012 annual report, UPS said “business to consumer” shipments represented over 40% of its domestic package volume and grew rapidly. Its business-to-business shipping volume, meanwhile, was relatively flat.
     UPS deployed its spare planes Monday and flew twice as many flights as usual on Christmas Eve. It flew 50% more on Thursday to handle the additional volume.

Suzanne Kapner contributed to this article.