What excuse does this guy give for a reason he is making a stop where there is no delivery. Telematics takes the humanity out of the job.
Category Archives: UPS
Quality Management!
If you’ve ever worked for a boss who reacts before getting the facts and thinking things through, you will love this!
Arcelor-Mittal Steel, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO. The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers.
On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business. He asked the guy, “How much money do you make a week?”
A little surprised, the young man looked at him and said, “I make $400 a week. Why?”
The CEO said, “Wait right here.” He walked back to his office, came back in two minutes, and handed the guy $1,600 in cash and said, “Here’s four weeks’ pay. Now GET OUT and don’t come back.”
Feeling pretty good about himself, the CEO looked around the room and asked, “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?”
From across the room a voice said, “Pizza delivery guy from Domino’s.”
Doing Time at UPS
Driving a truck for UPS may soon replace community service as the punishment of choice for many criminal driving convictions. Judges across the country have begun seeing the benefit of sentencing troubled motorists to 5 years at UPS instead of 3 years probation and 6 months of community service. “It’s a win-win situation, it satisfies the need for punishment and the offenders get trained to drive safely,” said Jack Hammer, spokesperson for United Parcel Service.
While the program is still in it’s early stages, results are already evident. One repeat offender who drove 3 years at UPS said that he learned the rules of the road. “I’m never going back,” he said, “I’d rather let my girlfriend drive than risk going back to UPS. It’s a hell hole.”
“I used to take driving for granted”, says Rex Easley, another offender who has worked at UPS for 2 years now. “I rolled through stops signs, I parked on the wrong side of the street, I figured no one was watching. Then I went to UPS and now I feel someone is watching all the time. I pulled a five year sentence, it feels like a lifetime.”
While life on the inside can be brutal at times, the lessons these lawbreakers learn are good ones. “You work hard and you learn to do your job, nobody is going to do it for you. There’s no help,” grinned Hammer with a glint of masochism. “It looks like torture, but it’s not. It’s tough love.”
Tough love in the workplace is a somewhat controversial concept, but it seems to be working at UPS. The UPS culture is rooted in tough love techinques and UPS used tough love on it’s own employees long before the idea gained popular support. “We’ve always believed that pain produces results,” Hammer explained, “We like to pile on the work, idle hands are the Devil’s workshop. Add a big dose of humiliation and and an occasional threat and you’ve got the secret to our success.”
A Look at Your Pension in 2013
April 10, 2009: On January 1, 2008, UPS transferred some 44,000 full-time Teamsters out of the Central States Pension Fund, and into a new UPS-only pension plan.
Many members have questions about their benefits in the new fund. TDU consulted pension attorneys and experts to answer some of the most frequently asked questions.
Do you have a question or concern about your benefits in the new UPS plan? Call TDU at (313) 842-2600, or email us at info@tdu.org.
Q: If I retire and Central States fails to pay me their portion of my pension, will UPS guarantee me the difference?
Yes and No. If you retire by July 31, 2013, yes. If Central States fails to be able to pay its full portion, UPS will make up the difference to guarantee your pension.
But if you retire after that, all bets are off. It all depends on what is bargained in the 2013 contract. This illustrates a major problem: the UPS pull-out weakened the Central States Plan, but UPS Teamsters are still dependent on it for a large portion of their pension benefits.
You can be sure UPS management will make good use of this hammer in bargaining, to try to extract more concessions from the Teamster leadership.
Fortunately there is an IBT election in November 2011. Teamsters have a chance to vote out Hoffa and elect leaders who will protect the pensions of all Teamsters.
Q: When I retire, will I get two checks?
UPS pays your full pension until age 65. Once you are 65, you will get two checks. Central States and the UPS Plan will each pay a share, based on how many years you have in each plan. Your years prior to 2008 will be paid by Central States; your years beginning with 2008 will be paid by UPS.
Q: Can you count your part-time years toward early retirement?
Your part-time years can be counted in order to qualify for a 25 or 30 year early retirement, but will not count toward your benefit amount. For example, a Teamster with 25 full-time years and five part-time years qualifies for 30-and-out, but will get $2625 instead of $3,000 per month because the part-time pension pays very low benefits. (This is the same rule as previously, under Central States.) If you qualify for a part-time pension and a full-time pension, you will receive two checks, and three checks after you reach age 65.
Q: How do the benefits under the new UPS plan compare to other Teamster plans?
They compare unfavorably, and that situation is going to get worse by 2013. Benefits in the UPS plan are frozen for the life of the contract, whereas those in most other plans are increasing. For more information, see The Teamster Pension Divide at www.tdu.org/pensiondivide.
The UPS Plan also has no reciprocity with other pension plans. This means if you transfer into the plan from the West or East, you cannot add your pension credits together from the UPS Plan and another plan. It also means if you leave UPS and take a job at another Teamster company, you cannot add your years together in the two plans.
Q: Can UPS take over other Teamster plans?
UPS gave the International Union a letter agreeing not to try to take over more pension plans until the contract after next. However, that is no solid guarantee. If they see a weak leadership at the International Union, they may seek to take over more pensions.
We Do the Same Work But We Get Less
“Our pension is the lowest for any UPSers in the country. We do the same job, but in the end we get less.
“You can bet that if we can ask to improve our pensions in our next contract, UPS is going to put a steep price tag on it.
“I’m helping to put together a TDU meeting in Florence so that we can educate other members. UPS is already planning for the next contract. We should too.”
James McLeod,
UPS Local 71, Florence, S.C.
At Least the Heater Works
A Brisk Pace….1948 Style
This is UPS driver Don “Monté” Montéverde exiting his package car in 1948. Like the rest of us, he was trained to “hit the ground running”.
The Banksters Strike Again
The foreclosure mess isn’t going away
We’ve told you before about how big banks cut corners on paperwork over the last few years in order to speed struggling homeowners into foreclosure. And a “60 Minutes” report that aired last night offers fresh anecdotal reporting on just how irresponsible–and potentially fraudulent–the banks’ practices were. Meanwhile, compelling video of a grandmother being evicted from her home by a SWAT team last week suggests the banks aren’t slowing down their rush to foreclosure and eviction.
Banks profit by processing a vast number of homes into foreclosure as quickly as possible. But as “60 Minutes” details, many of the mortgages at issue were bundled and sold from one Wall Street investor to another during the housing boom, with scant attention paid among financial players to the actual underlying ownership documents. And as the foreclosures unwind in a slew of court proceedings nationwide, many banks have produced dubiously rendered legal documents that seek to shore up the ownership paperwork long after the original mortgage transactions were on the books. In some cases, financial institutions paid contract companies who employed an army of “robo-signers”—office workers who forged signatures on mortgage documents that were then used to initiate foreclosures.
Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” spoke with one former robo-signer, Chris Pendley, a man who had been paid to sign the name “Linda Green” thousands of times over the course of an average workday on mortgage documents.
“When you came in to Docx on your first day, what did they tell you your job was gonna be?” Pelley asked.
“They told me that I was gonna be signing documents for using someone else’s name,” Pendley remembered.
“Did you think there was something strange about that in the beginning?” Pelley asked.
Yeah, it seemed a little strange. But they told us and they repeatedly told us that everything was above board and it was legal,” Pendley said.
Pendley told Pelley he had no previous experience in banking, in legal documents, and that there were no requirements for the job.
“You had to be able to hold a pen?” Pelley remarked.
“Hold a pen,” he agreed.
Asked if he understood what these documents were, Pendley said, “Not really” . . . .
Pendley showed us how he signed mortgage documents as “Linda Green.” He told us Docx employees had to sign at least 350 an hour. Pendley estimates that he alone did 4,000 a day.
There was an actual Linda Green, Pendley discovered, but she was no bank president either; she is a former shipping clerk for an auto parts store who was also hired on as a robo-signer at Docx. One plaintiff in a pending lawsuit discovered that Green is named as a vice president for 20 different banks in different mortgage documents, all bearing strikingly different renditions of her signature. She didn’t agree to an on-camera interview, but she told Pelley that the company selected her name because it was short and easy to sign rapidly on the doctored ownership documents.
All 50 state attorneys general are currently conducting an investigation into the foreclosure mess–including cases that involve forged documents like these. And Shelia Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told CBS she thinks the banks should have to pay billions to set up a compensation fund for those who are being forced to accept foreclosure without proper documentation.
But if you thought all this might have chilled the banks’ zeal to push struggling borrowers from their homes, think again.
The footage below from a local news station shows Catherine Lennon, a grandmother from Rochester, New York being forcibly evicted from her home by a SWAT team.
Lennon has said that though she missed some mortgage payments after her husband died in 2008, she subsequently began making payments again. But because it was her husband’s name, not hers, on the official mortgage documents, Fannie Mae wouldn’t accept her money, and moved her house into foreclosure.
Federal lawmakers intervened, and Lennon may soon get her house back–she’s been staying in a homeless shelter lately. But countless other Americans who are in similar positions may not be as lucky.
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
OOPS!
Damn, I hate when this happens!
People say the UPS guy can park anywhere, now I know what they mean.
10 FAQ’s
The follow
ing are some of the more frequently asked questions of the stewards with some general recommendations how to deal with the situation. As always consult your steward before taking any action to be sure of your rights.
- Can the company discipline me without a steward present, if no steward is available? The answer is a flat no. The company must provide a steward in any discussion with a union member if the possibility of discipline even remotely exists. Even if timeliness is an issue, the company cannot bring discipline without the presence of a steward.
- What does automatic protest mean on warning letters? Automatic protest means that the union and the company have agreed to place the warning letter under protest, and unless the issue comes up again, the letter will be withdrawn in 90 days, (unless some other time frame is agreed to). If the same issue comes up again, the union and the company have agreed to hear the warning letter issue before any more severe discipline can be implemented. I have expressed my displeasure with Automatic Protest in the past, but that is the system we live under today.
- What is the attendance policy for the company? My assumption is that the policy is consistent throughout the company, but here in the Rocky Mountain area you are allowed three attendance discrepancies in a running thirteen week period before you can be issued any discipline. The company must review each and every discrepancy in a timely manner with the steward present.
- Does the company have the right to dictate my appearance? The appearance issue has come up many times over the years. The company has the right to set appearance standards, and you have an obligation to abide by them. The only exceptions are if you are being singled out for a different standard than the other drivers, or the standard is discriminatory.
- Is it ever O.K. for Supervisors to do Union Work? Basically the answer is no. The only real situation is when management exhausts all possible hourly means to make service then the Supervisors can do the work. The problem arises when they get lazy and just resort to the Sups. as the first remedy. My recommendation is if you see them work, file, then sort it out later.
- Is it true I can be paid Double Time for excessive 9.5 hour days? Being paid Double Time for excessive 9.5 hour days is true, sort of. You must inform the company of your desire to have your hours reduced, and give them the opportunity to correct the problem. If they don’t, you file under Article 12 Section 1. The first grievance will be resolved as “the company agrees to abide by Article 12 Section 1”. If you continue to be dispatched with excessive OT you will file again, and usually after the grievance goes through the entire process, you may be awarded double time.
- I don’t like something the Union is doing, how do I make a change? Well most of you would first seek out the steward. If the steward does not satisfy you, don’t be afraid to go straight to the Business Agent at your Local union. If you still feel the need to go up the ladder, contact the Principle officer for your Local Union. Usually you will get results somewhere along this line. You still can go straight to the International Union, but that process is an article all of it’s own.
- I am being singled out for more severe discipline/harassment than the drivers around me. What do I do? Of course your first line of defense is your steward. Do not let management badger you without your steward present. Be very clear you want representation. That in itself is your most powerful tool, as the company will be much more careful what they say to you with the steward present. When all else fails resort to the grievance procedure.
- I have a good reason to be off work, but my manager is telling me no. What do I do? If you have a legitimate reason you need to be gone, and you’ve informed the company, and they are telling you no, then you need to take your lumps under the attendance policy above. If it’s a legitimate reason, (illness, doctor, dentist, family issue) simply call an hour or more before your start time. Of course you must fall within the 3 in a 13 week discrepancy or you may still be subject to discipline. It’s simple. The company needs you at work everyday. Try to be there, but in all of our lives things come up. You need to take care of things outside of the company as well.
- My steward is not taking care of my issues. What do I do? My first question to you is “are you simply expecting the steward to know you are having an issue, or have you taken the time to seek them out and let them know of your problem.” The steward can’t possibly know every driver’s problems in a big center. You must seek them out and verbalize your troubles to them. You can always go up the ladder to the business agent, but my bet is that if you simply communicate with the steward you will get results
UPS Spanked for Unsafe Trucks
The Watertown Daily Times reports:
A state attorney general’s office investigation into United Parcel Service’s delivery fleet, which was prompted by complaints from a mechanic at the UPS Watertown facility, has resulted in a $1.3 million settlement with the package deliverer.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced the settlement Tuesday, saying in a prepared statement that the agreement resolves allegations that UPS knowingly permitted trucks in serious disrepair to be driven by employees throughout the state.
“UPS knowingly endangered not only the lives of their own employees, but the lives of the driving public,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “By keeping these rotting and decaying trucks on the roadways, UPS was an accident waiting to happen and this office has zero tolerance for anyone who knowingly poses a serious and significant risk to New Yorkers.”
The investigation found that UPS was inspecting and passing its own trucks despite their poor condition, according to Mr. Schneiderman. In addition to the monetary penalty, UPS has agreed to have an independent inspector conduct state inspections of its vehicles for the next five years.
Read the rest of the story here about UPS knowingly using old trucks with “cracked and rotted frames”.