It’s simple. Do the job, by the book, or you will be fired. That is the message given to the drivers at our AM meeting yesterday. The last statement is if you are fired the company simply will not want you to work here. We have harped to you all on these pages about doing the job. Don’t falsify your delivery records in any way, shape, or form. Don’t be where you’re not supposed to be.
     You will certainly get into many arguments with management over the nickels, and dimes of time under Telematics. What will cost you your job is playing games with the air commit times. Playing games with saying you are delivering at an address you aren’t at. The company has taken the attitude that you are the highest paid in the small package industry, and you will perform at the highest level.
     I’m not making any comment here about that, it’s just the way things are today. Get used to it. Or as the company so politely says:
                                                                                          Get another Job!

In order to be prepared for Telematics, you need to start today. Practice running your route exactly by the book without a Supervisor on the car. You will then be prepared, ready, and calm when they do ride with you. You will know what is reasonable, and how much you should do in a given day. You will also be able to spot their games, such as a massaged load, areas removed, etc. You will then have a fighting chance when they drag your butt into the office to discipline you for failing to meet their imaginary numbers. If you are prepared, your life at UPS will become easier. You won’t have to sweat their harassment. Do it or else!

      UPS likes to take drivers into the office and tell them that they have vioalted the methods or violated the contract and that they are guilty as sin. Management will use the opportunity to rant and rave about integrity, implying the company has lots and the driver has none. But in reality, the company violates the contract every day. They can’t see their own shortcomings, or they don’t want to, because violating the contract works to their advantage.
        Here are just a few ways that UPS is guilty of violating the contract.
        Art. 17…The Employer will not allow employees to work prior to their start time without appropriate compensation. Every center has drivers who come in early and go through their cars. The company ignores it because it’s cheaper than paying them to go through their cars later or paying the preload to do the job right.
        Art. 3…..The Employer agrees that the function of supervisors is the supervision of Employees and not the performance of the work of the employees they surpervise. Anybody who doesn’t think the company violates this provision on a daily basis is deaf, dumb and blind. UPS is probably vioating this article somewhere in the world as you read this.
        Art. 37…The Employer shall not in any way intimidate, harass, coerce or overly supervise any employee in the performance of his or her duties. Like this never happens!
        Art. 21…..nor shall there be any discrimination against any employee because of union membership or activities.That means there shall be no retaliation for filing a grievance. If you don’t think the company violates this article, file a grievance tomorrow and watch what happens.
        These are just a few of the areas where the company is guilty of violating the contract. I could list more but my doctor has advised me to avoid thinking about things that make my blood pressure go through the roof. But the next time management gets up on their high horse and talks down to you, point out a few of these things.
         If you read your contract book, I’m sure you will find a few more too.

                                              As a long time driver I am a stockholder in UPS. 
                                                                      Why should I care? 
           The fact is as time goes on I care less and less for this company. The reason for the IPO was for long time management to artificially inflate the value of the stock they had acumulated during the private stock days. They have been cashing it all in and driving down the overall value of owning UPS stock.
      5 years ago my investment people told me I should reinvest my UPS money into something else. 
                                   I should have listened to them.
     The stock has continued to go down in value. Even with a 10 percent purchase price reduction, it’s been a lousy investment. Telematics was introduced to improve profitability, yet the stock continues to dive.
           So I’m supposed to care about this company because I own stock?
      I’m supposed to care about this company enough to let them treat me like crap? Not only do I not care anymore, I plan to let everyone I know that works for this company that they are wasting their time, not only caring, but investing in UPS as well.
                                         It’s a systematic effort to gut the company of all of it’s assets, including you!

     The speculation has begun that Telematics is being used to eliminate many of the highest paid driver jobs within UPS. With a large pool of unemployed people out there the company may have launched into a plan to eliminate the highest paid, and replace them with lower paid new hires.
     With a contract in the near future, the expectation would be a negotiated wage tier within the full time ranks much like the two tiered system implemented in the last decade for the part timers. Telematics allows management to harass everyone over anything. They just keep reducing the search time until they find a driver they can make look like a dirt-bag. They are able to fine tune the system down to “seconds wasted”. They have management people doing nothing but searching the system for someone they can harass.
      With the excessive pressure being brought to bear on the drivers, many will quit, many will retire before they are ready, and many will be fired for performing the job as they were trained by the fireball management types that trained them. Many of the management people would have been terminated themselves had they stayed as drivers.
     Of course Telematics is also designed to eliminate management as well. Upper level managers have the goal of reducing costs by eliminating people. They don’t care about performance, they don’t care about safety. They simply want to get rid of your ass to improve their bottom line, and protect their own asses. The company has become a system of cutthroat hoodlums willing to do anything to protect themselves. God forbid you happen to get in the way of that.
     So my question to the Teamsters is “Where are you?” We, (the rank and file), understand the interest in keeping the company, that employs more Teamster members, healthy. It just seems unusual that the Teamsters would remain so silent in the face of the treatment the rank and file is receiving under Telematics. Has it just not affected enough people yet? Some of the language negotiated in the last contract becomes very suspect in light of the implementation of Telematics.
     Article 6 Section 4 Article 8 says, “No employee shall be discharged on a first offense if such discharge is based solely upon information received from GPS or any successor system unless he/she engages in dishonesty (defined for the purposes of this paragraph as any act or omission by an employee where he/she intends to defraud the Company). The degree of discipline dealing with off-area offenses shall not be changed because of GPS.”
     We all know they company feels we are all theives and cheaters. The above contract language opens the door to a great deal of abuse. Every infraction will be considered as an intent to defraud the company. Every RJF is trying to cheat the system of production according to management.
     I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that every Teamster Steward is watched every day for any discrepancy. Everyday on the managers desk is a copy of every possible second the steward may have “stolen” from the company. The company surely has a plan to eliminate the workhorses of the Teamster’s. Yet the Teamsters remain quiet. The system proceeds as usual as if nothing has changed. Suddenly we lose a RJF and their job is taken away. No comment from the Teamsters. Two more people are fired for similar actions. Again no comment.
     Telematics will weaken the union simply by allowing management to target the Teamster members. Anyone vocal or outspoken can be taken out for any reason. With the panel system, a weak Teamster panel will lose rank and file members time after time. As an outspoken Steward I am sure my time is coming. Once our Union has been sufficiently weakened the rest of you top scale people will be next.
Contact the Teamsters and Ask Them to Rise to the Occasion Against Telematics!

We have had the first casualty of a “running, jumping, fireball”. This Gal had been notorious for running a paper route. Of course management loved her because her numbers were always great. For 15 years they looked the other way while she flung their stuff far and wide. Along comes Telematics. They found that she had “discrepancies”, in her air deliveries. They found she wasn’t leaving them where she said, or when she said. She had been living in fear of management for years, trying to do everything they wanted to stay out of the line of fire. It all worked great until the arrival of the great overseer. Now management does not have the power to lie, cheat , and steal like they used to. That includes protecting their “running, jumping, fireballs”
              Do It Right, or you won’t be doing it at all!.
                       There are no lies with Telematics!
              They won’t protect you, even if they want to!



UPDATE: The RJF mentioned here lost her job permanently through the panel system. IF you don’t do it right, you will be fired. Additionally two more people are up for termination. One was even a scab from the strike.

The word bailout has gone from descriptive to derogatory.

The FedEx-sponsored Web site BrownBailout.com (brown is both U.P.S.’s color and nickname) says that U.P.S. is “quietly seeking a Congressional bailout designed to limit competition for overnight deliveries.” Along with a “bailout-o-meter” showing U.P.S.’s revenue, and a spoof of a U.P.S. commercial, the site includes statements like, “This is a bailout, plain and simple, and the American people won’t stand for it.”

FedEx’s casting of a labor-law dispute as a bailout has raised ire at U.P.S. and at the Teamsters union, which said on Tuesday that it planned to respond with its own public relations campaign.

Some advertising experts said FedEx was putting its own brand at risk by so aggressively attacking a competitor and accusing U.P.S. of taking a federal bailout.

“Hinging so much of this — even the site itself and the URL name — to a bailout brings some pretty significant risks,” said Scott Elser, a partner in LaunchPad Advertising, which is not working with either company. “It’s arguably one of the most controversial terms that you can define in politics today. They draw you there based on that, and you don’t have to surf very long to realize that this is clearly not a bailout as most consumers and business people would define it, which is writing a check to a troubled business.”

“It’s a little bit of a bait and switch,” Mr. Elser said, which “has the ability to potentially harm their brand.”

“FedEx is appearing to spend millions of dollars to try to convince Congress that a FedEx driver delivering a package is different from a U.P.S. driver delivering a package,” said Malcolm Berkley, a U.P.S. spokesman.

FedEx’s labeling of the legislation as a bailout was wrong, he said.

“There’s clearly no way we’re seeking a bailout. In fact, what we’re doing is working to eliminate an earmark that has been given to FedEx for some years,” he said.

“I give them credit for inventiveness,” said Steve Centrillo, a principal at A-Team Advisors, a consultant to advertising agencies that is based in New York.

Pinning the problems on U.P.S. rather than on unionization helped FedEx avoid sticky labor relations questions, he said.

But, Mr. Centrillo said, the use of bailout was “the most questionably ethical thing on the site.

“It’s taking a word that is extremely loaded right now, and implying that somehow, the government is writing a check to U.P.S., which is clearly not the case.”
Inside NYTimes.com

The company has shown it’s hand for the real use of Telematics. The use is to harass drivers into using their break to cover Poop and Pea times. The company feels that any use of time for anything other than productive delivery is a theft of time from the company, and they call it excessive break. Drivers are being told that they do not have the right to break trace or wash their hands after they use the bathroom. Telematics shows the break in trace as a red line, with a heading of “no delivery made”.
     Drivers are being harassed for such breaks as a theft of time from the company. The other use is to claim drivers must count their break from their last stop, to their return to delivery, even though they are still operating a company vehicle, and subject to all of the potential problems associated with that. If they have an accident, or get injured, it will all be considered UPS time, but the driver must use their time to cover the drive to and from break. Is the company demanding we leave the vehicle in the middle of the intersection in order to walk to break? They don’t make it clear.
     We are being held responsible for the safe operation, and parking of that vehicle, but they don’t want to pay us for that time. Sounds like a theft of time from the drivers to me. Again, folks, it’s all about harassment. Telematics has no other function than to harass drivers, and the company is using it for no other purpose.
     Zero information has come from the Union regarding the harassment. My feeling is they are purposely being quiet about it, because they are afraid of the consequences of fighting such cases. Politics and all that. Our contract is very vague in these areas, and the company feels they can do whatever they want. I feel we should just go in a bag, and leave it in the back of the package car, or use the newly required PUD, (personal urinary device),installed in each car, (usually a Subway cup, or a Burger King cup, or for the girls, a 7-11 Big Gulp). The company has reduced it’s harassment to the ultimate in Brown. The new add will be, “what kind of Brown did you take for the company today?”
     Many of you will chastise me for having this conversation on these pages. The fact is, these are the kinds of discussions we are having in the office every day, with a Telematics printed sheet in front of us. They have argued with me on the Brown Cafe, and other sites, and the fact is, “Telematics is being used as a harassment tool”. Out of hundreds of meetings we have never had a discussion with a driver over excess backing. We have never had a discussion with a driver over seat belt usage. We have had a thousand discussions over where a driver took a dump, and how he charged the time.
                                                                     The company has a new motto directed at the drivers!
                                                                                   Sh-t on Your Own Time!

UPS loves to abuse their supervisors. And their managers. But in California, supervisors are saying, “The buck stops here.” And after reading the following news article, I’ll bet there isn’t a supervisor the country that isn’t thinking about packing up and moving to California. Read on….

LOS ANGELES, June 19, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — A unanimous federal jury awarded former UPS supervisor Michael Marlo $162,992.85 in unpaid overtime, missed meals and rest period compensation. The nine-person jury found that UPS improperly classified Marlo as an exempt employee and wrongfully deprived him of meals and rest periods and overtime compensation in violation of California law.

“We are pleased that the jury found in Mr. Marlo’s favor. UPS has routinely overworked its supervisors and intentionally misclassified its supervisors to avoid paying overtime and deprive them of meals and rest periods that UPS is required to provide under California law. This has allowed UPS to deprive its California supervisors of substantial amounts each year,” said Mark Peters, attorney for Mr. Marlo. “We hope that the jury’s verdict will send a message to UPS to follow California law, as well as reduce the excessive workload and the number of hours it forces its supervisors to work.”

The Marlo case is the first of 55 currently pending supervisor overtime cases against UPS in California to be tried.
Wall Street Journal