Some good news for drivers who are concerned about safety.

U.S. Department of Labor orders United Parcel Service to rehire, compensate Bay Area driver
Employee terminated for refusing to drive due to safety concerns

SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has ordered United Parcel Service (UPS) to immediately rehire and pay back wages, benefits, compensatory damages and $50,000 in punitive damages to a former Bay Area driver who was wrongfully terminated after he refused to drive after raising safety concerns.

A whistleblower investigation by OSHA found that UPS terminated the employee in retaliation for his refusal to work in violation of the whistleblower provisions of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act, 49 U.S.C. Section 31105 (STAA). OSHA determined that the driver was terminated after refusing to drive his vehicle because he felt it was unsafe to operate due to vision problems and poor weather conditions resulting in visibility concerns. Although the driver notified UPS management of the unsafe conditions, UPS management continued to order the unsafe operation of the vehicle. Either party in the case can file an appeal to the Labor Department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges.

“It is vital that employees be able to raise safety concerns to their employers without fear of retaliation,” said Ken Nishiyama Atha, OSHA’s regional administrator in San Francisco, whose office investigated the complaint. “This order reaffirms both the right of drivers to refuse to operate vehicles when they reasonably believe it is unsafe and the Labor Department’s commitment to taking the necessary steps to protect that right.”


NOTE: The Labor Department does not release the names of employees involved in whistleblower complaints.

Gotta question. Does it make much sense to cut management pay? Do away with safe driving incentives? Get Rid of Safety programs and rewards? Then turn around and spend millions on a system that will cost production. Reduce volume. Waste time. I guess it’s UPS management at it’s best.

                  In a world of homogenized, generic, look alike products and services, UPS has risen to the top of the delivery world. When you compare the companies out there doing the same thing, the outward appearance would be a simple color choice. Brown for one, purple and orange/green for another, yellow for another, red and blue yet for another. Even though they are different colors, the overall appearance is the same. The trucks are similar, the planes are similar, the delivery process is similar. So why would one company rise to the top over another when they all perform pretty much the same function in the delivery of goods and merchandise? The only difference would be the customer contact. The extra little time the UPS driver gives to the customer makes the delivery experience more personalized. The time it takes to ask the receptionist how her sick kid is doing. The minute it took to ask the dock foreman how his car ran in the race over the weekend. The discussion with a small business man about his new business and his future needs for shipping to make his business successful. All of these conversations go on every day. The UPS customer has come to rely on and trust their faithful, friendly UPS driver. The customer knows what time of day it is by the driver’s consistent arrival to their business or home. They know they will be greeted with a friendly “hello” or “how yah doin'”, and that this person truly cares about their business, and their lives. The company has even sold these relationships in their commercials. The truth is most drivers are truly special people. The company goes out of it’s way to hire personable people to represent them in the public eye.
              With Telematics those days are over. There is no sensor in the system for customer contact. Everything is a function of time. There is no sensor for establishing professional relationships that could lead to future business. Again it’s all about time. There is no sensor to determine whether the driver was shooting the sh–, or discussing future business for both the customer and UPS. Many times one eventually leads to the other. It is the trust built up over time that leads many of UPS’s customers to use them over FedEx. With todays Telematics system there will be no time built in to build that trust or to take that time.  To most customers that driver is UPS! The company has dictated that there will be no more! 
             In their zeal to improve efficiency the company is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. They are doing away with the very thing that has made the company special in an otherwise humdrum world. The drivers will now live in fear that they will be disciplined for any extra time that will show up on Telematics in their delivery day. The first thing to go will be taking time to service the customer. After the center manager has hauled the driver in the office a few times, (like it or not “company” the driver perceives that meeting as discipline), the driver will cease to make that special effort to help the customer. The driver will conform to the company demand of efficient production without customer contact, and the customer will be left with that uncaring, unfriendly feeling they get from the other delivery companies. When the time comes for them to make their decisions about who they want to handle their shipping needs, there will be nothing to differentiate UPS from all the other wannabes. 
             The disappearance of customer contact will certainly make each driver more efficient on a day to day basis. The question would be, “what will be the overall effect on the company’s goals of volume development”.
              It’s just another one of those unintended consequences of Telematics. 
              The other effect will be the driver’s sense of pride in UPS. Without the opportunity to show they care, and with the constant scrutiny, the tendency will be for the driver to become less caring, and involved, in the success of the company. For many people the world is all about money. The truth is, money doesn’t make the world go around. Many drivers take pride in what they do because they know they are having an effect in people’s lives in even some small way. Telematics will see to it that those days are over.
               Another unintended consequence!

           More on the Competition and Why this is Important

UPS has stopped giving safe driving awards. They also are stopping their years of service awards. To the best of my knowledge there will be no Circle of Honor Banquet either. It’s really no surprise. If management gets no raises, the good drivers get no reward. There take that. I guess it will be the end of unreported accidents as well. We now go into “who cares” mode, which is where everyone should have been to start with. Just another example of how the company looks at you as a liability, not an asset. They can spend Millions on Telematics, but they can only trash the real producers for this company. 
                                   Roll over in your grave Jim Casey.

     People love to talk about agendas. There’s the gay agenda, the conservative right agenda, the liberal agenda and so on. Do you think  that UPS has an agenda?
     I  think UPS has an agenda and I think it comes down from On High and is played out in every center in every building in the country. The UPS agenda these days involves cost cutting. In the past it used to involve service issues, or getting new volume. But today the whole agenda might revolve around reducing operating costs. 
     The March UPS agenda would have had some old familiar songs in it, but a few surprises too. Check out this list and see how much of it was implemented in your center last month. Now I don’t claim to know exactly what the March agenda was but if I did, I think it’d be something like this.

1.  Reduce the overallowed hours by 50%. No more than 15% of the drivers should be dispatched under 8 and that should be reduced to none. No one over 10.5 hours. Anyone going over 10.5 or dispatched under 8 should be reported.
2.  No part time overtime. None. Zero. Zilch. No double shifting.
3.  No overtime for 22.3 jobs. Reduce customer counter paid hours. No OT.
4.  Cut out supervisor use of credit cards.
5.  All uniform ordering has to go through one person and one person only.
6.  Turn off the lights when you aren’t using them.
7. Grievance pay must be preapproved.
8. Cut back on safety spending.
9. This is the good one……….Catch somebody abusing the lunch hour and fire them. That will scare everybody else into stopping their lunch hour abuse.

     These aren’t bad things (until you get to that last one). I’ve always said they need to keep us under 10.5. In fact why not just eliminate all OT for everyone, even the drivers. The part about not being under 8 is a tough one because the time allowances are so screwy. How can you dispatch someone over 8 and keep them under 10.5 if the dispatch is off by 2 hours. That like trying to thread a needle with your eyes closed. 
     But that last one, that’s the good one. They still think we are hosing them on the lunch hour. With all their spy technology, they still think we are hosing them. That’s just madness.

Just as ThinkProgress.com was launching its campaign to punish Bill O’Reilly for harassing his opponents with physical, trespassing confrontations, United Parcel Services became the first major sponsor to dump him today.

“Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS advertising during the Bill O’Reilly show on FOX News. We do consider such comments as we review ad placement decisions which involve a variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to continue advertising during this show.”

Since Rupert Murdoch is losing money on his Fox News empire, you have to wonder how many sponsors he can afford to push away by condoning O’Reilly’s illegality and unstable public presence.

O’Reilly is acting as an agent of Fox News and Murdoch when he sends his producers out to stalk, threaten, and trespass against his perceived opponents. I wonder how long it will be before someone sues O’Reilly and Murdoch, or files a criminal complaint against both of them for this behavior.

Deacon Blues, The Left Coaster

       It’s never too early to start thinking about what you would like to see in the next contract. Too often we focus on the money and the benefits and ignore the opportunity to make some changes in the language. We’ve done well with this strategy, the money is good and that goes a long way toward smoothing over some obvious problems with the language. One glaring mistake that we’ve made for too many years though is that we have not added a clause that says the company does not have the right to be stupid. 
      When I was a Steward, every day I had people come up to me and say things like:
     “They are sending me out today on a route blind. Somebody else who knows the route is doing the route I know. How can they be that stupid?”
     Or, “I’ve got an 8-hour today and more stops then I had yesterday. Do they really think that’s going to work?”
     Or, “They wrote me up for a mis-delivery and I was on vacation that week. Are they stupid or what?” 
     My response was always the same. “There is nothing in the contract that says they can’t be stupid!” 
     Article 11 of the Master Agreement is not being used right now. It’s listed now as “Reserved”. I think this may be what they reserved it for. I think the language would be simple enough to write. “The company agrees to pay one hour at the overtime rate to anyone to whom they do something that is deemed to be really stupid.” Then the monetary penalties would increase if the stupidity continues. 
     It’s never to early start making a list of what you want to see in the next contract.
Let’s start with Article 11.

Just a cool video of life on the pre-load. Turn up your sound, the music is great.
                                       

         FedEx and UPS recently competed head to head in a rowing race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day the FedEx team won by a mile.
         Afterward, the UPS team became very discouraged and depressed. UPS management decided the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Management Team made up of senior executives was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the FedEx team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the UPS team had 8 people steering and one person rowing.
        So UPS management hired a consulting company and paid them vast amounts of money. After six months of hard work, they advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. So the UPS Team acted: To prevent losing to the FedEx team again, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering managers, 2 area steering division managers and 1 operations manager.
        The UPS Team also implemented a new performance system that would give the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the Demonstrated Rowing Performance Program, with meetings, write-ups and free pens for the rower. Even up front parking and a coffee cup were promised for a winner.
        At the next race, FedEx won by two miles. Humiliated, UPS management fired the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new boat, sold the oars and canceled all capital investments for new equipment.
        The money saved was distributed to the senior executives as bonuses for a job well done.

 
     Did you know that UPS had a marching song? Well..they do. It was written by a couple of UPSers and introduced at a Breakfast Club meeting in May of 1929. It is sung to the tune of the “Caisson Song” (often called “Over Hill, Over Dale”).

  Sing along: 

        “Over hill, over dale, as they hit the concrete trail, our brown wagons go rolling along.
    Shout it out, without doubt, service rides on every route as our wagons go rolling along.
        Then it’s hi hi he in the brown shirt cavalry, shout out our message loud and strong!
    Where’re you go you will always know our brown wagons go rolling along.”