UPS Engineer Joins Picketing, Quits

                                         Here is a story from 2008 that just begs to be repeated.
Enjoy…



    When employees conduct informational picketing, they hope to raise public awareness of their workplace problems and send a message to the employer.
    But a Thursday march involving about 50 ASTAR Air Cargo pilots outside UPS’s Atlanta headquarters reached different eyes: A UPS software engineer on lunch decided to join the protest and, after leaving the picket line, resigned on the spot when approached back at work by two security workers and two Human Resources staffers.
    Tony Bordoli said by phone Friday he came upon the picketing while walking with a friend, and was touched when he saw a big sign on a vehicle that said the proposed UPS-DHL deal could devastate 10,000 families.
    “It affected me and there was something I knew that I could do about it, so I did. And I took a stance against an unethical action by my company. It’s probably not going to change things. I know I’m one person but it may slow it down,” Bordoli mused.
    Bordoli said his work was not related to the proposed contract, but that as a UPS software engineer in a financial office, he created programs that produced detailed analysis reports regarding which workers should have their hours cut.
    “I just felt I was really being used as a tool to devastate families and communities, and it was just simple. I mean, how could I not put the two together? I’m not going to be used as a tool to devastate families and communities anymore. I can’t conscientiously be a part of that,” said the 36-year-old Bordoli, who had worked at UPS for 10-plus years.
    In a way, the picketing indirectly woke me up,” he feels.
    He had been working on his current project for the past four months, said Bordoli, and had gotten to the “second plot point, if you will.”
    “It’s a big burden off my mind and off my back,” he said Friday concerning his decision to quit UPS. “Because I was feeling very conflicted with this particular project to begin with.”
    On Thursday evening, after joining the ranks of the unemployed, Bordoli did some research on the DHL-UPS deal and about the picketing ASTAR pilots in an attempt “to get more educated in what exactly I had chosen to do,” he chuckled.
    “And that’s when I was reassured that I was making the right decision,” he said.
    “This was by no means premeditated. I just went by my conscience when I saw the picketing, and the information of the families being devastated. It dawned on me that what I was doing by my actions, you know by my involvement, I wasn’t that far from that, you understand.”
    Bordoli said it may sound like a rash act and he admitted he did “get a little harshness this morning from my father.”
    “This time, I’ll pick a better company,” Bordoli said. “One that actually exercises proper social responsibility.”
    When he joined the picketing with the pilots, all in their pilots uniform, the picketers started asking him who he worked for?
    “I said UPS, and everyone, it was like a cheer moment,” he said.
    Later he told Human Resources staff and security in the stairwell that he was tendering his resignation, and let fall his UPS identification badge to the floor in protest.
    “I wish the cause well, because I have a family. You know, my family won’t be devastated from this because in the Atlanta area, I have marketable enough skills to quickly recover. So, I’m not worried about myself in particular. But I know things in our breadbasket up in Ohio, those guys are going through a lot more than I am. I’m actually fortunate,” said Bordoli.
    UPS spokesman Norman Black said Friday it is company policy not to publicly discuss individual personnel matters.
wnewsj.com