Teamsters United for a Better Safety Committee

I’ve recreated a flier that me and a few other folks at my job have been distributing for the upcoming Safety Committee elections for the San Bruno Night Sort.

Teamsters United
For a Better Safety Committee

For the past 17 months management has continually been neglecting its duties when it comes to the safety of us Teamsters and to its obligations to the Safety and Health Committee for the San Bruno Night Sort. Management has been notified numerous times that it is in violation of Article 18 Section 20.4 of the National Master United Parcel Service Agreement. Management has been infringing our contractual rights by appointing non-approved and non-elected union members to the Health and Safety Committee, including the position of non-management co-chair (which is an elected position by union members on the committee, NOT APOINTED BY MANAGEMENT!). Management has been flagrantly violating our contractual rights when it comes to the Temporary Alternate Work Agreement (also known as Light Duty) by forcing and intimidating workers to stay beyond their obligated four calendar days on the job; instead of resting up at home!

Teamsters United for a Better Safety Committee want to change all of this by standing up for the rights of All UPS employees, by making sure all injured employees get the treatment and respect they deserve, and by standing up to management so as to make sure our contractual rights are not trampled on!

PLEASE VOTE FOR
TEAMSTERS UNITED FOR A BETTER SAFETY COMMITTEE!

Please Mark Your Ballots For

Building A Building C
Dan Castino Daniel Esparza
Steve Yip Andy Philips

Unite and Stand Up for Your Rights!

Don’t Let UPS Drop Good Full Time Jobs

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

UPS is violating the contract by having Air Drivers pick up ground packages from drop boxes. This scheme underpays Air Drivers and undermines full-time jobs.

The company claims they have a deal with our International Union. But our International Union has told members this is not true…(Read More)

Double Shifting and Preload

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

So I’ll keep this short as I’ve talked about the Preload Shift violating Article 3 Section 7 of the contract before (habitually).

I’ve been double shifting on Preload for the past two weeks and every time I’ve double shifting I’ve seen  a plethora of supervisors working through out the night.  And not just working here and there but continually working for many hours throughout the night.

Why is this bad you may ask, well for one, just click the link above, and two, I wasn’t able to double shift yesterday because they have “too many workers.”…(Read More)

Writers Reach Tentative Deal

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

It seems like the Writers Guild (West) have reached a good deal where they will get a percentage of internet profit, but, we still need to see how good the deal is as it seems like the guild is using scare tactics to get its members to vote for the deal:

An end to Hollywood’s long and bitter writers’ strike appeared close on Saturday, as union leaders representing 12,000 movie and television writers said they had reached a tentative three-year deal with production companies.

…

The agreement would let writers claim to have bettered a similar deal achieved last month between the production companies and the Directors Guild of America. In the third year of the Writers Guild deal, writers will be paid a percentage of the distributor’s revenue rather than the flat fee for Web-streamed television shows granted to the directors. The writers had insisted on this issue to ensure they not lose out on any new-media windfall the studios and networks may get from Web video. The producers yielded on this point — and the directors did not push it —arguing that Internet distribution is unlikely to become a significant business during the length of these contracts.

Rail Teamsters Reject Early Deal

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

From the TDU:

Teamster engineers have voted down an early deal in a close vote on the Norfolk Southern.

BLET negotiators asked members to accept a new contract that would last until 2014, but rank-and-file Teamsters voted down the proposed deal by 1,143 votes No to 1,050 votes Yes. The current on-property agreement does not expire until 2009.

The proposed agreement would have continued a controversial bonus pay system, but reduced the bonus after 2009. Under the bonus system, members are paid a bonus in lieu of wage increases, based on financial goals set by the company. One engineer complained on the web: “We assume all the risk and the NS risks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.”

Next Time We Must Be Organized

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad

While the national contract has been stalled it will still pass. TDU states:

The biggest obstacle to defeating the concessionary contract nationally was the sheer size and scope of the Teamster-UPS sales job.

The company and the union reached every UPS Teamster with their Vote Yes campaign. Most UPS Teamsters received multiple mailings—including six separate mailings in the Central and Southern regions.

In contrast, our Vote No campaign relied on member-to-member communication. The fast track contract vote gave us limited time to expand our network.

The Hoffa administration’s miserable failure to defend Teamster pensions was another major factor in the contract vote. First, Teamster pensions were cut in the Central States and elsewhere after Hoffa promised they would be protected. Then our union failed to advance any positive plan for improving pensions without giving in to the UPS pension grab in the Central States.

With Hoffa and Hall offering no plan, no hope and no leadership, it is not surprising that the majority of UPS Teamsters voted for the contract in the Central States areas: the Central Region and the South.

Essentially the lesson learned is to get organized earlier as the next contract (in six years from now) will probably be worse than this one and we can’t depend on the union leadership to actually negotiate for us.

CONTRACT NOT RATIFIED! BOO-YAH!

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad

Unfortunately many UPSers fell for the Teamster International and UPS management bullshit and voted 65% to ratify the national contract. However, TDU reports:

UPS Teamsters rejected three supplemental agreements in the East, putting the ratification of the UPS national contract on hold.

Teamsters in the Central Pennsylvania Supplement, the Western Pennsylvania Supplement and the New York Area Local 804 Supplement voted No and sent these agreements back for further improvements.

A fourth supplement, the Northern California supplement was also nearly rejected.

Overall the national agreement is headed toward approval by 65 percent. However, under the Teamster Constitution the national contract cannot be ratified until all of the supplements have been approved.

Union negotiators need to return to the bargaining table to negotiate improvements.

My local, Local 278, rallied hard to vote down the Northern California Supplemental Agreement but unfortunately it passed only by only 307 votes. The other local leaders in covered by the agreement told their members to vote “Yes” and many of us thought that after seeing how bad the national contract and the supplement was they’d give a “No” vote. But that obviously wasn’t the case. We barely had any time to rally the troops for a “No” vote as Hoffa and his cronies at the union decided to push the vote up. All though I am proud of my fellow Local 278 crew as they voted 508 to 103 against the national and 516 to 94 against he supplement.

IATSE Local 1 Authorizes Strike

I’m late in this post but here ya all go.  According to the New York Times:

Members of Local One, the union representing almost all Broadway stagehands, authorized their leaders to call a strike in a unanimous vote yesterday, the union said. While the vote does not mean that a strike is inevitable, it is a necessary step if one is to be called.

In a statement, the union said that there were no plans for a strike, which would leave most Broadway theaters dark, though James J. Claffey Jr., the president of Local One, was quoted as saying at the meeting, “No work in December without a deal.”

Local 1 leadership stated:

We are professionals and unashamed to state that we are defending good middle class jobs that pay our mortgages, feed our families and allow our children to attend good schools.

The producers’ numbers, so widely distributed, are misleading at best and often bogus.

Their press release celebrated an offer of 16.5% increase in wages.  But the producers failed to mention their offer was accompanied by a 38% cut in jobs and income.

We are the caretakers of the theatre, the protectors of the workplace.  We keep it safe for all of us.  Six days a week, sometimes seven, we are the first to arrive and last to leave.

Local 278 Says “Vote No!”

I went to a meeting recently on Saturday for my local, Local 278, and expected the worst after the Teamsters announced that every single local leader full heartedly agreed to the new contract and after reports from other members of other locals from around the country during a conference call last week that their local leaders were also supporting the contract and using various carrot and stick methods to get their members to vote yes.

But I was surprised when I walked into the meeting ten minutes late that our local leaders were advising us to vote no on the Nor-Cal Supplementagreement and to vote no on the Master Contract with Secretary-Treasure “J. B.” calling the Nor-Cal Supplement a “rag” and the Master Contract “a waste of paper.”

Many of the people at the meeting where told timers (ten years or more) and many of them voiced their dissatisfaction with the new contract.  I won’t go into too much detail about the contract as MakeUPSDeliver.org has some good articles and fliers about the short falls of this new tentative contract at their website.

J. B. also went over our Nor-Cal Supplemental agreement and things didn’t look that much better there.  J. B. had been telling the negotiation panel that there needed to be serious changes to the suplemental to correct some major problems that are in our Suplemental right now.  Those problems, quoting J. B. are:

[O]n the October 2007 Nor-Cal Agenda there are [708] discharges, [393] suspensions and [996] regular grievance cases…total [being 2,097].  Currently on the Western Region Agenda for October 2007 (Second Level) there are [510] cases.

…I have reviewed the proposed settlement and I do not see anything that solves any of the problems that would help to solve any above.  There is nothing in particular that would cause the Company to encourage prompt settlement of grievances…Do not be surprised if your manager or supervisor tells you this is a great deal.  They are not lying.  IT IS A GREAT DEAL FOR UPS MANAGEMENT!!!!!!

Hence why Scott, my Night Hub manager, didn’t care if a grieved my being “suspended” from the Safety and Health Committee (however it is going to pre-grievance negotiations next week and there is literally no way they can win).

When someone shouted out if any of the other local union leaders in the Nor-Cal Region took the same stance as 278 J. B. said, “No, they are all trying to sell this contract to their constituents,” a huge collective sigh was realeased by the 100 or so Teamsters in the room.

“Fucking bullshit!” Someone shouted.

“It’s all politics,” explained J. B., “they’re being yanked around by management.  It’s all political.  But I guess I don’t give a damn anymore about that shit.”

This caused mostly everybody to laugh as J. B. is pretty much known for not giving “a damn” about what UPS management or other corrupt Teamster officials think of him (however this doesn’t mean I’m not suspicious of him).

At the end of the meeting a fellow Teamster directed everyone to go onto MakeUPSDeliver.org and J. B. said we need to spread the word to get everyone to vote no on the Supplement and Master; and if the Master went through and our Nor-Cal Supplement didn’t than that could at least through the Master agreement off course as all supplements need to have a yes vote for any further stuff to go forward (or at least that is what J. B. said).

One of the reasons why the Supplement was so bad was due to the fact that when J. B. was making these demands for changes in it he made some enemies (obviously) at UPS management and management in turn froze out Local 278 from Nor-Cal Supplemental negotiations (probably giving the other locals some kickbacks for letting them do this, no doubt).  So if this shitty Supplement does pass our local will refuse to recognize it as we were not apart of negotiations.

Image From:
Teamster New York Pension Fund 

TDU Conference Call

I took part in a conference call with UPSers and TDU members on Sunday about the tentative contract and how other locals have responded to it around the country and what we should do.  It was really nice to be in a “meeting” with like minded individuals who feel the same way I do about union power, UPS, and this new contract, it makes one feel less lonely to know others are also fighting the good fight.

The jist of the conference call was essentially that this contract had numerous concessions that didn’t need to be there.  Some of the biggest ones are getting rid of the Central States Pension Plan (in where close to half of all UPS Teamsters are in) , spliting up our raises over six month period, no health care for part-time employees for 12 months (and 18 months for their families), no guarantee of more full-time jobs, no protections for the employees already in full-time jobs, freezing that starting pay rate to$8.50 for part-timers until 2013, and some other technical issues that should have been improved upon in this contract but weren’t.

During the meeting other Teamsters and TDU members reported that many of their local officers have been trying to sell this contract to them and have been using various carrot and stick methods in order to garner a yes vote.  But many Teamsters (from what I heard) have fought back against their union officers and in various meetings in New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles Teamsters have voiced their opinion on what they view as a shoddy contract.  My local is having a meeting this Saturday at 10 a.m. which I’m going to try to attend, hopefully many at that meeting will voice their dissent as well and we can help get a no vote from our local.

We also gave out suggestions to the TDU officers and briefly went over how we can organize our locals to vote no on this contract.   When the meeting ended and as everyone was hanging up their phones there came a chorus of “Vote no!” “We gotta vote no!”  “Let’s do this people!”  Some words I’ll remember as I try to help organize my night shifters to give a solid no vote on this contract.

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Calls for Strike Vote

The New York Times reports:

With contract negotiations between producers and stagehands at a standstill, the union representing almost all of the stagehands on Broadway yesterday scheduled a strike vote for Oct. 21.

The union, Local One, announced the call for a strike vote after a meeting at its headquarters that was attended by the leaders of unions representing actors, musicians, ushers, treasurers, makeup stylists and most other Broadway professionals.

But there is some confusion as whether the international would authorize a strike if voted on by Local 1.  Hopefully the union doesn’t give in to the demands of the League of American Theaters and Producers and instead listens to its rank-and-file if they do indeed want a strike to protect their jobs.

And the Information Comes Pouring Out

According to the Teamsters for a Democratic Union the new agreement does not create 10,000 new full-time jobs, unlike the 1997 contract in where we fought for through a national strike in order to get 10,000 new full-time jobs:

The tentative agreement not only has fewer new full-time combo jobs. There’s another concession. If UPS pulls traffic off the rail and creates a feeder job, the tentative agreement lets the company count that as a new full-time job.

UPS is doing that anyway, to improve service, so why would we let them count that?

The purpose of the 1997 language was to create more full-time jobs and to increase the ratio of full-time to part-time jobs by combining 20,000 part-time positions into higher-paid full-time positions.

If we had failed to win 10,000 full-time jobs in 1997 and 2002, today there would be 20,000 fewer full time jobs, and 40,000 more part-time jobs. Fewer good jobs, and a weaker union.

Not only that but the new contract reportedly freezes the part-time starting pay rate to $8.50 until 2013!

In a major concession, the proposed early deal reportedly denies health coverage to part-timers for the first year of employment, and family coverage for the first 18 months.

This is the “Very Best Agreement” that Hoffa promised?

…

UPS made more than $4 billion in profits last year. Is this really the best they could deliver to the part-timers who make up the majority of their workforce?

If these accounts are true and there are no other significant improvements in the contract, especially when in comes to supervisors working and stewards than I will definitely advise all of my co-workers to vote no on the contract.  It seems like the only thing I have to hope for is a strong supplemental agreement between Joint Council 7 and the UPS NorCal region representatives.

One of the old timers (who began working in 198 is telling me that he’s automatically going to vote no because he “already knows” it will be a shitty contract.  He also laments that many people will vote “Yes” just because they’re so apathetic.  Hopefully though me and a few other workers who care can convince at least my hub to vote know, that’s all we can hope for.

Some Info on the New Tentative Agreement

The people over at MakeUPSDeliver.org have received some information on the new agreement despite our union (still!) keeping a tight lid on things. UPS is also planning on making its workers vote “Yes” for the contract as both Teamster leadership and UPS management want us to vote for (what, so far, looks like) a weak contract.

The tentative deal includes concessions that would lengthen the wage progression to 36 months. This is the second contract in a row that Hoffa has given in to the company’s demand to increase the progression by six months. If the agreement is approved, it would take a driver three years to get up to top pay.

The new deal would also lengthen the probationary period to 60 days.

Chief negotiators James Hoffa and Ken Hall promised the “Richest Contract Ever” but the new tentative deal actually provides for smaller percentage gains than the 2002 “Best Contract Ever.”

While the tentative agreement includes approximately $9 an hour in wage and benefit improvements compared to $8.75 over six years in 2002, this amounts to a smaller percentage increase than the current contract.

…

There are reports that in the Central States Area, retiree health care for 30-and-out retirees will be available for $200 per month ($400 to include spouse). However, we await detailed information in writing.

A New Safety Co-Chair, Oh Goody Goody!

Since you can’t tell from reading the headline I’ll just come out and say that this headline was written in a sarcastic tone.  The past two weeks I’d been noticing that Stephanie and a few other safety supervisors having this one guy, “Employee A,” follow them around as they made their safety walks around buildings A and C.  Stephanie would have “A” pass out fliers, safety reports, and would have him do the raffle.  I also would notice that he would be out on the floor a lot with the supervisors instead of doing his job as pick-off for PD-2.  I knew they were buttering him up for something, probably feeding him some propaganda about me, and letting him think he was somebody important when all management was doing was trying to corrupt him in order for him to do  the bidding of management.

Well, this morning at around 3:10 a.m. after my shift  I noticed that for some reason there was a new picture of the union safety board co-chair on the San Bruno Night Sort Safety and Health Committee wall.  When I looked closer I realized it was “A”!

So what’s  the big deal you might ask?  Well, for one reason(and one big reason at that) “A” is not actually a safety board member.  He was never elected or appointed to the board by the union or the union members.  Another reason is that we already have a union co-chair on the board, “K. G.”  So essentially what management has done was just go up to a random person and say. “Hey, you uh, wanna be co-chair?” With that random person going, “Uh, Okey-dokey.”

Now I don’t know what has got into Stephanie or Scott’s heads that they can just randomly and unilaterally appoint random people to the safety and health committee but for some reason they think they have the power to pick people on the safety and health board and actually appoint the  union co-chair despite the fact that Article 18 Section 20.4 states:

Bargaining unit members who seek to serve on the Safety and Health Committee may volunteer to do so, with  the approval of the Local Union.  The Union co-chair of the committee(s) shall be selected by the bargaining unit members of the committee.

Now that’s pretty damn clear cut right there.  Which is why I’m not sure what management on the Night Sort thinks they’re doing because once  this goes to a grievance committee there is no way they can argue their way out of that unlike some other situations.  Do they think they can intimidate every hourly and union employee on the Night Sort?  Do they think no one will actually read the contract?  What ever they  think they’re not going to be doing this for long.

U.A.W. Workers to Vote on Contract

The Detroit Free Press reports:

UAW local leaders are expected to meet in Detroit this morning to learn the much-awaited official details of the tentative agreement reached early Wednesday between the union and General Motors Corp., as UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and other union officials work to get the deal ratified.

Today is the first time the union will broadly distribute the specifics of a landmark deal that restructures retiree health care, introduces a two-tier wage system and eliminates wage increases for the duration of the 4-year contract. And the union’s more than 73,000 GM workers are anxious to see the hard facts.

The Free Press also reports:

A cornerstone of the tentative deal reached Wednesday is the creation of a trust — called a voluntary employee beneficiary association, or VEBA — that is expected to rid General Motors Corp.’s financial books of more than $50 billion in retiree health care obligations at a $15-billion discount.

But not all UAW members are happy about the deal’s:

guarantee that the proposed trust fund should be solvent for at least 80 years.

“I don’t buy that for a minute,” said Ralph Herndon, a 50-year-old GM retiree from Otisville, who retired in January from Orion Assembly. “I think we’re going to be worried for a long, long time. I think worry is going to be part of our life when it comes to our health care.”

In fact, on NPR today I was listening to the show All Things Considered and they were interviewing a retiree who worked for Caterpillar and he mentioned that one of the main benefits for working for Caterpillar was free health care for retirees but after the UAW set up a VEBA the retirees had to start spending a lot more money per month to receive benefits that were promised to them years earlier.  So we’ll see how this contract vote goes and if this VEBA deal is as good as Gettelfinger claims it to be.

Image From:
Detroit News