i have seen stewards talk to management and work out more hours or a better position for them self's or whoever saw management doing union work. a friend of mine told me his union steward was not gonna file a grievance for seen a part time sup work instead steward goes missing then full time sup shows up and tells my friend he is going to clock him in for an extra hour of work and he was gonna talk to the other sup.
another incident where a guy we know told us that he go bumped out of being a scanner in his area, and got sent to unload(not sure though). the part time sup told him since they did not want the steward(laid off air driver) walking around that they were gonna give him his position.
The manipulation of stewards by the company is nothing new.
That is why many places have "super seniority" for stewards. That way the company is less likely to be able to "buy" a shop steward by not cutting his job, or other methods that they have developed in the past.
As far as talking to management, that is part of the stewards job. You can either be a pain in their butt or try to reach a common ground on most issues. Nothing different than what goes on at a panel hearing. You fight the ones you feel have the best chance of winning, and you negotiate the best you can with a lost cause. As Tie said, I have had drivers come to me after a cocky full of crap steward has presented their case by being antagonistic, only to find out that they got the max that UPS could give them, when instead, they could have gotten by with a slap on the wrist, and a warning letter. Its hard to go back and try to fix a crappy mess like that.
There is no reason for the steward to be abusive or disrespectful, as that loss of control gives management the upper hand. IF they have you dead to rights after your Fubar, then what good is it to run in there demanding something? Much better to keep your job and fight another day. Over the years, that type of action has allowed between 45-50 drivers to keep their job at UPS, all of which UPS had more than just cause to fire.
As far as sups working, the official stand is that while the contract prohibits it, UPS does and will use management to do hourly work, and unless they are filed on and caught, they dont have any down side.
They know that 90% of the time, no one will ever know. Out of the other 10%, more than 9% of the time, the hourly wont say or do anything about it. The less than 1% of the time worked is contested, and then paid after grumbling and threatening.
The bigger threat is hourly working off the clock, but that is a totally different issue. But it also explains the lack of concern when most drivers see a sup working, and do nothing. Kinda hard to hold someone accountable for doing something wrong, when you are doing something wrong yourself.
d