Ken H

[oldupsman]

The vast majority of working Americans would drool over what you call "substandard".

The vast majority of working Americans don't work for a company making billions of dollars a year profit.
I don't understand the argument that just because I have better wages and benefits then my neighbor I should be grateful
​and the success of the company has nothing to do with it.

 

[rudy5150]

Wake up brothers and sisters!!!!!!
Teamsters Local 89

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

The vast majority of working Americans don't work for a company making billions of dollars a year profit.
I don't understand the argument that just because I have better wages and benefits then my neighbor I should be grateful
​and the success of the company has nothing to do with it.

You should be both grateful and thankful that you work for a company that is successful.

 

[Catatonic]

What a total waste of ink there.

​I think it is pixels.

 

[Catatonic]

The vast majority of working Americans don't work for a company making billions of dollars a year profit.
I don't understand the argument that just because I have better wages and benefits then my neighbor I should be grateful
​and the success of the company has nothing to do with it.

And that is a great thing about the Brown Cafe, there is no requirement to understand anything!

 

[CharleyHustle]

The vast majority of working Americans don't work for a company making billions of dollars a year profit.
I don't understand the argument that just because I have better wages and benefits then my neighbor I should be grateful
​and the success of the company has nothing to do with it.

I don't understand the argument that because the company makes billions of dollars the contract offer can be referred to as "substandard". What exactly is the "standard" and where exactly is the contract "substandard"?

 

[Benben]

The vast majority of working Americans would drool over what you call "substandard".

Upstate, the vast majority of working Americans wouldn't WANT to do what we do in order to get what we get. I would go so far as to say well over 1/2 of working Americans couldn't do what we do to get what we get. Many people "drool" over things they do not have but then once they learn what it takes to get them they no longer want those
things.

Why do you think the turn-over in preload is so insanely high? Its just not worth it to them.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

I wouldn't bust my ass for $8.50/hr either; however, I would and do bust my ass for $30/hr + free benefits.

You are right in that most probably couldn't do what we do; however, that doesn't mean that they wouldn't want to be given the chance to try.

 

[Wally]

And that is a great thing about the Brown Cafe, there is no requirement to understand anything!

Just like my management team!

 

[Bagels]

#1) You continue to compare HOUSEHOLD income while I'm referring to SINGLE-EMPLOYER income.

#2) As I wrote earlier, assume the CPI (the standard for inflation) went up 2% in one year. Because of the CPI measurements, somebody earning 20K is going to be more volatile toward inflation than somebody earning 75K. As I asked you earlier, do you really believe somebody earning $1M needs a 2% hike in pay to retain the same spending power (which is the concept behind inflationary raises)?Nor does CPI measure that, for example, the absolute cost of a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, a pound of chicken, etc. is about the same as it was in 2000. Many of these products have been on roller coaster rides, which makes CPI often deceptive.

Quite honestly, this is over your head so I'm not going to waste my time.

"At the conclusion of this contract, package car drivers will be among the top 5% individual earners in total compensation within the USA." That is how you started in this thread which is compleatley false. the top 5% had an AGI of $160,000 in 2009, 4 years ago. You can back pedal and keep trying to change the parameters but it still does not change the fact that UPS drivers are no where near the top 5% sources: Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data | Tax Foundation and How Much Money Do The Top Income Earners Make By Percentage? | Financial Samurai.


Inflation refers to the cost of things currently compared to years past. An over simplification would be a loaf of bread that cost $1 last year now costs $2. That is an inflation rate of 100%. Now inflation is not tied into 1 single commodity like a loaf of bread. It is a general, overall rise in the costs of everything in a "basket of goods" including food, transportation medical care, ect.
When my check goes up 2% and the inflation goes up 3% I can not buy as much food for my family when I go to the store using the same percentage of my pay. The same goes for paying my bills with the same percentage of my paycheck. My purchasing power has erroded. That is a loss to me and my family. You use the phrase, "spending power" and I find it misleading and inaccurate. I use the phrase, "purchasing power" because thats more accurate in terms of real world application. A decent article about this can be found here: Pioneer Investment - The Effect of Inflation on Purchasing Power - May 14, 2010. If you can not understand how a driver will be making less 6 years from now than they did 6 years ago when the raises were greater than inflation I can not help you anymore. I am at a total loss at this point.

If the only problem you had with the TA was with respect to article 7............we each have and deserve our own opinions lets just leave it at that. You saw the other apsects as, "more than fair." I saw all other aspects as a loss or a decrease in what we already had. The contract will cost us more and give us nothing additional than what we already had. This includes the incredibly weak "harassment" Verbiage. My 16 year old could twist those words to make them mean any damn thing he could want them to mean. What a total waste of ink there.

 

[anonymous6]

does anyone begrudge a professional athlete millions and millions for winning a super bowl, world series , or nba championship??

so why should anyone begrudge us a fair piece of the profits for making UPS a winning team? UPS did not make billions of profits by itself. we team members had a lot with making that happen.

the 2008 and the 2013 contracts were basically treading water if that. some parts were fair, some a slap in the face and who here can say with a straight face say some parts of the contract was a slam dunk? we should have been rewarded more. Coldworld said it best that the company could of made tremendous NON FINANCIAL offers like the occasional pat on the back. many would of been quite satisfied just with some recognition. just deciding to treat people RIGHT for a change would of been a slam dunk winner!

the company is quite short-sighted in this regard. it would of been much cheaper to reinstate the Christmas turkey and safe driving award catalog. people would of been less slighted by other concessions. we are all like boys and girls on the inside that just want to be accepted and treated well.

 

[Bagels]

does anyone begrudge a professional athlete millions and millions for winning a super bowl, world series , or nba championship??

so why should anyone begrudge us a fair piece of the profits for making UPS a winning team? UPS did not make billions of profits by itself. we team members had a lot with making that happen.

I don't feel that way at all. My comments were in regard to the faction of FT employees who constantly persist that they're under-compensated. My point was that I believe it's hard to argue against the fact that they're fairly compensated, but of course it fires up those who feel that package car driving should earn them a ridiculous amount of money (e.g. well over $100K).

There's only a finite amount of money to be shared with the Teamsters, and it's clear that the elephant's share they're receiving is being "paid" for by the increased usage of lesser paid temporary/seasonal/casual PT/FT employees (which ultimately slows the time it takes to go PT->FT) , and continued near-minimum wage provided to PT employees. I'm not certain there's enough PT to overcome this, given RTW laws (asking PTers to pay several hundred to join the union + several hundred in dues is a lot when a quarter of their take home pay is being used to buy the gas to get them to work). And yet the FTers who take want the PTers to vote for their retirement.

I have issues with the contract, but financials -- sans starting PT wages -- isn't one.

 

[beentheredonethat]

Many people quote Jim Casey's "fair days work for a fair days pay" However, I don't understand why fair to many is based on the company making a large profit. Would you all feel better making the same as you make now and UPS posting losses each year? Would you then say.. Boy we got them?

We make roughly 10-12% of profit per dollar

Using Year ending 2011, we made (per yahoo finance) 3.8 Billion after taxes on 53 Billion in revenue. Before taxes (but after interest exp) we made slightly less then 5.8 Billion or roughly 11% margins. So a penny and a dime of profit for every dollar of revenue is not all that much when you compare to other industries. If we added in a driver for every 9 drivers our driver costs would go up that 11%. (Granted, we would reduce some OT, but that would be offset by more people to contribute for HW and Pension. We would need more vehicles, more buildings etc etc.

Just that one decision would eat up most all the profit margin.


The other thing I think is funny. Most everyone here posts how stupid UPS mgmt is. I'll grant you we make mistakes. But how many other companies exist that have not gone thru bankruptcy that have been in business for over 100 years? Also is profitable and our people are paid as much? I can't think of too many companies like ours.

There have been hundreds of companies in our industry that went bankrupt with teamsters employed. So it's not like teamster labor guarantees the company will be successful.

It's real easy to complain and sit back and point out mistakes made by someone else.

​

 

[MFR2010]

2

 

[Benben]

........Using Year ending 2011, we made (per yahoo finance) 3.8 Billion after taxes on 53 Billion in revenue. Before taxes (but after interest exp) we made slightly less then 5.8 Billion or roughly 11% margins. So a penny and a dime of profit for every dollar of revenue is not all that much when you compare to other industries. If we added in a driver for every 9 drivers our driver costs would go up that 11%. (Granted, we would reduce some OT, but that would be offset by more people to contribute for HW and Pension. We would need more vehicles, more buildings etc etc.......
​

Excellent and TY for posting. From reading your post you have insight into the bussiness. Please do not take this as an attack because it is far from that but I have questions that nobody near me can answer and you are my best shot at understanding whats going on.

In my center the average paid day is north of 10 hours. Thats on average of 2 hours every day per driver paid OT at $48.5 an hour. We have trucks sitting in the lot every day. Adding routes I do not think would require more more trucks and no way more buildings would it? We did it 5 years ago.

5 out of every 6 new drivers are inside hires and that 6th is usually a pt sup. So adding new drivers should not increase pension or HW costs as the company is already paying these costs for the additional new drivers that are added. With a 60% quite rate of new PT hires over, 1/2 the replacements hired for inside work would not incure those costs.

Furthermore, bonus is only paid after 8 hours. Meaning if a driver takes out an 8 hour dispatch and gets done in 7.5 you have paid them nothing extra. And drivers with only 8 hours of work have the energy to crush routes day in and day out....more on that later.

The same amount of pavement must be driven to deliver the packages with the exception of to and from buildings to get into and out of delivery area. I have been in trucks with over 1 million miles and the average truck in my center is (a total guess on my part here) is at about 1/4 million miles. So the wear and tear on trucks can't be that severe can it? I mean we have trucks from the 80's still out there and the cost of gas is just the average of 10 or so miles to and from the building in my center.

Production drops after 9 hours worked and if anyone tells you differently they are lying. I know most drivers save the quicker residentials for after pick-ups, so on paper it might seam their stops per hour increases but I promise you we all walk much slower after 8 hours. The same driver doing 18 stops per hour at the 9th hour in a residential area would have been belting out 21 per hour if they had done that same area earlier in the day. Driver fatigue and the cost in production that this causes when drivers work 10 and 11 hours every day for months and months and now years on end is something I do not think anyone has figured out. I do not even know how to measure nor test how much this effects production.

Customer satisfation is something that UPS has become totally and completely ignorant of. This one factor IMO costs us more bussiness to FedEx then rates do (again, just my opinion here based on what my customers say about their fedex drivers.) I can not even begin to count the number of times in 1 week I have to appologize to a customer for; 1. delivering to a buss at 4:50pm and more importantly 2. their box being mangled and looks it has been drop kicked 20 times due to the fact that my truck is bricked out every day. My God, my 2-wheeler rode shotgun untill after 11 am Friday because there wasn't anywhere to put it in the back without crushing packages.

With all these factors how is it better bussiness not putting out 1 more truck per 8 or nine? I am just trying to understand the bean counting going on so please, please do not take this post as adversarial as it that was not it's intent. I truely look forward to your response.

 

[beentheredonethat]

Personally I don't agree with all the decisions that UPS is making in terms of Paid Day.

I think a reasonable pd day is about 8.8 - 9.2 hours average. Also, if I were to be COO and make changes. I would make it so that all the areas close to the facilities were closer to 8 hour dispatches and make it known to the drivers so the drivers that want to be in and out work those routes. The routes with a long to/fr would be at a very high paid day due to adding a route costs a lot in to/fr penalty.

Please keep in mind, where I am from (New England) the HW and Pension is based on UPS contributing x dollars for HW and y dollars for pension for all hours paid up to 40 hours in a week. So on average after 8 hours there is no more cost to HW and pension although we do pick up additional OT costs. Therefore in the driver ranks adding another driver does cost significant HW and pension expense. If an insider goes from inside to driver, then we have to replace that person and pay for their HW. I can't speak for all other areas of the country as to the impact of HW and pension. However, I believe the new National Agreement will work similar to what I described in New England. The differential between the two is pretty minimal. Also, what has been shown is that if you put a driver who is used to getting paid over 9.5 hours with a light day they eventually go back to working the longer day since they are used to the higher paycheck and people get accustomed to their pay and tend to live pay check to pay check. It's nice to get a break, but after a few weeks their wallet is empty and they work longer. . (Granted, not right away, but over time this has happened).

Where I think the error is on a long paid day is not in the slow down after 8 hours (I admit to some extent that exists and you are right). However, I think that's minor compared to eventually the person is more likely to get injured or in an accident. This is where the big cost is in my opinion.

The biggest problem is that although I disagree, the bean counters have shown it is more profitable (at least in short term).

As far as customers and customer's pkgs. I think the best thing UPS would do is to invest big time for a year or two in our ground network. I'd love to see a few new large hubs near me. In New England there are 2 big hubs (Worma, Chema) and some smaller hubs (HARCT, STRCT, PRORI) with PRORI being the newest followed by Chema. Chema is 26 years old. (and that's one of our newer hubs). There is no real reason for Worma and Chema. We should have one large Hub nearer to Worma that is an 80K hub to process the volume from NH\ME\VT\MA.

We should take STRCT and get rid of it and build a large hub for all New England to NJ\NYC area pkgs that can handle a substantial amount of volume. Similarly NJ needs another very large big building to handle the volume they process.

We could cut out a lot of costs by building some big hubs with less overall hub handles to process our customers pkgs.

BenBen.. You like to invest in stocks and you have a good analytic mind and you like dividend stocks in particular.
If you had 100K and you had two choices one fund that "guarantees" you 5% interest for 30 years and another that guaranteed you 6% interest for 30 years (and yes.. let's assume the guarantee is actually valid). Almost all people would go for the 6%, but why? after all it's only 1% more that's not that big of a deal right? Well, you and I both know that it is a big deal. It is because after 30 years the extra 1% gave you over 140K more in returns (assuming no impact of taxes and it was reinvested).

With UPS, we multiply the savings by the thousands upon thousands of drivers.

Hope that makes sense.. and even though I don't agree with it, the numbers over the last few years show it works and is profitable.

 

[Bagels]

I think the best thing UPS would do is to invest big time for a year or two in our ground network. I'd love to see a few new large hubs near me. In New England there are 2 big hubs (Worma, Chema) and some smaller hubs (HARCT, STRCT, PRORI) with PRORI being the newest followed by Chema. Chema is 26 years old. (and that's one of our newer hubs). There is no real reason for Worma and Chema. We should have one large Hub nearer to Worma that is an 80K hub to process the volume from NH\ME\VT\MA....

It seems like there's some ground work to do this. I'm in the Midwest and a short drive away from the megahub in CACH, and surrounded by medium sized hubs. About 100 miles away from me, there's a medium-sized hub that has coddles of capacity. Several years ago we were told that they were going to convert that hub into an automated one, and when that happened it would swallow up several neighboring medium-sized hubs, including ours. (While it hasn't happened yet, they shuttered our smallish hub and moved the volume to another local medium sized hub. The hub portion has since been scrapped, allegedly intended to be used for logistics eventually.)

 

['Lord Brown's bidding']

Benben, when five ptmers and that supe are promoted, someone must fill their shoes, and someone will eventually be qualifying for those benefits. In addition, I wonder what the daily cost for putting one car on the road is. Is it more than the $400 a day a driver makes with 3 hours of OT (and in the centers in my hub, the majority of drivers don't touch 2.5, much less 3 hrs of OT).

 

[stink219]

does anyone begrudge a professional athlete millions and millions for winning a super bowl, world series , or nba championship??

The same athlete that is worth zero for under performing, being traded or cut due to cost?

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

The same athlete that is worth zero for under performing, being traded or cut due to cost?

...or killing someone (or two people)...