Received my first warning letter from my center manager yesterday for misloads. I'm 99% sure that I misloaded the packages but wanted some opinions on my situation. I'm supposed to be working in unload and I don't have a usual "home" set of cars that I load. I only load cars during summer and peak. The set of cars that I had the misloads on, i've only loaded a couple of times before and it was my first day on them in at least six months. I stress again I'm an UNLOADER and only load when we are shorthanded. I have a good reputation during my short ups career and don't want to "stress" that opinion of me, but do I have a reason to file or just suck it up???
You should file a grievance/rebuttal for any documented discipline you receive for anything including missorts. Also get to know your contract as they vary from locations. Some areas a letter must be sent to your house within a certain time period, if that time period elapses the discipline is void. Always have a steward with you when you are talked to about anything that can lead to your discipline, its your right.
A steward especially a good steward can attempt to fix a problem like this if giving a chance so it does not lead to trouble for you and possibly correct the problem so we dont have missorts down the road. It could be a little problem you have that could be corrected with some advice from a senior employee who knows how to do the job.
If you have a boss that pushes pieces per hour like many buildings do, this sometimes creates missorts, and he/she will have to decide what is more important?
Nowhere in the contract does it say that you have to maintain a piece per hour quota!
Nowhere in the contract does it say that you can be discipline for missorts!
UPS has never meet with the union to negotiate working condidtiond like missorts. How can discpline be equal? Whos to say whats fair? You can have a loader that loads all bulk stops who loads 300 pieces a day and has 1 missort a day, yet another loader could load 900 pieces and have 1 a week.
Missorts suck, period!!!!! But threatening someones job over it sucks more. Why would anyone ever want to load? The loader is typically the last one to make the mistake, but several mistakes happened for it to get missorted, from the Pal person, to the sorter to the slide sorter, yet only the loader is responsible?
A piece of advice, check the label, recheck the label and make sure you are in the right truck every time. A fair days work for a fair days pay!
And be very careful taking advice from a message board, not everyone that replys is a steward or even knows the contract.