Here are the facts over the past four weeks since the California Supreme Court ruling.
1. Employers can no longer discipline employees for working through lunch. Employers MUST offer the lunch hour, but employees don't have to take it.
2. Stopping for a 15 minute paid break, or going to the bathroom, is different than not stopping for a 1 hour meal period (lunch). I still take my paid breaks.
3. I have personally skipped my entire lunch hour at least six times, and I have NOT 'code 05'. I have notified management when I was working without punching out for lunch, and have confirmed they did not take the hour out of my pay.
4. I am a driver that is on the 9.5 list, or at least they avoid making me go over 9.5 so I don't get on the list. This means that they can put enough work on me to keep me out til 7pm (8:30am start time), and they do. I do NOT run! If I work straight through my lunch, this enables me to be off the clock by 6pm.
May not mean much to some of you, but I have a girlfriend that needs to see me besides just on weekends. She goes to work at 8pm, which means she leaves her house at 7:15pm. When I take my lunch hour, I don't get to see her cause the company keeps me out til 7pm. But when I work thru my lunch hour, I do.
Just being able to see her for one hour, and eat dinner with her helps to keep our relationship alive. I already lost (divorce) a wife to this job, and worked late for 18 years while my son grew up without me, making his own dinners and putting himself to sleep at night. This time around I'm doing something about it. Why should I have to find some place to sit in temperatures ranging between 95 and 110 degrees in California heat for an UNPAID hour?? When I can keep working and be off an hour earlier, for the exact same amount of pay??
I'm still going to be on the 9.5 list, so they can't add extra work. It's just that 9.5 comes at 6pm now. It also creates a burden for them because now they have to find a driver that much earlier in the day that will be able to come take work off me in the event I'm not going to stay under 9.5 (which is often). Thereby, they might start lowering my stop count at the center in the morning, instead of waiting to find a driver who ran all day.
So, please set emotion aside about the disadvantages of working thru lunch, or just taking a 30 minute lunch. I'm a huge union guy, and have stood up for my union rights more than 98% of the pro-union guys. How many guys do you know that were arrested for activities during the UPS strike of 1997? I was. I also hand out 340 methods to fellow drivers and stress the importance of following them, specifically following 'trace'. I have been threatened with discipline for following the 'trace' and faced discharge for not delivering section 8 business out of order. If that doesn't make sense to anyone then you should read the methods. It is their job to make sure my route is setup to follow sections 1 thru 8 in that order.. not my job to go to the back of the truck and fix their mistakes or goofy splits.
So, please, can we stop the union arguments and just focus on the original question? I'm trying to determine if UPS is openly practicing discrimination by allowing some drivers to work through their lunch without discipline, while enforcing a lunch hour rule (that doesn't exist) for others. If I can get a list of drivers, or regions that have relaxed rules for lunch hours, then I can take that to a California Labor attorney and work towards changing the rules here in our state. If successful, and other drivers see that guys like me are getting off the clock by 6pm, with FULL pay, then maybe they will also be willing to sign the 9.5 list. It's a good incentive. You want more drivers to be back on the road... get everyone to sign the 9.5 list! That will do more for job creation than yelling at some guy for working thru his lunch.