APWA - Is it a real alternative or a foolish choice?

What is your opinion about the Association of Parcel Workers of America?

  • I'm a member, it's about time someone challenged the Teamsters

    Votes: 45 28.5%
  • Sounds like a good idea, but I'm just not sure

    Votes: 55 34.8%
  • We need solidarity, let's stick with the Teamster's

    Votes: 20 12.7%
  • It's an effort to bust the union, no way I'll even consider it

    Votes: 38 24.1%

  • Total voters
    158

705red

Browncafe Steward
No we just want to beable to retire before we are too old and need the care ourselves. Are you in CS?

Maybe some of us have had enough of the corruption.
Cole an how will the apwa help YOU retire sooner?
 
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705red

Browncafe Steward
If APWA voted a strike, it would be for a rational legitimate reason and I would proudly refuse to go to work.
Sadly, that was not the case in 97'.
How did you come to this conclusion? Thats right its their perfect record of putting up putting up picket lines, 0 for 0. Maybe its their spotless track record of negotiating, NONE. When you ran across that picket line in a girlish fashion did you trip over a picketer and bump your head? Your out in space a little on this one.
 

Cole

Well-Known Member
705 Howdy bro!

You doing well I hope?

They will help us retire sooner by keeping criminal hands off our pensions, and hiring top of the line people that are accountable to the members and can be dismissed if not to head up the pension fund, that's what I suggest anyway.:wink:


Take care, and I'll be in touch!:)
 

705red

Browncafe Steward
705 Howdy bro!

You doing well I hope?

They will help us retire sooner by keeping criminal hands off our pensions, and hiring top of the line people that are accountable to the members and can be dismissed if not to head up the pension fund, that's what I suggest anyway.:wink:


Take care, and I'll be in touch!:)
Cole, outside yourself i havent meet any top of the line people that promote the apwa!
 

mittam

Well-Known Member
You probably wont admit it, but several of your co cheerleaders didnt stand up in 97 and crossed my picket line, and withdrew from the teamsters. They didnt have a set back then, why am i to beleive they grew a set since then. If it was up to me if you cross a picket line or withdrwa you shouldnt be entitled to anything that has been bargained for by the union! Now their pissed off and mad at the union the same union they turned their back on. Not real interested in hearing their positions on whats best for us, the ones who stood tall in 97!!!!

I stood tall in 97, I was proud to go there every nite and show my support for what we were led to believe what was right, now all the standing we did has been undone by the very group we trusted 10 years ago. I was part-time then and we met at the hall the nite before the conference call with Carey. We were ALL to have a chance to ask questions or say what we wanted to see in "OUR" contract. When I stood up and introduced myself as a part-timer I was told to sit down and be quiet that what the full-timers got would trickle down to the part-timers, I see the trickle down now 4 tiers to the part-timers wages benefits that are nowhere close and work that is crammed down their throats. My over 9.5's and bad dispatches and the crap they put us through as drivers is nothing compared to what the part-timers go through. We went on strike to save our pension and now the union has pissed it away and we may as well say goodbye to our benefits or pay a high cost to keep our insurances, our pensions will never come back we cannot have an increase to them as long as they are in the danger area. The company is a year from getting control of the pension if it keeps going as it is, It is time for a change, Red I know what I posted a few up from here saying people got to be stupid to keep the teamsters in I really don't believe they are but we need a drastic change not just an overhaul as the TDU has tried for 30 years to do we have plenty of knowledgeable people here as drivers that can do a good job as stewards or BA's that we can take over with good representation and someone as yourself that is knowledgeable would be a plus for the people in your building, none of us want to be at UPS with no union we all know that would be suicide a the parcel but we know we don't have a future the way it is going. Hopefully people can at least take an open minded look at the APWA then make a decision informed either way they want to go but at least know the facts
 

satellitedriver

Moderator
How did you come to this conclusion? Thats right its their perfect record of putting up putting up picket lines, 0 for 0. Maybe its their spotless track record of negotiating, NONE. When you ran across that picket line in a girlish fashion did you trip over a picketer and bump your head? Your out in space a little on this one.
My conclusion was easy to come by.
A union for only Ups employees. What a concept!
I am willing to go with APWA's track record because I know the track record of the teamsters.
0>-,
since you seem to be confused by simple math equations I will try and explain.
0 is greater than the negative track record the teamsters have with their spotted track record.
I enjoy that you seem to try and inject humor in your personal insults.
P.S.,
Try and remember to use "you are", instead of "your" in your posts.
 

705red

Browncafe Steward
My conclusion was easy to come by.
A union for only Ups employees. What a concept!
I am willing to go with APWA's track record because I know the track record of the teamsters.
0>-,
since you seem to be confused by simple math equations I will try and explain.
0 is greater than the negative track record the teamsters have with their spotted track record.
I enjoy that you seem to try and inject humor in your personal insults.
P.S.,
Try and remember to use "you are", instead of "your" in your posts.
In 97 it was a upser that called the strike and you slithered across it then and you would do it again! The only math im confused by is the fuzzy apwa math and im not the only one. Did i hurt your feelings again? I will send you a box of tissues to the apwa po box, i hope YOUR in that neighborhood.
 

satellitedriver

Moderator
In 97 it was a upser that called the strike and you slithered across it then and you would do it again! The only math im confused by is the fuzzy apwa math and im not the only one. Did i hurt your feelings again? I will send you a box of tissues to the apwa po box, i hope YOUR in that neighborhood.
It was not a UPSER that called the strike in 97'. It was the "teamster" negotiating comittee. UPS employees did not get a chance to vote on the UPS contract offer.
I understand that you are not the only one who never got the grasp of simple math.
If the teamsters called a strike again, I would not wait the two weeks I did in 97'. I would do it at the stroke of midnight of the first day.
Slither? Not even close on that one red.
I have no feeling you could hurt.
Did I hurt yours by correcting your spelling?
 

705red

Browncafe Steward
It was not a UPSER that called the strike in 97'. It was the "teamster" negotiating comittee. UPS employees did not get a chance to vote on the UPS contract offer.
I understand that you are not the only one who never got the grasp of simple math.
If the teamsters called a strike again, I would not wait the two weeks I did in 97'. I would do it at the stroke of midnight of the first day.
Slither? Not even close on that one red.
I have no feeling you could hurt.
Did I hurt yours by correcting your spelling?
Who is ron carey?
 

Cole

Well-Known Member
As far as top of the line people, not many people go to message boards, and I just stumbled on this site myself I guess a month ago. I had heard of it but hadn't come here.

Anyway, I'll talk with you guys tom. as I have been reading online for about 2 1/2 hrs. about corruption in the Teamsters, and even found out stuff I didn't know about Ron Carey. He had balls, but he also had some questionable associates and actions too, so we had the option of crook 1 or worse crook 2.
 

705red

Browncafe Steward
It was not a UPSER that called the strike in 97'. It was the "teamster" negotiating comittee. UPS employees did not get a chance to vote on the UPS contract offer.

Ron Carey called that strike!

I understand that you are not the only one who never got the grasp of simple math.

Now now van and danny dont come on here, how are they suppose to defend themselves from that?

If the teamsters called a strike again, I would not wait the two weeks I did in 97'. I would do it at the stroke of midnight of the first day.

Of course you would, its alot easier to crawl pass a picket line under the cover of night!

Slither? Not even close on that one red.
I have no feeling you could hurt.
Did I hurt yours by correcting your spelling?
Not at all, after crossing my picket line i have no real use for you!
 

satellitedriver

Moderator
Not at all, after crossing my picket line i have no real use for you!
I wish you would have been at the picketline that I crossed. Maybe, you could have convinced me that the decision I was making was incorrect. I approached the line,sat in a chair with my back to the center and asked anyone and everyone to give me a rational reason to support Ron's manipulated strike.
The most articulate answer I got was that the union told them to strike. In the conversations about what the company offered, (to a man) each said they would have voted yes.
That sealed my fate as becoming a scab.
Probably, you will try and tear apart this response and discount my reasoning for going back to work for the job I am paid to do.
You have no use for me, but UPS does.
PAX
 

Cole

Well-Known Member
satellitedriver,

I had to go over it quite a bit on the picketline, and I said what I knew, and that was that we couldn't let UPS have the pension, part-timers worked 60 hrs and were classified part-time, and I was one that had done that when I was part-time with driving air and the re-load shift etc...I tried to learn as much as I could, as that was the first time I had been in a strike.

Of course I didn't know then that our pension would be so bad as it is now. Who knows if this would have happened had Carey severed all criminal ties, and made sure he was sticking to reforms etc...Maybe he would have been able to prevent the CS garabage, but of course that's mere speculation. It helped that I was in touch with the IBT, parcel division, and got a guy that worked in the parcel division to pay us a visit. His name was Denny Latszo or Latsco, anyway he was able to clear some things up.

Unfortunatley Denny nearly saw me and another guy duke it out, because he was showing up very drunk and trying to stir everybody up to cross the line, and when I say drunk I mean obnoxiously so. Now I would rather somebody go ahead like you did, than sit there at the company's behest and try and manipulate others to go with them.

Don't get me wrong I abhore violence, and one guy brought a couple of baseball bats, and I told him to get them the heck out there, because we are not going to be thugs, and give the media what they wanted. Others told him that as well.

Everybody was a bit worried, and I was on that line almost around the clock, and even was there by myself for a couple of hours one day, and I gotta tell you, I was dialing phone numbers quick as one could blink. I was waiting to see little red laser dots from a rifle pointing at me. Thankfully people got there quick. I learned to listen sitting out there in the heat and talking with the brethren etc...and we had a very respectful picketline other than the 1 incident when me and that guy had some heated words etc...

The one I got into it with, afterwards said he understood what I was saying and respected me for sticking to my guns, he would later become a fantastic steward, believe it or not, and a powerful ally!:thumbup1:

People chose to stay on the line, and maybe 3 crossed, but I don't think they would have held out a whole lot longer. We had 1 pkg driver, 1 feeder, and a couple of part-timers cross. The part-timers thought they would have our jobs when it was over...They were wrong, but one of those that did, has since become very vocal in the union, and actively files grievances and stands up for his fellow workers.

I respect that you did what you felt was right, and didn't try
to sway everybody else.


I still wouldn't want UPS to have sole control over our pension, because then you are finished as a union, and they could cut it as they wanted, and the union would have no say. I didn't think it was manipulated myself, I do think he was standing up for us. Was the walkout he called regarding the company raising the weight limit to 150lbs manipulated?

Pretty gutsy to call it against a Fed injuction imho. Honestly who knew things were going to get this bad at CS? In Carey's local they had had 25 and 30 and out for quite a while from what I remember, and likely still is, but I could be wrong.

All I know is the politics were probably unbearable, but nobody made him make choices he later made.

So I am glad we have the option to bring in the APWA, because I believe there is too much corruption to ever get things straight. I have done a great deal of studying lately on alot of the corruption, and it's mind boggling.

Hopefully if the APWA becomes our CBA, people will stay informed and stay on the officers and be active, because when we don't that's when the crooks step in, so it's vital we beinvolved and question, and challenge things that we think are wrong, and I think that could be done much easier with the APWA. We're not the only one's to get fed up with the Teamsters, and alot of people dealt with alot of intimidation in the past that were disidents etc...Heck the Teamsters on plenty of occasions went after people already organized in other unions, to get them to join the Teamsters, especially when Hoffa Sr was in control.


Anway I'll shutup now it's late and I am about to fall out at the computer. Hope you all have a blessed weekend!:thumbup1:
 
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