Forced to work through lunch?

Nitelite

Well-Known Member
Greetings,

At our hub, full time employees and part timers that wish to extend to the next shift are being forced to take a paid 20 minute lunch instead of the regular 1 hour unpaid lunch. Total hours is reaching 12 a day. Steward says nothing can be done, but is this even legal (Massachusetts)? Seems insane a company can force you to work 12 hours and only give you 20 minutes to eat (though there are 3 10 minute breaks in that 12 hours on top of the 20 minutes paid lunch). Is this right?
 
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westsideworma

Guest
Greetings,

At our hub, full time employees and part timers that wish to extend to the next shift are being forced to take a paid 20 minute lunch instead of the regular 1 hour unpaid lunch. Total hours is reaching 12 a day. Steward says nothing can be done, but is this even legal (Massachusetts)? Seems insane a company can force you to work 12 hours and only give you 20 minutes to eat (though there are 3 10 minute breaks in that 12 hours on top of the 20 minutes paid lunch). Is this right?

Thats fishy, whenever I extended I got an hour lunch, period. I work in the same building you do so that is complete garbage for them to do that to you guys.

This has been the worst peak I've seen in my short 3 years here. Many people who have been here 20+ years agree. I'm not sure who is to blame (meaning if its a building problem or a region/division influence), but the planning has been horrible. Our preload has been processing close to 50K a night which is a lot for us, as we don't have the capacity (building wise or truck wise) and we do 25-30K normally. Guess how much earlier we start on average? 15 min....15!!! We try to get more time and its a big production. The last few days we've wrapped at 9:30 or later and just barely at that (with drivers loading and pulling cages). This is completely unacceptable to me as I'm sure it is the to the drivers. We are just not given the time to do the job right this year...and I'd like to know why. My first year here (though my manager would probably swear up and down to the contrary), we were here ar 11:30/midnight on monday and 1-2am everyday other than monday. In other words we had plenty of time. The year we got PAS, Peak times were 1am on monday, 2:30-2:45am every other day. That was a big cut for us as well, but they added a ton of routes it seemed to lighten the load somewhat at least. I don't know who told them we could start at normal volume time this year...but its ridiculous.

Part of it seems to be the change in the day sort's or the lack of an actual day sort as it is now the afternoon sort. It keeps the twi from starting earlier, and the twi keeps the night from starting earlier which in turn screws the preload. There have been times with all the extra volume that we all (read:all sorts) have had that we have not had the primary unloading our packages until 4/4:15am which is later than our non peak start time. Not to mention our PDC units get on door and set up later now (4:30 or later) putting them WAY behind due to the night sort still running (as our PDCs go onto doors they use). I don't blame the night sort for that or any other, these orders have clearly come from above and I don't think the realize how ineffective it is. Maybe they know and are just looking for bonuses...I don't know.

Then they have the gall to come after people over missorts and pph. When the air is done I just count the out of sequence PALs (due to them being rushed) and I found over 15 yesterday alone in 10 min of doing that....brilliant plans indeed. One of our pulls does around 1800 pcs. fairly often and it would require him to load at about or over 300pph to get done...keep dreaming IE.

Sorry to hijack your thread nitelite, just had a rough day today and it really bothered the hell out of me and I needed to vent. I'm done now :whiteflag:
 

cino321

Well-Known Member
Then they have the gall to come after people over missorts and pph. When the air is done I just count the out of sequence PALs (due to them being rushed) and I found over 15 yesterday alone in 10 min of doing that....brilliant plans indeed. One of our pulls does around 1800 pcs. fairly often and it would require him to load at about or over 300pph to get done...keep dreaming IE.

Sorry to hijack your thread nitelite, just had a rough day today and it really bothered the hell out of me and I needed to vent. I'm done now :whiteflag:


Nice a 1800 piece route to pull. That should be two pulls, not one.
 
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westsideworma

Guest
Nice a 1800 piece route to pull. That should be two pulls, not one.

in my opinion the max any preloader should do is 4 cars and approx 1200 pcs. Thats what I was doing before I became a supe. That pull is currently doing 1500+ during peak. It is impossible to do these kind of pulls on your own. If help is not sent, you're sunk, plain and simple. No one really cares a result. People aren't going to keep pushing hard if they know they are facing the impossible everyday as soon as they walk through the door. If I know theres a chance it can be done, I'll go all out for you (when I was a loader). I mean I HAVE to help my people, they won't finish otherwise due to the lack of time and excess of volume.

Long story short, even though I know its against the contract if supes did not work our building would not have wrapped one day during PEAK this year. That is unacceptable, as we used to wrap all the time without help from anyone (hourly or supe) because we were given time to do so. For you union guys, I don't like violating the agreement, in my opinion if we agreed to it we should follow it, but like you I too have to work as directed....so I do.
 
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