History of OMS's (and/or part-time supervisors in general)?

[yellowjacket]

Hey everyone, former UPSer (left in 07) checking in with a quick question. I was an OMS (although we were fiddling with names back then, IIRC they were calling us PTPCS's when I left) when I left, and in the years since I've thought often about my old job. The curiosity and my free time on a Saturday afternoon finally got the better of me so I figured I'd register and see if anyone knew when the job of OMS (or part-time supervisors in general?) first came about. I started after the positions were already established and never really did get any kind of definitive history on where my job came from, other than that clerks used to do a lot of the phone answering type jobs before they had part time supervisors doing them. Were these jobs created in response to FedEX getting bigger and badder or the company preparing to go public or something? If you know anything about the history behind OMS's/part time supervisors I'd love to hear your insight!

 

[TxRoadDawg]

I remember something about center of the future as buzz words along with pas back in 03 or 04

 

[OldManAllowance]

A rose is a rose by any other name.

 

[yellowjacket]

Well I know UPS had part-time supervisors before 03-04/PAS, because I was hired before then and there were people in the office answering phones/driver problems/customer messages long before I got hired I thought they started OMS's in the office answering phones and whatnot in the 90s and before that just had driver supervisors or clerks doing it?

 

['Lord Brown's bidding']

I was friendly with our morning OMS' when I restarted working with UPS in '02. I cannot recall them from my brief stint Aug 99-Feb 00.

 

[BLACKBALLED]

OMS are office positions, they answer the phones, they do Driver time Cards, they make sure the boards upload accordingly, they message drivers and whatnot, there are good OMS and bad, we had a guy OMS and he was good and efficient, after awhile he went Driving, we got this female and she was slow and inefficient, she made it through by flirting with all of the Drivers and Managers, she had a Relationship with a Full timer there, she became a driver as well, you can guess how that happened, all I say is You have good with your bad.

 

[ddomino]

I am not sure when the OMS job was created, but one reason it was created was to dispatch same day pick ups. It also took a lot of responsibility from the delivery sups. I'm in a megga center. We have around 80 to 100 drivers. Before the consolidation of centers the staffing was 3 center mgrs 3 del sups 3 qc clerks and 3 cod clerks. Today those same 80 to 100 drivers have office staffing of 1 center mgr 3 del sups 7 oms 1 friend/t disp sup and 1 p/t disp sup and 2 qc clerks. COD clerks were eliminated when we went cash free, only excepting checks.

So we went from 3 ctr mgr level to 1, from 3 del sup level to 4, added 8 p/t oms level jobs, and eliminated 4 (from 6 to 2) union clerk jobs.

Paying an OMS (salary and benies) is cheaper than a p/t union job and friend/t sup job

 

[DS]

yellowjacket
You left 6 years ago,why do you still care?
Our oms crew is awesome,they make decisions that make sense,
Often,they need to talk to the center manager,and he usually makes the wrong one.

 

[menotyou]

Hey everyone, former UPSer (left in 07) checking in with a quick question. I was an OMS (although we were fiddling with names back then, IIRC they were calling us PTPCS's when I left) when I left, and in the years since I've thought often about my old job. The curiosity and my free time on a Saturday afternoon finally got the better of me so I figured I'd register and see if anyone knew when the job of OMS (or part-time supervisors in general?) first came about. I started after the positions were already established and never really did get any kind of definitive history on where my job came from, other than that clerks used to do a lot of the phone answering type jobs before they had part time supervisors doing them. Were these jobs created in response to FedEX getting bigger and badder or the company preparing to go public or something? If you know anything about the history behind OMS's/part time supervisors I'd love to hear your insight!

Here's a thought:

 

[2years2go]

Part time supervisors were first used back in the early 1970's. First in the part time hub operations and then eventually in the package centers to oversee the part time preload and local sort operations.

OMS's first came into use in the early 1990's. The company recognized that FT Sups were spending a majority of time in the office doing clerical type work and not OJS'ing or training / retraining drivers. The company also discovered that they could at times also reduce 1 (MIP) FT sup level by adding 2 (no MIP) OMS's. This resulted in a sharp increase in OMS's in the mid - late 90's.

The name of OMS's were changed to PTPCS in the 2006-2009 era. The reason was that there was a push in certain areas of the country to unionize the OMS's. To stop this, OMS's were given the title of a supervisor to remove them from a non-union clerical pool, putting them on the same level as PT sups in the operations.

Hope this information helps....

 

[yellowjacket]

yellowjacket
You left 6 years ago,why do you still care?
Our oms crew is awesome,they make decisions that make sense,
Often,they need to talk to the center manager,and he usually makes the wrong one.

I dunno, I just always wondered and never got around to really looking into it while I was there. I ran into another UPSer a while ago and was thinking about old times and it just *clicked* that people here would probably know the answer to my old question


for what it's worth, I was one of the "good ones".... lots of horse trading and begging and cajoling (INSTRUCTING worked, but more often than not it would get the response of "well I'll just file a grievance if you don't get X to do this", and a dozen people fighting to pass the buck to someone with less seniority, regardless if they actually could do the job), but it got results and didn't step on anyone's toes.

But you'll have to take my word for that

I had a good center manager for most of my time, but we ended up with a guy my last year or so who was basically just holding on until retirement. He had to be showed how to check his own email because he had someone at his last center do all that for him. Refused to put the effort in to learn supervisors' names so he would have random nicknames for everyone instead. I called him "the cannon"... he would just blow up when you presented him with a problem, so if you didn't present it to him juuuuust right and point him in the direction of the right solution, he'd blow up and issue some ridiculous directive that would just make the problem worse (once told me that I couldn't let the customer counter sign a left in building package out to a customer who came to the center to pick it up... no idea why, he just got frustrated and shouted and slammed his door. but I learned my lesson about handling him with kid gloves. Also learned my lesson about how to disobey orders without him realizing it lol).

Thanks for the responses everyone (sorry I wasn't more active here for a few days, life got busy!)

 

[yellowjacket]

Here's a thought:


Troll picture
[
QUOTE]


Wrong. You really think it's trolling to say that FedEx was "becoming bigger" i.e. a more serious competitor in the 1990s and 00s? Come on. Re-read my post, see if you think it ACTUALLY looks like I'm trying to pick a fight here. Is it REALLY a contentious claim to question if UPS took actions to respond to the competition?


I stopped arguing with people in brown uniforms when they stopped paying me to do it. I have a lot better stuff to do with my time now than to go around the internet bickering in pointless arguments over silly stuff. I thought it was a pretty valid question.