Is this your first year as a helper at UPS? If so, how many days do you have it? 7 or 10?
yessir.
All of a sudden you've got this attitude about how things should be and all these answers on how to make things right.
Who made you CEO this week?
Well, company choose to utilize helpers and union drivers are bickering about filing grievance, how they don't like that helpers getting used before higher cost drivers are given more work. It doesn't take much thought to put two together that dollar-for-dollar, off the street helpers add more production than using union inflated rate employees.
If it didn't make financial sense to do so, corporate would put a halt on this itself, but the fact costlier employees are throwing a hissy fit through the union personnel over helpers shows helpers add enough value to operations to permit reducing the use of high rate employee.
What I had no idea until now is how much of the restrictions against helpers are caused by road blocks made by the union.
Economics has not part in helpers not working today. The union does. If they had helper working today they would have been FT drivers.
That's the impression I got.
Economics does has role in helpers being used during peak. Read on: Wednesday I was on a route with 196 stops about 40 more stops than on a normal day the day before it had 220 stops. It gets dark a little after 4:30. I pick up my helper at 1:00 pm and we finished the route at 4:30 just as it was getting dark. I punched out at 6:00 after my lunch. If I didn't have a helper I would have been out past 8 if not 9. So if they paid my help 9 hr for 3 1/2 hr that's $31.50 they paid him for the day. If I didn't have a helper they would have paid me 2 to 3 hrs of OT if not more. 3 hours of OT is about $139 they save over $100 by having a helper just on my route.
Which means even off peak, around-the-year helper would permit some routes to be consolidated and cram more stops on the truck while still being able to meet same production quota while reducing the number of trucks on the road and saving cost and fuel.
I volunteered to work today and had 41 stops and worked from 7:30 until 4:00 because I had to pick up an extended letter box. My wife and two daughters went shopping.
It was an incredibly easy 8 + hours at over 60 an hour.
If they utilized a $8.50/hr for 6 hours and can shave just 2 hrs, it would've still resulted in positive outcome.
Just reading the posts about seniority, union and grievance, it's clear that union is a huge obstacle in business operations and staying competitive.