However, ol' Fitty is on vacation and since one of UPS paid holidays(New Years,Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve) falls on my vacation. I have TWO options. I can just bank the extra 8-hours for the 4th of July or I can also add an extra day to my vacation and take Monday the 9th of July off in addition.
I'll be taking Monday off. I like to schedule my 8-weeks paid vacation around my 7-paid holidays to take an extra day off and in between I use my 40-hours of sick basically as floaters. Also I get approx. 5 R/O's (Request Off) days a year that are unpaid. I just call my Supe and say; "Hey ol Buddy, (don't tell anyone I call him buddy) how about letting me off for the day." He runs down stairs and looks at schedule and says... ok, looks good. Call back 1-hour before start to see if anyone called in sick... I then call 59-minutes before start. He tells me... you got it! You are off! I hang up... do a little dance. Race upstairs and use momma like a Hoppity Hop!
Have a great 4th everyone!
I'm not one to brag...
- Thread starter Ancient Alien
- Start date
PT Car Washer
Well-Known Member
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
You guys are fools. I'm sitting here taking a dump thumbing through Google News and see this post...in a news feed! Now anyone paying attention is seeing you folks talking about your pay, benefits, etc. Meanwhile people are out of work and struggling. It always kills me about the lack of awareness you drivers have. Hub people making less than a quarter what you make, and you thump your chest like big bad union employees. News flash, other union employees carpenters, brick layers etc. don't even regard you as true union. You don't work for the union you work for UPS. The union can't go to Verizon and negotiate discounts without the backing of UPS. furthermore I'm pretty sure it was UPS that negotiated those discounts, as many other union employees carpenters brick layers don't enjoy the same benefit. You all avoided a huge reality check. A strike would not have ended in your favor. Look around you, the threats to your livilyhood are not existential they are real. Amazon is now offering franchises, FedEx is looting shippers like crazy because you guys couldn't be bothered to report lost volume or generate sales leads. Technology now eliminates missorts and human errors. Self driving vehicles will soon do away with the need for feeder drivers. 'That will never happen,' you say. Already is in other countries around the world and are in the pilot stages in this one. Those fancy new tesla feeder trucks are already equiped with the technology to automate. And get this, there are companies out there that are working on robots that can walk, lift, carry, deliver packages. If I'm not mistaken UPS doesn't really need package. The company has stakes in many other 'things.' I'm not here to debate and will not be around for replies. Go through the stages of denial then do some research. It's in your best interests, all of you/us, to just shut up and do our jobs. Yes I'm a UPSer, yes I'm on the other side, but we ALL should be thankful for a new contract and stop this foolishness. Because we are doing better than most but that could all change if you keep pulling back the curtain and showing the public what goes on in our world. Hashtag BE THANKFUL
Jackburton
Gone Fish'n
Ironic user name.
Returntosender
Well-Known Member
olroadbeech
Happy Verified UPSer
Wally
BrownCafe Innovator & King of Puns
The two different actors?
Johney
Well-Known Member
And to be given a winner charm by olroadbeech.SMH
Brownsocks
Just a dog
Uber drivers get the same cell phone discount and a better accessory discount than us. I agree about the feed because this post showed up on mine. Most of us will be long retired or dead before this country allows robots to deliver, auto drive is far from being allowed.
Freeze its much closer than you think. Get the big picture, electric vehicles are part of every major car producers inventory. These companies are driven by bottom line. Do you think they would spend all this money testing these cars if there wasn't a need? People are lazy, which is why our peak numbers go up every year. If they couldn't be bother with going to a store to shop what makes you think they wouldn't buy a car to drive them around while they play on their cell phones? Also watch the action in DC, these companies have k street lobbyists getting their hands in the pockets of those who legislate. Watch for studies to come out along the lines of automated cars safer than fill in the blank. You think it can't happen because of a few crashes, but with every crash they go back and tweak a few bugs in the program. If it wasn't going to happen they already wouldn't be allowed to be on the roads. Didn't a mayor just catch a ride in a self driving car to an event last week? And Uber drivers are contractors not union employees and they need their phones to work and for Uber to get paid another benefit negotiated by the company. Look I'm not your enemy I love my job and the people I work with. I just know we can get much more done and be better versions of what we already do if we focus on the most important things, doing the job that allows us to take care of our families.
olroadbeech
Happy Verified UPSer
Brownsocks
Just a dog
Uber and Ups are the same as thousands of other companies who the carriers jack around to get their business. The carriers are the ones who approach the companies and not the other way around.
Autonomous driving might be coming, but our line of work requires humans or robots far more advanced than anything even in the works. I know autonomous package cars and robots sitting in charge dock in between stops sound good to management, but the political will might never shift to your favor. The millions of blue collars in this country will take their fights to the ballot box first and I'm pretty sure we dramatically overpower the 1%er's in numbers.
Judging by my hydration levels and Ups profits I think we more than earn every damn cent we get and we deserve a fair deal! Shouldn't have to have contract negotiations for Ups to realize the part time wages are crap and proactively fix the problem, but that would hurt the bottom line to much.
It is sad that we need unions to force companies to do the right thing, but at the end of the day the only union i care about is my fellow brothers in brown who bust ass everyday to provide.
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I worked 54 hours last week, 44 of those in a heat warning, public sees that.
TheMachine
Are you sure you want to punch out?
There will never be an automated semi truck hauling the weight they do and Tesla ain’t getting anything right with regards to their vehicles, as demonstrated by their attraction to fire engine rear bumpers around the country. We got hit by one of their dumb vehicles two weeks ago while working on the highway. They’re incredibly flawed still and rushed out the factory.
Fully functioning, safe, reliable and trusted automated vehicles is still decades away, if they ever become the norm at all And that’s from an extended family member very high up at a top manufacturer. Car manufacturers still believe cars still need human influence to safely be on the road, despite them trying otherwise.
Fully functioning, safe, reliable and trusted automated vehicles is still decades away, if they ever become the norm at all And that’s from an extended family member very high up at a top manufacturer. Car manufacturers still believe cars still need human influence to safely be on the road, despite them trying otherwise.
zubenelgenubi
I'm a star
Really wish you folks would stop telling us what we are and are not happy about regarding the proposed contract, and what we are and are not willing to strike over. If you can't actually read what's being written, and actually understand our perspective, then the general public has no hope and it doesn't matter what we write.
You low level manager types have the most to lose in the event of a strike, that's why you get on here and try to guilt us into changing our positions. You have no argument, and you refuse to try to understand what we really want. You would stand a better chance of garnering sympathy if you were just honest and told us that you are scared that you will lose your jobs if we strike. But, you really ought to be banding together and sending mass emails to the UPS negotiating team telling them you support your workers, and to tell them what our concerns really are, not just what the teamster negotiators are saying our concerns are.
Concerns such as: we aren't concerned about OT, we are concerned about excessive OT, and now with the proposal, we are concerned that we will have no OT. We are concerned about ground drivers making less to deliver ground packages. We are concerned about raises keeping pace with inflation. The strike worry is a two way street. If UPS and the Teamsters actually start hearing us, instead of telling us what we want, and come up with an agreement we can all be happy with, then a strike need not be a concern at all.
And an existential threat means a threat to existence, it's not the opposite of "real". That would be "imaginary". And don't blame us drivers for the fact that UPS can't hire competent sales employees. We turn in leads, and they drop the ball. Hell, they can't even keep track of when shipping contracts lapse. SMH.
zubenelgenubi
I'm a star
Still trying to figure that out, are they two different scenes being spliced together? And that's not Linda Carter, I'm pretty sure, so is that from some 70's spoof porn? If so, does anyone know the title?
Ahh, good point. The use of existential in this argument was to illustrate that the threat was not far off but at our doorstep, not a philosophical debate but a real one. Whatever your understanding of the word, here is the reality. Robots that deliver packages are real and in production. An engineering company actually had the audacity to place employees disguised as 'vendors' in the jump seats of drivers a few years back, taking pictures, measurements, recording weights of packages etc as research for delivery robots (fact). Current numbers for UPS employees stand just under 300k, with about 30% being package and feeder drivers (give or take a few percentage points, but again facts). There are roughly 300million US citizens likely 50% of voting age, and roughly 110m who voted in the last election (facts). 110m is more than 300k. If you want to include all union members you can add that too. Keep in mind union numbers are on the decline for decades now(fact), there is a negative narrative being played about unions in this country, and a strong argument saying that the whole system is outdated (unions were created to improve labor conditions during the manufactoring boom in the early 1900s, give or take a few decades, again facts) . You got so caught up in formulating a rebuttal that you missed the point (very cool caption it the top of your post, guess on not that smart with 3 degrees being a lower management person). Here's an imaginary scenerio that I believe is real seeing as though Amazon went public with this franchise thing after talks of an agreement was reached. UPS strikes, stock price plummets, and Amazon makes a move to buy UPS package, setting the conditions that there will be no union and they set the wage prices, assume whatever prior agreements best case buy drivers out or have you work at the 15 or 20 dollar wage their current drivers make. Yes I likely would be out of a job, but remember I have those 3 degrees and a trove of other experience so it's not the end of the world. I'm not here to argue with you, I happened onto this thread which was the reason for the post. The vast majority of voters don't give a crap about your grievances, what do you think the narrative will be when they do the math and figure out that 110k+ UPS drivers are keeping them from getting their packages because they want more money? Good luck trying to explain that. There is a common narrative for the average upser (likely not you seeing judging from your reply). Hub kid who finished high school and stumbled into a job, worked his/her way up fill in the blank, no disrespect. You deserve everything you have. I consider myself an outsider coming to ups late in life. I tell anyone who will listen upsers are a hard working bunch. But that doesn't play in a place where income inequality and the wealth gap are miles apart. You don't walk into a store waving your pay stub, so why bring it up in a place where people will see it? And it's not you it's the stooge who started this thread. Some media troll found this thread and was compelled to post it. Why? Because they knew it would stir up conversation, and not the type you want. There is an assault on unions look at the teachers across this country and they have it much worse than you. Let's just brown up and keep doing our jobs is my point. I've know about this place for years and have never posted because this is your space. But like most things its a public space so let's be careful about what we say because you don't always know who your audience is.
zubenelgenubi
I'm a star
To answer your question about why anyone would post information about our pay and benefits I will try to explain. The fact that this thread, as you say, made its way onto google news, supports my hypothesis that the OP is a bot (or just a paid operative, but I prefer the bot theory because its posts sound like they were created by a bot) that was set in place by UPS and/or teamsters to disrupt the conversation among workers, and now we can add "sway public opinion" to the list of motives. So you are asking the wrong people.
I didn't miss your point, I'm pointing out the fact that you are ignoring (and continue to ignore) our actual concerns. For sake of argument, we'll say that the OP is legit, his purpose for posting the information he did is in line with your motives, to tell us how great we have it and convince us not to strike. His point is not to say that we deserve more money. From the many posts I've read the only concern anyone has expressed over driver pay is that it keep up with inflation. The ones we want to see make more money are the part timers. You are rebutting an argument we are not making, it's called a strawman fallacy.
I agree we have something to worry about from competition, that's nothing new. A strike could be devastating (nobody wants one), and public opinion may be against us, but you can't put all the responsibility for those facts on the union members, we can't do all the giving and what we are asking is not unrealistic. We want to keep browning up and doing the job, but we have a responsibility to ourselves and those who come after us to fight against the degradation of working conditions and the devaluation of our labor. It is management's lack of recognition of those two simple responsibilities that creates the threat of a strike, not the fact that we take those responsibilities seriously.
As for tech, it's coming, and nothing short of the collapse of civilization can stop it. Ironically, the tech itself may ultimately cause the collapse of civilization if we fail to adjust our economic model appropriately. If we succeed at making the needed adjustments, then technology need not be feared. There is no indication that technology poses any significant threat to package handling/delivering jobs within the next five years, so it need not require any serious consideration in these negotiations.
My advice to you is that you should not take one out of context post written by management, supplied to the media by management for their purposes and come here, guns blazing, telling us all to straighten up and fly right. Take some time, look around, and find the real story. Once you arm yourself with some real information, and you still have a problem with what you see, then feel free to start making some informed arguments. You are not the only management member on the forum (heck, we got plenty of the competition on here as well), so stick around and get to know us better.
Boxslinger11
Next gen teamster
Can you please break up your paragraphs with the enter button this just gives me a
ing headache
