Major clerk layoffs in local 804

The Milkman

Well-Known Member
Hi Milkman,
I have never been in an operation where there were friend/T Clerks and I am sure there are other viewers in the same situation. Could you (or someone else) describe a clerks start time and their high-level job assignment?
for instance, Start at noon as a counter clerk until 4, lunch, start 5pm as a driver address correction clerk until 9

We had friend/T clerks in New Jersey when I worked.. Most clk shifts worked around the clock .. As far as a high level assignment I guess I would say that without the clerks alot of work needed to be done before drivers left the bldg would create service failures. The lookups and address corrections needed to make service( Almost forgot..Service, we provide a service) on that pkg.. Now by cutting back hrs and juggling things more and more failures are bound to happen.. I filled in for ctr, hub and counter clerks for years before becoming one myself for my final 8 yrs..Clerks are vital to the operation and wether or not UPS wants to admit it, they would LOVE to have ALL P/T clks and can all the friend/Ter's IMO. I worked 8 -9 hrs friend/T at the Counter, and saw the erosion taking place in the hub over my last 8 years as far as clerks go. It may not be a HIGH level assignment as you claim but just as important as friend/t sups being bounced around to preload midnight or small sorts etc etc, but one thing is clear that everyone in his or her position make Big Brown click..Union or Management. Many times my c/m would throw me under the bus when I had Irate customers who demanded to speak to a Supervisor, they would tell me to tell them they were in meetings Blah Blah Blah..Customers were angry because of service failures for the most part, and I was the face of UPS to the public and became many times the punching bag because of management decisions that were poorly or never made to address issues with our service...I will leave it at that:knockedout:
 

Dragon

Package Center Manager
while not speaking for AcesUp804, as far as i feel yes and no. you (ups) don't have to guarantee me a clerk job. but the language needs to be changed so that we are guaranteed FULLTIME work. so that a 20+ yr fulltime veteran never gets bumped to partime hours. that's just plain wrong. im not looking to protect the jobs themselves. protect the people who bid on these jobs. the language should read that any fulltime employee regardless of classification can not be laid off, displaced, or hours reduced while there are partimers working anywhere in the local. a fulltimer should bump 2 partimers and keep his/her current rate of pay. simple and clear with no grey area.
Paul excellent reply, if the language is changed are you willing to load/unload trailers, SPA, load package cars (misload free), fuel and wash cars and have it all done in 8 hrs. In my center alone our local sort volume has dropped 10K a night. As harsh as it sounds we just do not need full time jobs in a lot of buildings now or in the future. If I am wrong I will be the first one to ask for a full time 22.3

I understand what your saying Dragon , but in our Local we have so work that UPS is trying to say isn't clerk but is in there clerk hand book as clerk work. That is going to Arbitration. If someone needs to be laid off it should be the part timers not full timers.

The reason the work is going away is because you keep having part timers little by little doing friend/T work. In my old bldg they had all p/t er's bring pkgs to the clks and basically they just sat at their post and were fed pkgs that previously they had to pull off trks etc etc. Now of course it looks like the friend/t er's don't have 8 hrs work because of the sneaky shifting of work from the friend/ters' who bid on these friend/T Jobs that at one time were not messed with.
Now some knucklehead decides to make more $$$ for the stockholders..Lets just eliminate all friend/T clks and save a bundle..Now that is a class move..Put yourself in someones position that may have to drive to a different bldg to make this job work and now UPS decides to just Bump guys around... I can understand why you are mad, no I would not want to do it either. How would you like that?? I think you would because all management are yes men puppets who only care about themselves and not the hard working men and women who made UPS what it is today.. I know you are pissed but this manager is not anyone's puppet. I am down there in the trenches with you daily. After spending double-digit years as a driver I decided the pay would be better in management then as an hourly worker...I have not been disappointed.
Us against them..keeps going on and on, someday maybe someone with half a brain will figure out that having loyal career employees are more valuable to the company than anybody off the street just in it for the money and not the pride of what working for UPS once meant:angry:
 

Dragon

Package Center Manager
while not speaking for AcesUp804, as far as i feel yes and no. you (ups) don't have to guarantee me a clerk job. but the language needs to be changed so that we are guaranteed FULLTIME work. so that a 20+ yr fulltime veteran never gets bumped to partime hours. that's just plain wrong. im not looking to protect the jobs themselves. protect the people who bid on these jobs. the language should read that any fulltime employee regardless of classification can not be laid off, displaced, or hours reduced while there are partimers working anywhere in the local. a fulltimer should bump 2 partimers and keep his/her current rate of pay. simple and clear with no grey area.

I understand what your saying Dragon , but in our Local we have so work that UPS is trying to say isn't clerk but is in there clerk hand book as clerk work. That is going to Arbitration. If someone needs to be laid off it should be the part timers not full timers.

The reason the work is going away is because you keep having part timers little by little doing friend/T work. In my old bldg they had all p/t er's bring pkgs to the clks and basically they just sat at their post and were fed pkgs that previously they had to pull off trks etc etc. Now of course it looks like the friend/t er's don't have 8 hrs work because of the sneaky shifting of work from the friend/ters' who bid on these friend/T Jobs that at one time were not messed with.
Now some knucklehead decides to make more $$$ for the stockholders..Lets just eliminate all friend/T clks and save a bundle..Now that is a class move..Put yourself in someones position that may have to drive to a different bldg to make this job work and now UPS decides to just Bump guys around... How would you like that?? I think you would because all management are yes men puppets who only care about themselves and not the hard working men and women who made UPS what it is today..
Us against them..keeps going on and on, someday maybe someone with half a brain will figure out that having loyal career employees are more valuable to the company than anybody off the street just in it for the money and not the pride of what working for UPS once meant:angry:

Hey don't bad mouth the UAW. GM lost market share steadily because they started building crap.
Remember the EV1. How far ahead would GM be now if they hadn't axed that program.
And now that they're building quality cars again things are looking up. GM stood behind Pratt & Miller with the Corvette program, and the C5R/C6Rs' earned 31 American Lemans Series wins, an overall victory at the Daytona 24 Hours and 3 class victories at LeMans.

The 2011 Cadillac CTS-V is the fastest production V8 sedan, luxury or otherwise, in the world and was named by Autoweek as the best new sedan for 2011, besting Mercedes, BMW and everybody else.

Just remember: In business, as in life, it is often not possible for either side to win but very easy for both sides to lose.

Its not the quality of the car that killed them its stuff like this...

Analysts estimate that each worker in the jobs bank costs GM about $130,000 a year in wages and benefits, a crippling financial burden for an automaker that lost $8.6 billion last year. This was in 2006


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1582844/posts

The above link is what I was talking about...
 

The Milkman

Well-Known Member
Dragon, I had many Mgrs that were not puppets and maybe you are 1 of the few that worked with us and not against us, I wish others were like you and maybe the higher ups (wonder how some got there) would be at the front lines to see the real UPS, not some sugar coated press release or United Way presentation.
Behind the scenes ,people do not want to or wish to see the everyday grind..A slaughter house makes us our food but many would not like to see the process of the operation...Surprised you went to the Dark Side after many yrs of driving??:peaceful:
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
It may not be a HIGH level assignment as you claim but just as important as friend/t sups being bounced around to preload midnight or small sorts etc etc, but one thing is clear that everyone in his or her position make Big Brown click
Thanks for the info Milkman.
You misunderstood what I meant when I used the phrase "high level". I was referring to a high level description of the job responsibilities ... sort of a title description.
I was not making reference to the importance of the job. All jobs at UPS are important ... if they are not, they should be eliminated.
 

The Milkman

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the info Milkman.
You misunderstood what I meant when I used the phrase "high level". I was referring to a high level description of the job responsibilities ... sort of a title description.
I was not making reference to the importance of the job. All jobs at UPS are important ... if they are not, they should be eliminated.

I Agree:peaceful::peaceful:
 

just chillin'

Rest in peace wooba
Paul excellent reply, if the language is changed are you willing to load/unload trailers, SPA, load package cars (misload free), fuel and wash cars and have it all done in 8 hrs. In my center alone our local sort volume has dropped 10K a night. As harsh as it sounds we just do not need full time jobs in a lot of buildings now or in the future. If I am wrong I will be the first one to ask for a full time 22.3

hell yes, ill unload, load, spa whatever. i did all of that for 19 fulltime years. i'm not afraid of work. im afraid of broke. and regardless of volume drop, why do we have to eliminate fulltime jobs? we got thousands and thousands of partimers. ups doesn't want to create more full time jobs? no problem. but don't ELIMINATE the fulltime hours until the person retires. or as harsh as this sounds, layoff two young kid partimers with little or no seniority and leave me the hell alone. i paid my dues to brown.
 

The Milkman

Well-Known Member
hell yes, ill unload, load, spa whatever. i did all of that for 19 fulltime years. i'm not afraid of work. im afraid of broke. and regardless of volume drop, why do we have to eliminate fulltime jobs? we got thousands and thousands of partimers. ups doesn't want to create more full time jobs? no problem. but don't ELIMINATE the fulltime hours until the person retires. or as harsh as this sounds, layoff two young kid partimers with little or no seniority and leave me the hell alone. i paid my dues to brown.

You paid your dues and they should leave you alone untill you hang it up..Ups would rather have P/T er's doing all the work........and believe me someday it may happen, by that time we will all probably be dead by then:surprised:
 

Ibt804Hammer

Well-Known Member
hell yes, ill unload, load, spa whatever. i did all of that for 19 fulltime years. i'm not afraid of work. im afraid of broke. and regardless of volume drop, why do we have to eliminate fulltime jobs? we got thousands and thousands of partimers. ups doesn't want to create more full time jobs? no problem. but don't ELIMINATE the fulltime hours until the person retires. or as harsh as this sounds, layoff two young kid partimers with little or no seniority and leave me the hell alone. i paid my dues to brown.

Paul, was your job created under that huge grievance won by 804 a bunch of years back ???
 

just chillin'

Rest in peace wooba
Paul, was your job created under that huge grievance won by 804 a bunch of years back ???[/QUOTE

yes it was. here's my theory about the whole thing if anyone cares. when the spa system came into play, ups had partimers scanning and de-capping. now de-capping is not entirely address correcting but its damn close to it. basically if the scanner spits out a blank, that address needs to be adjusted so the "smart label" system recognizes the address. that's de-capping. well the union said that was clerk work and grieved it for like 2 or 3 years. when it went to arbitration they won. a nice chunk of change for every clerk working for those years and the creation of new clerk jobs. now here's where it gets strange. ups waited right to the deadline to create these jobs and put zero effort into any kind of time study to see how many clerks jobs they needed. instead they basically asked the business agent and stewards how many they think they needed. now in 20 years i never saw ups do anything without thinking it through. so this baffled me. now business agents and stewards in certain buildings got greedy and requested way to many clerks than they needed. in my building if i remember right, we asked for 3 and got 2. then a guy retired and they never replaced him. but that's not the case in other buildings. now 2 years later ups is laying off clerks and using some horrible language in our supplement that obviously they knew about when they created the jobs there now cutting. i think its some payback to the union. it was the biggest cash settlement for a labor dispute or something like that and lots of photos of smiling guys with checks.
 

Ibt804Hammer

Well-Known Member
Paul, was your job created under that huge grievance won by 804 a bunch of years back ???[/QUOTE

yes it was. here's my theory about the whole thing if anyone cares. when the spa system came into play, ups had partimers scanning and de-capping. now de-capping is not entirely address correcting but its damn close to it. basically if the scanner spits out a blank, that address needs to be adjusted so the "smart label" system recognizes the address. that's de-capping. well the union said that was clerk work and grieved it for like 2 or 3 years. when it went to arbitration they won. a nice chunk of change for every clerk working for those years and the creation of new clerk jobs. now here's where it gets strange. ups waited right to the deadline to create these jobs and put zero effort into any kind of time study to see how many clerks jobs they needed. instead they basically asked the business agent and stewards how many they think they needed. now in 20 years i never saw ups do anything without thinking it through. so this baffled me. now business agents and stewards in certain buildings got greedy and requested way to many clerks than they needed. in my building if i remember right, we asked for 3 and got 2. then a guy retired and they never replaced him. but that's not the case in other buildings. now 2 years later ups is laying off clerks and using some horrible language in our supplement that obviously they knew about when they created the jobs there now cutting. i think its some payback to the union. it was the biggest cash settlement for a labor dispute or something like that and lots of photos of smiling guys with checks.

Yes, exactly as I thought. It was millions the local won in arbitration for the nightime sups doing thework. Imho, retalliation and payback time!
 

Ibt804Hammer

Well-Known Member
Reduction in staff, lol. Ton of new ups freight drivers in this area and the volume in our building is booming( in Feb).... no more ups hundred weight and the customer service AE are selling frieght like hot cakes.
 

The Milkman

Well-Known Member
Yes, exactly as I thought. It was millions the local won in arbitration for the nightime sups doing thework. Imho, retalliation and payback time!

We had a similar settlement in Jersey..Local 177...Part timers doing friend/T work..I believe 3 1/2 million..Top payout was 29k, others pro rated depending on if you were still working at the time of settlement. I was retired 3 years and got almost 18k...Nice bonus check..Thanks UPS for playing by the rules:happy-very::happy-very:
 

Signature Only

Blue in Brown
And you forget the late 1960s, through the late 1970s: when GM was making money hand over fist and turned a blind eye to competition from the east and Europe? Who signed off on all those labor contracts? Did the UAW hold a gun to GM and assure them that either their brains or their signatures would be on the contracts?
Its not the quality of the car that killed them its stuff like this...

Analysts estimate that each worker in the jobs bank costs GM about $130,000 a year in wages and benefits, a crippling financial burden for an automaker that lost $8.6 billion last year. This was in 2006


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1582844/posts

The above link is what I was talking about...
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
And you forget the late 1960s, through the late 1970s: when GM was making money hand over fist and turned a blind eye to competition from the east and Europe? Who signed off on all those labor contracts? Did the UAW hold a gun to GM and assure them that either their brains or their signatures would be on the contracts?

One of UPS's hallmarks is learning from the mistakes of others. I doubt that UPS will make mistakes like that in upcoming contracts.
 
I know it's an old post, but what the hell. Sorry to hear some of you got screwed. I'm a an AM clerk, well I was anyway. Lately more of my responsibilities have been given to a combo job friend/t'er. They claim "they don't have the hours available", so I get yelled at if I'm 5 minutes over my mandatory 3.5 hours because I'm wasting time with the "little things".
 
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