The whole point behind PAS/EDD and Telematics is to "de-skill" the delivery job, eliminate the need for retention, de-value area knowledge, and turn each route into a homogenous, paint-by-the-numbers routine that can be preformed by a drone who is micromanaged online from behind a computer monitor. Why retain older, more injury-prone drivers when you can just plug fresh new hires into the "matrix" and send them on their way?
And as far as "being paid in the 20's even without a union" goes....the hourly wage is only a small part of the package. That money isnt worth much without a pension...or decent benefits....or contractual gurantees of seniority, guranteed hours, paid holidays, bidding rights, a grievance procedure etc etc. What good is $25 an hour if your job has been subcontracted out or assigned to a lower seniority driver with a year-around helper?
Actually, there was a much different reason behind DPS / PAS / EDD.
When the idea started, preload turnover was very high. The amount of knowledge needed by the average preloader was between 500 and 2000 knowledge units.
In addition, most operations did not reloop due to work required to make the changes and retrain all the preloaders. Even though so much had changed over many, many years UPS' loops had not.
At that time, UPS did not have a delivery planning tool either.
So it seemed that the best solution was to create a new planning tool (DPS) and "simplify" the preload job by using a PAL label.
The combination of the two things above would allow for operations to reloop where needed.
Now, that being said many operation did a horrible job of relooping. Even though they had DPS / PAS / EDD they misued these great tools.
Many operations did great, but many others did poorly.
If you said that many opertaions did not take advantage of the tools or even made things worse, I could not argue. However to say that the reason for the tools was to devalue the employee...that is not true.
I was there in the early days. Even heard some things directly from Eskew.
P-Man