OK, yes the contract says if we come in we are entitiled to eight hours of work and if we don’t get it we should be paid for it. However I don’t think we should use this as a “gotchya” to get paid for hours that you don’t actually work.
I think it is normal to assume that on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve the average UPS driver wants to be off as early as possible. I know in our center they dispatched most routes with about 7 hours work and made a point at PCM to tell everyone if they wanted 8 hours to please speak up. (No one did, we have been on a steady diet of 12 hour days the last six weeks.)
Before I could bring myself to file a grievance for guaranteed hours with a straight face I would have to be told by the center to code five, have told them in reply that I want eight hours pay and have my request refused. I would be sure to do this via ODS so that I had backup for my grievance. I don’t think it’s enough to just finish up, come in and slide out, then next Friday say “where’s my eight?” after the fact.
It was a moot point for me on the “Eves” this year, my Christmas Eve was a rural route split out of a UHaul cargo van, lighter than the previous two weeks but still nine hours with the two hours of windshield time getting to and from area; New Year’s Eve we ran about three quarters of the normal routes and I drew a route whose number was a route I knew well but was in fact really another route in the same loop that I don’t know so it took me a bit over eight hours.. I am sure I will be over allowed but that’s gonna happen when you go on a route cold. (Lot’s of doctor’s offices, I brought back about half the car as CLH.)