Dill the question was is breaking jams union or management work. Just because you would not file a grievance on it does not mean its managements work. According to the contract that would be union work and should be grieved, maybe by grieving this another 22.3 could be made.
Aha! I re-read the question and it does ask about "pkg progression". I can see where it could be considered pkg progression as it "helps" the pkgs progress.
I'm in a small center with no one person designated to such a position. We handle our own jams or wait while the sup takes care of it. It doesn't happen but three or four times per shift and usually takes only a minute or two to clear up. I'm getting older and prefer to catch my breath than to climb up on those slides. By the time I could drag my ass up there the sup can have it cleared and running. It's interesting to hear that some hubs or huge centers actually have a postion for this and helps me understand your opinion.
After your post sleeve-meet-heart mentioned that his steward said he'd be "pushing buttons" if he grieved such an issue again. That's also how our stewards would react unless a sup was spending 10-15 minutes at a time doing this work and doing it several times per day.
Our current sort aisle sup is very good about not progressing. The poor guy sees us getting backed up with pkgs falling on the floor and can't do much about it. He has been know to try and
keep some from progressing by physically holding back some of the avalanche until we get our current mess cleared up. He uses his body like a shield of some sort and you can just see him hoping no one shuts down the belt. The only control button sorters have shuts down the entire building, then we have a ft sup come up yelling and throwing a tantrum.
Our sort aisle sup is the best I've ever seen. He actually watches out for us and can use his control panel button to stop flow while keeping the secondary on. This allows us a few minutes to clean up without upsettnig the higher ups. Sadly, the unload sup slams the stuff out to make himself look good and couldn't care less about us. Our prior sort aisle sup wasn't up there enough to know or care what was going on. In fact, he was often down there whipping the unloaders to go faster. Moral sucks, as our current sup and the unload sup don't get along at all. One wants production only, and the other sees it necessary to consider safety and quality. Our sup gets a lot of heat for wasting those precious few minutes.
Guess I've rambled on a bit but it has lots to do with my opinion. It's sad to see a decent young man put in such an impossible situation. Yep, he took the job and knew what it would be but has shown more common sense than any I've seen.