Cement, as if all UPS terminations are legitimate. If you only knew how many cases are overturned each month. UPS managers and labor managers play loose with the rules when they "want" to get a particular person out. I for one, would like to see the OFFICIAL reason UPS terminated this driver, but I can honestly bet it had to do with production and ORION.
YOU have it sort of right, but mostly WRONG.
In some parts of the country (not my local, thank you very much) UPS has "Working Terminations". In these cases, UPS will sit an employee down, terminate them, and then allow them to work until they build a case against them and then take that information to local panels or national arbitration.
This could take a year or more, but in the meantime, the person fired works under duress for the entire period.
They still come to work, see the very people who fired them, and simply wait for the company to rack up charges.
In this particular case, this driver experienced this very situation. ON a working termination, he was harrassed by management everyday until his termination was finally established and he came in and recieved notice that his case/termination was upheld.
We are talking about taking a mans career, income and retirement taken away from him with a process that only creates stress and discord on the shop floor. We dont know the duration of this particular process, but we can understand how it could drive a person to something like this.
In past negotiations, working terminations have been discussed, but UPS insists on having them in order to "make a case" versus "having a case". The Teamsters have always warned about situations like these arising stemming from harrassment, but the company refuses to listen.
Maybe now, in light of this tragedy, UPS will open their eyes to what they are contributing to situations like these.
As for me, I have no sympathy for either supervisor in this case. I know the pressure and stress all managers place unfairly onto UPS workers.
At some point, this was bound to happen, and at some point, it will happen again if they keep pushing the wrong people who own guns.
TOS.
