all im saying is that in my honest opinion nobody deserves an hour paid lunch, or triple time after 10 hours or whatever he said
if they offered it to me would i take it? of course...but paying out that kind of money for labor may seem like a good thing now but it hurts the company
If you read my thread on the times in Calgary you'd know how screwed up things were when I started. It was 12 hour days for months on end. I also know for a fact that the drivers in Edmonton were working 13 hour days for months on end. I was running about 110 stops with 500 pkgs by 1700 and STILL had another 20-30 stops left which meant I got resies in return for help with the commercial because we didn't have enough drivers (0830-2030 everyday).
I currently make $17 an hour because we have a bonus in Calgary. Our current top wage is $24 something an hour. I'm in the $100 a month bonus range for Alberta right now. I think I'm dropping back down to about $16 an hour next month. The reason for the bonus in Alberta is because we used to have a 150% turn over rate in the first three months with drivers. Hell, we STILL don't have enough part time drivers for air routes. We are currently the second (or 1st, unsure which) most expensive city to live in Canada. The only close competition is Vancouver. Then I think it's Toronto. We were FLYING drivers in from every part of the country to help us because we didn't have enough ppl to run the vehicles. You're welcome to ask any Toronto driver (I know we have some out there
) as I was told by multiple people who 'visited' us in Calgary that it was a regular request at PCMs.
For 2 people I pay approximately $130 a week for groceries, in Ottawa I used to pay about $70 for the same amount of groceries. I pay $1240 a month in rent for an apartment in the city on the second floor. Same apartment in Ottawa on the 17th floor was $1000 a month.
I'm guessing your next argument will be, 'why don't you move then.' I have a good career that will pay me enough to live off of in two and a half years, until then I'm barely having $100 left over at the end of the month.
Should the MLB, NBA, NHL all be paid the retarded amount of money they're currently making? Nope, but their union gets it for them so why not us? We're told by management we're 'professional industrial athletes', well, athletes get paid an insane amount of money and I'd like to have an insane amount of money. You don't think our president is left wanting at the moment, do you? You don't think he could take a 60k pay cut so a driver can have his route back right now? Don't kid yourself, they look after themselves, not the company.
Currently our contract, at least in Alberta, says UPS can't give us 'unfair overtime'. It's never been determined what 'unfair overtime' is. It's a FLIMSY part of the contract at best.
The joke at our depot used to be if you survived your probation period and were still around that's about 1 year seniority. I currently have 1 year senority and am halfway up on our seniority list. I don't know any other depot (except for Edmonton) like that.
Our routes have not been relooped OR had a time study properly done on them since our, now depot manager, did them in 1980 something (not making this up, it's what I got from a steward the other day). Calgary has had the biggest increase in population growth in all of Canada for lots of years since then due to the oil fields being so close. Only people harder hit by the population growth was Edmonton.
As to why Canadians have less stops on their car, this is what I think. We're not like the US where we build our cities UP (apartments, skyscrapers and such). We tend to build them OUT, this is why we have less stops on our vehicles (or so I surmise).
I do agree our pension is needing a revamp. It's currently $50 a month for every year of service with UPS. HA! Good luck relying on that to survive off of in retirement. Most halfway decent companies up here, for a pension, usually go dollar for dollar. You put a dollar in the Canadian pension plan, they put a dollar in. This way too they can't dip in and take it back out later like all those lovely car companies did.
We also don't get all the new toys the US do. Hell, up until about 7 months ago my depot was still using those old school diads. You know, the ones where you diad pen goes ABOVE the screen? Our biggest vehicle, other then the 5 ton, is the 1000 because we have 0 high level management in Calgary...Although they visit often enough to tell us how disappointed they are but how they're working so hard to fix it all (which they have finally fixed a lot of it but think that's only because our new building will break it all again, lol)
Hmm, what else is there to rant about now...
Oh, right! Why hasn't anyone played the smallest violin for me yet?!
Also, for those of you drivers in Toronto I'm not trying to say I have it rougher then you guys, I just dunno what goes on in Toronto...or Ontario at all (like all Calgarians). I have heard your management is anal about rules out there. We're laid back out here. Hell, I remember my first backing up accident, we were so short staffed and NOBODY would cover the route I was doing, I was only given a letter of reprimand. I really was hoping for a suspension for a day off or two though
