I'm getting on my soapbox for a minute here. Had a good friend of mine (a current 40 year driver) who attended a function at the union hall. After some questions from some drivers the BA told those who attended that "We are just letting UPS do what they want. The company is adding a bunch of new jobs, and we don't want to jeopardize that." He mentioned they are (at least down here in my local) letting UPS use independents anytime they want. Letting them do whatever they want while changing things around to go to a 7 day delivery operation. Example: There are are 25+feeder jobs that go from Houtx-Texarkana. These jobs are mostly held by higher seniority drivers who don't want to drive sleeper. They are Mon-Fri runs. They are mileage. They have a minimal amount of of work involved. They are 10-11 hour runs. The company recently came out and said these jobs are all going to change to Tues-Sat runs. They will no longer be mileage, but will now be paid hourly. Changing these jobs from mileage to hourly will cost the drivers on those runs approximately $100.00/day, should they stay on those jobs. I retired at the beginning of the contract before the current one. Seems like I remember reading that once a job was mileage, the company would not be allowed to turn it into an hourly run. I can't find anything in writing that says that though. There are a lot of unhappy senior drivers at my old building. Seems like the union down here, at least, is giving the company a blank check to do whatever they want to keep more union dues and insurance money flowing into the union. I hope this isn't happening everywhere else as well. The times, they are a changin'.
that a union man should be doing. Pisses me right off. A feeder driver and I pick up at the same customer everyday at the same time, we always help each other out.
