Like most other Company driven initiatives, the "Team Concept" was implemented half arse, poorly maintained, with very few in management bought in.
Why would they buy in, to be phased out?
Who could blame them?
Did you ever consider the problem was on your side of that fence on that one?
Much like the ORION system, it's garbage in and garbage out.
Part of the problem was on the management side on the implementation. But most of the problem was on your side. Don't take my word for it, take your brother's :
It never made it to my building, which means that it was scrapped pretty quickly after it started. My building didn't like the fact of hourly "managing" another hourly.
As he said, in his building, and across the country, the Teamsters tried to paint the program as hourlies managing hourlies. It was not, it was just giving the hourlies more input into their daily tasks. But look at the culture - yes there was some push back in the management ranks, but not much. Look at the culture UPS management has had for 100 years - when the brass says jump, guess what, we jump. For hourlies, the catch phrase is "Work as directed". For management it's "you have the right to disagree, you do not have the right to disobey." There was grumbling, but in general the management attempted to implement as they were instructed.
Now look at the Teamster's culture. There is a huge governing philosophy of us vs them, that anything the company wants must be bad for the members, so we must resist at every turn. And that is what they did. They actively encouraged employees not to participate in the work group meetings that were the very vehicle for them to give more forceful input into their dispatch and work assignments. In fact, they whined about the term "Team" (I remember an IBT propaganda leaflet with the line "already have a team, the Teamsters") that it was changed to "Work Groups".
