Any drivers/centers having there sphor certified by a 3 day ride. Our management is riding with us and telling us if we dont meet our sphor we will be terminated. Management is picking the days to ride with you and we are seeing it is the lightest, less miles , less bulk days they are choosing to ride with you. Is this threat going on at other centers across the nation?
It is, but there are certain rules management must follow to "lock" you into a SPORH. I don't know how it is where you are or if you're mis-informed, but management CANNOT "pick and choose" certain days. It must be 3 consecutive days. In other words, if a day is missed the 3-day ride must be started again.
Also (at least here in MA), the AM break must be taken before the 3rd hour and the hour lunch must be taken between the 4th and 5th hour. Then the PM break must be taken before the end of the 8th hour.
Where I'm from, this causes many problems for UPS. First, they stuff these 100% industrial routes with too much work. Then they inform the driver he sucks and needs to improve his SPORH. This is on a route in which the driver does the right thing by his customers and delivers all the packages and takes the bulk of his lunch at the end of the night.
In this hypothetical situation he doesn't mind taking 20 minutes in the middle of the day to eat and 1 hour after pick-ups are over. It becomes a problem when the center decides you're not working hard enough(is it possible???). The 3-day OJS comes and per the contract/union rules during an OJS, lunch must be taken before 1330. Pick-ups start at 1500 and we're sitting on 15 stops and 40 pieces. Half of these can probably be delivered in the .5 hours after lunch and before pick-ups. What is to be done with the other half?
They are either missed (not going to happen) or some poor purely residential driver is going to come and take the work. Its logic like this that leaves me wondering how our great company makes any money. It all stems from the greed of upper management in its hope that many drivers will give up their lunch.
Instead of a company of 80,000 drivers, lets imagine a business with 5 drivers, 5 trucks, and 5 fuel tanks to be filled. I'm the manager for this 5 truck business. My drivers are allowed up to 1 hour of lunch everyday. Driver A calls me and tells me he needs to work 30 minutes into his lunch hour to finish his deliveries. If I come from UPS, the protocol would to have driver B drive many miles and take the work from driver A just so driver A can sit for another 30 minutes twidling his thumbs. We just wasted fuel, labor, and efficiency to satisfy the "almighty lunch hour".
If I owned this company this manager would be fired ASAP! My instructions as manager would be to pay driver A the extra 30 minutes out of his lunch hour rather than wasting the fuel and labor of driver B to do the work that driver A can do just as easily and with less friction. Doesn't this make the most sense?
Why does UPS run its business like this? The only logical explanation I can conjure is that they save more money from the lunch runners than whats wasted in the labor transfer of drivers who actually demand their rightfully earned pay.
Where is UPS' ethics on this issue? I'm never told from the center team to take all lunch and breaks. I'm just told to "record 1hour and 20 minutes of lunch and breaks in the DIAD". Why? Because UPS doesn't care if you take them or not, just as long as you record them.
They know some people will give up personel time to get home to see their family. UPS is preying on these people to obtain free labor. Where is the company's ethics, I ask again?
I'm required to enter 1 hour of lunch in the DIAD everyday. If I only take 53 minutes and record as such I'm disiplined. Why? What other company do you know that does this? If you only take 53 minutes, why would UPS actually care that they doc'ed you for 53 minutes and not the hour that they want to?
The only thing I can think of is they want people to run the entire hour or only take 15-20 minutes and enter the entire hour, thus gaining 40 minutes in free labor.
Can you believe UPS is allowed to get away from this????
Slavery and Free labor ceased to exist in this country more than a century ago. Somehow, UPS has learned how to exploit free labor right here in the 21st century!
Here's to you UPS!
BOOOOOOOOOO!