UPS-APWA National NLRB Petition Started

[nospinzone]

Group seeking control of UPS employee pension assets
Pensions & Investments Online
February 22, 2007

Association of Parcel Workers of America expects to launch its campaign Friday to replace the Teamsters at United Parcel Service of America Inc. and take control of UPS employees’ share of more than $50 billion in multiemployer pension funds and more than $1 billion in annual contributions.

The dissident labor group plans to ask 238,000 UPS workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to sign individual petition cards requesting that the new organization represent them in collective bargaining, said Van Skillman, a UPS driver from Greensboro, N.C., and the president and co-founder of the organization.

The APWA cited better pension fund management and higher pension benefits as key reasons for seeking to replace the Teamsters.

The group needs at least 30% of the Teamster-represented UPS employees to sign the cards in order to ask the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election to determine which union will serve as the labor representative, Mr. Skillman said.

The $30.2 billion Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust Fund, Seattle; $20.7 billion Central States, Southeast and Southwestern Areas Pension Fund, Rosemont, Ill.; and $3.4 billion New England Teamsters and Trucking Industry Pension Fund, Burlington, Mass., are the three largest of 21 multiemployer Teamster funds covering UPS union members.

UPS contributed $1.289 billion to multiemployer funds in 2005, according to its most recent 10-K report. “The vast, vast majority of it” went to Teamster pension funds, said Norman Black, UPS spokesman; he didn’t have a figure. Mr. Black declined to comment on the APWA effort.

Galen Munroe, Teamster press secretary, said in a statement, “We don't believe that the APWA is a legitimate labor union, they have no filings with the Department of Labor and they have never negotiated any contracts.”

 

[Fredless]

Majority rules...I just can't believe the other legit unions like the IAM for example haven't picked up on this and tried to capitalize. My dad is president of IAM Local 731 and he bitches to me ALL the time about how the local teamsters up there try to get his truck drivers to decertify the IAM and go IBT...but he said his guys never vote in the IBT.

Well, I have bitched against the APWA, but if I get out voted, I get out voted. Majority rules.

Heres my one gripe, including everyone elses - GIVE THE PART TIMERS NATIONWIDE A SHOT AT A FULL TIME JOB BESIDES MAKING US BE FULL TIME DRIVERS FIRST!!!

 

[mittam]

Majority rules...I just can't believe the other legit unions like the IAM for example haven't picked up on this and tried to capitalize. My dad is president of IAM Local 731 and he bitches to me ALL the time about how the local teamsters up there try to get his truck drivers to decertify the IAM and go IBT...but he said his guys never vote in the IBT.

Well, I have bitched against the APWA, but if I get out voted, I get out voted. Majority rules.

Heres my one gripe, including everyone elses - GIVE THE PART TIMERS NATIONWIDE A SHOT AT A FULL TIME JOB BESIDES MAKING US BE FULL TIME DRIVERS FIRST!!!

Fredless I totally agree with you, part-timers should have the chance at full-time jobs regardless of it being driving or 22.3 jobs. We need more of the pters to have that cahnce instead of having to wait anywhere from 6 -15 years to go full-time, this will be addressed by the APWA! You seem sincere nad I for one would appreciate someone like you on th eside of the APWA, someone compasionate for what they do and able to encourage part-timers to stand up and be heard. We started the card campaign here and a very few part-timers acted interested. A lot of them did sign for us after we simply explained some things to them. However it is the same results most of the time it's only about 10 % of the part-timers that will stand up and speakout on what they want or would like to see.

 

[DS]

Thats a big problem at ups.If you want someone to do a good job,you have to pay them for it until they believe in it.promise them they will be rewarded and give them some hope.Then and only then will the talented young ones have the faith to
get up at 3:00AM for preload...or on a bigger scale,be a sup
that actually has people show up smiling every day...ok I`m
pushin` it there...no APWA in Canada yet

 

[yeldarb]

here is a link for a comment about APWA

http://denverbrown.com/union.html

 

[30andout]

here is a link for a comment about APWA

teamsters, ups, local 435, ibt

Sounds like just another uninformed opinion to me.

 

[30andout]

Isn't that strange, check out the way the link came up in the quote.

 

[mittam]

Isn't that strange, check out the way the link came up in the quote.

Everything about the guy Denver brown is strange he is a BA out there, responded about a year ago with him what a quack!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[brett636]

Sounds like just another uninformed opinion from me.

fixed it for you

 

[govols019]

Everything about Denver brown is strange he is a BA out there, responded about a year ago with him what a quack!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's a BA? That's weird. I knew he was a driver and a steward but not that he was a BA too. He's multi-talented.

 

[brett636]

He's a BA? That's weird. I knew he was a driver and a steward but not that he was a BA too. He's multi-talented.

Quit trying to confuse mittam with logic and facts. We don't want him to hurt himself and blame it on the teamsters too.

 

[Lizzard Toungue]

The APWA national NLRB petition drive has started at UPS and UPS Freight. It has been many months since we stood before elected Teamster Officials in November 2003. They had just announced the slashing of our pension. We stood up and told them then, that we were going to do something about it. They laughed, but they are not laughing now!

It has been a long and arduous task to get to this point. UPSers from around the country are standing together to build “a more perfect union.” The Teamsters have been riding off of our money for long enough. This time it will be UPS dollars for UPS people only! The infrastructure is in place. Pension management, healthcare and grievance resolution procedures are all in place. You are going to be impressed with what we are doing. We can do a lot more for all of us with the 60 cents on every dollar that the Teamsters are ripping us off at the present.

Let’s put our future in the hands of our people. The APWA are the employees of UPS. Don’t listen to the “nay sayers,” they told us that we would never get this far. Let our people at UPS decide. Sign the NLRB petition today!

Bravo I back the AWPA 100 percent.I am with you all the way on this one.

 

[1eyejack]

Let other members choose who they want as a union. none of us want to work until we are 65 or 80 the facts are fulltimers last about 15yrs and then they quit because they can not take the abuse on there bodies...We are pressing on with the cards nothing will stand in our way its the best news that i we have heard in a long time ... all we get from jimmy is more lies wht do u expected hes a lawyer not a great one if he was he would still be practicing the law the only thing hes doing is stealing from the hard people at ups break there hump.. we want all the money not 40cents worth maybe thats wht some of u think u should get but the rest of us want the whole dollar ..

 

[brownmonster]

Fulltimers quit after 15 years? Easy on the drama, the job aint that hard. In the 18 years I've been driving not one driver quit after 15 years except to retire.

 

[wildgoose]

Fulltimers quit after 15 years? Easy on the drama, the job aint that hard. In the 18 years I've been driving not one driver quit after 15 years except to retire.

Yeah and when 20 years shows up at 43 years of age and your getting home at 9 pm because they don`t know how many stops are on your truck or your spouse is tired of being alone all the time because your sleeping to much to make up for the long days ? Now your only at the half way point of your career because you now have to work till 65 or you better have a very good inheritence coming around. Your bones are taking a beating. This is a young persons job - not for older ones. Ups would rather have you work for 10 years and get out but with the teamsters over seeing our pension well you know the rest ! Need some financial help go listen to Brett636. Its your problem if your not set up financially by now not ups or the teamsters !

 

[govols019]

UPS TEAMSTER PENSIONS - TeamsterNet Forums

 

[brownmonster]

Iv'e never worked until 9 in my career, including peak. Our air pulls at 7:15 and ground at 8:20. 6:30 is 9.5 hours. File or shush.

 

[pkgdriver]

Iv'e never worked until 9 in my career, including peak. Our air pulls at 7:15 and ground at 8:20. 6:30 is 9.5 hours. File or shush.

Must be nice to start at 8am

 

[brownmonster]

Start time 8:40 Sneak into the 8:30 meeting and leave building between 8:40 and 8:50.

 

[Ironshot]

Brownies, it is time to support your own and move all Union efforts into our hands.. Vote the APWA in and be active members in OUR own Union.

Or you can have more of this...

TEAMSTERS (IBT)
New Report Claims Union Is Mob-Free, but May Be a Cover-up ​

Is it the truth or is it a whitewash? That

’s the question rank-and-file members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters ought to be asking in the wake of the release of the public portion of a new report prepared for the union, concluding that the IBT is free of organized crime. Union leadership, beginning with President James P. Hoffa, couldn’t be happier. But there’s an unpleasant reality: The report is in conflict with a n earlier one released over a year ago. The extent to which the Teamsters can sway skeptics will determine how soon, if at all, the federal government will lift its more than decade-and-a-half of surveillance.

The new report, released on July 14, was prepared under the supervision of Ed McDonald, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner with the Dechert law firm in New York City. The Teamsters hired McDonald, who previously had led the Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York, as part of its campaign to get a clean bill of health from the federally-approved Independent Review Board (IRB). The IRB had been set up in the aftermath of a 1989 out-of-court settlement of a civil RICO filed by the Justice Department. Union officials are pointing to the findings as vindication of their view that this monitoring no longer is needed. But the study may be hiding as much as it is revealing. ​

In April 2004, another study, also prepared at the union’s request, was released. The lead person in that effort was Edwin Stier, a prominent Washington, D.C. lawyer and former federal prosecutor who’d led the Justice Department’s successful cleanup of northern New Jersey’s notorious Teamsters Local 560. When Hoffa took over as Teamsters president in 1999, one of the first things he did was hire Stier. Stier and his staff in response put together an internal cleanup proposal called RISE (Respect, Integrity, Strength and Ethics). Some five years and $15 million later, on April 28, 2004, Stier and his entire team of investigators and lawyers resigned, charging that Hoffa had "backed away" and " inexplicably retreated" from the union’s commitment to fight corruption. In his resignation letter, Stier stated he had "substantial reliable information that organized crime again threatens the union." He specifically cited t op Hoffa aide Carlow Scalf and certain Chicago-area Teamster officials as subverting the investigation. Scalf himself has a checkered past; as a Detroit-area Teamster boss, he’d been suspended from the Teamsters for 60 days for allegedly embezzling nearly $70,000. ​

Stier isn’t about to clam up now that that the McDonald report is out. Calling it a "whitewash," he points to the report’s omission of any mention that officials at Chicago’s Local 727 have allegedly bilked millions of dollars from union dental benefit funds. Stier also notes that the new report did not discuss allegations that a foreman in the city’s Hired Truck Program solicited bribes and made as much as $90,000 a year on the side by secretly owning a truck used in the program. Cleaning up a union, as Stier learned first-hand from the Local 560 experience, is an arduous process. The prosecutions and reforms in that instance originally had been estimated at 18 months, but wound up taking 12 years.
Teamsters officials – hardly a surprise – stand by the McDonald report. Pat Szymanski, the union’s general counsel, claims Stier did not accomplish what he was hired to do, and was replaced because he no longer could be trusted to do the job. His replacement, McDonald, used even stronger language. "We found that everything he (Stier) did was wrong," he said. "We disagree with his conclusions." He added that the Justice Department was dissatisfied with the code of conduct proposed in the Stier report. Stier, in response, strongly disputes the charge. "The board (IRB) had seen the draft," he noted. "There was never a rejection of this document by the federal government."
It is far from certain as to which version of the story will gain the upper hand. But it is of more than passing curiosity that the union would move so quickly to discredit a half-decade-long reform effort because it didn’t like the conclusions or the recommendations. Stier believes the Teamsters were desperate to discount the findings, while looking respectable. "It became clear that Jim Hoffa was beginning to succumb to...pressure in Chicago," he noted. As the union gears up for its fall elections, union rank and file can be sure to hear a whole lot of Hoffa’s side of the story – and not too much of Stier’s. (Chicago Tribune, 7/14).

​