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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Say what you will about Teamsters, they fought this shot at UPS
And UPS still shafts their employees even with one of the more proactive unions in the country.
I hesitate on details because I don't want anything I ever say or write harming workers that tell me things, but suffice to say that UPS does all the normal evil corpo shit you'd expect anywhere else and the employees (to my naïve surprise) basically just allow it despite being in a service sector that 100% could bring the entire country to its knees with a fingersnap from union leaders.
Like not to shit on anyone, but if Starbucks goes on strike people will go to McDonald's or make their own coffee sugar slurries at home. If UPS goes on strike, corporations rely on UPS first of all, and they can't just shift all their stuff to FedEx who couldn't handle that load anyway. Nor could the USPS. Lifesaving medications, meds for chronic conditions, machine parts, all kinds of crazy shit gets touched by UPS. It's not that hard to see they hold a powerful position. Their workers do. And it seems that their management is extremely aware of this power and extremely draconian in enforcement of every tiny little thing they ding people for in what I view as basically like a suppression of any "willful" behavior from workers. It seems like management is told to be purposely hostile towards anything the union has negotiated and push lines at every moment. Or maybe managers are just doing what managers, cucks that they often are, do. Doesn't matter that much in the end.
An example is employees being "definitely not told" to not report injuries. Passive aggressive language like "well, if you report that injury, we'll have to take you off the schedule for a few days... also we really can't have any more injuries right now. Are you sure it's hurt?" Something to that effect (told to me directly from a unionized driver). When I asked the obvious (to me) follow up like "wtf? Did you get your union steward or someone from the union and inform them?" The answer was basically "no. Management tries to get you to just agree to stuff and management complains if you say you want some form of union rep present when you talk to them about anything."
Which to my understanding is explicitly illegal. Unionized workers have a legal right to have someone from the union present whenever they're dealing with management especially for shit like that. I'm not a lawyer, etc. so I just said like that's fucked up first off. And second you should definitely talk to a union representative about management's behavior towards injured employees.
But I hesitate to advise much beyond that because not everyone is me, obviously. I can't tell them that if my fingernail got fucked up at work and the manager wanted to be all prissy about his stats that perhaps I'd be considering how to rip his fingernail out with needle nose pliers. Considering only, of course.
There's more technical stuff like UPS ramrodding in this new "AI" driven bullshit they use to tell package delivery drivers where to go next, estimated times, blah blah. All the drivers seem to universally dislike it and say they can get better delivery times with the old system or just using their own knowledge of the routes. A lot of them have been running the same routes for years and years and now this AI bullshit plus management forcing it on them with threats of GPS tracking as evidence they aren't obedient is causing some amount of internal strain. They also apparently just removed a "maps" feature from the little devices that direct the drivers. Before it was like a google maps-style thing with a bunch of pins of locations for delivery or pickup. There was also a non-map plain list with directions like "turn here, drive this distance" whatever. Now they've removed the map with pins. Apparently drivers are just using actual Google maps or whatever because turns out that's sort of a required feature... being able to see beyond the blinders that they wish to place on drivers to force them into compliance. And for what? If every single driver fully obeyed the little AI thing will it even improve delivery times, save fuel, etc.? I dunno. But imo a truly strong union would take that shit and punt it over the moon and tell management there will be no more GPS tracking of employees either. Oh, don't like that? They'd cave as soon as the "ssss" part of strike was on the union's lips.
Anyway, apparently we need to work on fully radicalizing class conscious UPS drivers, get FedEx unionized, and show cucked Americans a glimpse of power they could hold if they just reach out and take it back.
That's an automatic, "a union rep will be present for every conversation even if it's just to piss you off" type of situation for me. Put those shithead managers in their place and show them who really has the power. I think you can safely advocate for them talking to their union in any case, granted, I hope it's an actual labor union, not a business union, or chances are they won't do anything. I'd expect Teamsters to do good by them.
This "managers getting pissy" situation is where you bring a vote to the union so the next contract requires a union rep present for every conversation between managers and workers unless the worker explicitly waves that right. Management does not get a say because they crossed a line they shouldn't have. They do not get to be pissy about it or there are consequences.
Zero tolerance for getting between workers and union reps. Zero tolerance for union busting activities. Give those fuckers an inch and they will pull the whole rug from under your feet.
I think it's tougher to show people this unless they are actively part of a union organized and operated by the workers they represent. When they have this connection, they can directly see how powerful they are through their collective actions and this understanding carries over into other parts of life.
When you are part of a union that doesn't have a direct connection to the workers and when you don't participate in your union (sometimes because it's a PoS business union), it tends to leave you disconnected from the process (and results) of organizing. It leaves you feeling powerless, much like with voting in liberal democracies, where you know your vote doesn't really matter and those who are supposed to be advocating for you don't care about you.
I'm wondering if the worker should even be able to waive it. There's room for intimidation tactics there.
Absolutely. Not sure how to balance this, because I can also see a manager abusing the rule by using it as an excuse to dodge a simple, but important conversation because no union rep is available.
That's the reason I left it open.