Reality Check EP 010

The hosts discuss a new addition to the contract that allows employees to be fired if they fail to report to work for three consecutive days without notifying the employer. They express concern about the potential for abuse by management and the lack of accountability for the company. They also highlight the negative impact this could have on employees who may be unable to contact their employer due to emergencies or accidents. They criticize the union for agreeing to this language and discuss the need to fight against it in future negotiations. They predict that this provision will lead to national disputes and panel hearings in the coming years. Teamster Power 767 Reality Check with Jeff Schoenfeld and Garfield Hooper. Hope everyone's doing well today. Today we want to talk about one specific thing. There's a future podcast we're going to be talking about all of seniority with a feeder driver here and a part timer. We want to get all that done, but there is one section that was added to the current contract that I got to tell you, no good. You agree? Oh, yeah. And as a matter of fact, it's just like one sentence in a part of the Article 48. Article 48, Section 2, Laws of Seniority. I'll go ahead and read. I'll go ahead and read the whole thing just from top to bottom and I'll let you know what's new. Employee shall be broken only by discharge for cause, voluntary quit, layoff for a period of three years from the last date of employment, failure to respond to notice of recall, unauthorized leave of absence, or if the employee fails to report for work for three consecutive working days, does not properly notify the employer by the beginning of their starting time on the third day. Wow. Otherwise prohibited by state or federal law, an employee's seniority shall be broken when they have reached maximum medical improvement from an on or off the job injury or illness if at that time they still cannot perform the essential work functions of their job. This provision shall not affect the employee's rights under Article 14.3. Now, Jeff, what is the new sentence that we have a lot to talk about? The new sentence is, or if the employee fails to report to work for three consecutive working days and does not properly notify the employer by the beginning of their starting time on the third day. Now, I was, I don't even know, when I saw that language, I was like, huh, so we're giving the company ammunition, right? Isn't that what you said? I mean, is that what you thought? Yeah. It's, so I was at the contract review meeting when Dave pointed this out. And when he read this, he pointed it out. Nobody asked him. He put it up. This was one of the things that the company wanted in the contract. One of two things they wanted in our Southern Supplement. I don't remember what the other thing was, but that was one of them. And this one stuck out to me. Yeah, we gave it to them. I don't know what we got in return. Maybe it was that, maybe it was that year, that extra year, extra year on the three weeks of vacation. Oh, yeah. From ten to nine. Oh, my God. That was well worth it, right? No. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. God Almighty. Okay. Go ahead. No, it's just, I can't believe we would give them something like this. I mean, you're going to give them another reason to be able to, you know, to fire us. We were given nothing to hold them accountable for doing the stuff that they do? Yeah. Huh. Well, I mean. It's a little weird to me. I've met toddlers with more accountability than the management in these buildings. But. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The issue that I have with this is like, you are giving the company carte blanche to fire somebody if something happens. Like, thankfully, our job pays us a pretty good amount of money. It feels like a lot less these days than it used to. But, you know, people, I know a lot of drivers that ride motorcycles. I know a lot of drivers that take a lot of vacations, go on cruises, go to foreign countries. You know, what happens if you have a motorcycle accident? You have, you know, maybe you don't have a family member that notices or that knows that they need to contact your supervisor and or your or your center manager and you're laid up in the hospital. Maybe you're in a coma. You know, maybe, you know, you know, one of a hundred things could have happened. But, you know, those three days go by and you don't contact, well, you're gone. So now the second week you're in the hospital, now you don't have insurance. You know, now the company can say now, sure, the company might be like, oh, man, that sucks here. We'll rehire you or we'll put you back on or whatever. But like, if you're a if you're somebody that, you know, a member of management doesn't like, we're not going to I'm not going to sit here and tell you that members of management don't play favorites. They don't try to fire people that they don't like or treat people differently that they don't. We all know it. We all know what happens. We see it. But, you know, now that person has to go to the union and say, well, I need, you know, while they're in there in the hospital bed, possibly fighting for their life, you know, they may never be able to do this job again. But right now they need to recover and now that now they have to call and say, no, they've got to get the union involved to try to get their job back so they can have insurance. Yeah. Well, and I just want to say, I just want to clarify something, too. When they say loss of seniority, it means you're fired. Oh, yeah. That's it. That's that's that's very clear loss of seniority means you're fired. When I was speaking with a member of the negotiating committee, they said that there'll be language in there where if someone would some was heard or this and that. Now, I looked at the language. Do you see anything? Not that I can see. No, no, no. So now it becomes a hassle, right? It becomes a hassle because we gave them something else and and, you know, they let's say they're out. They're out of money and this and that. And, you know, they're they're out. I mean, so many things because the company wants to keep them out for however long and they missed the panel. It's got to go to the next month or the labor manager doesn't want to, you know, settle this. They want to take this. They really want to make it difficult. I mean, look what we look what they've given them. Look what they gave them. And why did they give it to them? I just I can't understand. We've got anything in this supplement that was worth that. I don't think any language to be to be perfectly clear. Any language is worth that. But we didn't get anything remotely close to that. No. And so, you know, now we there's got to be precedent setting cases where, you know, this OK, so it's got to be heard for the first time. This has to happen. You know, just a bunch of different things. It's new language. Now we have to go into it. But now. So think about this next contract. They want to expound on this. They want to they want more. The company. Right. But if this was never in there, they would never be able to do that. It would just be still trying to get this type of language. But now they want they're going to want to go further. And we gave them this. And there's no telling how many people will lose their jobs because of this sentence in the southern region. No, that's that's absolute. And I've heard plenty of people want to say that, oh, well, if you can't contact a member of management at your building in three days, then you deserve to lose your job. But it is as far as I'm concerned, yeah, that doesn't need to be the stance of a team, sir. And it certainly doesn't need to be the stance of a leader in teamsters. Oh, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right. And but but yet it happened, right? Yeah, it happens. I know this will be something we have to fight to get rid of. Exactly. Another thing we have to another thing we have to fight, not, you know, putting anything back on the company because the company is going to do the same thing. They you know, they're going to get, you know, get away with doing this. Some of the some of the things we got to hold on to things every single day. But, you know, there's no recourse for them line. There's no recourse for them doing certain things. Oh, we'll just move them around to a different building or we just we'll slap them on the wrist. Why wasn't there putting it? Why wasn't their language mirroring with whatever happens to us can happen to management? Nothing. No. And that's that's frustrating. That's frustrating. So, OK, so the company can basically do what they want to make us fight, fight everything to, you know, to get rid of this stuff, some of this stuff that shouldn't even this discipline that shouldn't even be there. Yeah. I know you don't mind a good fight. I know you don't mind a good fight. But why should we have to have these fights? Right. Why should we have to go through this? This shouldn't be a fight someone has to go through. No, no, it shouldn't be a fight the union has to go through. We are making it easier for Pete for them to get rid of people. And that shouldn't be the case. Like if they want to fire somebody, they should have just cause they should go through the process and they should do it. And now we've just given them. And also, say something does happen, say you are in the hospital or whatever, and your loved one picks up the phone and not even your phone, their phone or whatever, and texts somebody that says, oh, hey, he's had a bad accident. He's not going to be able to make it to work. Just wanted to let you know, you know, this and this. All that supervisor, if they don't like that person, all that supervisor has to do is delete it. Oh, I never got anything. Yeah. I mean, it's – And don't think for a second there aren't members of management that would do that. I would even go so far as to say there are probably more of them that would than wouldn't. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And for whatever reason, and I don't really care what their reason is, they do it. Yeah. It's just – we've got to expect a good portion of them to do things like that. But again, we were put in harm's way, and that's part of this historically mediocre contract. So I just – this thing, this is not something that's going to be talked about once or twice. Yeah. This is going to be something that's going to constantly come up because it's already a problem. Somebody will have to take this, too. This sentence will cause a national panel at some point in the next five years, I'm certain. Absolutely. Oh, it will. If there's not one already on its way there. Absolutely. Oh, and Article 48's a big article, a lot of points to make. And we're going to talk about more of that in a future podcast. But we both felt strongly enough about this section and this sentence that we felt we needed to dedicate a podcast to talking about it. So – Absolutely. Absolutely. Very important. So, again, I'm Jeff Shenfeld. And I'm Garfield Hooper. Have a good day. Our experiences deal largely with the Southern Region Supplement. This is just an information podcast, and if you have questions, it's best to contact your local steward or business agent. And remember, strong people stand up for themselves, but the strongest people stand up for others.