Reality Check EP 025

The hosts discuss their frustration with harassment and the lack of accountability for management. They reference a contract clause that emphasizes fair treatment and respect for employees. They share a recent incident where a driver was taken out of service without a clear reason given. They highlight the importance of standing up for rights and not accepting unfair discipline. They mention a committee that handles cases of intimidation and harassment by management. They stress the need for management to be held accountable for their actions. They empathize with the impact on employees' livelihoods and express a desire for equal treatment and integrity. They discuss the importance of addressing performance issues but express frustration when employees are fired without cause. They end by emphasizing the need to support all members and ensure fair treatment. Teamster Power 767 Reality Check with Jeff Schoenfeld and Garfield Hooper. Alright Garfield, how are we doing today? Oh man, Jeff, I'm tired. Yeah. You know what I'm tired of? I hear you, man. Harassment. Wow. Wow. Absolutely. I'm tired of that too. I mean, that's crazy, right? It is. When you think they stoop to a low, they go to a new low. It sure is. And they think they can do whatever they want because there's no language that says, even if, you know, everything is always, oh, guilty till proven innocent. Yeah. Innocent till proven guilty. And the fact that they want to do it guilty till proven innocent, that's an integrity issue. Yep. You know, nothing addresses that, you know, and it's what it's like to have seen that. But in particular, anything recently that made you really just say again, you know, oh God, these guys. Well, listen, before we get into the details of what brought this episode on, I want to read to everybody the first paragraph in Article 37, which is management and employee relations. Because this is important. I don't know if anybody's ever picked up, hopefully people that listen to us have picked up and read through the contract. But this is a good contract. This is a good paragraph to burn into your memory. So here we go. Section 1. Yeah, Section 1, 37, Section 1. Yeah. The parties agree that the principle of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay shall be observed at all times. An employee shall perform their duties in a manner that best represents the employer's interest. The employer shall not in any way intimidate, harass, coerce, or overly supervise any employee in the performance of their duties. The employer shall not retaliate against employees for exercising rights under this agreement. And considering any grievance alleging retaliation for exercising their rights under the agreement, the severity and timing of the employer's actions that modify an employee's work, assignment, or reprimand employees shall be relevant factors to a determination of motivation. The employer will treat employees with dignity and respect at all times, which shall include but not be limited to giving due consideration to the age and physical condition of the employee. Employees will also treat each other as well as the employee with dignity and respect. Yep. And I mean, that says it all. I mean, they're not such – they can't just do what they want. They feel like they can. And we have to say, no, you can't. One of the things is taking the age into consideration. Yeah. I mean, they have to. They don't. Oh, we'll just load them up even more and, you know, make it so we can't walk soon, you know? Yeah. It's, you know, you're older, you've been here for a while, you need to exercise your rights and say, hey, listen, you're not taking this into consideration. You're not, you know, you're not accounting for my age, you know? And it's – then they just want to do, you know, again, the guilty until proven innocent. And that's not, you know, that's an integrity issue. I mean, you know, that's not treating someone with dignity and respect. That's, oh, we're going to do this. We're going to, you know, we're going to just fire you. And there's no language to say, hey, you can't do that. You can't just make up stuff. So, you know, but we have to combat it. We had an incident similar to this. One of my drivers was taken out of service pending an investigation, quote-unquote. And what really made me think about this was they – when they had the hearing or whatever it was with one of my other stewards and this driver, they wouldn't tell him what he did. They just said, you're being taken out of service and pending an investigation. They wouldn't tell him what the reason was. They wouldn't tell him – oh, I take that back. They told him it was because a customer called in and complained. But they wouldn't tell him what they complained about. There was no context whatsoever to why he was being essentially walked out of the building. And, you know, he was going to be off work for, you know, however long until they do this investigation. Now, granted, if you ever get pulled out for investigation, they still owe you your guarantee every day. So if you're out and if they're not terminating you right there and they're just pulling you out pending investigation, they still need to be paying you eight hours every day you're supposed to work. So be sure you do that – you make sure they're doing that. But, you know, it was like pulling teeth to get out what happened and why this was done. And finally we did. You know, I was able to get with the member. But, I mean, he was – he's still off the clock. So – or, well, he's still out pending an investigation. So, like, this is very much the company saying, oh, well, a customer called in. They said you did something wrong. We're not even going to ask you for your side of the story. We're just going to walk you out. Guilty till proven innocent always. And that's crap. So someone has to be stressed out. Yes. You know, it's absolutely unconscionable. It really is. And, you know, they've been doing this. But, I mean, there's some – I mean, it doesn't help the person at the time, right? I mean, they're out. They're worried if they're going to be brought back. You know, even though they – the chance they didn't do anything, right? Yeah. And, you know, it's – and I just want to say something here. It's important. They didn't do anything wrong. You know, they're going to – sometimes they just want to get you on, you know, progressive discipline. They'll get you back with, oh, time-serve suspension. No, no, no, no, no, no. I wanted to get it down to a warning letter. Okay? They want that time-serve suspension on record so they can move on from there. I want everyone to understand that. So no BA and no steward should just accept that right away. No. Right? That's very important. I mean, that's – that's extremely important. And we don't want anyone to just, oh, no, yeah, we'll just – we'll accept that. No. And they make it so ho-hum the company. No, we'll just do a time-serve suspension. Well, they didn't do anything. Yeah. No, we want this knocked down. So – but there is – and we've talked about this before. There is a, you know, 37 committee. Okay? Yes. Alleged intimidation, harassment. Yeah. Or oversupervision happens. It's – there's a 37 committee down at – down at the panel. And, you know, an individual, member of management, deemed to committed – deemed by the committee to have committed two or more violations of this section, will it – within two years, shall be required to appear in person before the committee. And that's obviously one thing. They need to, you know, they need to show their face. Okay? Yeah. The penalty could be up to five times the employee's daily guarantee. It just depends on the severity of the case. There's no definite rhyme or reason, oh, no, they're going to get five times. That's not the way it works. Yeah. But we want management held accountable. We want them to have the answer for what they're doing. They should. And that's the bottom line. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean – Because here's the thing. It's like these are people's livelihoods. You know, even if he's going to be paid for the time he's out. When I found out this happened and finally got to the bottom of it, I picked up the phone and called him. It was 9 o'clock on a Friday night. And I called him. And he was up. You know, he was stressing. And I told him about it. I told him how I felt about the whole issue and what was going on. And, you know, I kind of put him at ease a little bit. But, I mean, he's still – this is still something he's got to worry about. This is his livelihood. Absolutely. You know, I'm fairly confident that he's going to get through this with little to no discipline. But, like, the company still maybe, you know, said, oh, well, we're not going to even ask your side of the story. We're just going to act on this and put you through this bullshit, for lack of a better term. It's unnecessary. These are people. Well, I mean, we know that. We know they're people. Yeah. But they don't seem to. You know what it is. You know, it would be fantastic. And I wanted this in the language for years. You know, anything that we do should, you know, or anything that management does should be mirrored. Right? It's the same thing. If they have an integrity issue, you know, they should have to go through the same process. But the one thing we're not going to do, because we've got to be above that. Okay? Always, always, always keep our integrity intact. You know, it's – we don't want them fired if they didn't do anything. Right? Yeah. You know, if they do something, we want, you know, everything on the table. Yeah. But, you know, the fact that they're just firing people because they want to, who do you think you are? Yeah. You want to do that? No. I've been a steward for almost 10 years now. And, you know, I'm not going to tell you I've never seen somebody tired that didn't deserve it. Like, there have been people that have lost their jobs that, you know, I've told that they needed to, you know, do things like show up on time or, you know, deliver their error on time, you know, do what they need to do. Like, you need to make the effort to, you know, do this job correctly or they're going to figure out – they're going to figure out how to get rid of you one way or the other. There's only so much I can do. You know, if that's the case, then, you know, the company is going to be the company. It's situations like this one where I'm just like, the guy didn't even do anything. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, it's just each time it happens and, you know, what's our response going to be? And that's always – that's kind of, you know, why I think it's happening, you know. Yeah. That's something separate. But, you know, we want to do everything to make sure all our members are here. And, you know, when management just wants to fire them when there's really no reason, come on. Come on. But they're not humans. We can't expect a lot of them, you know, to think and think about the person that they're doing this to, you know. That's why we fight, you know. We uphold the contract. And, you know, that's the thing. I know people over the years, why do you get these people back? And I'm not talking about this. I'm talking about in general, you know, people who are, you know, known to be doing things, right? Yeah. But we're enforcing the contract. That's what we're doing, okay? Yes. We don't, you know, that's what we do. As, you know, stewards, VAs, we enforce the contract. And from there, you know, you put your best case forward and you see what happens. Yeah. But, you know, it's – that's what we do, okay? It's our job to uphold the contract. And, you know, it's not my job to tell you whether or not someone deserves to keep their job or not. It's my job to tell you whether or not the company has the right to do what they did based on the contract. And if I can find a reason in the contract that says, hey, you guys didn't do this correctly or, hey, he didn't do this – he didn't violate or whatever, then, you know, that's my job as a steward. That's, you know, the jobs of the business agents at panel. You know, if we're not doing that, you know, we could have labor charges filed on us. Absolutely. And that's why when there are new stewards put in, you know, they have to be willing to do the work. You know, you're a new steward. Hey, let's do this. You know what I'm saying? And they have to constantly, you know, we got to – you know, they got to get their experience watching other stewards. And so they can uphold the contract, you know, the right way. This is something that's, you know, been going on. We wish it didn't. But we do everything we can to uphold that contract. Yeah. No, you can't just do this. Very important. Something like this is extremely, extremely important. And, you know, we fight for the members. This is what we do. And, you know, it's – I'm going to say it, and this is a personal thing. I mean, it's a great feeling when you help someone. He had it before. That's what it's about. That's what all this is about. You know, it's great. I mean, you've had an effect on someone's life. You've kept their job because the company, you know, just thought they can do whatever they want. That's why everything involved in any case is important, every detail. And management tries to muddy the water, but, you know, keep doing the right thing and, you know, stay on course when representing a member. Yeah. Jeff Schoenfeld, myself and Garfield, thank you very much and have a good night. We all deal with national language, but on this podcast, when it comes to supplemental language, we deal mostly with the southern region. And as always, it's best to get advice from your local stewards or business agents. If you would like to reach out to us with any questions, we have an email address, 767realitycheckatgmail.com. That's 767realitycheckatgmail.com. And remember, strong people stand up for themselves, but the strongest people stand up for others. Thank you.