Reality Check EP 029

Garfield and the speaker discuss the issue of discharge or suspension in their workplace. They mention that the company is using the concept of "dishonesty" to fire employees and that there have been numerous terminations recently. They also discuss how the company is treating minor infractions as stealing time and using it as a reason for termination. They emphasize the need for employees to protect themselves during disciplinary meetings and to have a steward present. The speaker also mentions the importance of having multiple stewards present during meetings with management. So how's the day treating you today so far, Garfield? Pretty good. Pretty good. I saw a movie earlier. It was awesome. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Downtime is good. Yeah. Very good. So today, we are going to talk about discharge or suspension, and there are different things. I mean, the company's got to be ... Both sides have to abide by the contract, and the company doesn't like to do certain things, and it's always we're responding, okay, you can't do this, you can't do that. But Garfield's going to talk about a few things that might have happened or whatnot, and we'll just talk contractual language as well. So you got it. It's all you, Garfield. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and start off this by reading the first paragraph in Article 52. There have been a few changes in this current contract, but most of the language is the same. So here we go. Article 52, discharge or suspension. The employer shall not discharge or suspend any employee without just cause, but in respect to discharge or suspension shall give at least one warning notice of a complaint against such employee to the employee in writing and a copy of the same to the local unit, except that no warning notice need be given to an employee before discharge if the cause of discharge is dishonesty, which in parentheses, failure to follow methods, procedures, instructions, and or employee's failure to accurately recall details during any investigatory interview shall not by itself be considered dishonesty. Drinking of or under the influence of alcoholic beverages or narcotics, including hallucinogens while on duty, carrying or permitting the carrying of drugs or narcotics on the person or equipment that is prohibited by state or federal law, including meal period, recklessness resulting in a serious accident while on duty, an avoidable runaway accident, failure to report an accident, carrying of unauthorized passengers while on the job, or engaging in unprovoked physical violence on company property or while on duty. So the part of that that changed was the part in parentheses, failure to follow methods, procedures, instructions, and or employee's failure to accurately recall details during an investigatory interview shall not by itself be considered dishonesty. So that's been the change to the dishonesty language that we got, which is not enough of a change as far as I'm concerned, because if you give a company enough time, they'll turn anything into dishonesty. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So what has the company done in McKinney to make this an issue? Well, first of all, they fired somebody for quote unquote just cause, which my point was that just cause is required for any discipline, but not in and of itself a reason to discipline someone, let alone terminate them. And I'm not going to get into the details of what exactly happened to this employee or what this employee did, but I believe they're trying to make an example out of them. It's not fair to the employee. It's not fair to his co-workers. And on top of all of this, they seem like they've turned just about everything into dishonesty. There have been seven terminations in my building in the last two months, and every one of them has been for dishonesty. There's been no progress in this one whatsoever. They'll make it into whatever they need to, to fire someone, right? And like I said, they'll keep them out, and like we said before, they'll keep them out because basically there's their layoff or whatever it is, and so they don't have to pay them. And we'll keep saying it. These are the things that the company is doing, and I mean, it's not right. It's not right. They'll justify anything. They'll call, you know, they'll call something, it's not a violation, a violation by, you know, just basically trying to control the narrative and just say, no, this is what happened. And of course they do it guilty till proven innocent, right? Not innocent till proven guilty. That's what this company does. So, but, so what else Garfield? Well, I just kind of wanted to go over, because I know this is happening all over the place, you know, and there's terminations everywhere, there's layoffs everywhere. The company feels like they can get away with it. Our labor manager has told, not just our labor manager, but the labor manager over the, our district has told them that if you find a discrepancy of one minute, or if you can witness them, you know, stealing time for one minute, they'll support you in a term. You will be supported in terminating that driver. They've been utilizing telematics to come up with reasons to follow people and say, oh, well, you know, we, we took, one of the guys was on his lunch and he, he took, he clocked back in to come back out for lunch, but he had to go use the restroom. He went to use the restroom. Oh, well, they, they consider that, you know, he took too long of a lunch and didn't code it out. So now we have to go back on the clock. I mean, they are, they're look, yeah, yeah, a blank we do. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's, I mean, they have tried, you know, like going to the bathroom. Oh no, you got to clock out. No. What's a reasonable, you know, time, you know, well, you know, some people have issues and this and that. Yeah. No, you don't have to clock out to go to lunch. Come on, stop. And that's, I mean, that's breaking the law too. I mean, you know, you can't just tell someone to clock out to go to the bathroom. So I mean, I mean, again, but yeah, it's disgusting because they're just, they're just playing with people's lives. They are. And they don't, you know, that all it is to them. And I don't think, I don't think stealing time, I don't think stealing time like this should be considered dishonesty. And we don't work in a position to where like everything is perfect. You know, sometimes I have to look for stuff. Sometimes I have to look for, look for extra, extra work. You know, sometimes I just got to wrap my head around, you know, what's going on in the back of the truck or where I've got to go next in my board. And sometimes that takes time. And, you know, I don't think that, I don't think, first of all, I don't think the issues, I don't think a lot of the people that have been fired for this are actually stealing time. That's just the company coming up with, you know, ways to terminate people. But if they're going to treat it this way, then I think contractually stealing time shouldn't be considered dishonesty. Or at least shouldn't be a terminable defense if that's, they should have to progressive discipline somebody just like everybody else. And if any one of the people that have been terminated came up and said, and said, oh, hey, you've been taking a little bit extra long time for this. Like, I need you to shorten that up. Probably they would be like, oh, yeah, sure. Like whatever. Like, yeah, I'll pay more closer attention to it. Yes. Yes. Given the opportunity to fix it, most of them would just fix it. Yes. And some, you know, make mistakes happen. I mean, if you're, you've got someone who's been doing this, you know, a long time and they forget, you know, the timing they forgot to, you know, you know, whatever it is, then, you know, it's a mistake. I mean, come on. I mean, we're human, but, you know, and, and, and we're not saying that stealing time is okay. But what the company is doing is they're saying it's stealing time when it's, you know, in a lot of cases it's not now. So, I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. And, you know, people make mistakes. I mean, if it's continuous or something, whatever, that's not for me to say, but I just, you know, and that's not the, that's not what they're, I mean, the company's doing it and they're saying, you know, no, they're stealing time and that's it. So it falls under, okay, that's being dishonest and we're going to get rid of them and, you know, they're finding ways. So, you know, what we're trying to say is, you know, and then, you know, when you, when you go into the office, if they're going to, you know, do what they're going to do to you, make sure you have that conversation beforehand with your steward and a good steward is going to go, you know, speak with you and, and, and, you know, and, and say, Hey, listen, just, just don't, don't say anything. You don't need to speak the truth, always speak the truth, but you know, you don't need to start going and going and going and, you know, it's, it's sometimes people just get themselves in more trouble and it's not because, you know, like I said, we don't lie. It's just the company will just pick up on anything and they might not know it. And even if you do have the talk with them, sometimes people just go off on, you know, they go off and whatever, but we just have to, and that's, you know, we gotta, you know, we just got to always protect the members and sometimes we protect them from themselves. Right. Well, it's, it's important to note it, note that like, and I can't speak how other buildings do it, but mine does it. You know, I know as a steward that they're about to walk somebody out. If I walk into an office with the center manager and a supervisor that's there to take notes. So obviously if I, there's two members of managing there, I go get another steward automatically because there's always supposed to be as many stewards in the room as there are members of management. Yep. And, you know, we'll have the conversation, we'll figure out what's going on, then I'll call the caucus and then I'll say, Hey, you know, tell me what happened, you know, figure out what's going on for the, and, and two, nine times out of 10, I'm going to look at you and say, just keep your mouth shut. I mean, you know, it's, it's at that point, you know, they, they probably going to do what they're going to do, but you obviously keep fighting, but you could, and, and what was it you were saying before we were talking, what did you say? You can, it's, it's almost impossible to dig yourself out of that hole, but it's, it's real easy to dig yourself a deeper one. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's, they can have nothing on you and fire you, but, you know, after a local level hearing, they somehow have something on you, you know, it's, and, and, and we just want to avoid that because there is a huge uptick in them just firing, you know, without just cause, but they just want to, you know, they're, they're finding a way and they're taking people off the clock and, you know, they're, you know, it's because they're trying to work with less people and the people who are working is more, is much more work. And, and it's, it's just, you know, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's crazy, but we just have to, we have to be on high alert now, you know, we, we should be on high alert. So. Dot your I's and cross your T's everybody, like they're out to get, they're out to do it to anybody for any reason. Yes. One of the other things they did was not putting enough, was not putting the right amount of packages on the end of a, at the end of the day on a UPS store. Huh? Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So what was the exact reason that because he didn't put the exact. It was dishonest because he didn't put the right, because when he, when he put it in the end of the board, he put the number that was on the UPS store's sheet that the end of day and, and didn't count them. And it had been prelim to get, I guess. So he just, he just put that number on the end of it and cheated and, and that was it. Wow. And they fired him for dishonesty. And what does the, what have the supervisors for years told us to do with the UPS stores with the boxes? And what have your supervisors told you? I was just told them to load them up. Like just load them in the truck. Yeah. We're not supposed to scan them. Yeah. I mean, they tell us, I mean, they have told us that, I mean, I mean, so many different things. I mean, you know, don't, don't scan them, don't count them rough, rough estimate it. I mean, it, it, it, it's all told us so many different things, but you know, with, with the, with the current atmosphere, do everything right. Count every one of them. It is what it is, man. You know, it's, what are they going to fire you for doing the right thing? Well, I mean, I wouldn't put it past him at this point. Yeah. But I mean, it's, it's just, just do, you know, just do, you know, count it. Sure. It might take longer, but well, you know, you're just protecting yourself. That's all. You get paid by the minute. Yes, exactly. So, uh, glad we talked about this because this is, this is, this is, this is happening and this is not good because just in your building alone, how many terminations recently? I think seven. I think we're at seven. Wow. Seven or eight. Wow. Just, uh, just doing what they want. Yep. I mean, it's, it's, are they getting any pushback? I mean, me and the sewers are pushing back as much as we can. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't know. And it's, it's, that's just crazy. That's just crazy. There should be more there. But anyway. Oh yeah. So very important. Everyone, you know, just, you know, keep this in mind, you know, and, and just pay attention to everything and do everything right. Follow methods, do whatever you have to do, you know, in terms of just do things that you're supposed to do. It's crazy because you just, you don't know what they're going to do. They've told us so many different things and it might be good now, but it wasn't good back then and this and that. So just, just, just, just protect yourself. So, uh, all right, well, thank you everyone for listening and have a good day. 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, seven six seven reality check at gmail.com that's seven six seven reality check at gmail.com and remember strong people stand up for themselves, but the strongest people stand up for others.