Reality Check EP 031

The main ideas from this conversation are that dealing with harassment in the workplace is important and should be handled correctly. It is crucial to have a steward present during any conversations with management. Taking notes during meetings is also important, and one suggestion is to email yourself during the meeting for easy access to the notes later. The conversation also mentions that management may try to use progressive discipline tactics, and it's important to be aware of their tactics and protect yourself. The conversation concludes with the importance of the member being actively involved in the process and taking ownership of their situation. Teamster Power 767 Reality Check with Jeff Schoenfeld and Garfield Hooper. What's the good word today, Garfield? Oh, you know, the good word is harassment. It's not a very good word, though. I don't think it's a good word. It's a bad word. So the good word is dealing with harassment the right way, which is a couple of words, right? That's more than one word. All right. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so here's what we're going to do. Okay. So, no, in all seriousness, you know, dealing with harassment is one of those things where if you don't deal with it right, you know, deal with what companies bring, you know, the heat that they're bringing to a member and you don't help them the right way, it can make it worse. Yeah. Absolutely. And when you're in the office, I mean, it's you've got to be prepared. You've got to have, you know, your pen and paper or, you know, on your phone and something that takes notes. Yeah. So what situation do you want to talk about that you can, you know, helping members in the office, one way to help them? Well, first and foremost, I can tell you that have a steward present. But number one, have a steward present. That's number one. Like we have that issue sometimes, you know, supervisors or management want to be buddy buddy with you. Oh, hey, look, we got division managers, right? Or even division managers, the ones that don't have apparently don't have anything better to do. Yes. Absolutely. And which, again, that's your wine garden, right? Yes. Those are your wine garden, right? Those are yours. And you need to be prepared to exercise them. If a center manager or supervisor or division manager or district manager or Carol fucking Tomei herself. Okay. Comes up and wants to talk to you about something. Yeah. Hold on. I'd like to have my steward present before we continue this conversation. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I had this conversation with my division manager the other day. He said this will be the third day in the row he's had a conversation with this individual driver. Getting information from him. Trying to catch him. You know how they do. Yeah. And, you know, I walked up to him and said, look, if you're going to have these conversations like you need to have a sewer present. Oh, I'm not going to do that. You're not. You're not going to you're not going to get you're not going to allow people to have representation at all. It's like I'm not going to come look for a steward every time I want to talk to somebody. I was like, there's like nine of us in this building. Like, we're not hard to find. Most of us are here about 30, 40 minutes before start time. You know, you can just grab one of us. It'd be real easy. Yeah. And he goes, and I said, I told him, I said, I quoted the Weingarten, Weingarten rights. You know, if these are if this conversation could lead to discipline in any way, you know, you need to have a steward present or termination. And he goes, he looks at me right in the face and said, every conversation with a member of management could lead to discipline or termination. Fair enough. Where's the steward? I'm glad we agree with that. Yeah. Look at that. He didn't realize what he was saying. I mean, come on. I mean, my God. And I believe it. They could come up to you and talk to you about the weather. Yeah. And like, it's like it's so important for you to have your representative there with you. Yeah. When you do these things and when you have these conversations, especially now, like they're laying people off. They're looking for anything. They're looking for anything to get you out, even if they don't think there's a snowball chance in hell that the panel will uphold determination. Yeah. Oh, well, that's one more person. That's one more person. We don't have to pay paycheck or insurance for a month, two months. Well, yeah. And just going down the road, if anything goes to panel, what they're doing is they know it's not going to be a winning case, but then they'll probably try to get, and we've talked about this, progressive discipline. Yeah. Oh, time starts suspension. No, you always try to get it down to a warning letter. So there is no progressive discipline. These are the things they do. And if you're at the panel and then you go back to the panel in a couple of months or a year, they'll say, oh, he was just at the panel, even though it's past nine months. Yeah. But let's say it's within nine months. Well, they'll say, even if it's outside, they don't care. And they'll say, oh, strike that from the rug. It's a tactic that they use. And if the panel sees the same person back down there, you think they're going to be so lenient with them? Yeah. Even if they really didn't do anything, but the labor manager will, they have their own narrative. They muddy the water and they say what they want to say, not the truth. They say what they want to say and it changes everything. So every bit's important. And it starts off if you're, you know, if you're, if they're harassing you and bringing you in the office is getting your steward. Yeah. And so what's the situation you think? Let's talk about a specific situation. Okay. What do you. Well, I'll talk about the one with this driver that we were talking about here. That's now been the third day in a row that he's had a like this. Keep in mind, this isn't with a supervisor. This isn't with our center manager. This is with our division manager that's choosing to be a part of having conversations with our drivers about their performance. You know, how long you spent at this stop, that stop, you know, our dispatcher who can't do her own job, but can put together these little slideshows for the division manager showing that somebody spent six minutes a year, seven minutes there, whatever. With no steward. With no, yeah. No, no. We had, there were stewards in for that. Oh, so other conversations that they might've gotten information through the poisonous tree, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so we've been in there with these and I will stress to any stewards out there that if you're having these meetings with whoever it may be, there needs to be a steward, one steward in the room for every member of management. Always. And like to the point where one of these particular meetings that we had, there was two, there was me and another steward. They had the division manager, the dispatcher, and then one of our supervisors. And I immediately called the caucus. I said, I'm going to get another steward. And so I went and got that and we continued on. But like, the other thing is, is that the steward has to take the notes. You, if you're in that position, like you take notes too. Bring your phone out. One of my other stewards, he had the idea that what he does every time he's in a different meeting, he brings up his phone and he emails himself. He composes an email to himself and that way he has a date, a time already attached to it. Yeah. And, you know, if you have like Gmail or something, it's easily searchable. Yeah. You know, so you can email yourself and stuff like that. And then you have really easy notes that you can go back and get to anytime you need to. And I just started doing that myself because, you know, it is, it's even easier than just bringing up a notes app because like, you know, everybody's got email. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they brought him in. They said they were, you know, looking at different times that he said he was, you know, well, they're thinking in their head, oh, it's stealing time. Yeah. Stealing time. Of course. Everything's stealing time. I think of all, I think of the seven or eight people we've had terminated in our building, all but one of them I think have been stealing time. That's what they say. Yeah. That's what they say. And all but two of them have been brought back at this point. None of them have gone to the panel yet. Yeah. So, you know, it's hard to keep them out, you know, just to keep them, you know, put it, you know, to put them on layoff for a couple of weeks or whatever it is. Yeah. That's their way of, you know, laying them off by firing them. Yeah. You know, it's unbelievable. Yeah. So, so has anything happened, you know, with this, this, you know, with this member? So far, so far, no. No. Like they, they issued discipline on a couple of safety infractions because once again, our division manager, who doesn't have anything better to do, is out with a, you know, nice high dollar camera with a telephoto lens. Oh, okay. So he can take pictures and he caught the driver doing some, to be fair, like some questionably safe things, like on picture. And, you know, they gave him warning letters for those. And, you know, when I told him, it's like, hey, you just need to be sure and be safe, you know, watch your eyes, cross your T's, make sure, you know, make sure everything because obviously they're watching you. Yeah. I said, you know, we left the office and I said, I said, he's probably going to be out there watching you again today. Yes, absolutely. So just keep that in mind and like, be sure you're doing everything right. Use your three points of contact, close your door, you know, don't, you know, don't put packages in the, in the, in the cab, you know, just, you know, make sure you make sure you stop at all your stop signs, you know. Yeah. Just watch your eyes and cross your T's because obviously they're watching. Yeah. Yeah. So what's important in the office, so, you know, it's, it's, so the stewards there, and again, you mentioned it too, the member has to be a part of this. They can't just, okay, my steward's going to take care of this. They have to listen and pay attention and want to know what's going on. Yes. You know, and so maybe they might have a question at some point where, you know, you can, you know, take a caucus, you know, step outside and, oh, maybe we want to do this and, you know, be a part of it. I mean, you know, there's two people, you know, just, you know, it's not any more members of management, you know, it's, you know, two and two, but you just step outside. Maybe there's a good idea that, hey, maybe we go this way and whatnot. Yeah. But so it's, it's, it's, it's taking notes. Everyone should be taking notes, you know, just asking your questions. And again, they're the company's the moving party. So you let them speak. They do their questions. Okay. And again, when you're answering, always tell the truth, always tell the truth. Okay. Sometimes less is more though. Yes. You don't want to go into a whole thing because then you start messing, you know, making it worse for yourself. Yeah. You know, you, you answer that, you do that. And, you know, when they're done, you ask your questions and there's a steward, you know, you, you, you have to ask who, when, why, where, you know, all those things. And then you, whatever your years of experience have taught you, you know, what else to ask, you know, was this, you know, was this a straight technology? Did they do it straight through technology? You know, I mean, just saying, depending on the case, you have to ask questions, always about asking the questions. Anytime you're in the office like that and no questions are asked by the steward, that's a problem. Yes. That's a red flag. So I remember out there, you know, you, you, you hold your, you hold your stewards accountable. I mean, you need to, and the stewards need to know what they're doing. And, you know, it, it just takes a lot. Just take notes, you know, listen, pay attention. Don't, you know, go somewhere else in your head, you know, pay attention to what's going on in the room. Every word that management says, you remember, write it down and, you know, you could, you can catch them with things. They make a lot of mistakes. Oh, yeah. So, you know, just, okay. So, yeah, we just wanted to talk about, you know, about harassment that management does and what you can do to, you know, respond to that. And, you know, when you're in the office, you know, with a steward and, you know, what a steward can do and just the basics just to get you by. Yeah. And there's other things, but just the basics, you know, and again, it's important for the staff member to be involved with this, but just listen a lot. It doesn't mean you have to talk, just listen. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. And like you said, you know, less is more, you know, be brief. You know, they're going to ask you questions, you know, yes or no, you know, what were you doing here? I don't remember, but I don't remember is a perfectly valid response. Like you, like we deliver a lot of packages in a day, you know, some days are more stressful than others. And I don't remember specifically what happened. I don't remember who I met at this business, you know, and in this, like it's in the language in this contract that remembering something incorrectly does not constitute dishonesty. It wasn't in the past, but in this one, it is now. And, but that's still like, like I've said in previous podcasts, like it's really easy to dig yourself a bigger hole. Absolutely. I mean, you can absolutely just make it worse for yourself because a lot of times when you're in there, the company doesn't have much information. They could leave there with more information by you saying too much. Yes. So, you know, the member and, and that's where stewards got to know, Hey, we're going to take focus. We're going to step out. Yeah. You know, as I've done that plenty of times as a, you know, as a steward, I'm sure you have, but there's a BA, you know, you, you, you stop it right there. Stop it. And take your time. Everybody's being paid at this point. You're in a hearing. You're being paid. The stewards are being paid. You know, you know, don't worry about your air commence. They knew, they knew what they were doing when they, uh, when they pulled you into that discipline, you're a steward, you've got air commence. If you're the one in discipline, you've got air commence. That's on them. Well, you know, that's, you know, whatever, you know, get back out there, you know, have a conversation three, three, four. I've had, uh, supervisors try to follow me out with caucuses. And I said, and, you know, and I, and I told them, I said, I said, we're not going to have this conversation until you go back into the office and I'm getting paid by the minute. So we can, so I'll, I'll stand here all day. Yeah. That's, that's, that's a union area, wherever you're at with the member, that's a union area. And, you know, you just, they need to, you know, they need to know, Hey, you stay away. You can't be part of this conversation. We're stepping out because you're not a part of this conversation. And, but there is one thing I want to add here. Okay. It's just a general thing. So sometimes when they're harassing, they could say that something happened in, you know, while you're in the, in the hub or whatever, and they'll try to go get other members to write statements. Okay. And, you know, write statements against that member. I'm saying this, I'm going to say this a bunch of times more, never write a statement against another member ever, ever, ever write a statement against another member. Okay. And, you know, the company looks for that a lot too. And that's actually where they'll, you know, they'll go to, and that's, what's going to help them at the, at a panel case. So I'm going to say this again, do not, do not write anything for management. Okay. Against another member ever, ever don't ever do that. And, you know, if anyone could see us both right now, myself and Garfield, there's just a straight face there. There is. And we mean that we're going to say this one more time. I'm going to say this one more time. Don't ever, ever write anything against another member. Ever. I don't care what you think about that guy. That guy could be, or that person could be the biggest piece of shit you ever come across in your entire life. Yeah. You don't write something like that against another member. No, no, you don't. You don't. But, uh, I'm glad we covered this because, uh, it's important. And again, we say this all the time. We're going to keep covering stuff like this because this is important. This is what management's doing more so everywhere. So, uh, glad we covered it. And, uh, myself and Garfield, everyone 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. 767realitycheckatgmail.com. That's 767realitycheckatgmail.com. And remember, strong people stand up for themselves, but the strongest people stand up for others. 767realitycheckatgmail.com.