Reality Check EP 036

Teamster Power 767 Reality Check with Jeff Schoenfeld and Garfield Hooper. Hey everybody, we got a good episode going today. We've got Mike Lohman here, who's a 37-year Teamster with Local 767 and Union Stewart. And we got, of course, as usual, we have Jeff Schoenfeld. How are you all doing today? Good. Great. How are you doing? Nice rainy day here. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Good day to do a podcast, right? Yes, absolutely. So we're going to talk a little bit about some feeder issues. Of course, it's a place where, you know, Jeff and I are a little bit blind to because, you know, we haven't had a lot of experience with feeders. But Mike obviously has been, not only were you a feeder steward, but you were also a feeder business agent for quite a few years. Yes. So what is it, what are the big problems with feeders that you're seeing nowadays so we can get a better idea of what, you know, what things we should be touching on? You know, it's kind of like with every other classification. It's kind of the same old thing, really, because the company, you know, UPS, all the companies are like this. They kind of try to hammer away at the same thing all the time. So with, you know, where 9-5s are always a problem, the language has to get tighter and tighter with package. With feeders, it's subcontracting. It's a lot of seniority issues, especially on the call boards and, you know, the bidding and bumping, especially because a lot of the stuff going on recently with the layoffs, you know, guys getting laid off and then whether or not they come back up or where they go to when they get laid off with the off the streets. You know, those are kind of a lot of the big issues. But the subcontracting is always a problem because the company is allowed to subcontract by the contract a certain amount. I mean, if everybody's working. But see, we're in this position now where we have laid off seniority feeder drivers. There shouldn't be any contractors working, even though there are provisions in the contract to say that the bottom percentage could be laid. But, you know, in my mind, none should be – no feeder driver should be laid off if there's a single subcontractor running. Yeah. Yeah, that should be something in the – that should be, you know, something that they'll uphold by the contract. Like, hey, you know, we shouldn't be laying off teamsters and just bringing people out to – it should be a given. Like, if it's not specifically spelled out, maybe it should be. Right. Yeah, and I'm not sure what the other buildings are doing right now. Oh, go ahead, Jeff. No, no, I just want to say, yeah, no, keep going. Say, you know, what's – Oh, the Dallas building – yeah, I'm not there because I'm on the sleeper team all the time, but I don't hear a lot of it in Dallas. I don't know if it's – Mesquite was always the worst subcontractor, and I think Arlington too. Yeah. For those loads. Now, when they come from somewhere else, luckily, the language was changed back in the national to where you could grieve it if you're on the receiving end of a subcontractor. That was actually taken out for two contracts, about three contracts ago. So the one before this, 2020 – what was that, a 2018 contract? 18, yeah. Yeah. And that was when they put that back in there where you could grieve it if you're on the receiving end, because we used to – when I was an agent, we used to – when they took that language out, it got frustrating because they would subcontract. I don't know what kind of problems they were having in Lenexa, Kansas, and they would come to Mesquite constantly, and the company would go, ha-ha, well, they have to grieve it up there, and then, you know – Yeah. Well – Find somebody up there and see if they wanted to get – you know, and it just didn't work. We had a steward out of service for a while back then when his contract had got really bad. He was on workers' comp, so the local actually paid him for three or four hours a day or whatever it was. He sat out at the Mesquite Gate in a lawn chair at the entrance. This is the kind of solutions you do. He sat at the entrance with a notepad and wrote down every trailer, every tractor that came out of there, the shining wheels, every subcontract. That's what I had him doing as the agent, because, you know – And then – He was a long-time steward, and, you know, he was out on workers' comp and needed a little extra money, so, you know, they could – you know, he could get that bounty on those. But, yeah. So those are the solutions. Yeah. So – Yeah. Let me ask you a question. So a lot of the subcontracting grievances, they're filed, and I noticed – you know, what I'm hearing is a lot of them are being lost. So what's the – I mean, what's the proper thing that, you know – how do you get where you – where you win a subcontracting grievance? Like, what do you need to put on there? What do the members need to know they need to put on there? Well, you'd need a trailer number, and hopefully inbound and outbound – or the time, at least – trailer number. If you happen to be – buy one that drops it, you can tell where that came from. You know, you can put that on there. The company helps. But as long as you've got the trailer number and the time it came in or left, there should be a way for the – the agent should look that up. The company has an expedited list they use, and that's an easy thing to request from the company. It's just a matter of work to pry it out of them, even if you believe that they're not giving you the information. I used to get it. There was a – whenever the subcontracting got bad, you'd do – get the expedited list and go through that list and find that trailer, and you can see where it went to and came from. But, you know, the company keeps track of all this stuff. And, you know, that's sort of the agent's job, or – you know, because they aren't going to give that information to the steward usually. Yeah. And any time there was guys that would call me and say – guys and gals that would call me and say, hey, I've been late. I only worked three days this week, but I've seen subcontractors. Well, what day did you not work? Or I'd give them a section of that week and say, pick one here that you could have done and file a grievance on it. So it's kind of two-way. The local has to be involved and the member. Yeah. Yeah. You can't just sit in the office and go, oh, you didn't write everything on your agreement. Sorry. Denied. You know, members need the education and the – you know, that's the job of the agent and the steward is to drag people along kicking and screaming to fight the company. Even if you have to drag them kicking and screaming, once they win a couple times, they realize, oh, I can do this. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, that makes – that makes sense. That, you know, part of the state of affairs right now. Anyway, I think we're going into the day. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. But, you know, so does it matter – and this is – I'm asking this because I just don't know. Is it a matter of how many hours you have left on DOT? How does that work? So, you know, when you file. Yeah. Yeah. You would have to have the hours available. Okay. So, a steward sitting there or somebody else could file on behalf of another member. Okay. That they know is laid off. Yeah. You have to have the hours available. Yeah. It's a replacement. It's not like supervisor's working where it's a penalty. Hey, I see a supervisor working. No matter if you're working or not, you still get paid for it. Okay. As long as it is, you have to have suffered a loss. Yeah. I, myself, have done that a couple of times when they've used – when they were using – when they first started laying off, they were pulling people from other buildings and using them in our building as drivers. And I was like, you've got to use our layoff people first before you're calling people from other buildings. So, I filed a couple of big grievances to get a lot of the people laid off paid. Of course, for some reason, the company took a stance that they weren't going to pay everybody. They said that they were just going to pay, like, the top two. And I'm like, well, you've got three people from other buildings. Like, I'll do the math. I'll divide it up. But all of these guys deserve the opportunity to work. Right. You didn't give them that opportunity. You didn't call anybody. Maybe the person at the top wasn't going to be available that day. So, the next person down. So, like, you've made this decision. Like, you need to cut checks for all of them as far as I'm concerned. I did the math and edited it all up and split it all between all of them. But they didn't want to settle it. Or maybe the… Well, they're always going to try to horse trade a little bit. It's just whether or not you have the backing and you can go far enough with it to make them not do that. I mean, you know, that stuff started, at least to my knowledge, back when, like, there was a lot of supervisors working. I'm sure there still is. And the grievances were vague, let's say. You know, Janie worked here from one to three, but it was an EREG driver and they couldn't tell because they just came by. You know, it worked the whole shift. But the supervisor would say, well, no, I didn't. I just happened to be there when the guy was driving by. Huh? Yep. And you're like, no. So, you've got to kind of… Without an eyewitness for the whole time, that's where sort of, you know, I guess you'd call it horse trading. I guess that's not a nice word for it. Whatever it is, where you have to come to a compromise and say, okay, well, I guess we can't prove the whole shift she was up there working. But there's no way she was only up there just when a guy happened to be driving by in an EREG. Yeah. Let's come to the middle somewhere. But if it's a seniority violation like that or subcontracting, there were people laid off with hours available, package car with people laid off and people coming from other buildings, that's a direct seniority violation. Yep. They're black and white. And you've got time cards. Either the person worked or they didn't. Yep. And they should make a difference in pay, whatever they got in the hub or not. It shouldn't be… Yeah. There is no gray area. There is gray area in a lot of contract disputes, but there's not in straight up seniority disputes, payroll. There's really not a lot of black and white there. You either worked or you didn't, or you get paid what you're supposed to get paid, or you didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you've got to be able to go after the company with those kind of things. And, you know, honestly, they end up respecting that. And you don't have to cower from them if they, you know… Absolutely. You know, this isn't going to a car dealer and trying to, you know, I guess I do have to pay MSRP. No. You know, we're the teamsters here. You know, just because we put down our baseball bats and picked up briefcases doesn't mean we can't take care of business. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. No, we appreciate that. We just, you know, we wanted some clarification on that, you know, and we appreciate it, Mike, as always, getting that, you know, the little things behind it. And, of course, like anything else, you've got to have the backing of your local and VA's doing what they have to. But, you know, you give us a little insight. We appreciate that. Right. The bottom line on the self-contact, and let me interrupt you just to clear that up, is that's a pretty straightforward grievance. Yeah. Somebody came in and I wasn't working. They came from, you know, or they took one out to San Antonio. I was staying in their hub. Hell, probably in the hub loading that trailer. Yeah. And that guy just drove off with it. It's pretty black and white. There's not a lot of wiggle room. I agree. I mean, I definitely agree on that. I don't know why it doesn't end up like that, but, you know, it's… Right. That's definitely it. It's black and white. They work. That's it. So, with the rail, I guess I was thinking earlier, maybe I was thinking too hard about it, but it just reminded me, I talked about, really, if anybody's laid off, they shouldn't be self-contracting. I was getting confused with the TOSC language, which is the Trailer On Flat Car, which is the rail. The rail language does say they can't use, they can still use the rail if someone with three years or less is laid off. Yeah. So, because otherwise, like these people that are laid off now, a lot of them do have three years and less. They'd have to shut down putting the stuff on the rail. Yeah. I guess it was negotiated at some time that, well, they have to keep their contracts with the rail or the rail, you know, boots them off and doesn't give them room. I don't know where that came from. Probably that. Yeah. But that's where the… If you have one person laid off, there shouldn't be a contractor leaving your yard. I mean, they could run them around the yard and yard shifters have back… go back to shifter drivers who would be full-timers, like they have in a lot of the areas and a lot of the closed shop states without as many part-timers. They have yard people who are full-time. It was a big job. And then if something came up like that, oh, crap, we got to have somebody cover this Austin real quick. They jump off the shifter, they put a part-timer in the shifter, and then the full-time driver would go. It was really good flexibility. I don't know why the company, maybe because they didn't like paying the full-time yard shifter. Maybe they thought it was too good of a job, you know, for the drivers to manage that. Well, he likes it too much. Let's try to get rid of that job. Yeah. But a lot of flexibility for the company. It really was. Yeah. And it's a safety thing. It's also for a lot of things at this company. It seems like the S doesn't really stand for service anymore. But when you have that backup, you know, you're able to service the customer at a moment's notice. When you have that full-time backup, it's capable of getting on the road and going immediately right there from the building. And, you know, they don't want to – they're not worried about that anymore. At least they're not as much as they used to. And it's one of our own. It's not someone from up the street. It's not a contractor. So, I mean, most importantly, and I just – that fight just – I mean, that needs to – it just – we need that fight. There's just not enough of it. So, but that's, you know, that's one thing. But, well, so that's our episode for today. I appreciate Mike Lohman for coming on today. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mike. Keep it up. Absolutely. The power in the Teamsters. Absolutely. You got it, Mike. You take care. 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, 767 realitycheck at gmail.com. That's 767 realitycheck at gmail.com. And remember, strong people stand up for themselves, but the strongest people stand up for others.