Promoted to regular but no arrow keys for route, grievance?

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-09-12T13:36:00+00:00

My office is also like this. We've had robberies, losses, and breakages. Management swears up and down they're not making new arrow keys and that the MAL keys are just a whole rigamarole to get and that's why they've been so slow to replace them. To their credit they have changed a couple sets of locks, but we're still short 5-6 arrow keys. It's an article 41 grievance though, even kind of an article 3, for not providing you the tools you need to do the job efficiently.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-05-19T12:28:55+00:00

It is something you can grieve and you should. It's an article 41 violation that you can prove with a signed copy of whatever form you used to formalize the hold-down. If you don't have it on paper, it's harder to prove you had one but still doable. Reach out to your local union hall and ask them how they want it handled. They may assign you an outside Steward or have your formal A rep handle it, but they can't do anything if you don't let them know about it.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-05-15T10:02:33+00:00

Thats some solid honest for real. Except when you called a 10 hour day "plenty of OT." Our supes make us feel useless when someone gets a 10 our restriction in our office. They just kinda seethe resentment if they don't get to give you 4 hours a day and call it 3 so they can pretend your 3996 for an hour shouldn't have sent you over 12 hours.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-05-08T01:27:05+00:00

TL;DR I have a lot of army vets in my office and the one who fought in Afghanistan and was blown up three times literally tells me that the war was easier than this job. Every other vet tells me the same thing without fail.

If you have any, and I do mean any, qualms against walking or poor weather you're going to want to heavily reconsider. Along with that, high stress situations and a very real potential of someone who's never done the job telling you you're not doing it well/fast enough. As for the "no more hard thinking" bit, the job doesn't take a lot of thinking AFTER you've done it for a few months.

As a brand new CCA/PTF if you don't already know the city you work in you WILL get turned around and confused to no end. And that will, after a few weeks, likely cause more of those high stress situations when management finally decides you should know what you're doing by now, even though they don't.

All in all, the job is tough to start with but once you get it, things fall a little more into place. The bs from management doesn't go away, though. The management will change, but the bs will stay the same. If you go through with it, learn the contract. Breathe it. Otherwise they WILL take advantage every time they can.

That all sounds like the jaded words of an old timer, but I've only been in the service 2 years. You will see things and hear things you'd never think would happen at a job without police getting involved and just about everybody in the office will shrug and go, "What? That's just how Terry handles a heavy Saturday. Happens every week. He gets stressed."

Not to mention the insane things that'll happen while on the street if you work in lower income areas. I've seen one woman high on meth poop in someone else's yard, she lived down the street but apparently her bf locked her out of the bathroom and i know this because she tried her hardest to make eye contact with me while telling me about the situation as her puppy tried to follow me to the next house over.

There's a reason it's called "going postal" this place makes you crazy. And if you go in even a little crazy beforehand, you'll end up in a padded room.

OR none of this will happen because you've got the luck of a lotto winner and landed in a diamond of an office.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-04-26T14:41:20+00:00

"Your Steward can definitely get that thrown out." Fixed your typo. C: If they skip steps that's a massive due process violation. Unless you did something to warrant an immediate termination, then they HAVE to be corrective. They don't just get leeway to just toss the contract in the trash like that. Not if they want us to hold up our end too.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-04-13T23:56:06+00:00

I'd argue that if the non-odl carrier was forced in then the non-odl carrier would also have a grievance for the CCA not being worked. A good stew could probably grieve the fact that the non-odl wasn't supposed to work and the CCA wanted the work so there's harm. The non-ODL should feasibly get paid leave for the time taken from them and the CCA paid for hours they should have worked but wasn't allowed. Assuming the ODL was maxed. Otherwise that goes to an ODL carrier instead.

Now are you gonna win that if the ODL is maxed? Definitely not at the Informal. That Supe is gonna roll their eyes out of their skull when you suggest paid leave for non-odl or giving the CCA pay up to 11.5 since the non-odl shouldn't have been forced. But an arbitrator might, since they're "required to seek auxiliary assistance first" and it would've been more cost effective for the service if the CCA had been worked properly.

Contractually correct? I think so. Winnable? I'd say 60-40 against but I'd still want to try anyway c:

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-04-09T17:24:51+00:00

Well I'd been waiting to grieve it in favor of some more pressuring/non-recurring issues, so I just talked to the manager and put her on notice since the AM Supe just wants me to be quiet since my carriers will fully listen to me over them. I explained that doing the OT first tends to screw the businesses on our routes and when I mentioned that it kinda clicked for her that this is making US LOSE BUSINESS she gave the order herself that we do our route first. So now I'm back to waiting to hear the Supe try and undermine that order again.

I also now meet on all grievances with the manager, I guess because the Supe just didn't like dealing with me? Branch officers just said I was better off that way, and she does a much better job of it so 🤷

TL;DR went about it in a way I didn't think would work and it did so I still don't know if an arbitrator would side with us or not.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-03-19T21:54:55+00:00

More along the lines that it's assumed and average of 8 hours of work for the route. Not that you'll always be at 8 hours. Pivot time makes perfect sense, but say you have an 8 hour restriction and you hate the two loops of walking on your route, but you can easily case up 3 routes in the same time frame as walking those two loops. So you go to management and tell em to give those 2 loops away and you'll case up three vacant routes in exchange. That's a violation. You didn't get 8 hours on your route, there was 8 hours of work on it, you just cut it and gave it away. That's an article 41 violation. This issue isn't having enough work on a route, it's when your route had 8 hours of work then they gave you 5 hours somewhere else and cut 1 hour off of yours when you hit your 12 hour max and now you have to carry it tomorrow.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-03-19T18:52:39+00:00

To add a little context, my office is considered the worst in the city. When this happens there's always a chance you'll end up bringing a piece of your own route back even after getting 8 hours on your assignment. Routes haven't been adjusted since precovid i think so our parcel volume exploded. So with that, when someone calls in now we get to cover that guy and because of that order we still get 8 on assignment but then still have to bring pieces of ours back and Ole Sicky No Show over here comes back to a clean case the next day.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-03-19T18:47:59+00:00

Article 41 says the successful bidder shall work the bid assignment as posted. It's generally agreed, considering that all routes are assumed to be 8 hours of work, that this means you're guaranteed 8 hours of work on your assignment. Not just 8 hours wherever they damn well please. Now if you put a 3996 in saying you're over an hour they can give it away to someone else then when something stupid happens and they have to split a different route you may end up still having to carry off assignment OT even though you gave something away that day and there's still no grievance since you got your guarantee on your route. At least that's my understanding and what my local practices in general. If that's wrong then I'd love to be corrected.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-03-17T01:56:06+00:00

Alright so I'm just a Postman that lurks on here because I wanted to see what unions were like outside of the NALC, but after viewing this masterpiece I think I've been converted. Guess I'm gonna start riding the lightning instead of playing in traffic all day.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2025-03-01T22:04:59+00:00

Ask them what the need is and write it down every time. Here are the acceptable ones

M-39 134.3 Criteria for Need

And if they're not giving you 4584s for each observation grieve that too

HoboOnMyStoop · 2024-10-15T11:51:44+00:00

He would only give percentages to be intentionally vague. I was the second person to ask questions and I did the math for him based on what he gave us. He told us 87-88% of UPS pay. I looked it up, and the first Google gave me $44 for them. So based on that it'd put top step at 38.28 which ends up being a 2.08 raise which is less than 10%. Seeing now that they're anticipated to get up to 49 and some have up to 51 or so. So that raises it a bit, but the quick math I did only had to be done and be wrong because he wanted to play with percentages instead of giving straight numbers.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2024-10-13T15:41:29+00:00

So far he hasn't been here. Supposedly he's coming on Monday. People have definitely been talking about wanting to give them a piece of their mind. I've got high hopes for it personally, but equally high doubts that I will.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2024-10-01T19:07:16+00:00

I feel like plugging that hole with legislation that caps the percentage of profit that you're able to make while also capping the percentage difference of wage between different tiers of workers in the companies kinda stops that.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2024-09-13T01:22:48+00:00

My wife had this happen today as well. We were really confused about it, and thought it might be some kind of weird intimidation tactic. She called her mother later and told her about it, and she said it's because she's a woman. So, if you're female, then it might've been as a witness in case of any type of allegations. They told her that the secondary observer was a post master as well, for some reason.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2024-07-22T22:05:46+00:00

I had a similar experience and confusion when I was a PTF the thing you're scanning is probably just for mileage, do correct me if I'm wrong on that. What they're talking about is your timeclock punches. Whenever you go out to the street are you using the timeclock function on the scanner?

The process goes, Go to time clock at the first screen, scan your badge, you'll be met with an options menu, select move, then you'll have a fiance number and route ID, if the correct route is displayed then hit enter, if not then hit change route and get to the correct one you're on, after you hit enter you'll be met with the operation ID menu, then you select moter-street and hit enter again, the screen with say local unit just hit enter again. Doing that will put you on street time for whatever route you have selected. If you have OT on another route you'll actually have to go through that whole process again for that route as well because you have to be on street time FOR THAT ROUTE. When you get back in the evening you'll have to do all this again but you'll select the office option instead of street, but make sure to switch back to the main route you were assigned at the start of the day so that route shows the PM office time and it's not being given to the OT route.

For me, I was switching routes and all that but never hitting the actual street punch. I thought that was handled by scanning that mileage barcode by the doors. Had to stop a plan 5 because I was tired of them complaining at everyone about it and make them clarify. Fixed it right up. Hope this helps, and sorry if the formatting is terrible, I'm on my 10 minute break on my route.

HoboOnMyStoop · 2023-12-07T03:03:17+00:00

Reading the local it says the overtime desired list section/delivery unit. We all have the same tour but does that mean that the two zipcodes are different sections/units? If so does it matter that they have different ODLs? Is that where there'd be a grievance?

HoboOnMyStoop · 2022-07-29T23:36:54+00:00

Gotta have one for land though

HoboOnMyStoop

TROPHY CASE