Annual Bids

It's so unfair. You have maybe 20 years good service at the place, but new driver's should be afforded the opportunity for the best runs.
That's the only way to make everything fair.
From now on, names will get drawn from a hat.

 

Sometimes the senior guys won't quit, even when they no longer care about doing good work or even showing up most of the time. They've grown around their job like a tree around a nail. I've worked terminals where 30-year men couldn't hold the extra board year round.

At one out-of-state terminal where I was doing a project, I was talking about my home terminal with crews and they pulled up the seniority roster; the oldest man had 60 years seniority and was still working. In a profession with its own federal retirement system so they don't even pay into social security. Retirees pull down 3-5k/month and spouses get another check for half of that. If they both worked under that system, they both get a half check for the others retirement on top of their own.

But some keep holding that cherry job because they can't let go. I sometimes worked the best job in the terminal for weeks because the guy holding it hadn't shown up for years, long-term disabled, but wouldn't let go. Meanwhile younger people raising families were on call.

 

You can’t trust them. Soon it will all be draw of the hat

 

Once a year for us too. Unless a new run is added or removed. You take the gravy (summer driving) with the bad (winter driving).

 

I did concrete in a union shop. We picked start times by seniority. Typically the senior man took the first start.

The contract said everyone's hours were to be within 10%.
Hours worked were posted.
They were usually close, but the same couple guys always had the most.

What got me, I stayed there 3 years, was 15 out of 28, a guy that had 18 years in, and just worked his ### off, dropped from the 7 start to the 13th.

I ask him why, and he said it was the only way he could pull OT, cause the daytime dispatcher would be gone home when his 8 was up, then the batch man would just dispatch us.

And the daytime dispatcher was a little flamer.

But that was about the end for me. 18 years, and an impeccable employee, and the dude had to play games. F that.

 

Every human organisation eventually drops it's own goals in order to protect itself. Unions are no exception. Coming from steel mill country, its sad to see what happened to something that people died for so workers could have humane working conditions, and it's sad to see continuing corporate erosion of those conditions, like at Amazon DC's or Wal-Morgue.The latter is the largest employer in many states the recent degradation of working conditions will affect lots of places. And they already were paying so low that the government was supplying food and health care. Transportation cant be sent to China, so they're trying to automate it.