My only experience with Unions was at UPS and friends that work for the Government. Two different worlds. It's quite easy for the Company to fire a UPS employee if they document their case. I had a friend that got fired just for being stupid. The traffic in the Wash DC metro area is terrible. When I started in 85 my designated travel path to my route had a time allowance of 28 minutes. When I retired it took an hour and ten minutes on a good day, and the time allowance had never been updated. In 85 our Next Day Air packages had to be delivered by noon, now it's 10. The mileage traveled in a day goes into your planned day, more miles, more allotted time. He was having trouble getting his Next Day Airs delivered on time, so instead of just telling his Sup he couldn't get it done, he tried cutting corners to do it. He started using a different travel path, "The Back Way", and got on route 10-15 minutes earlier. So, he started getting his time committed packages done on time. Then he started coming home the back way also. Losing about 3 miles each way, total of 6 miles lost. The computer that plans your day figured he was now being dispatched with less than 8 hours of work, so they gave him more work, and now he had way too much work. In his convoluted sense of logic, he figured he was supposed to be running more miles, so at the end of the day, he just added the 6 miles in his computer board. Everything worked fine for a few weeks, then in an audit they found the mileage in his board didn't match the mileage on his vehicle, and fired him for dishonesty. His case went to arbitration, where the Union proved he had no personal gain by fudging the numbers and was only making service to his customers. The arbitrator agreed he had no personal gain in the case, but also agreed that he had been dishonest, which is a "Cardinal Sin" in our contract, and upheld the termination. So, even though he was a pretty good, hard working employee, he got fired for being stupid. The company feels they have to make any case of dishonesty an example, so it doesn't encourage slackers to use the same excuse, Joe.
. This sort of thing does my head in. Once upon a time, if you owned land you could do with it what you chose. I don't remember ever being asked at an election whether limits should be placed on knocking a tree over or not, some green-tinged government duckhead just made it so with the stroke of a pen. One of the unintended consequences now being that some whiner who didn't like you disturbing their Sunday afternoon with a chainsaw can make a vexatious complaint anonymously to stop you. In a half sane world, the council's response should have been "Pics or it didn't happen" rather than dragging your mate through some stupid investigation.
