MOKENA, IL | The Teamsters Local 710 Bargaining Committee for the UPS Work Rules met Thursday and Friday last week to continue negotiations.

The parties reached several tentative agreements and had a lot of open dialogue on a variety of issues, focusing primarily on examples of delay time and how it is paid to the drivers.

“We are holding firm on our proposals and haven’t given anything up,” said Chairman and 710 President Del Schaefer. “We still have a large number of issues that still need to be addressed, but we will not bargain against ourselves, and we are not interested in concessions.”

“We talked at length about delay time, which was set up years ago as a penalty for UPS not having ‘ready lines’ like many freight companies have, where our trucks should be set up for us to hook up and leave. UPS should not be requiring our members to do any extra work that costs our members more time away from their families, which our Agents and Stewards did a great job of articulating across the table.”

Tentative agreements for the Work Rules reached to date include:

• language from the 2008 Work Rules regarding designated areas has been reestablished;
• newly created mileage layover and sleeper team runs will be reviewed and approved by a Business Agent, and any disputes will be referred to the grievance committee; and
• defining that mileage jobs that are filled with hourly feeder work would not apply to split barns (jobs domiciled at Addison, Jeff Street, Palatine, and CACH).

The parties also addressed several housekeeping items, and took time out of negotiating the Work Rules to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding the Sleeper Team Optimization process.

“When the company informed us of what they planned to do regarding changing up some of the Sleeper Teams throughout our 710 buildings, we demanded to bargain over this issue,” said Business Agent Matt Hamilton. “It was extremely important that we got something in writing that protects our drivers in buildings affected by the changes to Sleeper Team Runs as well as help out at CACH.”

Local 710 UPS negotiations are scheduled to resume April 12, to begin discussing the 710 white paper agreement, with the clear understanding that the Work Rules will be revisited and completed during the bargaining process. In total, the Local has received nearly 6,000 proposals from the rank-and-file members.

The Local 710 UPS agreement covers more than 7,000 members throughout Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Stay tuned to Teamsters710.com or follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest bargaining updates.