Do you have kids? Does his neighbor have kids? Maybe he has sensitive plants and the acidity will kill them. It doesn't matter. Some rando is pissing on his property. It isn't a huge deal, but it is unpleasant.
If someone is under so much pressure at work that they have to piss in my yard, then they're having a far worse day than me. As far as I'm concerned, they can piss anywhere they damned well like.
The point of saying that the UPS driver was pissing in his bushes was that the UPS driver doesn't have time to take a restroom break and has to grab the best opportunity he can find.
It's not about the property owner's feelings. However, even that can be viewed as an externality that UPS is pushing onto third parties.
Even if he doesn't care (I personally wouldn't), doesn't change the fact that the guy couldn't even take a proper bathroom break because of arbitrary time constraints.
No, I think it's downvoted because it's a made up story. It's easy to make up stories on the internet that invoke the feels, much harder to verify that they are true.
Stop trying to make this about "unions vs no unions."
Edit: No proof has been supplied this happened to an actual UPS employee, nor has there been any official statement by the union that this is actually something that has happened. Therefore, this is fake news until proven otherwise.
There's literally a comment on this thread where someone states that this actually happened. And a similar story, though involving bushes. Ergo, not made up.
Because not all comments here are people making up stories / sharing anecdotes, and it's relatively easy for me to ignore them. I was merely answering GP's question about why it was being downvoted.
You must be browsing a different HN than I am. On my HN, there's a lot of support for unions, including voices advocating for software developers to unionize while we're still in position of power over employers.
I don't see that at all. It's very right wing economically and anti-labor.
I'm guessing most of HN is Engineers making loads of money who don't have to think about struggling in any sense when it's a reality that 78% of people in USA are living paycheck to paycheck.
Edit: I even see the HN anti-union comment flagged because again, HN is anti-union and anti-labor.
Again, we must be living in alternate universes, which somehow collided and started mixing in this HN thread. The HN in my universe has plenty of pro-labor and left-wing comments as well.
Or maybe it's a timezone thing? I'm in Europe, I tend to browse HN during our days and evenings. Maybe the threads visited by most Americans show up as I go to sleep, and disappear from the front page before I wake up?
Ehhh, I still see lots of irrational hatred for unions. There is starting to be more support for labor, but this is still primarily a startup forum, so capital is still idolized.
> It's downvoted because the users of hackernews have an irrational hatred for unions, so anything that justifies having/forming a union is downvoted
Of course, unions are a barrier to "disruption" and there's a lot of anti-union propaganda floating around, a lot based on selective examples of unions' worst behavior.
Personally, I think unions should be stronger, but maybe we need to experiment different models for unionization and employee organization.
It’s downvoted because it’s a classic story that always seems to come up whenever these kind of union articles appear.
Want to emphasize how bad workers have it? Just tell people they’re pissing in bottles!
The reality is no, workers aren’t pissing in bottles. At least not on a regular basis anyway, and not because they were forced. If they were, it means they’ve been drinking tons of water. But how would they have time to drink so much water if they supposedly don’t even have time to take a bathroom break?
Awareness of your own bodily functions is just a part of life. One that people take for granted, until it puts them in a difficult situation. There was once a time on my way to work I got stuck in a bad traffic jam and had to shit really bad. Eventually, there was a point where I realized I wasn’t going to make it and started rummaging through the backseat for any kind of bag.
>But how would they have time to drink so much water if they supposedly don’t even have time to take a bathroom break?
What? Those are two distinct and not comparable things. Besides, being a driver can be pretty hefty labour and you'd be stupid not to be drinking lots of water while you work.
You can drink water while driving. Awareness of your bodily functions is a part of life and so is empathy and understanding that your employees will need bathroom breaks while working.
It's a classic story for UPS drivers because it's true, though it's actually more of a problem for FedEx drivers than UPS drivers.
And of course they're not pissing in bottles every day. The problem is that they don't have the time to take a rest break due to the unrealistic volumes of deliveries each driver is expected to make regardless of traffic, weather, or other conditions.
Exactly, the bottles are a clear and understandable symptom (literal, figurative, or somewhere inbetween) not the sickness they are trying to highlight.
The reality is no, workers aren’t pissing in bottles.
Fifteen seconds on Google turned up an unofficial forum for UPS workers. Pissing in bottles appears to be extremely common. From perusing a few threads on the topic, the zeitgeist appeared to be "everyone does it, but if you leave your piss bottles in the truck after your shift then you're an asshole".
Perhaps they feel an undue pressure to do something like this. There are some people in these threads that definitely find it out of the norm. [0] It very well could be people who simply don't stand up for themselves particularly well. I find it really difficult to believe that they lack the time/ability to use a gas station bathroom. Some routes may not have public restrooms, but I'd be willing to bet these are few and far between. They would most likely be rural routes, where you could get some privacy much more easily anyway.
It is also possible people actually prefer to do this rather than stopping frequently and dealing with the hassle of finding a place, parking, running the risk of it being a single restroom and already being occupied.
I'm not sure if you've ever done physical labour, but you need to keep yourself hydrated over an 8 hour shift. Especially if you're working in 90 degree weather.
I downvoted because it's generally not productive to make context-light comments of the form, "There exists one grievance that one side has." It just encourages the outrage culture and further unproductive comments.
I've heard the same story during strikes over here by public service workers. It's a story designed to engender sympathy from a public most of whom in reality have inferior pay and conditions to the strikers.
The public service are the last unionised workers in Britain and are about the only people who ever go on strike any more.
I hate this sort of "there are other people worse off" dismissal when workers stand up for themselves. Change has to start somewhere, and other people being worse off is never a reason to not demand better conditions.
The thing about the public service is that everyone is an employee. Even the top boss is. It's the last place where change will come from. With their unsackability and final salary linked pension schemes they are completely out of touch with a country where zero hours contracts have become normal while at the same time its the taxes of those people who prop up their generally unproductive jobs.
Are you saying that people in other fields, or office jobs, need to piss and shit themselves because they don't have the time to walk to the restroom located a few doors down the hallway?
Because we have at least 2 reports of it happening to UPS employees on this (currently very short) thread. Extrapolating the UPS rate of self-soiling to the entire economy, there should be literally thousands of people just pissing and shitting themselves at work every day.
But there aren't. Because most people work in jobs that let them take restroom breaks frequently enough that they don't need to soil themselves, and have access to a restroom during those breaks so that they can actually do so. UPS drivers don't: they may not have access to restroom facilities when they actually need to use them.
I doubt there will ever be an official metric, so it's your word against theirs.
I, for one, find the narrative that "they're just making it up so they can extort their employer for more money" to be less believable than than simply considering that it's the truth.
Furthermore, it was pointed out earlier in this thread that employees discuss engaging in this behavior _amongst themselves_. If it is, in fact, completely untrue, you would have to add "widespread conspiracy" to your acceptable narrative. (My reasoning being that there's far less incentive to lie to a co-worker than to a boss; only the boss can affect change. The notion that 260k low level employees have banded together to promote a lie, including amongst themselves, is so unlikely I'd call it laughable.)
I'm not saying that they are making it up but if it maybe happened once it's going to get put out there as the norm.
I worked in a job once where the supervisors had their lair in a room just behind my back. They spent half their time moaning, as they sat around drinking tea all day. "Our conditions are worse than the cleaners!" was a memorable quote that's stuck in my head. Edit to add: they were govt employed, we weren't.
what would give those reports a lot more weight in my eyes would be if they were from ex-employees of the USPS. People who'd left the job for something else through being forced to pee in a bottle. It's ridiculous, where do taxi drivers pee? Where do ice cream sellers and sandwich board wearers and a whole host of other employees?
Ever see those liquid filled milk jugs along the side of the road when public restrooms are scarce. Maybe there's a bad milk conspiracy nobody knows about?
Some guys in the military do it when on deployment, but that is usually because they are too lazy to walk the 50ft at night to the bathroom outside. Source: I was in the US military.
The story since the recovery has been one of increased output but no growth in wages. Something different is going on whereby workers don't seem to be able to bargain for more. Whether that's due to globalisation or being replaced by robots it's undoubtedly the case in the UK that society is becoming less equal. About the only group who are protected from this are those in Government jobs. Everyone else is doing less well apart from those at the very top end of society who seem to be doing better than ever.
Like I said, that sounds like something the workers need to take up with their employers. The solution in this case is never to try to tear other workers down and to attack them for having something, it's always to ask your own employer why you don't have it.
I am not attacking public server workers as a way of promoting better wages for private sector workers.
Also getting a raise is not ALWAYS as simple as asking your boss for one, especially in an era of globalisation and robotics. They even have a word for the phenomenon, redundancy. All that's keeping you from the dole queue may be the fact that in real terms, you're costing less year on year because your wages are remaining stagnant.
I have a family member who drives for UPS. He shit himself while driving because he wasn't allowed to stop outside of assigned breaks. They also tried to fire him because he had to take off for cancer surgery (minor melanoma). He tells some horror stories.
This is a job that pays about $35/hr which is what the union helped them negotiate. They'd rather piss in bottles than lose $35 a day on an hour long break. Their union won't force an hour long unpaid break, so the drivers just do their own thing on the clock.
The union also fights against CDL requirements for better/safer drivers and allows excessive overtime because it pays out so much.
Its not a good union by certain measures, like a lot of big unions focused on low/no skill labor it can help raise salaries (and raise product cost) but also not be helpful in anything they think 'hurts' workers like mandatory unpaid breaks, CDL requirements, background/credit checks, etc.
Modern unions have little in common with the unions of old that existed before we had any real safety regulations and far less labor regulation. Now they exist almost solely to return as much financial value as possible (wages) for the investment (dues).
>The union also fights against CDL requirements for better/safer drivers and allows excessive overtime because it pays out so much.
Considering the work pattern of last mile delivery drivers compared to OTR truckers and how rarely both groups fall asleep at the wheel and crash into things this doesn't bother me in the slightest. Being subject to all the regulatory overhead that goes with a CDL would be bad for, the workers, the employers and anyone buying their services. It's not like UPS drivers are falling asleep at the wheel and running over little old ladies left and right. There's no negative externality that can be eliminated by regulating delivery drivers.
They're driving a big honking vehicle. That usually requires a CDL. If the CDL requirement was dropped, pedestrian fatalities would rise. This is a surety.
If you're implying credit checks don't hurt workers, you can GFY. Medical bankruptcy is real in the US and being unable to obtain employment because you were sick and couldn't afford a $300,000 bill is asinine.
Ultra intense competition. The companies do what they need to do to stay alive and satisfy their shareholders. Fedex and Amazon are fierce competitors for UPS.
Amazon in particular has incredible power since they can decide what they themselves will ship, and what to send to others to ship. This allows them to self-ship lightweight, regular sized packages, which are the most profitable things to ship, and send the harder to ship items to carriers. It is a brilliant form of arbitrage.
On top of that all of the major parcel companies are at least partially competing with a giant, government subsidized entity (the post office).
We are coming off of a long recession, meaning the workers themselves have been grateful just to have job. Long recessions breed labor abuse, because the workforce is willing to accept it.
Lots of reasons. I am sure it is technically unlawful to make an employee shit him or herself, but what is allowed is not the driving factor here.
A few years back our UPS driver arrived with our packages but could not scan them because his scanner is forcibly disabled during assigned breaks. So he hung out for about 10 minutes and expressed annoyance that he was being controlled. Perhaps they now have flexibility as to when their assigned break occurs.
I did a holiday stent with them while I was in university.
I was a package runner, so I would take the packages from the truck to the house, while the driver could organize everything and get things ready for the next few houses.
The worst part was the super short breaks. We would stop for maybe 5-8 minutes, piss, and grab food to go.
There were a few things from my experience there that stick out in my mind:
- There was this weird implied situation with running. It was iterated to me multiple times that UPS does not encourage me to run, but I needed to do everything I could to efficiently get the package to the house and back. So they were basically telling us to run, even though they couldn't specifically say it.
- On my route one day, there was a van following us and stealing packages that we were dropping off. We had no idea until they scared the shit out of some poor lady, who ended up calling customer support. Apparently, she saw me, and even motioned for me to leave the package... but I never saw her- I just dropped it off. When she went to the door to get it, the thieves were taking it off her porch. I'm glad she said she motioned me to leave it, because if not, UPS wanted to hold me personally responsible for the loss.
- We had to pick up packages from a handful of UPS stores in the area. We even had a bigger truck that day to hold the capacity. There was zero organization to it, it was just throw everything that could fit on the truck. We had it filled to the TOP, but we still had to do some deliveries. I had no idea where to find the packages, because they got all mixed up... So we ended up crushing some packages because we had to climb the mountain of boxes to find them. I always felt bad about that day because I stepped on a styrofoam box of omaha steaks and completely destroyed it, but we delivered it anyways.
Things we're normally pretty well organized, except that day that we had to pick up everything. We moved all the deliveries to the front, but we had WAY more pickups than the driver expected and that's how they got mixed up. Plus other people were helping load it up and moved things around to fit better. It wasn't common for things to get that out-of-place.
> use empty water bottles to piss in because they don't have time to go elsewhere
Would this be less bad if they supplied one of those bottles that is specifically for that purpose? And what is so bad about that anyway? What if there was a porta potty similar to what is on boats (or rv's) in the truck? Would you feel the same way?
After all at least where I am located (and elsewhere) they are competing with the low end labor which delivers for Amazon for less cost. And those employees are driven pretty hard (and get paid less with less benefits).
UPS driver is not a leisurely take your time type of job. It never has been. They have always hustled in any way they could (and I remember them from the 70's).
In my mind, no. It's extremely undignified. UPS needs to hire more drivers if they are pushing people to that kind of limit, where stopping to use an actual toilet is considered a luxury.
"That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading?"
YES.
"Astronauts do it too."
Astronauts are in an entirely different environment, where they have nothing but a thin suit separating them from the lifeless vacuum of space. Not at all comparable to delivering packages.
"It's not like they are cleaning out sewers in Mumbai."
"Someone else has it worse" is never a justification or an argument.
> "That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading?"
>
> YES.
You piss in bottles on the job because the job demands it (never explicitly, of course). When you're poor, working poor, a manual laborer, etc... The power dynamics at these levels are so grossly disproportionate that you don't have a seat in the room, let alone at the table. You have to piss outside of your break times? Deal with it. Oh, you didn't get a break? Sorry, here's your last pay check, don't come back here tomorrow. That may be the extreme end of it, mostly experienced in the construction business (where I really saw the worst of it), but it wasn't far from the truth when I worked in warehouses loading trucks or in a glass plant, either. And, maybe it's a vastly different experience in a not-at-will state, maybe it's changed dramatically since the early 2000s, I wouldn't know but I really doubt it.
This pissing in bottles thing is just part and parcel for manual laborers and, speaking from personal experience, I never once found it degrading. In the 8 or so years that I spent working manual labor full-time I'm not aware of any of my co-workers who did, either.
Absolutely everything in your post sounds horrible. There is absolutely no justification for it, none. There is zero reason whatsoever that employers cannot allow people breaks.
> There is zero reason whatsoever that employers cannot allow people breaks.
I agree with you here, completely, but it's the world some people live in. And, I don't think telling people that the behavior they are forced to engage in frequently, as a result of the bankrupt power structures they have to operate in, is degrading, is going to help them at all.
> everything in your post sounds horrible.
To you, and i'm sure to many others, as well, maybe even most. That doesn't mean it translates to the folks who live these lives.
> There is absolutely no justification for it, none.
Also maybe they dont care. When you make it clear that you aren’t going to share the wealth with your frontline employees. They probably don’t care what your wealth looks like.
I grew up with many union democrats around my father. A lot of them had the opinion this is a multiple million person metro if you won’t spread your gains then die off and someone else will move in.
I was working for UPS during that strike. We didn't lose a lot of drivers from what I recall because they had relatively nice hourly wages to come back to and could weather the storm a bit.
We lost almost the entire load/unload staff though. The grunts in the truck at 12am unloading semi-truck after semi-truck worth of boxes. They were only getting ~$8/hr and couldn't afford to be out for 2 weeks. Out of 12 guys on the team I supervised I think 2 came back.
Short term it might not affect them, but long term it could reduce the number of employees UPS needs, and they might not be able to get hired on at FedEx.
And fedex will gladly go on a hiring spree to meet the new demand! Its not like they have dormant capacity to just swallow a permanent 10% bump in packages.
A strike authorization is common during negotiations to put pressure on the company, said UPS spokesman Glenn Zaccara. Even with that, the union can’t go on strike until after the current contract expires on July 31.
So, they still have a bit of time to agree on terms.
Unemployment isn't as low as you may think, the number reported only includes those still actively looking for work. Anyone who has given up on the prospect of finding a job won't be counted.
That said, unemployment _seems_ low, so it may add pressure to their strike.
If you aren't actively looking for work and you don't have a job why should this count as unemployment? This means they aren't collecting unemployment from their state, correct? If they are disabled (mentally/physically) enough to not be able to work, that is another category.
Whenever I hear/read this type of reply my answer is: so what? Why should they be counted as unemployed when they clearly are able but just aren't actively looking.
If they aren't actively looking because they're taken care of by some other means and are content with their lives, that's one thing. If they aren't actively looking because they have given up hope of finding a job, and are seething with discontent, that's another thing. Depending on which thing, and how many people are feeling it, there may be nothing to worry about, or an incipient revolution. That's my answer for 'so what?'
Yes. The BLS only looks at an estimate of their number, it doesn't examine their motives, circumstances, or level of discouragement. I seek to emphasize that all of those things matter.
I guess, also stay at home parents as well as baby boomers who got laid off and can maybe eek by til they collect retirement would be in this category too.
Because it depends on what you're really looking for. There are plenty of ways to opt out of the job market, most of which won't put you on the unemployment list. Unemployment rate matters if you're interested in how many people are in a particular, very specific, transition period between (legal) jobs. For this discussion, I suppose a better metric would be labour force participation rate.
Having observed the use of unemployment numbers for political reasons over the years, my opinion is that this "stopped actively looking" idea is used when there is not another valid criticism of the state of the economy available and the speaker still wishes to cast shade.
Ok, this seems plausible as to why that metric is counted by BLS separately. Politicians change unemployment coverage and stop counting people that move off unemployment funds to a different category, looks like they did something.
>Anyone who has given up on the prospect of finding a job won't be counted.
That's fine, it isn't like Companies are pounding on the door asking them to get back to work, so for the purposes of negotiating, the unemployment is low.
Because not everyone who isn't looking for work wouldn't want it. Among those who aren't looking for work would be the retired, students, stay at home parents, the disabled, etc.
Without basic income guarantee it is never labor's market -- labor undersold = labor starves, labor underbought = capital experiences temporary inconvenience.
Amazon packages are primarily delivered by USPS on Sunday (partly for laughs, and partly because the GOP wants to run the USPS into the ground so they can privatize it).
Which at that point, not only would UPS Management would have a legitimate grievance, so would Amazon and everyone shipping holiday items. That strike would be over in minutes.
After UPS decided no left turns they started showing up at 4pm at my dads work. They stopped using UPS for all shipments after that. Here at my office UPS almost always shows up at 4:50pm or even 5pm on the dot to deliver something. Fedex meanwhile stops by around 10-1pm. USPS marks my packages as delivered or available for pickup and then delivers it the next day or leaves it sitting outside the locked office doors on a saturday or sunday...
They've been minimized since the 70s, but the decision to exclusively use right turns was reversed shortly after it was widely publicized. They make left turns, when they make sense, again.
> Here at my office UPS almost always shows up at 4:50pm or even 5pm on the dot to deliver something. Fedex meanwhile stops by around 10-1pm.
This is purely a function of your location, the nearest warehouse locations, and local delivery routes. At my house Fedex usually shows up around 6-8pm, and UPS around noon.
I've also never had the experience you describe of UPS packages being marked delivered when they weren't. (Edit: sorry, misread. Nor USPS, though, for what it's worth.)
I have had a Fedex driver leave a door tag and claim I wasn't home multiple days in a row, when they hadn't even rung the doorbell. That's one individual driver and doesn't necessarily reflect on the business, though.
We work in a busy business park, 10 minutes from the warehouse, where UPS freight comes by and loads an 18 wheeler every day full of packages from a neighbor. They used to arrive at 2-3pm daily but we are now their seemingly last stop. Dropping packages off at 5pm to a business just doesn't work.
All of my examples are for work locations. Residential is always a shit show, but business customers should be held to a higher standard considering they have operating hours that are standard.
"I've also never had the experience you describe of UPS packages being marked delivered when they weren't."
Parent said USPS did that, not UPS.
I've also experienced USPS doing that, and then been very worried for 24 hours until they actually delivered, assuming that had someone stolen my package from the front yard.
I don't understand what's with this weird hate of the working class asking for better conditions on HN?
Isn't this essentially how a capitalist economy should function? If companies look at people as capital, then this capital can look at the company as their capital and try to control it by withholding capital from the company.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadI can't really imagine myself caring.
It's not about the property owner's feelings. However, even that can be viewed as an externality that UPS is pushing onto third parties.
Stop trying to make this about "unions vs no unions."
Edit: No proof has been supplied this happened to an actual UPS employee, nor has there been any official statement by the union that this is actually something that has happened. Therefore, this is fake news until proven otherwise.
I'm guessing most of HN is Engineers making loads of money who don't have to think about struggling in any sense when it's a reality that 78% of people in USA are living paycheck to paycheck.
Edit: I even see the HN anti-union comment flagged because again, HN is anti-union and anti-labor.
Or maybe it's a timezone thing? I'm in Europe, I tend to browse HN during our days and evenings. Maybe the threads visited by most Americans show up as I go to sleep, and disappear from the front page before I wake up?
Of course, unions are a barrier to "disruption" and there's a lot of anti-union propaganda floating around, a lot based on selective examples of unions' worst behavior.
Personally, I think unions should be stronger, but maybe we need to experiment different models for unionization and employee organization.
Want to emphasize how bad workers have it? Just tell people they’re pissing in bottles!
The reality is no, workers aren’t pissing in bottles. At least not on a regular basis anyway, and not because they were forced. If they were, it means they’ve been drinking tons of water. But how would they have time to drink so much water if they supposedly don’t even have time to take a bathroom break?
Awareness of your own bodily functions is just a part of life. One that people take for granted, until it puts them in a difficult situation. There was once a time on my way to work I got stuck in a bad traffic jam and had to shit really bad. Eventually, there was a point where I realized I wasn’t going to make it and started rummaging through the backseat for any kind of bag.
You can drink water and drive at the same time.
What? Those are two distinct and not comparable things. Besides, being a driver can be pretty hefty labour and you'd be stupid not to be drinking lots of water while you work.
And of course they're not pissing in bottles every day. The problem is that they don't have the time to take a rest break due to the unrealistic volumes of deliveries each driver is expected to make regardless of traffic, weather, or other conditions.
Fifteen seconds on Google turned up an unofficial forum for UPS workers. Pissing in bottles appears to be extremely common. From perusing a few threads on the topic, the zeitgeist appeared to be "everyone does it, but if you leave your piss bottles in the truck after your shift then you're an asshole".
https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/what-do-you-do-w...
https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles-in...
https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles-le...
https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36...
It is also possible people actually prefer to do this rather than stopping frequently and dealing with the hassle of finding a place, parking, running the risk of it being a single restroom and already being occupied.
[0] https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/what-do-you-do-w...
The public service are the last unionised workers in Britain and are about the only people who ever go on strike any more.
Because we have at least 2 reports of it happening to UPS employees on this (currently very short) thread. Extrapolating the UPS rate of self-soiling to the entire economy, there should be literally thousands of people just pissing and shitting themselves at work every day.
But there aren't. Because most people work in jobs that let them take restroom breaks frequently enough that they don't need to soil themselves, and have access to a restroom during those breaks so that they can actually do so. UPS drivers don't: they may not have access to restroom facilities when they actually need to use them.
I doubt there will ever be an official metric, so it's your word against theirs.
I, for one, find the narrative that "they're just making it up so they can extort their employer for more money" to be less believable than than simply considering that it's the truth.
Furthermore, it was pointed out earlier in this thread that employees discuss engaging in this behavior _amongst themselves_. If it is, in fact, completely untrue, you would have to add "widespread conspiracy" to your acceptable narrative. (My reasoning being that there's far less incentive to lie to a co-worker than to a boss; only the boss can affect change. The notion that 260k low level employees have banded together to promote a lie, including amongst themselves, is so unlikely I'd call it laughable.)
According to employees, it happens frequently.
I extend my arguemets about whether or not the behavior occurred (at all) to the frequency of the behavior: either it's a lie or it's not.
Once again, seems to me like it's not.
That sounds like the public needs to take that up with their employers.
The union also fights against CDL requirements for better/safer drivers and allows excessive overtime because it pays out so much.
Its not a good union by certain measures, like a lot of big unions focused on low/no skill labor it can help raise salaries (and raise product cost) but also not be helpful in anything they think 'hurts' workers like mandatory unpaid breaks, CDL requirements, background/credit checks, etc.
Modern unions have little in common with the unions of old that existed before we had any real safety regulations and far less labor regulation. Now they exist almost solely to return as much financial value as possible (wages) for the investment (dues).
Considering the work pattern of last mile delivery drivers compared to OTR truckers and how rarely both groups fall asleep at the wheel and crash into things this doesn't bother me in the slightest. Being subject to all the regulatory overhead that goes with a CDL would be bad for, the workers, the employers and anyone buying their services. It's not like UPS drivers are falling asleep at the wheel and running over little old ladies left and right. There's no negative externality that can be eliminated by regulating delivery drivers.
If you're implying credit checks don't hurt workers, you can GFY. Medical bankruptcy is real in the US and being unable to obtain employment because you were sick and couldn't afford a $300,000 bill is asinine.
"Now they exist almost solely to return as much financial value as possible (wages) for the investment (dues)."
And the company doesn't exist for the same thing?
Amazon in particular has incredible power since they can decide what they themselves will ship, and what to send to others to ship. This allows them to self-ship lightweight, regular sized packages, which are the most profitable things to ship, and send the harder to ship items to carriers. It is a brilliant form of arbitrage.
On top of that all of the major parcel companies are at least partially competing with a giant, government subsidized entity (the post office).
We are coming off of a long recession, meaning the workers themselves have been grateful just to have job. Long recessions breed labor abuse, because the workforce is willing to accept it.
Lots of reasons. I am sure it is technically unlawful to make an employee shit him or herself, but what is allowed is not the driving factor here.
I was a package runner, so I would take the packages from the truck to the house, while the driver could organize everything and get things ready for the next few houses.
The worst part was the super short breaks. We would stop for maybe 5-8 minutes, piss, and grab food to go.
There were a few things from my experience there that stick out in my mind:
- There was this weird implied situation with running. It was iterated to me multiple times that UPS does not encourage me to run, but I needed to do everything I could to efficiently get the package to the house and back. So they were basically telling us to run, even though they couldn't specifically say it.
- On my route one day, there was a van following us and stealing packages that we were dropping off. We had no idea until they scared the shit out of some poor lady, who ended up calling customer support. Apparently, she saw me, and even motioned for me to leave the package... but I never saw her- I just dropped it off. When she went to the door to get it, the thieves were taking it off her porch. I'm glad she said she motioned me to leave it, because if not, UPS wanted to hold me personally responsible for the loss.
- We had to pick up packages from a handful of UPS stores in the area. We even had a bigger truck that day to hold the capacity. There was zero organization to it, it was just throw everything that could fit on the truck. We had it filled to the TOP, but we still had to do some deliveries. I had no idea where to find the packages, because they got all mixed up... So we ended up crushing some packages because we had to climb the mountain of boxes to find them. I always felt bad about that day because I stepped on a styrofoam box of omaha steaks and completely destroyed it, but we delivered it anyways.
Don't feel too bad, Omaha steaks are crap.
Would this be less bad if they supplied one of those bottles that is specifically for that purpose? And what is so bad about that anyway? What if there was a porta potty similar to what is on boats (or rv's) in the truck? Would you feel the same way?
After all at least where I am located (and elsewhere) they are competing with the low end labor which delivers for Amazon for less cost. And those employees are driven pretty hard (and get paid less with less benefits).
UPS driver is not a leisurely take your time type of job. It never has been. They have always hustled in any way they could (and I remember them from the 70's).
YES.
"Astronauts do it too."
Astronauts are in an entirely different environment, where they have nothing but a thin suit separating them from the lifeless vacuum of space. Not at all comparable to delivering packages.
"It's not like they are cleaning out sewers in Mumbai."
"Someone else has it worse" is never a justification or an argument.
>
> YES.
You piss in bottles on the job because the job demands it (never explicitly, of course). When you're poor, working poor, a manual laborer, etc... The power dynamics at these levels are so grossly disproportionate that you don't have a seat in the room, let alone at the table. You have to piss outside of your break times? Deal with it. Oh, you didn't get a break? Sorry, here's your last pay check, don't come back here tomorrow. That may be the extreme end of it, mostly experienced in the construction business (where I really saw the worst of it), but it wasn't far from the truth when I worked in warehouses loading trucks or in a glass plant, either. And, maybe it's a vastly different experience in a not-at-will state, maybe it's changed dramatically since the early 2000s, I wouldn't know but I really doubt it.
This pissing in bottles thing is just part and parcel for manual laborers and, speaking from personal experience, I never once found it degrading. In the 8 or so years that I spent working manual labor full-time I'm not aware of any of my co-workers who did, either.
I agree with you here, completely, but it's the world some people live in. And, I don't think telling people that the behavior they are forced to engage in frequently, as a result of the bankrupt power structures they have to operate in, is degrading, is going to help them at all.
> everything in your post sounds horrible.
To you, and i'm sure to many others, as well, maybe even most. That doesn't mean it translates to the folks who live these lives.
> There is absolutely no justification for it, none.
Other than objective reality, sure.
I grew up with many union democrats around my father. A lot of them had the opinion this is a multiple million person metro if you won’t spread your gains then die off and someone else will move in.
Strikes are to be avoided if possible but they're a forcing function to improve work conditions, not a strategy to boost revenue.
They have very little to lose while doing a strike.
For the drivers, that is a lot to lose.
We lost almost the entire load/unload staff though. The grunts in the truck at 12am unloading semi-truck after semi-truck worth of boxes. They were only getting ~$8/hr and couldn't afford to be out for 2 weeks. Out of 12 guys on the team I supervised I think 2 came back.
So, they still have a bit of time to agree on terms.
That said, unemployment _seems_ low, so it may add pressure to their strike.
They are all going down and have been almost constantly since 2008. It's at historic levels.
Seems like a constant decline so it's not sudden and very explainable.
[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
Whenever I hear/read this type of reply my answer is: so what? Why should they be counted as unemployed when they clearly are able but just aren't actively looking.
Just seems like an 'other' type of metric.
That's fine, it isn't like Companies are pounding on the door asking them to get back to work, so for the purposes of negotiating, the unemployment is low.
Wait for the transportation infrastructure to give it a try, then the real fun starts.
How cute ><
(French guy here)
They've been minimized since the 70s, but the decision to exclusively use right turns was reversed shortly after it was widely publicized. They make left turns, when they make sense, again.
> Here at my office UPS almost always shows up at 4:50pm or even 5pm on the dot to deliver something. Fedex meanwhile stops by around 10-1pm.
This is purely a function of your location, the nearest warehouse locations, and local delivery routes. At my house Fedex usually shows up around 6-8pm, and UPS around noon.
I've also never had the experience you describe of UPS packages being marked delivered when they weren't. (Edit: sorry, misread. Nor USPS, though, for what it's worth.)
I have had a Fedex driver leave a door tag and claim I wasn't home multiple days in a row, when they hadn't even rung the doorbell. That's one individual driver and doesn't necessarily reflect on the business, though.
All of my examples are for work locations. Residential is always a shit show, but business customers should be held to a higher standard considering they have operating hours that are standard.
Parent said USPS did that, not UPS.
I've also experienced USPS doing that, and then been very worried for 24 hours until they actually delivered, assuming that had someone stolen my package from the front yard.
Isn't this essentially how a capitalist economy should function? If companies look at people as capital, then this capital can look at the company as their capital and try to control it by withholding capital from the company.
Along with the estimated loss of “up to” 400,000 jobs due to Trump tariffs, I’m all in on front row seats to the corporate apocalypse
Can’t wait to see Dayglo Orange Dingbat handles it
My hope would be the same way the alien President handled the implosion of the galactic economy in Rick and Morty