A 57-year-old UPS driver in Texas died after collapsing in the heat while making deliveries
A 57-year-old UPS driver in Texas died after collapsing in the heat while making deliveries
Following months of negotiations with Teamsters, UPS announced in June that it would install air conditioning in new trucks starting next year. The company said it would send new trucks to the hottest parts of the country first, if possible. The company also said it would retrofit its existing package cars with cab fans, exhaust heat shields, and cargo area ventilation.
"While these improvements will make a difference in the months and years ahead, we had to fight like hell to secure them," the Teamsters union said in its social media post Thursday. "Chris Begley should still be alive to experience them. All companies, including UPS, need to remember that their past failings to protect workers can have deadly serious consequences in the future."
Chris Bagley should still be alive and it's a damn shame the Teamsters failed to protect him from social murder. Only new trucks? Only next year? They drove trucks without fans, heat shields, and ventilation? What the fuck.
The Teamsters could have, at the very least, demand a total halt on driving trucks without fucking fans. "Oh but that'll cause package delays!" Well I guess we just have to murder drivers for the sake of logistics.
If anyone tells me how great and historic the new contract is one more fucking time I'll fucking lose it.
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Man STFU. Its sad that Chris died and is always preventable, but in the end it does come down to taking care of yourself and knowing your own bodies limits. The union isnt going to strike to bankrupt the company until every truck gets AC, trucks not equipped with fans is not a condition that makes trucks undrivable, and dont put the blame on the union for any of this.
This is the best contract we've had in years, and historically, it is the best we've ever had. We got 60 concessions in the next contract, including improved safety features, all cars must have a fan within 30 days of ratification, 2 within 3 months, all part timers are now starting at $21, drivers are no longer being forced to work 6 days a week, we eliminated the unfair 2 tier pay system for drivers, seasonal vehicle drivers are now seasonal only and part timers get first dibs at those positions, and many other items i cant remember.
Do not slander my union
I was a Teamster when I worked for Sygma, and out of all the unions I've been a member of (four, now), the Teamsters were the motherfucking worst. If they were actively trying to take a revolving door of 18- and 19-year-olds just getting their first big-boy jobs and turn them into all into die-hard anti-union voters for life, they couldn't do a better job than they're doing right now, and I told my steward that before I quit.
They designed the whole contract specifically to offload all the real work onto the new guys, protect the older guys when they decided to throw hands on the loading dock, and give as much overtime as possible to the ancient, divorced boomers with no family to go home to, that they could spend pretending to sweep the floors while the trainees finished the actual loading. Guys would bid order picking, then use seniority to bump bid loads/receivers off their jobs and wouldn't pick a single case for the whole contract, while getting paid picker bonuses and shift differentials.
And just to rub salt into the wound, those perks (bumping lower guys off their bid jobs and "sweeping the floor" during overtime) were specifically written out of the latest contract, so only the guys hired under the previous contract would ever get to do them. They straight robbed those kids of even anything to look forward to if they toughed out the low-seniority years. They also negotiated a different pay scale for under 5 years, 5-10 years, and 10 years in, and you can guess which end of that they weighted the raises toward. It was a complete shitshow, and when kids would quit, the Teamsters would keep their initiation fee (taken out of the first three paychecks). You could call to try to get it back, but the best they'd do would be to put it towards your initiation fee for your next Teamster job, as if any of those kids would ever willingly subject themselves to that shit ever again.
AND THERE'S MORE. I just don't feel like typing up a fucking novel on it. Don't even get me started on the shady shit they did during the contract negotiations I was actually present for. It was worse than maddening; it felt like it was specifically crafted by the senior guys to make sure that ladder was pulled up as high as they could behind them, while not actually making any waves for the company. And the safety issues they ignored and covered up, and the fancy fucking "union meetings" they never told anyone about so that they were only attended by the office reps, because they were being held at the most expensive restaurants in the city, on the union's dime, and the number of stewards who were literally fucking floor supervisors, and on, and on, and on....
UIW was kind of spineless and milquetoast, but they took care of us. The Teamsters are fucking old-school mob racket motherfuckers who are single-handedly responsible for an entire generation of workers who think all unions are a scam.
Drivers are regularly being hospitalized and murdered because the trucks are unsafe. Your union failed to put the health and safety of workers ahead of the company - like you said, the union isn't going to bankrupt the company because they're on the company's side. Not the workers.
So blame the UPS you fuckin goon
Blaming the teamsters here sure is a creative take, I'll give them that
If you hire a bodyguard to protect you and he stands aside while you get murdered, do you not blame the bodyguard for failing to protect you? Obviously the murderer is the murderer, but the bodyguard is a failure and shouldn't be trusted to do his job.
Sure, management should be in work camps and forced to pay back their debts to society.
nobody in this thread agrees
grow up admit fault
lol are you trying to peer pressure me?
if everyone says your breath smells like shit and you can't smell it, your breath smells like shit.
peer pressure? what a dumb fuckin thing to try and use as defense. shut up
If a bunch of libs tell me I'm wrong and that I'm dumb and I should shut up, good! I welcome their hatred. 😘
hide behind that then
too bad I'm not a fuckin lib you assuming idiot lol
"I'm not a lib!"
🤣
👍
Some of the things he typed were regarding health and safety. I fail to see how they didn't consider health and safety.
And he's right that it's offputting how heavily you had put your shame on the people who got a lot for the employees, and virtually none of it on the company that fought to stop it.
They didn't consider health and safety as an immediate concern. They considered it as secondary to the company's profits, that's why it's going to take so long to get even basic heat protections like fans and heat shields. There shouldn't have been a phase-in period. They should have grounded the fleet until they at least had some basic protection, if not full air conditioning.
And the company's managers should be in work camps, that goes without saying. Instead, they're in bed with the union.
You sit here, typing away, demanding everyone man the barricades now.
Ok. what have you done, personally, to improve drivers conditions?
I can barely keep myself alive working in extreme heat on the production line, at best all I can do is agitate and highlight the class contradictions so people see the horrific conditions that workers continue to suffer under the new contract. I, myself, collapsed in a sobbing delirious wreck because my welding station didn't even have a fan - just like this man! And what do I hear from other people? Victim blaming, saying its his own fault he died! Slander, saying he didn't take care of himself and its his fault he didn't know his limits!
And if I had died when I collapsed at work last month, they'd have said the same thing. All. My. Fault.
Fuck that.
Inevitably more drivers are going to fucking die because the union sold out for a compromise contract instead of fighting for the health and dignity of all drivers! Instead of demanding climate control for everyone, they don't even get fans.
Go read the contract
Air conditioning only in new vehicles, so drivers in old vehicles will still die. Vehicles without basic heat protections like shielding and fans are still allowed on the road. No heat breaks. What am I looking for?
Well you should be looking for the contract, for one
Cute.
The sellout contract still leaves many drivers in danger of heat related threats to health and safety, because it only mandates air conditioning in new vehicles. Old vehicles are still death traps and there's no stipulations to forcibly retire old vehicles.
And now another driver is dead. How many more will have to die before you admit your union failed?
Health and safety starts by being able to show up to work and make money to live on, thats the US system. Its not the best system, but its what we have to work with and the union is making it better and better for us every contract. Talk to Fedex express employees, theyre going away. Talk to FE Ground or Amazon, DHL, whatever else is out there. They dont have it nearly as good as we got it at Big Brown.
He isn't going to be able to show up to work and make money to live on ever again.