Ending the Arbitration Backlog

The Local 804 UPS Supplement has strong language that requires UPS “to schedule and use five arbitration days” a month—”three for discharge cases, a fourth for suspension cases and a fifth for all other cases.”

The intent of this language is to prevent members from being out on the street, waiting for their case to be heard, with little or no income to provide for their families.

But our arbitration rights had effectively been abandoned.

When the new Local 804 leadership team took office, 96 members were discharged. Another 118 members were suspended. More than 70 contract cases were also on the docket with no plans for having them heard.

The local hadn’t scheduled a single arbitration for January and only one case was scheduled for February.

In all, we inherited a backlog of 286 cases—some of them years old. We’ve put an action plan in place to reduce this backlog to zero before the end of the year.

Since January, 75 discharge cases have been heard, settled or scheduled.  Twenty-four suspensions and thirteen contract cases have been heard, settled or scheduled.

At this rate, the backlog of arbitration cases will have been resolved by October and new cases will move forward in a timely manner.

Members who are out on the street will not wait eight to nine months for an arbitration date and Local 804 will not waste money on
cancelled arbitration dates.