A couple of updates

Sorry I haven’t been updating my blog. The problem is that now that I know my route well, and my customers like me, and I’m not forced to work unwanted overtime in areas where I get in people’s way or meet interesting people, nothing funny happens to me anymore. Basically, I’m fairly contented with my job, and my customers are fairly contented with me. That’s a good thing, but it makes for boring blog material. Plus, I’ve been on vacation this week, so I’ve been trying not to think about work.

But I do have some updates for you. The first is about my wrist injury. It only took four days before the company caved in. My steward (updates on the steward election next) helped me by talking to the woman in charge of dealing with worker’s comp claims. He told her that I would like a second opinion, and that he had advised me to get a lawyer. Four days later, I got a call from the doctor’s office informing me of a new appointment I had with the hand specialist. When I saw the worker’s comp woman, she explained it to me.

“Basically,” she said, “Dr. _____ said that if you ask ten doctors, five would say it’s industrially related, and five would say it’s not, so since it’s easy to treat, he said let’s go ahead and treat her.”

Wait, that’s it? But I had planned to dig in my heels, line up allies, and have a good ol’ fashioned righteous fight with the company.

Fine, I won’t call a lawyer, but I still insist on seeing my own doctor. I just don’t like the idea of my employer and doctor (who my employer uses on an ongoing basis for worker’s comp claims) colluding about my care. It makes me think that the doctor tries to give favorable outcomes to the company so they continue to choose that practice.

She tried to convince me not see my own doctor:

Gentle manipulation: “Why don’t you just try this specialist first and see if you like him.”

Scare tactics: “The problem I’ve run into with outside doctors is that they don’t submit reports in a timely manner and it delays payments and such for you if you end up off work.”

Intimidation: “Well, tell me why you don’t want to see Dr._____.”

Now, I don’t have to tell her that. It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t be asking. But I told her that I wanted someone neutral.

“He is neutral,” she tried to convince me. “He has his own practice and only comes to [this office] once a week.”

Any doctor hired by the company is a company doctor to me. I won’t ever be falling into that trap again.

Now, for the steward elections. My guy lost by one vote. The driver who won, was the other guy I considered supporting. He and I had many conversations over the weeks leading up to the election. I must have made an impression on him because as soon as the results were in, he called me and invited me to be his alternate steward. I had no idea he had planned to do that.

But alas, the final decision is up to our Business Agent (BA) because alternate stewards are actually appointed by him, not the steward. He just usually appoints who the stewards want to work with. My steward told me right away that the BA was not happy with him choosing me, but that he was still going to push for me because he felt we need strong leadership and we need women in power. We have one African American official on our Local leadership board, the rest are aging white men. He thinks that’s a problem, and feels we need more diversity in leadership. I like the way he thinks.

But I can be contentious (surprise!). I bring up topics the leadership would prefer not to deal with. And quite frankly, I challenge the union bureaucracy, and the BA relies on that Bureaucracy. So elevating my leadership status is threatening to the BA. And he finally won. My steward called me a couple days ago and said he was tired of arguing over my appointment. He felt that if he continued to demand me as alternate steward he would not have the support he needed from the BA when it came to fighting grievances, etc.

“But I’m still going to train you. I still want to work with you. Eventually the contract will be up and there will be another election and opportunity for you. And I still think we need women leaders,” he assured me.

He has chosen another woman driver to be his alternate. Someone who I think will do an excellent job because she already speaks up for drivers.

I would have liked to be the alternate, but the important thing is that I’ve already established myself as a leader among some of the drivers. I’ve earned their respect, and I’ve strengthened our working relationship. As this economic crisis deepens, management will crack down on us harder and harder. It will take a cohesive and strong rank and file response to protect us. We can build that in our workplace despite our BA.

a union dilema

One side effect of the downsizing on my building is that we lost a center. We had 4 centers—each covering a different city or area, and to cut management costs, they decided to merge them into 3 centers. For the union, this means we need to have new steward elections.

I’ve only been driving for 4½ years, but I’m fairly active in the union. I ran last time we had steward elections and got my ass kicked. Winning wasn’t my objective though. I just wanted to put myself out there as a union activist.

This time around, the nomination sheets haven’t even been posted and I’m being courted by three drivers.

The first one to ask for my support is someone who is critical of the union bureaucracy and was steward before I started working there, so I don’t know first hand how he works, but from rumors, he has a good record. I thought he would be the person I supported, but in consequent conversations, he has been dismissive of my arguments around rank and file power to take on both the union and company. He keeps talking about how no one got fired when he was steward and his record filing grievances. Those things are important, but what I’ve tried to impress on him and my other co-workers is that in this economic crisis, the company will be coming down hard on us, and we need to shove back whether or not we have official approval from the Local leadership. We need to look beyond just the grievance procedure.

The other two have been more open to the idea that this is a new period requiring new tactics from us. Eventually, the company will want to re-open the contract, and when that happens, we can’t rely on the International to fight with the tenacity we need to resist concessions. We need to be ready to take action.

The next driver who asked for my support actually requested I be his alternate steward. We would run as a slate. Since I don’t feel confident to run for steward myself (the company would know I am inexperienced and walk all over me), learning the ropes as an alternate makes sense. At first though, I didn’t want to support this driver because he doesn’t come to work all that often. He was the alternate before, and he was gone on injury a lot. He also was on the safety committee which allowed him to sit in the office while the rest of us broke our backs delivering packages. The union has set a rule saying you have to be steward to be on safety committee. Could it be he just wants to be steward to remain on safety committee?

But when he was around, he was actually the steward I wanted to talk to. He was more responsive than the head steward and even though he didn’t actually file the grievances (because the head steward wanted to control them), he would confront management for me much more readily. And, I like some of the ideas he has of using the morning meetings to announce union stuff. He also agrees with me that we don’t have to wait for our business agent to call a driver meeting.

Plus, he was flattering when he asked me to run with him. He likes what I bring to the table, knows I go to the meetings and am active in the union, I think outside the box and have a lot to offer. Plus, I’m a woman. I bring a different dynamic and perspective that will be important for the members. These are all things he said. Which makes me believe he is sincere. So I agreed.

But that was when I thought there were only two people in the running. A third driver’s hat is in the ring. He was the steward from the other center we merged with. I originally was told he was not going to run again because he was going to start working with the International. Apparently, that was just rumor. He has a good track record and is respected by his drivers. He also has a broader vision of the labor movement. Not only does he agree that we need a driver meeting and that we don’t need to wait for the BA to call it, he knows we need to ask the drivers about what their issues are and come up with a good agenda so that we actually accomplish something at the meeting. He’s been active in organizing drives with the Local. The philosophy he espoused to me is that he can’t be steward by himself. He needs a team of people, like me, who will be active and support him. My support would be welcome because he knows he wouldn’t have to pull teeth to get me to meetings and such. He, too, seems sincere.

What the hell do I do?