Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 8, 1994 TAG: 9403080046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
During talks with UPS in Chicago last week, Teamsters officials questioned the firing of Carl Richardson, a Teamsters shop steward at the UPS Roanoke hub, union spokesman Bernie Mulligan said.
Richardson believes he is a victim of retaliation by UPS for his local efforts to enforce an agreement the company signed last month ending a one-day strike over the package-weight issue.
UPS declined to respond to Richardson's charges.
Richardson's wife, Anita; 2 1/2-year-old son, Austin; and 6-year-old daughter, Amanda, picketed Monday morning at the gates of the UPS terminal on Thirlane Road, near Roanoke Regional Airport. Departing UPS route drivers honked their truck horns in support of the fired shop steward and his family.
Richardson, who did not picket, said company managers fired him Feb. 28 after following him and questioning him extensively about the way he was running his route in the Natural Bridge area of Rockbridge County. Richardson, 31, had worked for UPS for 10 years.
His firing, Richardson said, came five days after he had exercised his rights under the Feb. 7 agreement. The work stoppage, which did not spread to Roanoke, resulted from an increase in the maximum weight of UPS packages from 70 to 150 pounds.
After finding some of the heavier packages on his truck, Richardson said he insisted that managers send another driver to help him unload the packages, as provided for in the strike settlement agreement. Although management at first questioned his request, a driver eventually was sent to help him, Richardson said.
A few days before that incident, Richardson said, he had stood up in a morning drivers' meeting and challenged a company manager who told drivers to ask their customers for assistance if they needed help unloading the heavier packages.
Asking customers for help was not part of the agreement, Richardson said. Customers are not trained in lifting heavy packages and could hurt themselves or a UPS driver, he said.
"If I have no back, I have no job at UPS," he said.
Company managers, who monitored Anita Richardson's actions Monday morning with a video camera, declined to comment on her husband's firing. Gina Ellrich, a company spokeswoman at UPS headquarters in Atlanta, said she could not respond to specific questions about personnel issues.
Anita Richardson said, "I think the management here has made UPS a company without a conscience." The company has no concern for employees' welfare and fired her husband without any reason, she said.
She said the firing had upset her children. When her daughter said a prayer before a meal on the day her father was fired, she asked God not to let the family starve, Anita Richardson said. The couple had always told the children their father worked to put food on the table, she said.
In many parts of the country it has become a major fight to make UPS live up to terms of the settlement agreement, the Teamsters' Mulligan said.
"All over the country, we've seen the company come down hard on people who've exercised their rights," he said.
Don Stone, an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a union caucus, said the UPS actions against Richardson were even more suspicious because the company had brought in a manager from Richmond to help a Roanoke manager shadow Richardson on his route.
Richardson has filed a grievance over his firing, and Stone said Richardson has an excellent chance of winning a discrimination and retaliation case before the National Labor Relations Board.
Because of their fear of UPS management, some drivers are lifting 150-pound packages by themselves, Stone said. "We're getting injuries reported all across the country."
Stone said he was surprised that more spouses of UPS drivers had not taken some sort of action. "I believe it's inhumane to have them struggle with these packages," he said.
In earlier news reports, UPS spokesman Bob Kenney said the 150-pound weight limit was "absolutely safe" and a standard the company's competitors use.
by CNB