Went into work today only to find no morning dispatch again and that work is still slow. Our contract states; that we get a Minimum Days Pay for each day that we are assigned work that does not equal a Minimum Days Pay, which is 8 hours a day at shop rate.
After submitting two Minimum Days Pay requests to payroll earlier this month, they had informed me that lowboy drivers were not eligible for this. Problem with this is … I don’t see anywhere in the contract where it says anything about lowboys.
Since I have worked here, none of us had requested this kind of pay, only because work has been steady and because most of us were to naive to request it and/or were too intimidated to request it.
Now that our division is closing down July 21st and it has been extremely slow, I do believe we are entitled to it. But yet, many of the drivers are too afraid to ask. Last time I knew, we were employees and not owner operators and are entitled to some kind of daily pay for at least showing up for work.
And I do not see this as being quality of life (as the union calls it), when we have to drive in and/or sleep in a truck everyday, only to hang around the terminal all day for nothing.
Even when there are loads, a driver has to go in to work and wait until his name on the board goes to the top in order to get a good load. As slow as we are, and with our division closing down this month, the union should have entered an agreement with the company to lay off those who request it.
Instead they have done nothing!
Filed under: IAM Union, Management | Tagged: Auto Truck Transport, IAM Pension Fund, IAM Union, Morgan and Morgan
