Work/ Union This week has been... interesting... Friday: Find out new hires' weekly attendance bonus is up to $200/week. Gross pay for a 20 hour week is now $20/hr. Full time union members finally start to take notice of the issue, as this is more than a new driver makes. This isn't super relevant to the drama that unfolds next, but I'm salty about it since the bonus is selectively applied and is exploitative as fuck if you get sick or injured. Friday Night: Rank and file vote down our national contract and various regional supplemental agreements. The union's lead negotiator is grumpy AF on the teleconference while announcing the results. They pushed the yes vote hard. Company puts out a statement accepting results. This is the positive energy high water mark. Late Friday Night: International Union ratifies national contract citing language in our constitution. They'd telegraphed that this would happen, but it still takes most people by surprise. Also: with the contract ratified, the new pay rate for new hires combined with bonuses is now $23/hr in 20 hours. Saturday: All hell breaks loose on social media. What limited news coverage there is notes how this will strain labor relations at the company going into the holiday season. Dissenting local leaderships start publishing open letters demanding the union walk back its position. Company puts out statement that they now consider master contract settled, with regional supplemental agreements outstanding. Can you guess what happens tomorrow? Sunday: Yup. International indicates that they will apply the same language to ratify a large chunk of regional supplements. This language was not applied last contract negotiation. In 2013, rejected supplements were renegotiated and re balloted. This is one of the sore points that get brought up when... Monday: 7 out of 10 of the International Union Vice Presidents write letters in opposition. The gist is that they want an emergency meeting of the General Executive Board, where they will attempt strike the language being used to impose ratification from the constitution. Tuesday: My local, which is aligned with the International and had a seat on the national negotiating committee, realizes they have a problem and publishes a letter stating that "our members" believe that there are issues with the contract that need to be addressed prior to implementation. The list of requested changes, surprisingly, doesn't suck. Looking forward: NLRB complaints. Probably Lawsuits. Probably no actual change on the contract. I doubt the executive board is allowed to meet. Rank and file will remain pissed off. The offending language will be struck from the constitution at our next convention. Recall language might get added. The dissident Teamsters United slate is going to have a cake walk into office in the next elections. I'm actually pretty proud of the rank and file. Our leadership sucks, but our turnout went up by a third. We handily rejected the contract despite the union and the company both pushing a yes vote. And we haven't meekly rolled over and accepted the outcome. Bikes Haven't ridden much since I crashed last year. My Raleigh is too heavy to want to lug up and down stairs, and my Surly I've been actively avoiding as that is what I was riding when I crashed. I've changed the setup on it a lot since then, but I still shy away from riding it. It'll probably set there until I pull the parts off of it and get a new frame-set. The frame is fine, I just don't want to ride it anymore.