January first of Rinker Materials of West Palm Beach, Florida purchased United Metro Materials from Peter Kiewit D.B.A. Kiewit Materials of Omaha, Nebraska. Prior to the purchase date, Kiewit put into place at least two individuals, Dan Speck and Randy Pathael. Their titles are insignificant, but they are in decision making positions.
They both do not like our Union Business Agent. Mainly because he seems to play their stupid immature game with a slightly different set of rules and the Union has won many, many grievances due to their idiotic policies and decisions.
Example, the company fired two of three drivers for making an unauthorized stop for something to eat. The third driver was as guilty as the other two, but was not fired because he was considered a 'long time employee'. There was a fourth driver involved, but he was a trainee at the time and was not held responsible since the trainer made the decision to stop.
Due to these facts, the arbitrator ruled in favor of the fired individuals, and in fact of the arbitrator's decision, Mr. Dan Speck took away all of the privileges of the quick stops that were allowed from all of and only the Teamsters unit of labor. This included even emergency bathroom stops, let alone somthing to eat or drink.
Another item, but not necessarily in the correct order, was the fact of disconnecting the am/fm radios in all of the company trucks. A decision apparently made by Mr. Randy Pathael. Rumor has it that after hours he happened to go through some trucks at one of the plants and found that 'all' of the am/fm radios were on and the company radios were 'all' turned off. So in his most mature way of thinking, he ordered all of the am/fm radios to be disconnected.
Yet another item was the near elimination of a long standing policy of granting an unavailable day off for personal business. We are not sure which one of these geniuses came up with this one, but they are trying to force Teamster employee's to take vacation days they may have available in lieu of unavailable days off. The unavailable days are still there, but are granted sparingly. Vacation days are the first priority, forcing employee's to eat up vacation time that could have been spent doing something with their families at a later time.
Still another item was the removal of all of the driver's rooms. Nay, more acurately is the dead bolting of the doors to the driver's rooms. This has forced all of the drivers to remain outside of the building and either mill around their trucks and/or sit in their trucks the entire time they are on the clock. Eating lunch must be done either in their trucks or while standing outside in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. For those of you who don't know Phoenix very well, let us tell you that it is not unusual for the temperature to reach 115 degress in the summer and as low as 30 something in the winter.
In addition to removing the driver's rooms they also took away the use of a micro wave oven, which was used to heat lunches and the coffee machine and coffee which was a very long standing policy given to the employees as a sort of pat on the back for doing a spectacular job of making this company as sucessful as it has been, making millions of dollars over many, many years.
Not every group has been affected by these irrational, childish decisions. The operating enginees still can have their coffee and a place to sit down and eat their lunches. The mechanics still can have their coffee and a place to sit down to eat their lunches. At least they were given the option of keeping the coffee machines and purchasing their own coffee. The Teamster unit was not given the option of either coffee nor lunch room. This certainly seems like discrimination against one unit of this company.
Some of these decisions came to be before the actual purchase on January 1. However, Rinker Materials are rumored to have been involved, to some degree, prior to the purchase date. We cannot be sure, at this time, if these decisions were made by Rinker people or the two immature individuals left in charge from Peter Kiewit and left in charge by Rinker. Rinker people in Florida have not responded to any of the many invitations to meet with any of Teamster unit to discuss these morale problems. The invitation was made to have a committee of Teamsters, without the Business Agent, and without these two individuals there to iron out these issues. To date there was no reply from anyone from Rinker in Florida.
Most of us have heard that working for Rinker is a good thing. We have to wonder about that, since there has been no response for a meeting with them and leaving a couple of highly paid spoiled men with a childs retaliatory minds. We are all hoping that Rinker is just an absentee landlord, for the time being and will eventually see the wrong and the financial hurt that the lack of morale and being treated like this has done to their productivity, which translates to money lost.
We have only listed some of the injustice levied at only one group of labor within this company. Our hopes are that Rinker does some investigations into the allegations about these two individuals making the decisions to get rid of all of the dump truck fleet and then putting money into the purchase of these same trucks then leasing them back to United Metro Materials to haul the same materials that they did as United Metro Materials trucks.
The invitation is still open to anyone with authority from Rinker Materials in Florida to meet with a small committee of Teamsters to discuss these issues and anything else to stop this bull.
Any and all of this letter and the other many letters can be discussed, if only Rinker would contact us and request a meeting. Even if Rinker is behind this bull. It would certainly clear the air as to which individuals are behind this harrassment.
Bargaining unit
Phoenix, Arizona
U.S.A.
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