Evans v. United Parcel Serv.
| Decision Date | 21 January 2022 |
| Docket Number | 19 C 4818 |
| Parties | MICHAEL EVANS, Plaintiff, v. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE, INC., and TEAMSTERS LOCAL UNION NO. 705, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Plaintiff Michael Evans alleges that defendants United Parcel Service Inc. (“UPS”) and Teamsters Local Union 705 (“Union”) conspired to deprive plaintiff of his entitlements under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (“CBA”), discriminated against him on the basis of his race, and retaliated against him for filing grievances by preventing him from working extra shifts. After ruling on defendants' motions to dismiss, the following counts remain: Count I, asserting that defendants breached their duty of fair representation and violated the CBA, under Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C § 185, et seq.; Counts II and III, asserting race discrimination and retaliation, under 42 U.S.C. § 1981; and Count VI, asserting a violation of the Illinois Whistleblower Act, 740 ILCS 144, et seq. (“IWA”). Both defendants have moved for summary judgment. For the reasons stated below, both motions are granted.
As a preliminary matter, plaintiff and the Union did not bother to include a statement of material facts section in their briefs, electing instead to leave it to the court to sift through the parties' Local Rule 56.1 statements and the underlying exhibits to determine the factual background and sequence of relevant events. The briefs submitted by plaintiff and the Union assume the court is as familiar with the underlying events as the authors, jumping straight into legal argument without providing sufficient background information. Courts in this district have repeatedly informed litigants that a Local Rule 56.1 statement is not a substitute for a statement of facts section contained in the supporting brief. See e.g., Flakes v. Target Corp., 2019 WL 6893005, at *2 (N.D. Ill.Dec. 18, 2019); FirstMerit Bank, N.A. v. 20000 N. Ashland, LLC, 2014 WL 60605817, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 13, 2014); Duchossois Indus., Inc. v. Crawford & Co., 2001 WL 59031, at *1 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 19, 2001) ( ).
Plaintiff additionally failed to comply with Local Rule 56.1 in several respects. First, plaintiff filed only a response to defendants' statements, without filing his own statement of additional facts as provided by Local Rule 56.1(b)(3). Instead, plaintiff “smuggle[d]” new factual material into his response to defendants' statements, Phillips v. Allen, 743 F.Supp.2d 931, 936 n.1 (N.D. Ill. 2010), which “unfairly deprived Defendants of a vehicle under Local Rule 56.1 to dispute those facts, ” Johnson v. County of Cook, 2012 WL 2905485, at *13 (N.D. Ill. July 16, 2012). Further, many of plaintiff's responses fail to cite to the record at all, and the few citations plaintiff does include do not support plaintiff's claims.[1] In addition, plaintiff misnumbered many of the paragraphs, making the court's job that much more difficult.
Finally, plaintiff attached his own declaration to his summary judgment brief. The declaration is undated, and is thus inadmissible under 28 U.S.C. § 1746; Sheikh v. Grant Reg'l Health Ctr., 769 F.3d 549, 551 (7th Cir. 2014). Even if the declaration had been dated, many of the statements within the declaration contradict plaintiff's deposition testimony, and are otherwise conclusory or speculative.
The court can discern the following facts, as labyrinthine as they may be. UPS hired plaintiff, who is African American, in December of 1999. In 2005, plaintiff began working as a part-time PM Air Driver. His employment is governed by the terms of the CBA between the Union and UPS. The CBA has several relevant provisions. Article 40 governs the salary rates for Air Drivers. Article 40 states that the workweek for part-time Air Drivers “shall be five (5) in seven (7) days, ” and that part-time Air Drivers Article 40 further states that Air Drivers who work on Saturday or Sunday
The CBA has a separate provision governing full-time employees, which all parties agree plaintiff was not. That provision of the CBA, Article 46.1(a), states that the “straight time work week for all employees shall consist of five (5) days, Monday through Friday inclusive. of eight (8) hours each, with time and a half to be paid for work performed on Saturday..” Both UPS and the Union assert that Article 46.1(a) does not apply to plaintiff, because it applies only to full-time employees and plaintiff was a part-time employee. Plaintiff believes that this provision applies to him, and had frequent meetings with the Union and UPS representatives over this applicability of this provision.
The CBA further governs which employees can do certain types of work. For example, UPS managers are discouraged from using Air Drivers for “ground” work, and must pay a penalty in the form of a higher pay rate to use Air Drivers for such work. When extra ground work is available, it must first be offered to Package Car Drivers, then 22.4 Combo Drivers, FullTime Air Drivers, part-time AM Drivers, and finally part-time PM drivers, and then in order of each individual employee's seniority. As defendants note, this means hundreds of employees have the option to accept extra ground work before that work is offered to plaintiff.
UPS guarantees part-time Air Drivers, like plaintiff, 15 hours of work per week, and plaintiff admits that UPS always gave plaintiff at least 15 hours of work. Plaintiff's guaranteed hours are scheduled between Monday and Friday. However, on occasion, plaintiff would pick up extra shifts on Saturdays. Overtime work on Saturdays was colloquially referred to as “sixth day pay.”
At some point, plaintiff became convinced that he was entitled to overtime pay (time and a half) for all work done on Saturdays-regardless of whether he had worked 40 hours that week or eight hours that day. In late 2017, plaintiff began requesting payroll adjustments to receive time and a half for all hours worked on Saturdays, even when he had not yet worked 40 hours those weeks. Many of these requests were granted, but UPS asserts they were granted in error.[2]In early 2018, UPS Senior Management realized that plaintiff was requesting payroll adjustments that he was not entitled to, and began denying his requests.
Starting in April 2018, plaintiff filed dozens of grievances with the Union regarding his sixth day pay. Plaintiff claims that at one point union steward Kevin Gloria informed plaintiff that he was entitled to sixth day pay for his work on Saturdays. However, when plaintiff spoke with Union officials higher up the chain, such as Union Trustee Scott Rein and Union Secretary Treasure Juan Campos, they all emphatically claimed that plaintiff was not entitled to sixth day pay unless he worked more than 40 hours that week or eight hours that day. They also repeatedly explained that Article 46.1(a) does not apply to plaintiff because plaintiff is a parttime Air Driver, and that Article 40 applies to plaintiff. The Union chronicled dozens of meetings, letters, phone calls, and text messages with plaintiff discussing the terms of the CBA, and explaining that plaintiff was not entitled to sixth day pay unless he worked more than 40 hours that week. Plaintiff admits that he does not know of any other part-time PM Air Driver who received sixth day pay without working 40 hours. He further admits that when he worked over 40 hours a week, UPS paid him overtime, as per the CBA.[3]
The Union withdrew some of plaintiff's grievances, believing them to be without merit, and failed to file some others for the same reason. Plaintiff had several meetings with Union Trustee Scott Rein and UPS Labor Manager Chris Opperman about his concerns. Opperman investigated plaintiff's original payment requests and determined that plaintiff had been overpaid. UPS claims that in similar situations, it would normally seek repayment for the amounts the employee had been overpaid. However, Opperman declined to seek repayment from plaintiff at Scott Rein's request. Plaintiff claims that Opperman was rude to him in these meetings and would interrupt him, although plaintiff admitted that Opperman treated Rein, a white man, the same way.[4]
In addition to grievances over pay, plaintiff filed grievances because he was offered fewer ground work shifts. Plaintiff believed UPS was violating the seniority rules by offering theses shifts to employees with lower seniority than plaintiff. The Union represented plaintiff on some of these grievances and won settlements, although plaintiff now complains that the Union accepted settlements without his consent (the Union is permitted to do so), without seeking penalty payments, and didn't get the full amount plaintiff requested. UPS also puts forth numerous facts regarding its restructuring of employees that resulted in less ground work for all employees, not just plaintiff. For example, UPS compensated for increased package volume on Saturdays by...
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