Minix v. United Parcel Serv.
Decision Date | 22 March 2021 |
Docket Number | Civil Action No. 5: 19-482-DCR |
Parties | DANIEL MINIX, Plaintiff, v. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE, INC., et al., Defendants. |
Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky |
At United Parcel Service, Inc. ("UPS"), Plaintiff Daniel Minix found "a good career" where he could "work [his] way up." [Record No. 33-8, p. 22] Unfortunately, ambition gave way to acrimony early in his tenure. Mere days after becoming a qualified package car driver, he was terminated for dishonesty when he recorded incorrect dispositions on several packages. And after admitting his fault and requesting mercy throughout the grievance process, UPS's decision to discharge Minix was upheld. His termination and its aftermath led to this lawsuit against Defendants UPS and International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 651 ("the Union").
Both defendants' have moved for summary judgment. [Record Nos. 32, 33] In response, Minix argues that his behavior was not dishonest and that the Union arbitrarily failed to defend him from the accusations levelled by UPS. [Record No. 42] But if the matter were submitted to a jury, Minix would face the burden of proving that UPS violated the collective-bargaining agreement when it terminated him for dishonesty and that the Union did not fairly represent him in the grievance process. The defendants' motions will be granted because Minix cannot meet this burden on the facts presented.
The package car driver position was not Minix's first job with UPS. He worked as a truck unloader at UPS's Prestonsburg location the previous year. [Record No. 33-8, p. 23] While there, he rode a package car only as a passenger, when he assisted with delivering packages "a few times." [Id. at 24] The position was seasonal, ending in January 2018. [Id. at 27-28] Four months later, Minix began working as a part-time loader-unloader at UPS's Lexington North Center. [Id. at 28-29] He performed well in both roles by all accounts. Minix soon turned to his "original goal" at UPS: driving a package car. [Id. at 30]
The road to becoming a UPS package car driver begins with signing an intent form. Minix did so shortly before his twenty-first birthday in the fall of 2018. [Id. at 30-31] Prospective drivers then begin the qualification process. In addition to classroom training, the process involves on-road supervision and training. [Record No. 33-12, p. 9] Drivers are given a set of expectations, and supervisors review daily the performance and progress of all qualifying drivers. [Id. at 9-10] Supervisors ultimately decide to qualify a driver based on "[m]ultiple facets," including the time it takes to complete routes, the driver's ORION percent trace (which tracks how closely a driver is following a prepared map of deliveries), service failures, and any other record-keeping or delivery issues. [Id. at 21-22]
A package car driver is one of many positions at UPS. Put simply, they get packages from the UPS facility to the customer's hands. [Record No. 33-11, p. 16] Success depends on the "little brown trucks you see running around your city all over the place." [Id.] But success also depends on technology: the DIAD. Referred to by some as a "board," a DIAD is "the way [drivers] keep track of the packages." [Record No. 33-8, p. 198] It is a handheld device thatprovides a driver his route and a list of packages to be delivered or picked up. [Record No. 33-10, pp. 26-27] And it tracks a driver's coordinates. [Id.]
Key functions of the DIAD include scanning packages and recording package disposition codes, which lets both UPS and the customer know what happened to the packages. [Record No. 33-12, p. 13]1 "Every package must receive a scan."2 [Id.] And for each undelivered package, drivers are given a menu of options. Three are relevant here:
In general, drivers scan packages and enter package dispositions at the location of attempt. This allows drivers to leave a paper "info notice" with the customer indicating that delivery was attempted, but unsuccessful. [Record No. 33-10, p. 33]
The parties do not dispute the policies and procedures described above, but Minix claims he was unaware of most of them prior to his termination. In particular, he testified that he did not know: (1) when to use each disposition code [Record No. 33-13, p. 11]; (2) what the "missed" package disposition means [Record No. 33-8, p. 45]; (2) what the "need suite number" package disposition means [Id. at 61-62]; and (3) that a package disposition must be scanned at the attempt location [Record No. 33-13, p. 12].5 There is no evidence that a training manual or any other document listing package dispositions or other policies is given to drivers. [Record Nos. 33-11, p. 32; 33-12, pp. 18-19]
Absent written policies, UPS management set expectations based on "UPS methods which all of [their] drivers are trained on." [Record No. 33-10, p. 47] And both UPS management and Union members (who work for or used to work for UPS) testified that future drivers learn the policies and procedures above during their training and at a class known as Integrad. [Record Nos. 33-11, p. 32; 33-12, p. 19] Union President Michael Watson described this course as a "boot camp of becoming a delivery driver." [Record No. 33-11, p. 32]
Minix testified that he did not attend Integrad. [Record No. 33-13, pp. 8-9] However, he later clarified that he attended a weeklong course, but that "all [he] did was [sit] in aclassroom in Cincinnati." [Record No. 33-8, pp. 31-32] Between his coursework and on-the-job training, Minix claims that he was not taught to properly scan and report packages:
They didn't train me on most of the different situations on how to scan these packages . . . . no one had told me about different situations on how to scan some of these packages. And there was ways that I had done it on my training route that had been working and no one had said anything to me.
Minix's Employee History Profile, which includes a record of training, indicates that he completed over twenty courses on September 28, 2018, but it does not provide details beyond the names of the courses.6 [Record No. 33-9] Altogether, there is little in the record to confirm the amount of instructional training Minix received before qualifying as a driver.
A clearer picture of Minix's actual driving experience can be found. As noted above, in his first two roles, Minix did not drive a package car. That changed when the qualification process began. He was trained on a single route that was "all the same every day," so he did not "learn the variations of different routes." [Record No. 33-8, p. 41] Ninety percent of the stops on this route were at business, rather than residences. [Record No. 43-1, p. 2] And Minix claims he knew some package disposition codes, but only as they applied to the stops on his training route. [Id. at 14-15] He acknowledged, however, that the method of entering a package disposition code does not change with each route. [Record No. 33-8, pp. 44-45]
Minix's pre-qualification record bears one significant blemish occurring in late 2018. At the end of his shift, He brought back thirty-six packages. [Id. at 35] None had a recorded disposition, and he did not inform UPS of any delivery issue. [Id. at 36-37] The incidentresulted in his qualification process being frozen until March 2019. [Id. at 38] Watson, Minix's lead business agent, claims that UPS considered disqualifying Minix, but that he negotiated for a second chance at qualification on his behalf.7 [Record No. 33-11, pp. 10-12] Ultimately, the incident did not result in any additional discipline or training. [Record No. 33-8, p. 35]
Minix was successful in his second attempt at qualification. Apart from a minor incident (that is, his UPS manager Christopher Lee claims a single package was improperly handled during one of Minix's routes [Record No. 33-12, pp. 10-11]), Minix continued to successfully complete his training route. By the end of his training, he had driven the training route thirty-seven times,8 averaging around ninety-two delivery stops and thirty-six pickup stops per day. [Record No. 33-8, pp. 36-37] Minix became a qualified package car driver on May 30, 2019. [Id. at 35]
But any comfort in his new position was short-lived, as two or three days into his qualification, Minix—in his own words—"had a really bad day." [Record No. 33-13, p. 5] That Saturday, June 8, UPS supervisor Matt Ward assigned Minix to route 93T. The route required stops at multiple apartment complexes and business on Lexington's south side andwas new to Minix. [Record Nos. 33-8, p. 5; 33-13, 13] He was tasked with delivering 186 packages at 145 stops. [Record No. 32-2, p. 37]
Trouble began that morning. Faced with a keypad-guarded gate at a retirement community, Minix coded the package as "Not in 1" and kept moving. [Record No. 33-8, pp. 74-76] Next, inside a mixed-use development with stops at residential apartments and retail establishments, Minix did not reach...
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