By Rob Roth and KTVU staff
Published May 21
KTVU FOX 2
SANTA ROSA, Calif. – An 86-year-old woman from Santa Rosa says a UPS driver came to her rescue in the middle of his workday.
On her way to a medical appointment, Magda Vahey fell and broke her wrist while crossing the street near Providence Santa Rosa Hospital last month.
UPS spokeswoman Amanda Catala said Devon Brooks saw the woman lying in the middle of the street bleeding and ran to help.… Read more »
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Trina Johnson has worked for UPS at the Bayside hub in Richmond for 21 years, and she loves her work and her union. “I’m a gal in brown. With the uniform that you wear, you’re proud. During the pandemic, when everyone was in shutdown, we were out there, bringing good things.”
Dealing with different people each day is one of the most interesting aspects of Trina’s job. “You bond with your customers. It’s like we’re all family.
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As he waited for his school bus in 1980’s San Francisco, Luis Estrada would watch the garbage men running with their pack cans and picking up garbage every morning. Those Teamsters Local 350 members inspired young Luis to become a garbage man.
On August 2, 2000, Estrada began his career at Allied Waste Services of Daly City and as a member of Teamsters Local 350. “I was working full-time at the San Francisco Produce Markets and part-time with UPS in South San Francisco.
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Samuel Styles has been a member of Teamsters Local 70 and worked as a delivery driver for Pepsi in Hayward for nearly three years. He’s out delivering Pepsi products every day to Safeway and Lucky stores, 7-11s, neighborhood corner stores, and restaurants. “I’ve delivered to every city in the Bay Area in one week. It’s great because I get to see different things, like restaurants that I’d like to try.”
The benefits he appreciates most about being in the union are the medical and dental.
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For 36 years, Greg Doench has been a package car driver for UPS, first in Concord and then in Oakley. What he enjoys most about his work is being outside and being active.
“My job allows me to work in the city I grew up in and that I still reside in,” he says thinking about the residential route he’s had for the past 18 years. “I get to see a lot of people that I grew up with,
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Eric Wright calls himself a “jack of all trades and master of none,” but after 24 years of working for the City of Hercules as a Maintenance II lead worker, he’s really a renaissance man with a wealth of skills who has a strong dedication toward achieving his job duties.
Wright works with an 8-person maintenance crew and they take care of the parks, trees, irrigation, concrete, roads, and basically whatever needs maintenance and repair.
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(May 26, 2021) This morning, a gunman killed eight Valley Transportation Agency (VTA) workers and himself at a union meeting of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 in San Jose.
Teamsters Local 853 also has members who subcontract to the VTA. The following is a statement by Teamsters Joint Council 7 President Rome Aloise:
“Fortunately, our members were safe from this horrific event. However, this is yet another devastating mass shooting that has snatched the lives of working people in the course of their day.
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The Ten Point Commentary
(Sung to the tune of A Horse With No Name, by America.)
I drive through the city on a car with no name
Giving space, visibility.
Safe by choice is not by chance…A way to be accident free.
La la, etc.
This is one of several songs that Matthew Whaley wrote to promote safety for the drivers at UPS when he served as co-chair of the safety committee.
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John Quimby owes his life to the Teamsters. In 2019, he needed a liver transplant. “If I didn’t have this good union job with those great union benefits, I’d be dead.” He’s sure his union medical benefits saved his life.
For the past 22 years, John Quimby has worked at International Paper in Elk Grove, and he’s been an active member with District Council 2 of the Graphic Communications Conference, serving as recording secretary for the union and as chief shop steward on the job.
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Merritt Billington has worked at UPS for about 25 years; a career he started when he was 18 years old. He delivers packages in the city of Gilroy for UPS and serves as the Local 853’s chief shop steward at the Morgan Hill Center in San Jose. He makes 150-190 deliveries each day — a workload that’s up by about 25% since COVID started.
For most of his career at UPS, Billington was an active member with Local 287.
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