The Case

On May 13, 2003, Dan O'Shea was discharged from UPS after a 24-year career for using a tape recorder to note delays and verify management instructions. For 15 years he was allowed, with UPS' knowledge, to walk in, and walk out through the security gate with the recorder. Only after a work-related injury did UPS decide he was violating a UPS policy.

What ensued was the usual pattern by UPS targeting an employee who filed a workers compensation injury claim and that employee who attempts to protect his job and his family.

It is also the usual pattern by the Teamsters targeting a union member who publicly declares his local union officers aren't representing their members as Dan O'Shea had done for 15 years, repeatedly watching coworkers harassed, intimidated and abused and aided a number of those drivers.

In the discharge, Dan O'Shea was subjected to the normal UPS company policy, which for many UPSers know, is that to UPS, the only policy they truly have is that "there is no permanent policy" only temporal policy that changes daily, even hourly, many times policy is different for some than for the majority.

You'll find that Dan O'Shea, like other targeted employees and members, was subjected to policy that was discriminatory, altered or non-existent (unwritten and unknown until the time he was notified of such 'policy' at the time of his discharge). One could say it is the DAN policy (discriminatory, altered and non-existent).

A three-year chase for a phantom policy ensued by Dan O'Shea. Since UPS never presented a policy at the UPS/Panel hearing and the Teamsters refused to investigate and acquire an alleged policy, Dan O'Shea filed charges with the NLRB. The NLRB stated that after a careful investigation there was no violation of the "purposes and policies" of the Act (National Labor Relations Act).

The NLRB still refused to show Dan O'Shea the "phantom policy". After a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request and subsequent lawsuit because the NLRB violated law in refusing to reply to O'Shea, it was uncovered that the NLRB had performed no investigation and received no existence of a policy O'Shea was accused of violating.

With such disclosure, UPS and the Teamsters finally admitted there was "no policy" even though UPS management committed perjury by declaring in sworn affidavits at the initial panel hearing that Dan O'Shea "violated company policy".

So both UPS and the Teamsters Union then defended their actions by alleging that Dan O'Shea was discharged for violating the "law". UPS' attorney, Richard Hafets of DLA Piper-Rudnick alleged time and again in motions that O'Shea "violated law" despite all absence of due process. (Richard Hafets bio - coincidentally he formerly worked for...the NLRB.)

Maryland never charged Dan O'Shea with a violation of it's laws. Attorney's, neither prosecutors or defense lawyers argued nor defended Dan O'Shea in a finding of guilt in a courtroom "proscribed by law". Corporate management and Teamster officials declared O'Shea guilty by interpreting the law of a state (Maryland) in an unlawful non-judicial tribunal (in Virginia) held far from the district where a violation of law was allegedly committed and that disallowed any attorney representation in their "Rules of Procedure".

Corporate management and Teamsters officials never negotiated policy, but interpreted state statutory law they admitted they did not know during the panel hearing.

A federal court in Maryland allowed these "non-lawyers" to charge, try and convict Dan O'Shea in violation of all due process rights. Not only did the federal court allow it, they unlawfully abused their power by interpreting the Maryland law in their decision. (A federal court has no authority to interpret state laws, that is only for each state court to decide.)

The federal court's public decision branded Dan O'Shea a criminal - with no trial, no defense and no jury.

However, the Maryland wiretapping law applies only to "private communications", and the Supreme Court has already determined that work-related communications are not "private communications". But even that is moot, only a state criminal trial and jury should make that decision, of a state law - a trial and jury Dan O'Shea was unlawfully denied.)

The 4th Circuit ignored Dan O'Shea's pro se appeal and simply found "no reversible error". (As O'Shea's 4th Circuit briefs and Supreme Court brief will verify, there was no violation of law). Yet as will be seen later, the Appeals Court Dan O'Shea appealed to (and where the lower judge's wife sits), ruled in favor of the lower court with an unpublished opinion, hiding their misdeed.

The Supreme Court simply denied Dan O'Shea's petition for certiorari - "Petition Denied".

Yet while the Judiciary and Government aids UPS and the Teamsters in interpreting law and disallowing union members to protect themselves, UPS and the Teamsters collusively have engaged in one of the greatest incorporation of surveillance upon American workers in the history of this country:

"What is all this surveillance for? 'It's to grow the business and provide better service,' says Pat Canavan, UPS vice president for package project management. When asked about cutting labor costs, company spokesperson Joan Schnorbus explains that 'the union has been involved in the process at every step of the way...'.

Steve Henderson, a UPS driver in West Virginia, says surveillance was used to harass and target him....Along with scrutinizing every detail from his DIAD reports and subjecting him to managerial ride-alongs, UPS sent spies out to secretly videotape Henderson while out on his route. They finally busted him taking an unauthorized eighteen-minute bathroom break at Hardee's because, Henderson says, he was sick. UPS fired him for 'stealing time.' Drivers and linemen at Southern New England Telephone reported similar harassment involving the overuse of GPS reports after they won a strike. 'They're out to getcha, man,' says Henderson."

"It's to grow the business and provide better service" - simply pure propaganda.

It's about targeting union members on a massive scale with the collusive aid of the Teamster leadership as UPS readily admits. Targeting those especially closer to retirement or are injured and while incorporating such surveillance on a grand scale on the union masses, preventing union members from protecting themselves to the point of denying them constitutional safeguards.