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Unions

UPS Worker: ‘There Is Momentum To Fight For More’

July 28, 2023 Luigi Morris , Left Voice. , , , ,
This Tuesday, UPS and Teamsters announced they have reached a tentative agreement for a new contract for UPS workers nationwide, a week before over 340,000 workers were set to go on strike across the country in what would be the biggest strike of its kind in U.S. history. Now that strike is on hold as workers read, debate, and vote on the tentative agreement. After years of stagnant wages and deplorable working conditions, UPS workers have been organizing around the clock to fight for their demands, including much higher starting salaries for part-time workers and ending the two-tier system.

Northeastern Grad Workers Organize For A Union Despite Harassment

July 27, 2023 Tarang Saluja, Left Voice. , , ,
In a tremendous show of solidarity, union members and community supporters from across the state of Massachusetts and beyond came to support Northeastern University’s graduate student workers (GENU-UAW) in a “Mass Solidarity Rally for our Rights” as they prepare to vote YES for a union from September 19 to September 21. This union vote comes after eight years of obstruction, retaliation, and other forms of union-busting from the administration at Northeastern. It was noted that the Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) was used to harass students for chalking activity and even specifically intimidated marginalized students in their labs.

Inside The Teamsters’ Historic Contract At UPS

July 26, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, The American Prospect. , , , ,
Some 340,000 UPS Teamsters will see significant gains to pay and working conditions if they ratify a five-year tentative agreement announced by the negotiating committee on Tuesday. Rank-and-file workers were poised to proceed with what would have been the largest strike at a single private-sector employer in decades, and the resolve from workers over the past several weeks was key to getting UPS to agree to a tentative deal that meets their demands. Negotiations, which broke down on July 5, resumed July 25, after UPS said that it would be “prepared to increase our industry-leading pay and benefits.”

As Big Three Auto Contracts Expire: Hurried Line Speeds, Horrible Hours

July 26, 2023 Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. , , , ,
David Sandoval remembers when he and his co-workers had a whole 72 seconds to assemble their sections of each seat for the Ford F-150, back when he started at a Michigan parts plant in 2004. Today, 60 seconds is the deadline managers give each team racing at a dozen stations: to bolt the frame together, lay electronics, add heating and cooling gear, set cushions, and attach trim. Robotic lifting arms help on only one or two steps; handheld tools and elbow grease must do the rest. Each crew is told to clear 680 seats in a 10-hour shift. That harsh speedup makes it small wonder that repetitive motion injuries are piling up for U.S. auto workers, while the Big 3 auto companies—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler)—posted $250 billion in profits in just the last four years.

The UPS Strike Looms As Corporate America Cashes In

July 25, 2023 Stephen Franklin, In These Times. , , ,
It’s early in the morning and Cesar Mendoza slips into his 20-year-old clunker of a car and heads for the UPS warehouse in Southern California when the thoughts swell up. Damn, I am stuck here, he thinks. I’m still working only a few hours a day and barely earning anything. And then, he reminds himself, as he does each morning, to try and think positively. But he can’t. Six years after starting out as a part-time UPS warehouse worker, he gets $17.85 an hour and when the hours are low, as they’ve been lately, he takes home about $300 a week.

Record Wages Should Be Received If Record Profits Are Being Generated

July 25, 2023 Luigi Morris , Left Voice. , , , ,
In Griffin, Georgia, UPS warehouse worker Jess Leigh exemplifies the struggles of part-time workers. As a single mother of two, she has spent nearly six years on the preload shift making poverty wages and has worked in multiple positions from loading trucks to being a hazmat responder.  Jess has been a firm advocate for part timers’ rights in these contract negotiations. She is a member of Teamsters Mobilize, a coalition of UPS rank-and-file workers whose main demand has been “a base wage of $25/hour, $0.75 in catch up raises for each year of service, and 5% raises over the life of the contract.” She has also earned a lot of recognition from workers across the States due to her role in organizing “Red Solidarity Fridays,“ a day where inside workers wear red as a show of unity in this fight. 

Auto Workers Kick Off Bargaining With ‘Members’ Handshake’

July 22, 2023 Dan DiMaggio and Courtney Smith, Labor Notes. , , ,
Bargaining between the United Auto Workers and Big 3 automakers is looking very different this year. New UAW leaders ditched the public handshake ceremony with company executives that has traditionally kicked off bargaining. “I’m not shaking hands with any CEOs until they do right by our members,” said President Shawn Fain in a Facebook live talk July 11. Instead, officers—recently elected on promises of greater transparency and militancy, in the union’s first-ever direct election for top posts—established what could become a new tradition: “the Members’ Handshake.” Fain and other executive board members spent July 12 greeting workers at the gates of three Michigan assembly plants.

UPS Teamsters Are ‘Just Practicing’

July 20, 2023 Alexandra Bradbury and Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
The clock is ticking on the August 1 strike deadline of 340,000 UPS Teamsters. It would be the largest strike at a private employer in decades. “People are actually paying attention,” said delivery driver Kioma Forero, a Local 804 shop steward in New York City. Customers along her route stop her to say, “I hope your negotiations go well.” The hosts are talking about it on Hot 97, the city’s top hip-hop station. A deal could still avert a strike—as we went to press, the Teamsters announced UPS had reached out to resume negotiations. The union bargaining team had dispersed to members’ home locals after talks broke down July 5, for practice picketing that has put on display just how ready to strike UPSers are.

UPS Pilots Won’t Fly If Teamsters Strike

July 19, 2023 Eric Kulisch, FreightWaves. , , , , , ,
The union representing UPS pilots says they will not cross picket lines if Teamsters drivers and package sorters walk off the job when the current contract expires Aug. 1, resulting in the immediate shutdown of the express logistics company’s global air operations. UPS (NYSE: UPS) has 3,300 pilots who are represented by the Independent Pilots Association (IPA), a separate union from the Teamsters. “If the Teamsters are on strike, we will honor that strike and we will not fly,” IPA spokesman Brian Gaudet told FreightWaves. UPS pilots are allowed under their collective bargaining agreement to honor primary picket lines and did that for 16 days during the Teamsters’ strike in 1997.

American Airlines Flight Attendants Move Closer To Strike

July 19, 2023 Nick Robertson, The Hill. , , , ,
American Airlines flight attendants will hold a strike vote starting this month, their union announced Tuesday. The vote will begin July 28 and end August 29, with the result announced the next day. More than 26,000 flight attendants are seeking wage increases in a new contract with the airline. “Flight Attendants are ready for an agreement that respects our contributions to the success of this carrier,” Association of Professional Flight Attendants President Julie Hedrick said in a statement. “Our contract became amendable in 2019, and American’s Flight Attendants have not received cost-of-living increases or any other quality-of-life improvements."

Bosses, Union Officials And Rank-And-Filers Debate Work From Home

July 18, 2023 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Work from home arrangements proliferated during the pandemic and became very popular among white-collar workers. They are now the subject of a tug of war between labor and management because high profile bosses—like Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, Elon Musk at Twitter, Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase, and Andy Jassy at Amazon--have decreed that it’s time to get back in the office. Such mandates have triggered widespread resistance, even among workers without collective bargaining rights.  At Amazon, for example, more than 20,000 employees signed a petition urging Jassy to reconsider his May 1 deadline for everyone showing up at least three days per week, with few exceptions.

Hundreds Of Chicago Teamsters Stand Up To UPS Greed

July 15, 2023 Eliza Schultz and Haden Kersting, Fight Back News!. , , , , , ,
On July 14, 300 workers turned out for the latest practice picket and rally at the UPS Jefferson Street Hub on the Near West Side of Chicago. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 705 and Local 710 organized this event, which was the largest of many practice pickets in the Chicago area that occurred throughout the week. Flyers promoting the event read, “Chicago Teamsters stand up to UPS greed!” The event comes as contract negotiations between the IBT and United Parcel Service remain halted. The Teamsters already negotiated a major win for full-time drivers with the end of the two-tier classification system, known as 22.4.

Amazon Teamsters’ Rolling Pickets Hit Facilities Nationwide

July 14, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Brandi Diaz was at a customer’s door in Palmdale, California, delivering stuff for Amazon, when the customer asked her, “What’s the difference between you and UPS drivers?” “He said the difference is UPS is union, Amazon is not. He referred to us as ‘Jeff’s Bozos.’ “I am no longer Bezos’ Bozo!” Diaz said over honks and chants from 200 Teamsters from six different locals and some labor allies at a picket line outside an Amazon warehouse in northern New Jersey July 6. Diaz and her co-workers voted to join Teamsters Local 396 in April. They are Amazon delivery drivers, but they were nominally employed by an Amazon contractor, the Southern California company Battle-Tested Strategies.

Workers At The Trevor Project Unionize

July 14, 2023 Sara Van Horn, In These Times. , , ,
A majority of workers at The Trevor Project, a widely-praised nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth, decided to come together this spring and unionize as Friends of Trevor United. About a month later, they celebrated when management at the nonprofit agreed to voluntarily recognize their union. The Trevor Project has grown exponentially over the past few years, leading to what one union organizer describes as difficult workloads for crisis counselors dealing with increasing numbers of distress calls. Amy Solar-Greco, an organizer with Communications Workers of America — the union representing Friends of Trevor United — says Trevor’s rapid growth was ​“unsustainable and burdensome” for employees who are tasked with ​“performing intense, highly stressful and lifesaving work.”

In Heat And Smoke, Workers Fight Negligent Bosses

July 13, 2023 Caitlyn Clark, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
On June 29, the air quality in Detroit was among the worst in the world. “Outside it smelled like burnt plastic, almost like trash,” said UAW member Cody Zaremba, who works at a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan. He and his co-workers were experiencing coughing, runny noses, watery eyes, and trouble breathing. But GM didn’t even acknowledge the smoke, Zaremba said, much less offer any protection. “Everybody just had to go about it their own way,” he said. “We can all see it and smell it. But what are we going to do about it?” As wildfires, drought, floods, and scorching heat disrupt the supply chain, the logistics industry is starting to worry about the impact of climate change…on profits.
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