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Can UPS And The Teamsters Reach A Deal?

July 3, 2023 Stephen Franklin, In These Times. , , , ,
When the temperature hits three digits in the brown UPS truck Luis Rivera drives, he slows down his deliveries, which gets him in trouble, he says, with his boss. “They say, ​‘Why did you take so long?’ and I say, ​‘Dude, it’s hot. I know when I need to take a break,” explains Rivera, a veteran delivery driver and Teamsters member in Central California, where heat waves are common. Rivera ticks off the times that colleagues have gotten heatstroke and recalls the tragedy of a young UPS driver, 23-year-old Jose Cruz Rodriguez Jr., who died two years ago in Waco, Texas.

UPS Teamsters Union Struggle Is Critical For All Workers

June 28, 2023 Gavrielle Gemma, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
340,000 workers, members of the Teamsters Union, worked tirelessly during the worst of the COVID pandemic. Despite exhaustion from overwork, disease, and family tragedies, they saved lives by delivering packages to those quarantined. Meanwhile, bosses at UPS lived in luxury as profits soared to $56.3 billion from 2019 to 2023. In 2023 alone, UPS says it will spend $3 billion in stock buybacks and $5.4 billion in dividends. Every penny of that profit is due to the labor of the workers. The current contract expires in less than five weeks. Every day the company delays making a realistic offer to the union, the closer workers come to a strike authorized by 97% of the rank-and-file who voted.

Teamsters Rank And File Hold Speakout Against UPS Contract Proposals

June 26, 2023 Fight Back News!. , , , ,
Commerce City, Colorado - On June 24, rank-and-file Teamsters stood out in front of the gate of the Commerce City UPS hub outside Denver to speak out against the economic proposals UPS submitted during negotiations. These proposals include wildly unpopular ideas, such as the creation of a two-tier wage system for preloaders and a $17 per hour starting wage. As people were walking out of the gate, many workers flocked to the table, insulted by these proposals and ready for further action. “They think we're worth $17 an hour; this is what UPS thinks of their preloaders,” Kat Draken, a Teamster shop steward, furiously stated, “they must think we're joking about striking.”

‘We Must Strike’: A Message From A Rank-And-File UPS Worker Activist

June 23, 2023 Greg Kerwood , Left Voice. , , ,
It has become almost cliche to say that nobody wants a strike, as if it were somehow uncouth to stand up for one’s humanity without a qualifier. But wanting a strike is truly not the question. The question, rather, is do we NEED a strike? And the answer is an unequivocal YES! We NEED a strike to unite our members at UPS, and our Teamsters Union as a whole. We NEED a strike to create a generation of militant Unionists, whose education will be the picket line, and whose graduation will be the launch of a new Labor movement. We NEED a strike to create the bonds that hold Labor together, that unite workers; those that can only be forged in the furnace of workplace action.

With Strike Looming, UPS Teamsters Win Air Conditioning, Other Gains

June 18, 2023 Simon Rowe, Fight Back News!. , , , ,
Tampa, Florida - Since national negotiations started in March, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has reached many tentative agreements in their national contract with United Parcel Service. These agreements that will benefit Teamsters include but are not limited to better cooling systems in package cars, strengthened grievance procedures, and the creation of more union jobs. The current Teamsters contract with UPS was a five-year agreement which expires on July 31. Unless the Teamsters bargaining team reaches a tentative agreement with UPS for a next contract and the rank and file votes “yes” by July 31, over 300,000 Teamsters are set to strike on August 1.

Teamsters Vote By 97 Percent To Strike If UPS Fails To Deliver Strong Contract

June 17, 2023 International Brotherhood of Teamsters. , , ,
Washington, DC - UPS Teamsters have voted by an overwhelming 97 percent to authorize a strike, giving the union maximum leverage to win demands at the bargaining table. The powerful vote allows the UPS Teamsters National Negotiating Committee to call a strike should UPS fail to come to terms on a strong new contract by July 31, when the union’s current National Master Agreement expires. The Teamsters represent more than 340,000 UPS package delivery drivers and warehouse logistics workers nationwide. “This vote shows that hundreds of thousands of Teamsters are united and determined to get the best contract in our history at UPS.

UPS Teamsters Start Strike Authorization Vote

June 8, 2023 Sean Orr and Elliot Lewis, Labor Notes. , , , ,
With the largest private sector labor contract in the United States set to expire on July 31 at midnight, the eyes of the American labor movement are on United Parcel Service (UPS) and the nearly 350,000 Teamsters who work there. The Teamsters announced a UPS strike authorization vote starting this week, with results to be announced June 16. Union leaders are strongly urging a yes vote. “This is how we win,” said Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien. Our contract fight matters for the entire working class. We want workers everywhere—and especially at Amazon and FedEx—to see that organizing a union leads to better pay and working conditions and greater control over their working lives, and opens the door to a better world.

For Women At UPS, Fighting The Bosses Means Fighting The Patriarchy

June 2, 2023 Teddy Ostrow and RuWalsh, The Real News Network. , , ,
UPS is a male-dominated corporation, both on the corporate side and on the union/worker side. And like across all institutions of our society, there are structural obstacles, challenges, prejudices, issues that women uniquely face at UPS. You could say the same thing about non-white and particularly Black UPSers, as well as LGBTQ+ UPSers. There is a long history of women organizing at UPS that we can’t fully cover here. I’ll throw some links in the show notes that you should definitely check out. That includes the group UPSurge. Yes, UPSurge, which was a largely women-led militant group in 1970s pushing for a fair contract at UPS, members of which eventually merged into the movement we all know Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

UPS And The Logistics Revolution

May 20, 2023 Teddy Ostrow, The Real News Network. , , ,
The word “logistics” has somewhat of an impersonal ring to it. When you hear it, you think: massive container ships, cranes, eighteen wheelers, aircrafts, conveyor belts, spreadsheets, contracts, and of course, boxes. It’s almost as if all of this infrastructure that moves our goods around the world, around the clock, is running by itself. But undergirding “logistics” is one indispensable element: Workers. Millions of them, without whom the colossal flow of goods and services would come grinding to a halt. In this episode of The Upsurge, we ask how our modern logistics giants, like UPS – and the Teamsters that keep it running – came to wield so much power.

Why 340,000 UPS Workers Are Preparing To Strike In The US

April 29, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , ,
United Parcel Service (UPS) workers are gearing up for a potential strike as they hold contract negotiations with the company. Talks between the company and the union representing UPS workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, opened on April 17. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien says that workers are ready to walk off the job if UPS fails to reach a deal on a strong contract before the current one expires on July 31. Workers are demanding better pay, more full-time work, better job security, and an end to the two-tier “22.4” job classification. The deeply unpopular “22.4” provision creates a lower-paid tier of workers who essentially performing the same work as senior drivers, but for lower pay

UPS Workers Might Revitalize Labor

April 15, 2023 Teddy Ostrow, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
Over 340,000 workers at United Parcel Service (UPS) could launch the largest strike against a single company in US history this August, when their collective bargaining agreement expires. The clock is ticking as the top package courier in the world, which has seen two straight years of record-breaking profits, considers whether it will hold much of the country’s logistics infrastructure hostage by refusing workers’ demands: raising the poverty pay of part-time warehouse workers, re-establishing “equal pay for equal work” among delivery drivers, and introducing extreme heat–related and other safety protections, among others. National negotiations between UPS and the Teamsters union, which represents the workers, begin on April 17.

‘Strike Force’: Building The UPS Contract Campaign

April 8, 2023 Justin Alo, Labor Notes. , , , ,
At Duke’s Hawaiian Coffee Shop and Deli in San Marcos, California, Friday mornings are abuzz with organizing talk—building unity among fellow Teamsters ahead of a potential strike at UPS. We began meeting in February, just a few of us. Soon enough, word spread about what we called “Unity Breakfast,” and the coffee shop filled up. At the first meeting, my co-worker Tim Peppers defined the main purpose: to educate members about the contract campaign and potential strike. We talked about how we are part of a movement much bigger than our own building, and why it’s important to build unity across our differences in seniority and classification.

Getting The Members Into Motion At UPS

March 21, 2023 Sean Orr, Labor Notes. , , ,
Rank-and-file activists at UPS have a huge task: getting our 340,000 co-workers ready to mount a credible strike threat by August 1. Luckily we don’t have to do it alone, like we did in 2013 and 2018. This time we have the support of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman, and the rest of our international leadership. We have a contract campaign coordinator, internal organizers, and a whole team of staff from the international union to engage members and coordinate all our efforts toward one big fight. But we need to show UPS that the whole membership is ready to fight, not just the leaders. Rank-and-file Teamsters need to be active and ready to walk if our demands aren’t met.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien Vows To ‘Pulverize’ UPS

November 3, 2022 Stephen Franklin, In These Times. , , ,
Chicago — Spelling out union strategy for an all-important contract with UPS, Sean O’Brien worked his way up to a fiery pitch. ​“We gotta strategize, we gotta organize, and then we gotta pulverize UPS,” he declared. The room erupted into cheers, applause and fists clenched upward. The presentation by the short, muscular, bald-headed, fourth-generation Teamster from Boston, a union member since his teenage years, felt like a shop steward’s typical nitty-gritty warm-up speech.  Listening near the back of the conference, Dan Campbell, 69, a retired Teamster from Wisconsin, felt lifted by what he heard. He liked O’Brien’s ​“hard-nosed” tone and especially liked his call ​“for everyone to get on board and row with all hands.” O’Brien is president of the one-million-plus Teamsters Union.

Workers Speak Out As UPS Continues Retaliation Against Union Activists

September 6, 2022 Bit Penguin, Left Voice. , , , , ,
New York city, New York - Starting at 8:00 a.m. on September 1, workers and allies began to congregate at the steps of the Metro Queens UPS facility. The rally built on two-days of tabling, where dozens of coworkers posed for solidarity photos and encouraged coworkers to sign a petition defending “all fired activists.” Veterans of the 2014 ‘Maspeth 250’ wildcat strike, a struggle against the unjust firing of union militant Jairo Reyes, were quick to show their solidarity. So far, approximately 150 workers from the two Maspeth UPS buildings signed the petition, with plans in place to get many more signatures.
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