[ Teamsters have overwhelmingly voted to strike July 31. The vote
doesn’t mean that a walkout is inevitable. The vote is a signal UPS
management ignores at its peril. Most important, which side of the
scale the Biden administration places its thumb.]
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A TEAMSTERS STRIKE AGAINST UPS COULD REMAKE THE UNION MOVEMENT FOR
THE BETTER  
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Michael Hiltzik
June 21, 2023
Los Angeles Times
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_ Teamsters have overwhelmingly voted to strike July 31. The vote
doesn’t mean that a walkout is inevitable. The vote is a signal UPS
management ignores at its peril. Most important, which side of the
scale the Biden administration places its thumb. _

Unionized UPS workers have voted to authorize a strike if the
Teamsters and the company don’t agree to a new contract before the
existing pact expires July 31., (Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press // Los
Angeles Times)

 

Over the last year, unionization drives by Starbucks baristas
[[link removed]] and Amazon
warehouse workers
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all but monopolized the attention of the labor organizing world.

That may be why the most important development in the field has
operated under the radar until very recently. We’re talking about
the contract talks between United Parcel Service and about 340,000
members of the Teamsters union.

The negotiations have already yielded an overwhelming vote by the
members to strike if no deal is reached by July 31
[[link removed]],
when the current contract expires. Hand-wringing about the impact of a
UPS strike has intensified lately, since the shutdown of a company
that handles an estimated 6% of the nation’s gross domestic product
(according to UPS) could have dire economic consequences.

Sean O’Brien has made it clear that we are not going to take any
concessions.

— Viviana Gonzalez, Teamster steward

What’s more important, however, is the impact that a successful
negotiation or a strike could have on the health of American organized
labor.

It would demonstrate that workers have truly gained leverage over
employers after three pandemic years and a year of inflation fueled
by corporate profiteering
[[link removed]].
It could also demonstrate the value of union solidarity in the face of
determined resistance by employers.

As I’ve reported before
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the notion that American workers have gained an edge over employers in
the pandemic’s wake has been wildly overstated.

Labor expert Theresa Ghilarducci of the New School points us to a
recent survey by Oxfam
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that among the 38 developed nations in the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranked at or near the bottom on
measures of wage policies including minimum wages (36 out of 38),
rights to organize (32nd) and worker protections (dead last at 38).

Employers have fared much better, thank you. That includes UPS, where
the pandemic burnished the financial picture. UPS revenue grew to
$100.3 billion last year from $74.1 billion in 2019, and profit grew
to $11.6 billion from $4.5 billion in 2019.

In other words, the company’s profit margin nearly doubled, to 11.6%
last year from 6% in the year before COVID. If there’s an argument
against distributing more of that largesse to the workforce that made
that growth possible, let’s hear it.

Given U.S. law and past practice, piecemeal organizing drives in
discrete workplaces such as Starbucks stores always face an uphill
battle.

Starbucks has managed to fight many of its barista unionization
efforts to a draw by exploiting the indifferent and time-consuming
system of labor law enforcement in the U.S. The coffeehouse company
has engaged in what a National Labor Relations Board judge found in
March to be “hundreds of unfair labor practices,”
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his ruling came more than a year and a half after the offenses were
committed; the enforcement process still hasn’t concluded.

The Teamsters can’t be manipulated as easily, since the union is
bargaining for its entire UPS membership, companywide. That said,
previous Teamster leaders have been overly indulgent toward the
company; some of their historical concessions are on the negotiation
table right now. Today’s Teamster leadership, moreover, won their
seats by promising specifically to take a hard line with UPS.

That stance has already yielded accords on numerous noneconomic
issues. The most important may be the company’s agreement to install
heat shields and air conditioning in its delivery vehicles, in which
summertime temperatures can soar higher than 100 degrees; scores of
UPS drivers
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reportedly succumbed to heat-related injuries.

Last summer, driver Esteban Chavez Jr. died from what his family
maintains was heat stroke
[[link removed]] suffered
while delivering packages in Pasadena. (The question, of course, is
why it took union negotiations for UPS to address this issue.)

“We have a new person in charge,” says Viviana Gonzalez, a UPS
driver for nine years and a steward for Covina-based Teamsters Local
396. She’s referring to General President Sean O’Brien, a former
UPS employee who won his Teamsters post in 2021 by defeating a
candidate handpicked by former President James P. Hoffa.

“Sean O’Brien has made it clear that we are not going to take any
concessions,” Gonzalez told me. She says the workforce takes pride
in having kept UPS operating through the pandemic — “without us,
you didn’t get food, medicine, essential stuff” — but sentiment
is widespread that the company hasn’t sufficiently acknowledged the
workers’ role during that difficult period.

The most interesting aspect of the current contract negotiations may
be the union’s demand to eliminate a lower, second tier of drivers
who do the same work as other drivers but for lower pay. The main
difference in their duties is that they work Tuesday through Saturday,
rather than weekdays.

Creating the so-called 22.4 drivers (named for the contract section
that covers them) allowed the company to extend delivery services into
the weekend without paying the full-time workforce extra for weekend
duty or overtime.

Full-time drivers earn an average of about $95,000. The 22.4 drivers
earn less per hour while receiving comparable health and pension
benefits.

Earlier contracts gave the company more flexibility to hire part-time
workers, to the point where about half of all the Teamster members at
UPS are part-timers. The company says a part-time workforce is
“essential to our success,”
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the average workday encompasses “alternating bursts of activity and
slack time.”

UPS also portrays part-time opportunities as “ideal for many
people” who want time to “advance their education and pursue their
passions.”

That sounds a lot like the argument by gig firms such as Uber and
Lyft, which assert that classifying their drivers as independent
contractors affords them the “flexibility” they value in their
lives, even if it means giving up the job protections and benefits
that come from classification as “employees.” For the companies,
it means lower costs, so you be the judge.

At UPS, the part-timers earn less than half the average hourly wage
that full-timers receive.

Serious labor leaders know that two-tier and part-time employment is
poison for workers’ interests. Managements have long “assumed that
full-timers wouldn’t fight for more full-time opportunities and
better pay for part-time workers, while the younger part-time work
force wouldn’t fight for better pensions or reduced subcontracting
of full-time jobs,” Teamster officials Matt Witt and Rand Wilson
observed in a 1999 retrospective
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the last UPS strike, in 1997.

That two-week strike ended with one of the best contracts the
Teamsters ever achieved with UPS. After a string of mediocre contracts
signed by union leaderships racked with internal dissension, the union
in 1997 took a more militant stance toward UPS and, perhaps more
important, leadership made a concerted effort to engage members in the
contract negotiating campaign.

The issues then, as now, included the company’s reliance on
part-timers — who often worked as many hours as full-timers, but
were paid less. During the four years preceding the 1997 contract
talks, more than 80% of new hires
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classified as part-time. The striking workers benefited from their
positive public image, which immunized them from a company advertising
campaign aimed at portraying them as greedy.

The strike’s success bore lessons for organized labor generally,
chiefly that successful bargaining was the best advertisement for
union membership. “You could make a million house calls, run a
thousand television commercials, stage a hundred strawberry rallies,
and still not come close to doing what the UPS strike did for
organizing,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the umbrella
union’s national convention a month later.

As it happens, however, the glow faded. Organized labor continued its
steady decline in membership and influence. At UPS, the Teamsters
allowed the company to implement the 22.4 classification in 2018, even
though 54% of the voting membership rejected the contract.

Then-President Hoffa ruled the contract to have been ratified
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citing a union rule that permitted him to do so if voting turnout had
dipped below 50% or the “no” votes didn’t exceed two-thirds.
Turnout had been only 44%.

The strike vote doesn’t mean that a walkout is inevitable,
obviously. But the vote is a signal that UPS management ignores at its
peril. The most important question may be on which side of the scale
the Biden administration places its thumb.

In November, when railroad managements balked at union contract
proposals calling for more sick days — proposals the financially
flush railroads were well able to afford
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thanks to record profits — Biden sided with the railroads. Then, as
now, the rhetoric was all about the “crippling” effects of a
strike.

Biden has been portraying himself as a pro-labor president. The truth
is that he has been a better friend to labor than any of his
predecessors since Franklin D. Roosevelt. That makes the UPS situation
a test he can’t afford to lose. He should celebrate the Teamsters’
solidarity in demanding a fair share of UPS profits. Make no mistake:
If there’s a strike, it will be because UPS management wanted it to
happen.

_[Los Angeles Times columnist MICHAEL HILTZIK writes a daily blog
[[link removed]] appearing
on latimes.com. His seventh book, “Iron Empires
[[link removed]]:
Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America,”
published in 2020. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/hiltzikm
[[link removed]] and
on Facebook at facebook.com/hiltzik
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* Teamsters
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* UPS
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* IBT
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* two-tier contracts
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* concessionary bargaining
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* worker protections
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* Health & Safety
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* part-time employment
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* part-time workers
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* subcontracting
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* Labor Organizing
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* Trade Unions
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* Labor Movement
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