[ UPS Teamsters used a strike threat to win big wage increases in
their tentative agreement. Amazon workers are looking at the pay gains
as proof they can do the same.]
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WAGE GAINS AT UPS HAVE AMAZON WORKERS DEMANDING MORE  
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Luis Feliz Leon
August 3, 2023
Labor Notes
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_ UPS Teamsters used a strike threat to win big wage increases in
their tentative agreement. Amazon workers are looking at the pay gains
as proof they can do the same. _

Teamsters from six different locals joined newly-unionized Amazon
delivery drivers from California in picketing an Amazon warehouse in
northern New Jersey July 6. The Teamsters tentative agreement with UPS
is inspiring demands among Amazon workers, , Photo: Teamsters // Labor
Notes

 

Amazon warehouse worker Paul Blundell has spent the past year talking
to his co-workers about how UPS Teamsters were getting organized to
strike. So recently, he had big news to share: “A few days before
the strike deadline, UPS caved.”

“Everybody’s jaw dropped” when they heard that night shift
workers at the Philly UPS air hub will get an immediate raise to
$24.75, Blundell said. “We top out around $20.90 after three years,
so UPS is now starting well above that—with raises for the rest of
the contract.”

UPS part-timers also have low-deductible health insurance coverage
with no premiums, and pensions.

At UPS’s Philadelphia air hub, the current wage for an inside worker
starts at $20 an hour for the day shift and $22 for night. In South
Jersey, an inside worker starts at $19.75 on days.
 

Infographic: Jenny Brown / Labor Notes
UPS Teamsters are voting August 3-22 on whether to ratify
the tentative agreement
[[link removed]].
But the big wage gains made at the negotiating table are already
reverberating at Amazon, where the company is slated to adjust its
wage progression in the fall, and workers are hoping to make the case
that they are underpaid compared to their peers at UPS.

NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE

Amazon employs a million workers in the U.S. across 1,300 warehouses,
and pays a patchwork of wages.

At the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York, part-timer
David-Desyrée Sherwood saw the boost in pay at UPS as something to
organize around. “The $21-an-hour starting wage is crazy strong
compared to what we make at Amazon,” he said.

“I know part-timers at UPS wanted more, but I still think it’s a
noticeable enough difference for us to agitate around, plus their wage
progression is also infinitely better than what Amazon gives us.” He
later added: “I support whatever the rank and file votes to do.”

He said at JFK8, full-timers start at $18.75 and are capped at $21.75
after three years; part-timers earn the same wages but are on a
different progression.

JFK8, where workers won a union authorization election last year,
offers the most competitive Amazon wages in the region. Presumably
union density in the borough pushes up wages; the average wage on
Staten Island is $41 per hour and the median household income is
$85,381, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

At RDU1, an Amazon fulfillment center just outside Raleigh, North
Carolina, Reverend Ryan Brown welcomed news of the tentative deal.

“It shows the power of solidarity, the threat of a strike, and
collective bargaining,” he said by text message. “We hope that the
Teamsters have the same success in organizing Amazon delivery
stations.” Brown is president of Carolina Amazonians United for
Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the independent union
[[link removed]] of Amazon workers at RDU1.

At the 3,000-worker fulfillment center STL8 in St. Peters, Missouri,
Paul Irving and his co-workers struck Amazon last year
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Black Friday (November 25) to demand higher wages, after marching on
management in September to deliver a petition about wages and safety
with 350 signatures. In response to the November strike, the company
raised wages from $15.50 to $16.50 for part-timers but didn’t meet
workers’ other demands, on safety.

But now, Irving and his co-workers are looking to make further gains.
“If UPS wages go up, Amazon should do the same,” he said.

Workers at STL8 delivered another petition in April with 400
signatures. And they sent a letter in June to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy
demanding that Amazon eliminate work practices that result in serious
injuries.

RAISE THE STANDARD

Workers are taking on the e-commerce giant in one thousand cuts. In
a growing
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labor practice strike, Amazon delivery drivers
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Palmdale, California, who joined the Teamsters have extended their
picket lines to 10 warehouses in California, New Jersey, Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Michigan
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and Georgia.

At Amazon’s delivery station DGE9 in Buford, Georgia, 25 warehouse
workers came out during their break to meet the Palmdale strikers
while they were picketing a nearby Atlanta sortation center, ATL6.

In the parking lot, the workers had an impromptu conversation about
shop floor organizing and legal protections that cover collective
action.

“We had a real good conversation about our common struggles and what
we can do about it,” said one of the delivery station workers, who
asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation.

Since then, the conversation has turned to the UPS contract. “The
wages they won have sparked a lot of conversation,” the worker said,
and the excitement is spreading to other nearby warehouses. “I just
got off a call talking with other workers from Amazonians United
Atlanta about trying to catch this lightning in a bottle right now.”

Last October, the Buford delivery station workers presented
a petition
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walked off demanding a base pay bump of $3, but they only got a
40-cent increase.

“The UPS workers have raised the standard, and we know that’s
going to put pressure on Amazon from outside,” said Blundell in
Philly. “But if we want to make the gains UPS workers have shown us
can be made, we Amazon workers have to be organized from the inside to
push this company to treat us with respect, with our wages, with our
working conditions.”

FAIR PAY AND SAFE WORKLOADS

Blundell and his co-workers are campaigning across several warehouses
in the Philadelphia metro area to demand that Amazon match what UPS
Teamsters won, with the aim of taking this demand nationwide.

“We do basically the same work,” he said. “There’s no reason
we should be paid so much less by one of the richest companies in the
world. If UPS workers had gone on strike, that message would have been
shouted from the rooftops.”

They’re building on a petition
[[link removed]] that
Amazonians United Mid-Atlantic piloted at the Philadelphia delivery
station DDP9 and other facilities, demanding $22 an hour to match the
pay rates at Target and Walmart distribution warehouses. Now they are
expanding it to UPS ahead of Amazon’s annual announcement of its
wage progression, known as the “step plan.”

The step plan allows Amazon to raise or lower starting wages. Because
of the tight labor markets, workers say they’ve only seen wages go
up, but they add they don’t know anyone who has been at the company
long enough to remember further back than five years.

The petition also called for making overtime during peak season
voluntary instead of mandatory, to reduce injuries from repetitive
stress.

At a delivery station, workers load packages on trucks and vans on
their way to the customer. The work involves lifting, carrying,
twisting, and other strenuous repetitive tasks. Amazon has been
cited many times
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its failure to eliminate ergonomic hazards.

Workers also demanded in the older petition the right to listen to
music while at work.

A PATCHWORK OF WAGES

Each Amazon warehouse has its own step plan. Some workers believe the
company determines its wages based on an area’s cost of living;
others say it’s based on an area’s median income.

“Ask management why and you’ll get all sorts of babble about
‘network standards’ and ‘target rates’ and ‘market
assessments’ that amount to complicated ways of saying ‘because we
can,’” according to a recent newsletter of Amazonians United
Philly, the organizing network that Blundell and his co-workers work
with.

On July 25, a warehouse worker in New Jersey’s fulfillment center
ACY1 wrote on the company’s _Voice of the Associates_, an online
bulletin board for Q&A with management:

“Congrats to UPS workers, who just fought UPS for a contract that
raises wages by $2.75 immediately and by $7.50 by the end of the
contract. Amazon’s step plan increases haven’t kept up with
inflation for at least two years, we need a raise, too. Any plans for
that?”

The head of Amazon’s human resource department responded, “As a
former UPS employee, I am glad to hear UPS reached an agreement but I
am prouder to work at Amazon,” and then chirped about flexibility.

“Amazon’s average starting wage in North America in fulfillment
and transportation is $19, with employees earning between $16 and $26
per hour depending on their position and location in the U.S.,” said
Sam Stephenson, an Amazon spokesperson. “Amazon reviews wages
annually to ensure hourly pay is in line with what is being paid for
comparable work locally.” The company wouldn’t clarify whether it
was including the hourly rates of lower management in the average.

But Amazon’s starting pay at delivery stations in the Philly area is
$17.80, according to a wage progression chart shared with _Labor
Notes_. In Buford, Georgia, the starting pay is $17.20 with a 50 cent
overnight differential. In Revere, Massachusetts, the starting pay at
fulfillment center DMH9 is $17.75, with a three-year progression to
$20.15. Amazon stops its raises after three years.

The only way to bump your wages beyond the steps is to become a
“tier three worker,” such as a process assistant—a role that is
adjacent to management but comes with no supervisory power. A process
assistant at Amazon’s fulfillment center DMH9 tops out at $23; the
same role at Staten Island’s JFK8 pays $24.65. Workers at JFK8
groused that Amazon’s failure
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promote them into these roles was the catalyst that spurred them to
unionize.

Amazon workers on Staten Island campaigned for a union demanding $30
an hour. Amazon drivers in California who unionized with the Teamsters
won a $30 wage, but Amazon then canceled the contract of their nominal
co-employer, Battle-Tested Strategies. At Amazon's Kentucky air hub,
workers are demanding $30 an hour.

Some UPS part-timers already earn more than that. One of them is Elbie
Lieb, a member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and a part-timer
with UPS in Indiana, who earns around $33 an hour after 27 years at
the company. If the tentative agreement is ratified, her wages will be
$42.29 by the end of the five-year contract.

UNION DIFFERENCE?

Blundell and his co-workers spoke with a Local 623 shop steward and
other Teamsters so they could explain to their co-workers how UPS
warehouse wages compared to Amazon’s in the Philadelphia and south
New Jersey area.

For the Amazonians United Philly newsletter, workers put together a
chart comparing pay across warehouses of non-union Walmart and Target
as well as unionized workplaces like UPS and the Postal Service.

But the Teamsters’ existing contract didn’t show a compelling
union difference.

This is partly because Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15
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response to organizing and political pressure. UPS Teamsters had
contract negotiations the same year, and the part-timers, who work in
warehouses sorting parcels and loading them into delivery trucks, were
pressing for a $15 starting wage.

But the union capitulated to a $13 starting rate, rising to $15.50 in
2022. Days after Amazon’s announcement, a majority of Teamsters
voted down the tentative agreement, but Teamsters then-President James
P. Hoffa imposed it
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This year, with new leadership and stronger rank-and-file
organization, UPS Teamsters have raised the wage floor substantially.

“Before deregulation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was
the central force guiding competition in the logistics industries
throughout the country, taking wages out of competition and forcing
companies to compete on quality and efficiency,” said Brian Callaci,
chief economist at the anti-monopoly Open Markets Institute and a
former union organizer with UNITE HERE.

“The UPS contract is a huge win for UPS workers. But its potential
significance is even greater: if it causes Amazon, FedEx, and other
non-union workers to look at those gains and want that for
themselves… Then maybe the union might be able to play that central
role in the industry once again.”

“It's all one fight here in the logistics industry,” said
Blundell. “We have to be organizing together. We have to be raising
standards together, or we risk losing by being disorganized.”

_[LUIS FELIZ LEON [[link removed]] is a
staff writer and organizer with Labor [email protected]]_

RELATED

* TEAMSTERS AND AUTO WORKERS ARE RAISING THE BAR FOR CONTRACT
CAMPAIGNS »
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* DESPITE BIG TEAMSTER WINS AT UPS, SOME EXPECTATIONS OUTPACE GAINS
»
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* UPS TEAMSTERS TO VOTE ON CONTRACT THAT ENDS DRIVER TIERS, LIFTS
PART-TIMER PAY »
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* UPS TEAMSTERS ‘JUST PRACTICING’ »
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* MICHIGAN AMAZON WORKERS STAGE LARGEST DELIVERY STATION STRIKE YET
»
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Mailing Address: P.O. Box 250-480, Brooklyn, NY 11225
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