“This has just huge implications for the entire labor movement in the United States,” said John Logan, the director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, referring to labor talks at UPS. There are also prominent labor organization campaigns at Apple, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Apple, even strippers at a dance club in Los Angeles. Teamsters are attempting to organize Amazon workers and dozens of company delivery drivers and dispatchers in California joined the union last month. Driver safety, particularly the lack of air conditioning in delivery trucks, is also in the mix.Ī win at UPS could have implications for the organized labor outside the company. In addition to addressing part-time pay, and what workers say is excessive overtime, the union wants to eliminate a contract provision that created two separate hierarchies of workers with different pay scales, hours and benefits. O’Brien went on a nationwide tour of local Teamsters shops preparing frontline workers ahead of negotiations. The acrimony over the current contract was so fierce that last year workers rejected a candidate to lead the Teamsters favored by longtime union head James Hoffa, instead choosing the more combative Sean O’Brien. Union members rejected the contract they were offered in 2018, but it was pushed through by union leadership based on a technicality.
“Our members worked really hard over the pandemic,” said Teamsters spokesperson Kara Deniz.
The Teamsters say frontline UPS workers deserve some of that windfall. The Atlanta company returned about $8.6 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks in 2022, and forecasts another $8.4 billion for shareholders this year. UPS workers feel they have played a part in the transformation of how Americans shop since the last contract was ratified in 2018, while helping to make UPS a much more valuable company.Īnnual profits at UPS in the past two years are close to three times what they were before the pandemic.
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