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Risk of major disruption as UPS strike looms in US
(www.bbc.com)
Good, labor needs teeth again.
Always nice to see this constant wave of labor strikes, organizing and action
Agreed. Do you think it would help the cause if we all ordered as many as we can of the smallest cheapest things that we can get UPS delivered? Put the pressure on by flooding them with orders they can't meet if there's a strike?
No, the best thing to do is listen to teamsters leadership and if they ask for a boycott stop using them until the deal goes through.
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Refusing to negotiate, especially when the finish line is in sight, creates significant unease among employees and customers and threatens to disrupt the U.S. economy. Only our non-union competitors benefit from the Teamsters’ actions.
We’re proud of what we’ve put forward in these negotiations, which deliver wins for our people. The Teamsters should return to the table to finalize this deal.
“We break our backs working for this company. UPS needs to recognize our sacrifices not just with empty words, calling us ‘essential workers,’ but by putting the pay, benefits, and protections we deserve into a contract,” said Cesar Castro, a part-time UPS Teamster with Local 396 in Los Angeles and a member of the Teamsters National Negotiating Committee. “Every UPS Teamster expects this by July 5 or we will be ready to strike.”
UPS recorded $100 billion in revenue and over $13 billion in profits last year alone.
Makes you wonder who UPS PR means when they say "our people". Negotiation to acceptable terms is the responsibility of the company, not the workers. That is part of the basic requirements of running a corporation.
Refusing to negotiate
Refusing to take a pittance offer is not the same as refusing to negotiate. UPS made 13 BILLION in profit - not revenues - last year. Stiffing your employees is unacceptable.
I like how the interviewee remarked on his concerns for the younger union members.
I imagine the Teamsters are too large and too savvy to go for a new contract that creates a two-tier system of new members with a crappier package than senior members. They should know that would be a death spiral for union membership.
You'd think that, but that's exactly what they did last negotiation. One major issues on the table is to reverse that.
Divide and conquer has worked with a lot of other unions.
"Strike needed to correct low labor prices and lack of AC during climate meltdown." real headline
On one hand, they do deliver my medicine. On the other, WHY do they not have AC? If I miss my meds I am sending bad vibes to management.
Also, why does your medicine not have ac? Many medicines are heat sensitive.
That doesn't matter as much, the semi trailers don't have ac either, and packages spend a lot more time in there than in a delivery vehicle
It does make a difference for the drivers though
The trucks are thin sheet metal, brown absorbs the sunlight, and putting A/C in the cabs is all but useless.
They're going to try & implement better heat controls for the cargo area, fans to blow out hot air & such. That's more important than A/C; the cargo can reach temps well in excess of 130°F. You can bake cookies back there, yes, people have done it to demonstrate.
Once the new contract takes effect, all trucks sold must be A/C capable (lol) & very very hot centers will get more assistance first. All older trucks will be required to be retrofitted with 2 fans in the cab. That is a far cheaper, EASIER, more effective, and more common sense approach than A/C in delivery trucks.
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Good. Especially this time of year when the drivers are literally roasting in their trucks and big brown refuses to put in ac.
People have literally died due to lack of AC in the trucks. Should have updated them long ago
USPS looking at this to finally be profitable!
... Unless you actually work there cuz that'll suck
Edit: It's a joke guys
"United States Postal Service"
It's not meant to be profitable. It is a service. As in: not a product. A service performed by your government. Subsidized by taxes because that's how it works. That's why it's (almost) always the cheapest option when you need to ship or deliver.
Also, it WAS profitable, for the vast majority of its history. It only stopped being profitable something like 8-10 years ago, when Congress mandated that (IIRC) pensions had to be funded 70 years in advance.
It sometimes seems like there's nothing good in this country congress won't eventually destroy. The USPS was, and is, mostly an excellent organization. Only sabotage will bring it down.
Republicans are doing most of the destruction, not Congress as a whole.
I mean, it would be nice if ALL government pensions had to be funded decades in advance. Singling out the USPS was some blatant bullshit though.
Why? It would mean a massive pool of money just begging for some cockroach from Goldman Sachs to come around and dump it into mortgage backed securities.
More people are retiring than are replacing them in the work force for one thing. Having pensions paid decades in advance means (in my mind) it smooths out somewhat instead of crashing.
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USPS does not receive any taxpayer subsidies.
That's the power of government corporations!
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The USPS would be profitable if they didn't have to beg Congress to raise the price of stamps and weren't forced to fund pension liabilities for people who won't retire for 30 years.
I consider myself a news junkie, and I'd never even heard of this until right now. God, do I wish good news like this actually got the airtime it deserved!
I think a part of it comes from who Biden is. When I voted for Biden I hoped for three things
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Clown show to be over
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Small problems in government getting fixed
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At least one big improvement.
So far he has given us two. His administration has been quitely making things run better in government and doing it in such a way as to not attract attention. You can't really expect the news to dedicate a segment to pension reform when they have been at the all you can eat fest of blood in the water and -gates of 2016-2020. Even now Google news in private browsing mode shows me more results about the two frontrunners of the GOP nomination (16 months before the election) then it does of the man literally in the White House.
It's a bit sad that he doesn't have the best odds of winning relection, mostly because of the total lack of showmanship. I wanted a dedicated civil servant and I got one, but only for 4 years.
It’s a bit sad that he doesn’t have the best odds of winning relection
Agreed with the rest of your comment, but gotta disagree with this line. All signs seem to indicate that the general election will be a Biden / former guy rematch. And Biden's already beaten him once.
To be clear, not saying victory is guaranteed or even likely, it's going to be a long, hard slog between here and election day. But I wouldn't count Biden out just yet, not by any means.
Republicans fucked with the accounting in the PAEA to make it seem like it's failing so they can privatize it.. USPS actually makes money hand over fist.
This article is about UPS(United Parcel Service) and not the USPS(United States Postal Service). UPS is a publically traded company.
The implication is that the disruption to UPS's service will drive business to the USPS.
USPS usually handles the last mile. Guess what big company handles the other miles for them.
Guess what big company has no obligation to deliver to anyone ever? You know who does have that obligation? No matter where in the country you live? The U.S. Postal Service.
What I'm saying is the strike will not be a boon for USPS as much as people seem to think. On the one hand they have government officials trying to get rid of it, on the other, to cut costs, they've offloaded a lot of their shipping to other companies like UPS, FedEx, etc. They're going to feel the effects of the strike in a negative way. I agree with the guy quoted in the article that the other shipping companies like FedEx and DHL will be the ones getting the increased business. and they don't have a union.
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I feel bad for the loaders and sorters. Kinda shitty they're forced to strike when everything was only ever about the delivery drivers.
Edit: My friend is a loader. Not one peep from union about any of their issues. They're all about the drivers. She's worried about her finances during the strike. Teamsters is gigantic. It's one big business battling another big business and only the peons are going to hurt. Oh and AC and stuff like that was the easy negotiation that everyone agreed to. The impasse is about pay and only driver pay. Big surprise.
So, Biden and Congress are going to step in again and break this strike like they did with train workers, right? They’re both logistics unions that will (apparently) cripple supply chains if they go on strike.
If they say there’s no legal mechanism for that: they have a template and it already passed constitutional tests - the same teeth the Railroad Labor Act has can just as easily be applied to UPS/FedEx/DHL via a new law.
If Biden and Congress aren’t consistent with their logic on this it just proves how deep in the railroad baron pockets they really are.
Except that the Biden Administration kept working with the railroad unions for months after the strike to pressure the railroad companies to give them sick leave, resulting in the railroad companies caving and giving the unions everything they wanted this spring. Union leaders are on record saying they couldn't have gotten it done without the Administration's help.
But progress doesn't sell as well in the papers as doom and despair, so almost no one knows about it.
So…in other words…justice delayed is not justice denied? The workers just need to shut up and live with bad contracts - we just need to trust they’ll do the right thing?
The result was:
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Labor got crushed - effectively the government did their negotiating for them. Why pay dues to a union that can’t even strike and can’t even negotiate by itself?
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Railroads made absolute fortunes
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A pittance was doled out since they had so much bad PR due to all the train derailments
Personally, I think it’s hypocritical the government tells two groups with the same criticality to supply chains two different things. For one group, it’s a threat to the nation and our financial survival, so they can’t go on strike. For the other group, silence.
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Oh shit, thanks for this.
Thanks for the additional context. I never heard anything about this. You can't say the Biden Labor department has been idle. They have also been very present with the Longshoremen negotiations on the west coast recently. I wish they were even more pro-worker but this just goes to show that elections matter.
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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