To protect their identities from management and the union, the workers use the pseudonyms Peter and Heather. WSWS reporters recently sat down with two part-time loaders at the Tualatin, Oregon UPS hub, which is located in a southwest suburb of the Portland metropolitan area. As part of this effort, the WSWS is interviewing UPS workers around the country on their conditions, the role of the union and the battle they are facing this year. The World Socialist Web Site will do everything to assist UPS workers in the fight for rank-and-file committees and to provide a political perspective to mobilize the working class against the capitalist system and both corporate-controlled political parties. These committees should reach out now to Amazon, FedEx, USPS and other logistics workers, to prepare a common fight.
#UPS DRIVER PAY PROGRESSION FULL#
These should include the transformation of all part-timers into full-time workers with full pay and benefits and workers’ control over line speeds, safety conditions and production. The coming struggle will require workers to elect rank-and-file committees, independent of the union, to unify all UPS workers and outline their own demands. In this contract, the TDU and TU are calling for a $15 an hour starting wage for part-timers, or about half of what a UPS part-time worker made in 1978 when taking inflation into account.
#UPS DRIVER PAY PROGRESSION DRIVERS#
The drivers would deliver packages part-time and could be used for any other “recognized part-time work.”Īll factions of the union bureaucracy, including the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and the Teamsters United Slate, are complicit in the decades-long erosion of the working conditions and living standards of UPS workers. In response, the Teamsters lead negotiator in the current talks, Denis Taylor, has proposed the introduction of so-called “hybrid drivers” to allow UPS to work a new tier of lower-paid drivers on Sunday instead of paying senior workers double time. Nevertheless, the company is under increasing pressure from Amazon to slash costs in the upcoming contract. Profits are expected to hit $6 billion in 2018.
Last year, profits for the global logistics giant surged to $4.9 billion, bolstered by Trump’s corporate tax cuts. After a year-and-a-half of failing to get workers in several areas to accept local supplements necessary for the ratification of the National UPS Master Contract, Hoffa unilaterally implemented the national contract and supplemental agreements. Hoffa and other union negotiators agreed to a contract that cut health benefits, lengthened the so-called progression period to reach top pay to four years, and froze starting pay for part-timers at $10 an hour. In the last contract in 2013, union president James P. Today, two-thirds of UPS workers are part-time. In 1982, the Teamsters agreed to reduce the wages of new part-time workers-previously paid the same as full-timers but with no benefits-by a third or more. In 1976, the Teamsters betrayed a two-week strike by workers in the midwestern Central states and a thirteen-week walkout on the East Coast against company demands to replace full-time “inside employees,” who sort packages and load and unload trucks, with part-time casual workers. The Teamsters union has a long record of collaborating with the package delivery giant in beating back the resistance of UPS workers. In the mid-1970s, UPS blazed the trail for corporations throughout America and the world with the introduction of a part-time casual workforce. The Atlanta-based company is also synonymous with speed up, workplace injuries and low-paid part-time labor, with workers often saying UPS stands for Under Paid Slaves. With nearly a quarter-of-a-million unionized workers, UPS is the largest unionized private sector employer in the US. Since the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of teachers and other workers in the US have joined strikes and mass protests that have placed workers in increasingly direct conflict with the corporatist unions. The overwhelming strike vote is part of the growing militancy of workers in the US and internationally. UPS Freight workers, including over-the-road and city truck drivers and associated workers, voted by 91 percent to strike. Earlier this week, United Parcel Service workers voted by 93 percent to authorize the Teamsters union to call a strike when the five-year labor agreement covering more than 230,000 drivers, warehouse and other workers at UPS hubs and air cargo operations across the US expires on July 31.
0 kommentar(er)
