As contract negotiations between parcel delivery giant UPS and its unionized workers break down, hundreds of thousands of brown-shirted laborers around the United States are poised to go on strike. It would be the first time since 1997 that UPS workers hit the picket lines over demands for more equitable pay and other concessions from a company whose market cap currently stands at $150 billion. That labor action was an unambiguous victory for workers, with over 185,000 Teamsters members shutting down UPS for 15 days and costing the company $850 million. With both sides blaming the other for the stalemate in negotiations before the current contract expires at the end of the month, UPS says it’s proud of its proposals and says they lead the industry in pay and benefits.
In a statement to WAMC, the company said the following of the Teamsters: “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.”
Bryan Donovan is the President of Teamsters Local 404, which represents 1,300 UPS employees in Western Massachusetts. He spoke with WAMC about why the union isn’t satisfied.
DONOVAN: We went into this with a lot of sticking points. The behavior of the company was really the driving force behind a lot of the proposals that were put forward by the membership. There was a lot of harassment and things of that nature that really drove a lot of what's going on. A big portion of the economics is really, right now, the sticking point at this level. These guys worked 14 hours a day- The pandemic. I mean, I don't need to tell everybody about the pandemic. Everybody understands it, everybody knows that we all went through it. But for these UPS guys, we kept this country moving. We ship a lot of medical, we ship a lot of important, timely necessities, and we do our job well. We do it very well. The UPS guys are- I mean, you can set your watch by a UPS guy.
WAMC: Now, I've heard wild numbers about the impact of the last UPS strike back in 1997, that it cost the company upwards of $850 million, the 15 days strike in 1997. Were you involved in that strike?
I was lucky enough to be a tractor trailer driver for UPS at that time. I was a union steward, and I was the captain of the evening, the overnight picket line shift. It did cost him a lot of money. I think a big part of what's keeping these guys together and the unity and the solidarity is, it's the same right now as it was in 1997. We had a lot of public support. We can't tell you how much we appreciate that. People understand- We should get our fair share. And fair share is different for different people, but the bottom line is, we got workers here that are making $15 less for doing the same job as a guy right next to him. That's a disparity that we can't live with.
Can you speak a little bit about what it's like to be among the workers during this time, what conversations are like between UPS workers during this time?
Well, to be honest with you, they’re amped up. I sat in on the New England negotiations. We have a national negotiation, which is where we're stuck right now, and we also have supplemental negotiations, each part of the country has their own supplement. And the original plan was not to get the nationals going until the supplements were done. Well, all the supplements are done. And I sat in on the New England supplement, and to hear the members and how they're reacting to a lot of this stuff- They're amped up. I can't say that they're angry. But there's some angst there that they want their fair share. They really feel like they were abused by the company, that there's room in the billions of dollars that they made for us to be compensated for that.
Part of this is also about a request from the teamsters to have UPS remove surveillance cameras from delivery trucks. Talk to me about that angle- Why is that important to the folks in the Teamsters?
Well, I think what you have to understand when you tackle that subject is, UPS has a tremendous amount of monitoring data as it is. They know how long it takes between the time that you sit in the seat of the truck to the time that you turn the key and start it. And they keep track of all of this stuff. There's monitoring data for everything. And to their credit, they spent a lot of money on procedures and things like that, and safety. And they don't have any empathy for these numbers. If someone does something in the data comes back bad, they suspend them, they fire them, they give them warning letters, they discipline them, and they discipline them as to the highest degree that they can. They're very stringent about all these things, and to put cameras in there to watch our every move is just- It's excessive. And to be honest with you, the drivers are not against surveillance, as far as monitoring traffic and things like that, forward facing cameras. What they're against is the camera that faces them. There's a level of paranoia, even, that develops when you have that kind of thing. And there's also some cameras we've had, they malfunction, they don't work properly. And if they don't work properly, they give the company bad data. And I've already told you what they do with the data. So, if you're getting warning letters and terminations and suspension on that data, then we don't want it.
Last year, we saw legislation basically side with owners in the in the negotiations between workers and rail companies. What are your thoughts heading into this potential labor action, knowing that it seems like Washington stood behind the owners or the management during the last major labor strike situation in the country?
There again, you have to analyze the environment that they were doing that when. You can't compare UPS, which is a private corporation, to the railway. The rail is under the Railway Act and they can't strike. The government can step in at any time and put them back to work whether they have a beef or not. They can't do that with us. Well, they can do it if they feel that it interferes with commerce, and to the degree that it puts the country in a dangerous position. But that would take literally an act of Congress, and with the President and already the Labor Department, the head of the Labor Department has come out and said she sees no need to interfere in the UPS-Teamsters negotiations. That could change if we go on strike. But the bottom line is, when you compare the what happened with the rail, there was leverage. There was, there's leverage with us. They didn't have leverage. We just got a 97% vote, strike authorization vote. That's leverage.
At the end of the day out there, should UPS teamsters go on strike, what do you want the larger community to understand about that gesture? Why would that be happening, and what would explain the potential disruptions that would emerge from that decision?
You know, not to give you a history lesson or anything, but workers have been under fire for the better part of 40 years in this country. The wages have been driven or held down. Profits for corporations are just astronomical. Everything seems to be based around Wall Street and what the stockholders says or does. And stockholders don't have a stake in companies. Like it or not, they just don't. This is a vital step in what is a battle. This is a war. The companies want to keep everything they can, and we want our part. We want our fair share. And the definition of fair share between the two parties is definitely far apart. So, in order to renegotiate just that definition, we have to take them on. And this is an important part of what unions do and how they do it. A strike authorization vote is a very powerful tool when you're talking about a national negotiation like this. And we're not afraid to use it, that's for sure. I think the general demeanor of the Teamsters in general, especially the members, we want to strike, we want to strike simply because it's going to get what we want. It's going to get what we feel we deserve, and I think deserve is more a term that we should be using. Because during this pandemic, these guys, they were on the verge of being- Well, they were. They were abused, and they got nothing for it. They didn't get any COVID bonus. Just a couple months ago, our CEO Carol Tomé was calling us, calling all my members heroes. And now all of a sudden, we're greedy bastards.
