Editorial: (N.Y.) Daily News

A UPS delivery truck in May 2018 in Chicago. (Jonathan Weiss/Dreamstime/TNS)

Labor rolls on with UPS deal

This editorial was originally published in the New York Daily News:

The Teamsters, as always, are delivering the goods, this time in the form of a labor agreement with UPS as a potential strike threatened to shut down deliveries that undergird large parts of the American economy.

It’s worth here pausing and reiterating what exactly the Teamsters have won here. This deal came after months of negotiations that included, among other demands, a pledge for the company to install air conditioning in their ubiquitous brown vans. With temperatures this year rising to the hottest days on record, UPS drivers, driving dozens of miles a day and performing hard physical labor, it’s baffling that it would take the specter of a strike to get the company to commit to A/C, which far more than an amenity is a life-saving feature. Indeed, more than 140 UPS workers were hospitalized with heat-related illnesses in just the the period between 2015 and 2022.

UPS reached an agreement on air conditioning in mid-June, which left more meat-and-potatoes issues like pay and benefits on the table. A particular sticking point was pay for part-time workers, which in UPS and the broader economy, make up increasing chunks of the labor force as managers try to make the idea of a stable, long-term job with guarantees a thing of the past.

As the ink dries on an ultimate deal, it now goes to the company’s roughly 340,000 Teamsters to vote on. Even after the drawn-out talks, it’s not clear that the contract will be ratified and a strike averted. That’s partly due to significant built-up frustrations with the company among drivers who were expected to do mandatory overtime during the pandemic, putting their health at greater risk, while company profits skyrocketed.

Let that be a lesson to UPS and other companies about the folly of holding out too long, not listening to your workforce and hoping their concerns will just dissipate. They won’t, and surging workplace organization and the so-called summer of strikes will ensure your employees will be heard.

Johnson Newspapers 7.1