A lost opportunity

At the Labor Notes conference last year, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien told us that if the union could not reach a new contract with UPS by the end of July 2023, the Teamsters would not extend the contract and would strike. Now that the Teamsters have settled we will need to see what they got and whether a strike could still get them more if the members vote it down.

After the union’s reform caucus was elected in 2020, booting out James Hoffa, the Teamsters began getting members strike-ready. They have brought the rank and file into the organizing effort by using one-on-one meetings with workers, parking lot meetups, practice pickets and campaign pledge cards.  

From what is being reported so far, the Teamsters didn’t roll over for the company. They demanded an end to the two-tiered system, more full-time work, better wages, ending the speed-ups, safer warehouse working conditions and air conditioning in the trucks. It seems the two tiered system is still in place with part-time workers pay rising to a minimum of $21 an hour, less than half the average pay of full-time workers

This is disappointing because part-time workers have the worst conditions and pay due to Hoffa’s previous sweetheart deals. Dylan D., a preloader at the Oakland hub since 2022, told me that part-time workers have to load three trucks with up to 300 packages per truck in a four-hour shift. They are paid less than full-time workers, are often short-staffed and have constantly changing weekly schedules and seasonal pay.  

Dylan told me “the company has total control over scheduling, and uses this to compress hours to the absolute minimum while working each UPSer at a very fast pace.” 

The Teamsters fought to abolish the two-tiered system although form reports so far that did not happen. According to Dylan, “the fact that O’Brien has been pushed to take up part-time issues in the way that he has is indicative of the militant organizing part-timers have done across the country.” 

Commitments not to cross picket lines came from unions up and down UPS’s supply chain. Last week, the Independent Pilots Association (IPA) which has 3,300 UPS pilots, announced it will again refuse to cross picket lines which will mean scabs won’t receive any packages to deliver. The Democratic Socialists of America have also launched a nationwide solidarity campaign.

The Teamsters strike threatened to disrupt a huge choke point. Former Harvard professor John Womack argues in his classic book, “Working Power Over Production,” that even a small number of workers taking direct action at a choke point can disrupt the company, the entire industry and even the U.S. and global economy. 

Womack’s ideas are becoming widely shared in a new book about his book. I wrote last year that CUNY professor Immanuel Ness and CSU-Long Beach professor Jake Alimahomed-Wilson’s 2018 book “Choke Points” provides numerous examples of how workers using disruptive power.  

The Teamsters are learning to use disruptive power. UPS moves 25 million packages every day, one quarter of the entire logistics industry, and accounts for 6 percent of the nation’s GDP. It’s no secret that the strike would cause “massive disruptions” to the US supply chain, as Bloomberg reported. 

Not surprisingly, O’Brien asked the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats to not interfere with their strike as they did last winter when they repressed the railroad strike. 

Settling may have been premature because the union has wide support across the country with many ready to help the Teamsters win their strike. Among the proposed efforts were donating to their strike fund, joining their picket lines and marches, stopping orders using UPS, and refusing to accept to handle “hot cargo” deliveries to ensure scabs didn’t have any work. 

Other strikes up and down the supply chain could have also taken place to strengthen their position and help re-energize the working class.

Since Teamsters are also on strike at some California Amazon warehouses, we can still join them by refusing to also accept Amazon packages or use any web services running on Amazon Web Services. 

A national strike could have been the spark we need to turn the workers movement around. As Dylan told me only a few days ago, “a strike at UPS would demonstrate above all that workers themselves can bring one of the largest companies in the country to its knees as a means to extract much-needed concessions.” 

Perhaps their strike threat was credible enough to do just that. We won’t know for sure until we can closely examine the details of what the Teamsters settled for this week. The members will get to do just that and vote the contract down if it doesn’t meet their demands. One thing is certain, a strike would deliver even more, including an end to the reviled two-tiered system and a re-energized working class.

Robert Ovetz is editor of “Workers' Inquiry and Global Class Struggle,” and the author of “When Workers Shot Back” and mostly recently “We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few.” Follow him at @OvetzRobert