UPS vs. Teamsters

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.fightbacknews.org/2007/06/upsteamsters.htm


June 2007

UPS vs. Teamsters

By staff

Working at United Parcel Service (UPS) is a backbreaking, grueling job. Few people last even one year. Most who work there for a long period of time have back and/or joint pain. The main jobs, loading the trucks or delivering packages in the boxy brown trucks, are especially taxing. The loading jobs are so rough that UPS only wants part-timers to do them, figuring no one can handle the job for a full eight hours.

Why do they do it? Why do they sacrifice their bodies year after year in a job that most don’t like? The answer is simple. The benefit package the Teamsters have won in past years is pretty good. For a working class parent it is hard to beat the Teamster benefit package at UPS. When you are broken down at the end of your career, there was always a decent pension plan to retire.

But UPS didn’t become one of the world’s richest corporations and the Teamsters’ single largest employer by giving away benefits. In fact, UPS has aggressively been trying to erode Teamster power for many years.

First they changed the loaders from full time to part time. Then they cut the wages and benefits of the part-time workers, who used to get paid the same as full-time workers. Starting pay for part-time workers has only increased once in the 25 years since 1982 and has been frozen since Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters.

Now that UPS has marginalized and pushed this group of workers down, they have set their sights on full-time workers. Particularly, UPS has announced that they want to pull out of the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. UPS is willing to pay the multi-employer fund $4 billion in penalties because they know they could make it up in the long run by reducing the benefits to its full-time employees.

UPS launched a major propaganda campaign among its employees with mixed results. “UPS won’t even let us go to the bathroom without a struggle. Now they tell us that they know what’s good for us. They say, ‘don’t worry we will take care of your pension.’ I don’t think so!” said Joe Balkis, a 19-year UPS Teamster in Harvey, Illinois.

FULL article at link.

[FreakinDJ]

1. That is IT!

From now on all my Ebay crap is going USPS

[Craftsman]

3. I worked as a lkoader for UPS in college

It is hard dirty work. My sympathies are with the teamster.

[DainBramaged]

2. Because of 12 years of Republican rule

Each and every corporation has found more and more creative ways to screw the American worker, to benefit the "stockholders".

Without people, UPS would be the largest truck dealer and airlines in America. It looks like they want it that way.

Strike. The only solution. There aren't enough part-timers to fill the jobs and they know it.