Teamsters chief says still open to deal with UPS
UPS Teamsters practice picket ahead of an upcoming possible strike in Brooklyn, New York
Fri, July 14, 2023
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -The head of the union representing 340,000 United Parcel Service workers on Friday said he's ready to keep talking with the company, even though his bargaining committee rejected its latest contract offer.
Negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS deadlocked last week, with the world's biggest package delivery company saying it had no more to give and the Teamsters demanding better pay for workers who missed out on labor shortage-driven pay increases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The contract covering UPS workers who sort, load and deliver packages expires at midnight on July 31.
"The clock is on our side, not theirs. I assume at some point they'll be reaching out looking to try and get a deal," Sean O'Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, told Reuters following a worker rally in New York.
Earlier in the day, UPS said it remained focused on reaching an agreement before the current one expires. At the same time, it said it would begin training non-union employees to deliver packages in the event of a strike.
UPS delivers about 20 million packages a day - roughly a quarter of U.S. parcel volume. A stoppage could delay shipments of everything from Amazon.com orders to critical medicines, and fuel inflation-stoking supply-chain disruptions. One estimate put the economic impact of a 10-day strike at more than $7 billion - one of the costliest in at least a century.
The stakes are high for both sides.
UPS, which aims to hold down labor costs to compete with non-union rivals, could lose customers in a strike, while the Teamsters count UPS as the largest employer of U.S. workers represented by the union.
UPS posted significant profits during the pandemic and rewarded executives and shareholders, O'Brien said. "Everyone has gotten a piece of the pie except for the people that actually touch the packages and provide the goods and services," he said.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; editing by John Stonestreet)
UPS Teamsters practice picketing ahead
UPS Teamsters practice picket ahead of an upcoming possible strike in Brooklyn, New York
Fri, July 14, 2023
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -The head of the union representing 340,000 United Parcel Service workers on Friday said he's ready to keep talking with the company, even though his bargaining committee rejected its latest contract offer.
Negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS deadlocked last week, with the world's biggest package delivery company saying it had no more to give and the Teamsters demanding better pay for workers who missed out on labor shortage-driven pay increases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The contract covering UPS workers who sort, load and deliver packages expires at midnight on July 31.
"The clock is on our side, not theirs. I assume at some point they'll be reaching out looking to try and get a deal," Sean O'Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, told Reuters following a worker rally in New York.
Earlier in the day, UPS said it remained focused on reaching an agreement before the current one expires. At the same time, it said it would begin training non-union employees to deliver packages in the event of a strike.
UPS delivers about 20 million packages a day - roughly a quarter of U.S. parcel volume. A stoppage could delay shipments of everything from Amazon.com orders to critical medicines, and fuel inflation-stoking supply-chain disruptions. One estimate put the economic impact of a 10-day strike at more than $7 billion - one of the costliest in at least a century.
The stakes are high for both sides.
UPS, which aims to hold down labor costs to compete with non-union rivals, could lose customers in a strike, while the Teamsters count UPS as the largest employer of U.S. workers represented by the union.
UPS posted significant profits during the pandemic and rewarded executives and shareholders, O'Brien said. "Everyone has gotten a piece of the pie except for the people that actually touch the packages and provide the goods and services," he said.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; editing by John Stonestreet)
UPS Teamsters practice picketing ahead
of an upcoming possible strike in Brooklyn, New York
Tara Suter
THE HILL
Tue, July 11, 2023
The general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters hit UPS Tuesday for its “underpaid” and “overworked” employees, responding to a Twitter thread from the company about the benefits of working part time.
“They’re rightfully demanding what they’re owed,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in the tweet. “It’s time for your company to do right by the #Teamsters and our members’ families. 20 days to pay up.”
His comments come amid high tensions between the Teamsters and UPS. Negotiations on a new contract between the two collapsed last week as the July 31 set date — when the current contract expires — for a Teamsters strike inches closer.
“Will companies/institutions every learn that these tweets don’t go well?” one Twitter user wrote. “Like people will ALWAYS use these as an opportunity to expose your poor working conditions and/or messed up systems?
Other responses to the thread included Twitter users’ complaints with the company’s heat regulation in their trucks and a screenshot of an article reporting on UPS’s financial misdeeds.
“Speaking of setting the record straight, we think an ‘average $20 an hour’ for part-timers means either @UPS’s Twitter account has been hacked by someone who doesn’t know what ‘average’ means or the company is simply rounding up to the nearest 20,” the official Teamsters account said in a Quote Tweet.
Another Twitter user spoke about the negative working conditions they said they faced while working at UPS, including “extreme heat with no breaks” and “carbon monoxide poisoning one time.”
“When I went to the doctor for the latter, y’all threatened to fire me!” the Twitter user said in response to the UPS thread.
Tue, July 11, 2023
The general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters hit UPS Tuesday for its “underpaid” and “overworked” employees, responding to a Twitter thread from the company about the benefits of working part time.
“They’re rightfully demanding what they’re owed,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in the tweet. “It’s time for your company to do right by the #Teamsters and our members’ families. 20 days to pay up.”
His comments come amid high tensions between the Teamsters and UPS. Negotiations on a new contract between the two collapsed last week as the July 31 set date — when the current contract expires — for a Teamsters strike inches closer.
“Will companies/institutions every learn that these tweets don’t go well?” one Twitter user wrote. “Like people will ALWAYS use these as an opportunity to expose your poor working conditions and/or messed up systems?
Other responses to the thread included Twitter users’ complaints with the company’s heat regulation in their trucks and a screenshot of an article reporting on UPS’s financial misdeeds.
“Speaking of setting the record straight, we think an ‘average $20 an hour’ for part-timers means either @UPS’s Twitter account has been hacked by someone who doesn’t know what ‘average’ means or the company is simply rounding up to the nearest 20,” the official Teamsters account said in a Quote Tweet.
Another Twitter user spoke about the negative working conditions they said they faced while working at UPS, including “extreme heat with no breaks” and “carbon monoxide poisoning one time.”
“When I went to the doctor for the latter, y’all threatened to fire me!” the Twitter user said in response to the UPS thread.
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