Nation’s UPS Guys, Teamsters WIN, Call Off (Part Of) Hot Strike Summer

Thirty billion with a b. That’s how much the Teamsters say UPS is throwing at their faces to avert a strike by 360,000 UPS drivers that would have started July 31. The negotiations between UPS and its drivers culminated in an agreement (still to be ratified by the union’s members) that calls for raises of $2.75 an hour to start. Over the contract’s five year term, those raises will grow to $7.50 an hour. That means that for 2023, part time drivers will earn at least $21 an hour; full-time drivers will see an average top rate (I don’t know what that means either) of $49 an hour. In 2028, it will be … more than that! (Math.)

Beyond the excellent raises, UPS has met the Teamsters’ and UPS drivers’ demands for health and safety — namely, air conditioning and cargo ventilation so drivers don’t literally heat stroke out when they climb in the back to get your Amazon schwag. They also won’t force drivers to come in on their days off, which duh yeah.

I’m so old I remember when UPS went on strike in ‘97 — and all of a sudden, a whole lot of people who wouldn’t have spit on a union if it were on fire realized wait a minute, we love our UPS guys. The two weeks UPS drivers struck in ‘97 cost UPS hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as angry business people demanding they PAY THE FUCK UP to their handsome, friendly UPS man. (Yes, most always a man, now that I think on it, which is a labor post for another day.) That led directly to the 2000 Justice for Janitors strike, and Los Angeles’s “Rolling Thunder,” when for the first time in a generation the unions started to feel frisky — and show it.

Congratulations Teamsters. Let us know when AFSCME threatens to strike. We owe them everything.

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