Contract out for delivery: As Teamsters reach UPS deal, summer of labor rolls on

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 one way or another.

While work stoppages can and should be a last resort, they’re proliferating precisely because many workers feel like the dynamics and trade-offs that have long powered U.S. industrial and cultural prosperity — a full-time job can sustain a family, gains in productivity and profits will be disseminated throughout the income ladder, work will have some measure of stability and security and getting sick or having a momentary setback won’t unravel everything — have fundamentally broken down, and can’t be fixed by other means.

If they were to strike, the Teamsters would join the SAG-AFTRA actors and WGA writers who help create the country’s film and television sectors, and potentially the UAW autoworkers who are pondering their own strike over disagreements with automakers. The actions cause some short-term strife and pain to peripheral industries, like the crews that would be staffing the film and TV productions not currently getting made, but it’s telling that even these workers are broadly supportive of their striking colleagues. That’s because they understand that we’re at an inflection point here that will determine how labor operates in an era of AI and gig work.

—New York Daily News Editorial Board