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UPS and Hoffa Don't Deliver for Workers...

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Teamsters Trade Gains of 1997 UPS Strike for Deal to Organize Members at Freight Division
— Mark Brenner


In mid-November Teamsters (IBT) at United Parcel Service approved a controversial five-year agreement, more than eight months before the expiration of their current contract.

The new contract will pull 44,000 Teamsters out of the union’s multi-employer Central States pension plan, and end conversion of part-time into full-time jobs at UPS. It also widens the gap between full-time and part-time standards, freezing part-timers’ starting pay and forcing new part-timers to work for a year before they are eligible for health care coverage.

These givebacks were accepted in spite of the company’s healthy bottom line, UPS reported more than $4 billion in pre-tax net income last year...


READ THE REST AT THE LABOR NOTES WEBSITE...



Check out the opposition to this concessionary contract here...

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  1. DougDecember 30, 2007 at 10:46 PM

    Dear Sir,

    Your comments with regard to the recent HOFFA v UPS sellout just came across my desk. Its apparent you understand how seriously injurious this contract is to the rank and file and future UPS employees, not to mention the effect on the middle class. There is much more behind the scenes that you would have no way of knowing about, let alone fathom.

    UPS in collusion with the International does more damage to young part-timers and future employees, and their families than the public or you could possibly comprehend.

    I have a long history of union involvement with UPS that continues to this day even though I was forced to retire from UPS almost 13 years ago.

    Sincerely,

    Douglas Page Chapman Sr
    6619 Dralle Road
    Monee, IL 60449-9431
    708-534-0490-Home
    708-359-9592-Cell
    Advocate PUPS Inc & NABER Inc http://pupsinc.homestead.com/naber1.html
    36-1/2 years member in good standing IBT Locals 705 & 710
    Over 55 years experience UPS/BROWN 30 years an employee, and 18+ years when my Dad was an employee.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Douglas SmileyDecember 31, 2007 at 8:03 AM

    American labor unions have become "liuetenants of big business". They are part of the capitalist system and they must be dissolved and be reborn again through socialist revolution and administered by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jerry Mead-LuceroJanuary 8, 2008 at 11:34 AM

    Hi both Dougs, sorry for my slow response, I was tied up with other matters over the holiday season. Thank you for your feedback. Yes, I agree with the both of you in regards to the damage this contract does, not only to UPS employees but to the whole labor movement. In 1997, under reformer Ron Carey, one of the main slogans of the UPS strike was... "Part Time America Won't Work!" And they struck a major blow to the part-timization of the U.S. workforce in that strike. It seems Hoffa is slogan is more like... "Screw the Part-Timers". I am a big fan of the work of labor historian Kim Moody, and his new book lays the bulk of the blame for organized labor's decline in recent decades on the concessionary tenor of the union officialdom since the 1970's and before. The UPS contract is a wonderful illustration of his point.


    Doug 2, though I quite understand your frustration with the union bosses, and share your desire for a radical transformation of our society, I am still convinced that such a transformation is dependent on a renewed, revitalized labor movement. But I mean labor movement in the broadest sense of the term. In many ways it is the new emerging forms of workers organization (worker's centers, the CIW, minority unions, workers associations) that I think offer some of the best hope for this revitalization. The growth of these new forms of labor organization along with a return to the militant, creative traditions of the IWW and the CIO, is U.S. labors only hope.

    ReplyDelete

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