According to the Teamsters this morning a strike action of their 340,000 workers employed by UPS is now more likely than ever. In a press release send this morning they state:
Around 4 a.m., UPS walked away from the bargaining table after presenting an unacceptable offer to the Teamsters that did not address membersā needs. The UPS Teamsters National Negotiating Committee unanimously rejected the package. Following marathon negotiations, UPS refused to give the Teamsters a last, best, and final offer, telling the union the company had nothing more to give. [...] No additional negotiations are scheduled.
The contract regulating these 340,000 workers expires on July 31; a strike action would thus begin on August 1.
The working theory is that corporate supervisors will have to pick up some of the slack if a strike goes into effect, but obviously there are nowhere near enough of them to actually keep things running anywhere near efficiently.
Our store's back room fills up with Ground shipments easily in a single day. Presumably the skeleton crew drivers would only be able to pick up some - we've theorized they would only pick up the Next Day and 2nd Day Air packages, but that wouldn't be very useful - the pilots that give those service options their names have their own unions that would absolutely support the strike and not cross the picket lines, so even your Air shipments wouldn't be going anywhere.
And our corporate overlords wouldn't dare let us do anything silly like close during the strike. There have actually been talks of renting out POD storage units to put behind stores and just fill them up with shipments for days and days... How absurd.
It would be necessary, of course. Even if we told every single shipment customer to go to the post office or FedEx, we still get Amazon returns, Amazon returns, Amazon returns. In fact, it's most of what we do in a day. I'm not kidding, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest, on average I'd say we take about 400-700 Amazon returns, put each one in an individual plastic bag, tag them, and fill up 18 cube boxes with them.
Even if you tell people that their returns may not ship out for weeks, they won't care, they won't listen, "Amazon told me to bring it here so that's what I'm doing." We could not process a single actual UPS shipment in a day and still fill up the back area with Amazon returns alone.
So this is going to be a fun situation.
Not to say, of course, that I'm upset at the union in any way. I 100% support their strike action as well, and if a single customer gives me any goddamn lip about it, I'll put on my customer service smile and say some shit like "Oh, well, I understand, and I'm sorry that your fellow humans fighting for humane working conditions is an inconvenience to you, but the post office is right down the street."
This is corporate's fault, as always.
You want to know what one of those "non-economic issues" is? Air conditioning.
The UPS drivers had to fight, with national union action, to win the possibility of having FUCKING AIR CONDITIONING IN THEIR TRUCKS. You know, those giant metal diesel boxes they drive around in the sun all day? Yeah, they've never had air conditioning. Corporate said it would be too expensive.
Corporations are soulless, parasitic demons, never forget! š
Godspeed and I wish every union member the best in getting the working conditions y'all deserve. Delivery and fulfillment work is exhausting, especially in the summer. Hell, while not UPS I've done it before moving contractor paint from store to site. And let me tell you, I couldn't keep up with what these UPS folks do every day.
Remember though: Strikes are supposed to be disruptive. That's the entire point. So if anyone gets uppity about their package being delayed...
CORPORATE OFFICE
UPS
55 Glenlake Parkway, NE
Atlanta, GA 30328
OTHER CONTACTS
Corporate office: 1-404-828-6000
UPS Airlines: 1-502-329-3060
The UPS Store: 1-858-455-8800
There's the people who can make it all stop. :3