Nation's UPS Guys, Teamsters WIN, Call Off (Part Of) Hot Strike Summer
Good. It's too hot out, and we would miss our UPS guys.
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.
OPEN THREAD!
My dental appointment was 2 hours of pure hell and they still haven't gotten the mold done. I have to go back in two weeks for a three hour appointment. There's not enough Xanax in the world to get me through this. So far I have spent six and half hours just trying to get the upper mold made. On today's fifth attempt Dr. Sadist the Teacher decided he was going to keep the mold in my mouth even if I was choking, even after I told him I have PTSD and was dealing with flashbacks. That fucker thought he could force it, nah I'm twice as strong as as him, I yanked his hand with the mold out of my mouth. Creep disappeared as the two students jumped in to help me get the goo off my face, out of my nose, and remove the clumps in my mouth. Doing that destroyed a mold that was nearly perfect where they just needed to redo one side.
I realized something about Dr. Sadist, the people who go to the dental school for treatment are generally low income and poor who are using Medicaid, I'm thinking he feels entitled to treat us like shit. That fucker just seemed so annoyed and put out by the fact it was so hard to get this mold made, like I was causing the problem. Out of the dozen or so attempts I only made them stop twice because I was choking, I'm not fucking this up, they are. I'm getting my teeth no matter what.
Dr. Sadist can eat the biggest quantity available of canned clams... that have been sitting in the sun for several hours. Chased with a glass of buttermilk.
I found out the other day that one Sean Astin is a union negotiator in the writers & actors strike.
Samwise Gamgee, always the hero.