UPS Workers Will Deliver A Strike Next Month If Company Won't Give Them A Good Deal

With 350,000 workers, it would be the largest strike in United States history.

Today UPS workers voted 97 percent yes (that is a lot!) to authorizing their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to call a nationwide strike if they don't reach a deal with the company by August 1. Should that actually occur, it would be the largest strike against a single employer in US history — the Teamsters represent 325,000 of the company's 450,000 employees, and that's a whole lot of people.

They're not asking for a lot. What the workers want is an increase on starting pay, and an end to the two-tier system in which drivers who work from Tuesday through Saturday are paid less than those who work Monday through Friday doing the exact same job. Some pay raises certainly seem to be in order, given that, as the  New York Times  reports, the "company’s adjusted net income increased by more than 70 percent from 2019 to last year."

The workers believe that they will come to a satisfactory agreement with UPS before the deadline, but the option to strike is now there if they don't — and it's not an idle threat. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has been clear that he is ready to take on UPS since he was elected in 2021.

"This vote shows that hundreds of thousands of Teamsters are united and determined to get the best contract in our history at UPS. If this multibillion-dollar corporation fails to deliver on the contract that our hardworking members deserve, UPS will be striking itself," O'Brien said in a statement. "The strongest leverage our members have is their labor and they are prepared to withhold it to ensure UPS acts accordingly."

The union did, however, reach a tentative agreement with UPS on Thursday on one very important issue: air conditioning. Did you know that UPS vehicles don't all have air conditioning? Because they don't. Imagine driving around all day in the summer with no air conditioning? That is legitimately cruel and unusual treatment and something you'd probably get sent to prison for if you did it to a dog.

UPS has gotten multiple citations over the years from OSHA for this issue, which has put drivers in actual physical danger. Last year, video of a UPS driver literally collapsing on someone's porch from heat exhaustion went viral, putting a spotlight on the issue.

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There was also the case of 23-year-old Texas UPS driver Jose Cruz, who was found dead in his truck in 2021, allegedly from a heat-related illness. At the time of his death, UPS held that it just wouldn't make sense to put air conditioning in the trucks because the drivers get out of them every 2-3 minutes, and claimed that their "drivers are trained for the effects of hot weather and, as a result, reports of heat-related stress are rare."

 That is not exactly true. Heat-related illnesses are actually quite common among UPS drivers.

UPS employees have recorded temperatures of up to 150 degrees in the main cargo area — a temperature at which one could actually cook a steak. 

Anyway, it appears they're getting air conditioning now, so that's nice. It's going to take years and years, apparently, for all of the vehicles to actually be air conditioned, but the old ones will apparently get two fans per truck, which is, I suppose, better than nothing.

If UPS were to strike, it would put a massive strain on the US economy, as about 6 percent of the nation's gross domestic product is transported by UPS drivers, so the company should definitely get on figuring out a contract that will make the workers happy.

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