By Barry Sheppard
"It is more a rebellion than a strike. The walkout by 185,000 drivers, loaders and sorters of the United Parcel Service is best seen as the angry, fist-waving response of the frustrated American worker, a revolt against the ruthless treatment of workers by so many powerful corporations."
This quote from New York Times columnist Bob Herbert captures the spirit of the teamsters' strike against UPS, which entered its 11th day on August 14. The two sides remain deadlocked in what has become the most important labour battle of the 1990s.
UPS has cornered 63% of the parcel delivery and 80% of the ground delivery market. With managers and other non-union employees sorting, loading, driving and even flying UPS airplanes, UPS is doing less than 10% of its regular business.
The company is losing at least US$50 million a day, according to investment experts. But it raked in $1.1 billion in profit last year, and has vast resources to put up a long struggle.
The union has told its members to expect a prolonged strike.
An open question is whether or when President Clinton will intervene under the Taft-Hartley slave labour law to attempt to force the workers back to work. UPS and some members of Congress are calling for such intervention.
The teamsters entered this battle with a depleted strike fund, something the company counted on to squeeze the workers in a long fight. But in a welcome departure, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) president John Sweeney announced the federation's full support of the strike and pledged to loan the teamsters US$10 million a week to fund strike benefits. This will amount to only $55 a week per worker, however, and they will be hurting.
Part-time labour
The key issue in dispute is UPS's increasing use of low-paid, part-time workers. Part-timers account for 60% of the company's work force and more than 80% of all the new employees over the past four years.
Part-time workers start at $8 an hour, and go up to $10.50 in two years. This starting rate has not risen since 1982 despite a dramatic increase in the cost of living over the period.
Most of the loaders and sorters are part-timers, many of whom are guaranteed only three hours' work a day, often in the dead of the night. Travelling to work at 1am and returning home at 4 — to make only $24 or $34! Full-time workers, like drivers, make about $20 an hour.
About 10,000 part-time workers often put in nearly 40 hours a week, but are paid at the part-time rate.
There is a turnover rate for part-timers of 400% per year. The most common reason for leaving is the absence of opportunity to go full time. This means that many part-time workers do not stay long enough to get the benefits such as medical care that UPS does give its part-timers when they have been on the job long enough — unlike most employers of part-time workers, who pay no benefits.
When the union polled its members about what issues they thought were important before bargaining began, part-time pay and getting more full-time jobs were at the head of the list.
Teamsters president Ron Carey is taking the issue to the rest of the union movement and the public. Through statements on TV, radio and the press, the message is getting out that this strike is about fighting against low-paid and part-time work. It is being well received by workers everywhere, who have seen the growth of the use of temporary and part-time work, as well as contracting out, to slash wages.
Some rank and file pickets' comments in the press include: "You look around and it's hard to find real full-time work any more", said Linda Borucki, 31, who has worked for UPS as a part-timer for 13 years. "How do people expect you to make it?"
"These companies have all the formula", said Laura Piscotti, 30, who rides two buses for more than an hour to work 20 to 25 hours a week. "They don't take you on full time. They don't pay benefits. Then their profits go through the roof."
"People don't even look at workers as human beings any more", Leatha Hendricks said. "My name is Leatha, but to them, I'm just a machine. All they care is that you've got some strength in your back. And when your back goes out of whack, it's over. You're gone."
A New York Times reporter in Willow Springs, Illinois, wrote, "On the outskirts of the huge UPS center in this Chicago suburb, where about 70 percent of the 5500 employees are part-timers, the striking workers sounded at times as if they were not simply taking on one company, but corporate America."
The broader theme is emerging: can workers fight and win, not only at UPS but nationally, to narrow the spread in wages, benefits and job status that has developed since the 1960s? Can the lowering of average real wages since 1973 be reversed?
By not only fighting to maintain current conditions, but seeking to improve them, especially for those on the bottom, the UPS workers have shown the way forward for the labour movement and the whole working class.
A battle of titans
UPS has made it clear that it is willing to fight a prolonged struggle. Its "last, best and final offer" called for freezing part-time wages at the current rate; raising the wages of full-time workers by only 1.5% a year for the next five years, about half the official present inflation rate, plus a one-time "signing bonus"; and creating 200 full-time jobs a year that part-timers could take.
The union is demanding a substantial rise in the starting wage for part-timers; the conversion of 2500 part-time jobs to full time each year; and no bonus but a substantial wage increase for full-timers.
The strike has been well prepared. The ranks are nearly solid. Full-time workers understand that they too have to take a stand against the increasing use of part-timers, or they will find their jobs becoming part time down the line. Even the well-paid pilots who fly UPS airplanes are honouring the picket lines.
Teamsters and pilots are being mobilised to leaflet baseball games, which are attended by tens of thousands of workers almost every day. Rallies have begun to be held to keep up morale, and also to draw in support from other unions and workers.
The company is also pressing to withdraw from the present pension plan and start a new one under its control. Under the current plan, UPS pays into a multi-employer fund run by the union. The union wants to keep control over the fund, and to keep it multi-employer, to protect the pensions of workers in companies that go bankrupt.
In a public relations ploy, UPS claims that under its plan UPS workers would get substantially higher pensions, a claim the union disputes.
The company is also demanding the deletion of a provision in the old contract that allowed UPS drivers to honour other unions' picket lines. It also wants to be able to subcontract more to low paid non-union firms.
Another issue is safety. Kate Brofenbrenner, director of labour education research at Cornell University, reports, "UPS has one of the worst health and safety records. The company has an injury rate two and a half times the industry standard."
A year or two ago, the company raised its weight limit from 70 to 150 pounds (31 to 68 kilograms). The new limit can only mean increased injuries. And the company has long deployed platoons of industrial engineers to monitor the speed of every step the workers take.
A changed union
In the background is the profound change in the union leadership that has taken place since 1991, when Ron Carey was elected president in place of an old guard known for its corruption, suppression of union democracy and sweetheart deals with the employers.
It was the old guard that first accepted part-time employees at UPS in the 1960s. It accepted the introduction of the two-tier wage between part-timers and full-timers in the 1980s.
Ken Paff, the national organiser for Teamsters for a Democratic union, said of the current strike, "Our movement has fought for 20 years to get to have a union leadership that would fight for the membership on issues like full-time jobs instead of just going along with what the company wanted".
The old guard has not been driven out completely, however. It remains entrenched in many locals and regional bodies. Last year, its candidate for president, James Hoffa, Jr., the son of late teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, almost defeated Carey. The Hoffa son never was a teamster, but is a lawyer who ran on his father's name, which still has an aura of militancy.
It comes as no surprise that the Wall Street Journal has been waging a campaign in defence of Hoffa Jr., seeking to overturn Carey's recent election.
There were some irregularities concerning contributions to Carey's election campaign, the result of Carey relying more on professional fund raisers and less on rank and file activists like the TDU. Hoffa went to court to try to get the election annulled. Currently, a court-appointed election officer is pondering whether to order a new election.
The stakes are high in this battle. A win for the teamsters will be a great inspiration to the rest of the labour movement, and strengthen those who want to move in a class struggle direction.