Grassroots/Hank Kalet

Why We Must Fight

Teamsters at UPS may walk off the job, which would be the largest private-sector action during this pro-labor moment.

There are 350,000 Teamsters working at UPS, according to a Labor Notes piece written by two union members. They have been working under an inadequate contract that mirror the poor working conditions across the American economy, and that have led workers in various industries to organize and strike for the first time.

“UPS jobs were once considered a yardstick of secure union jobs,” write Sean Orr and Elliot Lewis. “Now 60% of the workforce is part-time, making around the minimum wage in many regions.”

The contract ceded power on work schedules, overtime, oversight, and made numerous other management-friendly concessions — and it did so despite a majority no vote. New drivers were to be paid on a separate tier, “make less money and get fewer overtime protections than existing drivers doing the same work.”

A rank-and-file revolt, Orr and Lewis write, led to new leadership, which is now fighting for significant pay increase for part-timers to $25 an hour, the elimination of … two-tier wages for package car drivers, an end to forced sixth days of work, increased pension payouts for 60,000 workers so they’re more equal across the country, no driver-facing cameras, more holidays, and an end to subcontracting and the use of gig workers.

And, if these demands are not met, UPS drivers say they are prepared to walk.

If they do, the impact will be massive. The Associated Press reports that UPS ships about “24 million packages … on an average day,” which “amounts to about a quarter of all US parcel volume” or “the equivalent of about 6% of nation’s gross domestic product.”

And UPS profits over the last two years “are close to three times what they were before the pandemic,” writes the AP.

The Atlanta company returned about $8.6 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks in 2022, and forecasts another $8.4 billion for shareholders this year.

The Teamsters’ demands should not be a surprise. They are similar to what rail workers were demanding — and in line with what academic unions like mine have fought for and won over the last two years.

Workers across the economy have grown tired of companies — both in the private sector and among public institutions — that treat us like disposable cogs. We are only asking for dignity, to be treated as fully participating humans and workers who contribute to the larger social structure and who deserve a say over what happens to us at work, where we spend two thirds of our waking lives.

I teach at Rutgers University as an adjunct. We struck in April to force management to move away from the gig model universities have come to rely on. Professors, clerks, drivers, writers, warehouse workers are uniting in their industries and across industries and job categories to end the gigification of work.

We are demanding better working conditions — safer and more secure workplaces, a say in scheduling and pay that is commensurate with what we do. That’s why the unions in higher education at Rutgers struck, why the writers are on strike, why the rail workers voted to strike, and why workers at Starbucks, Amazon, Target and other formerly non-union businesses are organizing.

We fight because we have to, because not fighting leaves all the power in the hands of the people who run the corporations and the public entities that have been operating like corporations. We fight because corporate capitalism is structured to generate wealth but to keep the wealth from flowing to workers. Everything is tied to a “bottom line,” to profit, and it is why our healthcare system costs more than any other industrialized country but still fails to cover everyone, why as many as one in six Americans lack access to health food or find themselves homeless on any given night.

We organize and fight because we do not have the same access to power as those with money, so we must work together and fight together.

Hank Kalet is a journalist and poet. He teaches journalism as an adjunct at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, and teaches writing at two community colleges. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Substack, hankkalet.Substack.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023

Populist.com