Teamsters union OKs pact despite members rejecting it

Bill Knight column for Oct. 25, 26 or 27, 2018

The Teamsters union this month approved implementing a controversial five-year contract with United Parcel Service despite 54 percent of members casting ballots against the pact in a ratification vote announced Oct. 5. The wrongheaded power play sends a bad signal to the rank and file, allies in organized labor and the community, and foes, from the GOP to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Elsewhere, Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, representing 8,500 workers, on Oct. 16 announced that it plans a strike-authorization vote in early November for a possible work stoppage the week after Thanksgiving. It hasn’t had a walkout since 1997’s national UPS strike.

As to the national Master Agreement (Chicago has a separate UPS agreement), the Teamsters’ constitution requires at least 50 percent of UPS’ hundreds of thousands of Teamsters to vote, and the turnout was 44 percent.

When the ratification results were announced, Denis Taylor, director of the Teamsters’ Package Division, said the union would resume bargaining to seek improvements, but he later said, “The leverage is not there. Certainly, the company understands they’ve got an issue that they’ve got to deal with,’’ reported Bloomberg News.

“The fact that they’re moving to ratify the contract over a ‘no’ vote is a huge betrayal to the members, and I think it’s very damaging to the labor movement as a whole,” said David Levin, an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a reform caucus within the larger union, which has more than 10,000 members nationally. “There’s a lot of attacks against the labor movement, from Right To Work, etc., and it’s a terrible time to be sending workers the message that union leaders can just ignore and override the voices of the members.”

Opponents to the tentative settlement objected to:

* a push for two-tier wages for drivers;

* provisions establishing excessive overtime –70-hour workweeks – during “peak season”;

* creating “combo-drivers” (inside part-time workers who could also be drivers when additional driving work is available), which the company could use for 25 percent of its driving workforce, and they’d top out at $6 less per hour than regular, full-time drivers for doing the same work;

* the union’s abandonment of the Fight For $15 an hour; and

* no additional protections against harassment by management.

Members also rejected several other, smaller contracts, including one representing 11,000 UPS Freight workers, most of whom want to eliminate subcontracting. There, negotiations are set to resume after 62.1 percent of those workers voted against the agreement (the turnout there being 66 percent).

Further, six of 36 supplemental agreements that deal with issues on the Local level, rejected by members, still must be renegotiated, so the complete agreement won’t get final ratification until those are resolved.

“The last UPS contract [in 2013] established a grueling, four-year wage progression for drivers,” reported Jenna Woloshyn, an Oakland, Calif., a UPS Package driver from Teamsters Local 70, “which meant temporary two-tier wages. But eventually all drivers would reach top pay.

“Union negotiators and the company seem to be banking on the hope that current drivers only care about themselves,” she added, “ – never mind that this simply shifts the burden of overtime and weekend work to different people and then pays them less.”

In May, more than 90 percent of members approved a strike authorization vote, something they didn’t do during negotiations for the last contract. When the current contract expired August 1, it was extended.

Chicago’s pact was also extended, but if the last scheduled bargaining sessions this week don’t go well, the Local could cancel the extension, which would permit a strike 30 days later – a peak season for UPS.

Local 705 also objects to the two-tier-wage scheme and demands improvements to the pension plan and health care, particularly for retirees.

Nationally, there were 92,604 eligible votes cast from UPS, Inc. – at 44 percent, a huge increased from the 64,000 who voted on the 2013 UPS contract (which had 47 percent rejecting the settlement) – the recent results were 54 percent no and 46 percent yes.

Teamsters reportedly face dissent in other divisions, too, including aircraft mechanics, who also recently rejected national agreements.           

Based in Atlanta, Ga., UPS reported is making $5 billion in 2017 and predicts this year’s profits to be $6 billion.

“The members know that UPS is making a lot of money, and they want to get what’s owed them,” UPS feeder driver Dave Bernt told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Meanwhile, the price of the Teamsters’ action on the Master Agreement could be incalculable.