Teamsters, UPS reach agreement

AP via MSNBC.com ^ | 7/15/02

[GeneD]

WASHINGTON, July 15 — The Teamsters reached an agreement on a new contract with United Parcel Service Inc. on Monday, 16 days before their current contract was set to expire. The agreement was reached after nine weeks of negotiations. Details of the tentative pact were to be revealed at an Atlanta news conference on Tuesday.

“We have a definitive agreement,” said Teamsters spokesman Bret Caldwell. “We’re cleaning up the paperwork.”

Caldwell said he expects results from a union vote on the proposed contract by mid-August.

A two-week strike in 1997 cost UPS $750 million, and both sides said they wanted to avoid a repeat. The company, which controlled about 80 percent of the small package delivery market then, was virtually crippled when 185,000 Teamsters went on strike with the support of UPS’s 2,000 unionized pilots.

The walkout revolved around the union’s demand that more part-time workers be given full-time jobs. That again was a big issue this time around, and the Teamsters sought even more full-time jobs in this contract.

UPS customers, fearing another strike after the contract expired July 31, had already started defecting to rival companies. The Atlanta-based company said its second-quarter profits fell slightly. Package volume was down 2 percent in April and May from last year’s levels, and fell 4 percent in June.

The Teamsters now represent about 230,000 workers at UPS. It is the largest private-sector labor contract being negotiated this year. Labor analysts say the outcome will set the tone for the strength of unions for years to come.

The negotiations also represent union president James P. Hoffa’s biggest leadership test as he tries to win sizable concessions that top the previous contract negotiated by his predecessor and bitter rival, Ron Carey. Hoffa has secured a $100 million line of credit and pushed through a dues increase to build a strike fund in preparation.

[Paleo Conservative]

Ever notice that after that strike, FedEx started their own ground delivery service?

[packrat35]

I get a shipment from FexEx ground twice a month. I like their service much better than UPS. I have many many UPS horror stories.

[Springman]

Fed Ex ground use to be
RPS express. Fed Ex bought it because of the last UPS strike, and they didn't have the local del. ablity(sp?).

[Madcelt]

Your're right. FedEX was also one of Al Gore's biggest campaign contributors. They also flew him around on one of their planes. Probably payola for throwing them under the railway act when their workers were considering joining the teamsters.

I believe it was actually called the FedEx amendment.

[holyscroller]

Wow! There go their prices again. About have a heart attack every time I ship a box. Also, don't think your box is untouched by human hands once you see it go down the conveyor belt. My grandson works nights packing UPS trucks, and when I asked him why there is so much damage, he laughed and said the boxes are THROWN from the belts to the trucks, and frequently miss.

[avg_freeper]

When I worked at UPS I could do the following:

- unload 2 boxes per second
- sort 2-3 boxes per second
- load 1 box every second or so

Try to move 30lb objects around like that for 3-4 hours at a time. There isn't anything gentle about it. But that's what they wanted out of us. The priority was on speed and accuracy, not care for the contents of the box.

And when it came time to load the big trailers up, you build up what was called a "wall" every 3-4 feet. To do this, you had to quickly pound or shove a box in each layer of the "wall" to stabilize it against the sides of the trailer.

I was always surprised there wasn't more damage.

[Madcelt]

You forgot to mention that the conveyor ended with you and you 4 53 foot trailers to load(at the same time). I remember that. Got fired when my boss told me I was moving too slow (2 hours into shift). Told him if He could do better, then show me. Instead he showed me the door. His boss called me at home and told to report for work the next day. I was waiting for my orders for desert shield.

[avg_freeper]

...and the second you get behind you're screwed for the rest of the night because it sends a jam up the line. But the unloaders will keep on sending them out at full force. You spend all night breaking up conveyer and slide jams as well as having to load your trucks.

Once when I was on the sort isle I remember the Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana belts getting backed up. I sent a guy helping me sort down there because I was doing fine.

The guy loading the trailers told him that there was a jam up top on the belts and he needed it broken up. Well the guy I sent down there broke up the jam and WHOOOOSSSHHHH! all the boxes flooded away and down the slide.

He gets down from breaking up the jam walks over to the trailer to help the guy load. The loader was no where in sight. So the helper guy is pissed but starts to load the trailer anyway so it doesn't get backed up again. The boxes were in a real jumble in the nose of the trailer so instead of wasting time reassembling them into a wall he just starts his first wall about a quarter of the way back. He knew he would have enough room anyway.

So he gets through, and notifies the driver that its ready. While the driver is jacking the nose up our supervisor happens to be walking by and hears a muffled ".....mmmmppphhhelp meeeeeeeeee..."

To make a long, boring, story short, the guy who was loading the trailer got knocked unconscious by the initial flood of boxes and then got covered up. The guy who came in to help then walled him in. If nobody had heard him in there he probably would have had an all-expenses-paid trip to the Texas hub.

I don't regret having the job though. It helped pay my rent through college and it had good hours. Alot of my friends from college graduated with 20k-30k in loans to pay back, but not me. It also kept me in pretty damn good shape too. Heck of a work out if you push your self enough.

[Madcelt]

Something similar happened to me except it was'nt a person that got trapped it was a Boa constrictor.(darn thing was almost as big as me) Needless to say We did'nt bother him (hee) I only heard about what happened when they found him in the Atlanta Hub:)