After mobilizing a 340,000-strong workforce to present a credible strike threat amid contract negotiations with UPS, UPS Teamsters have won a historic agreement with the company that will “[raise] the bar for all workers,” according to Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien.
Workers won significant raises for part-time workers, which had been the last major demand of the union before this agreement was reached. Part-time workers will now start at USD 21 per hour, a major increase from the current starting average of USD 16.50 per hour. Teamsters leaders also eliminated the deeply unpopular 22.4 system, which placed workers doing the same labor in different tiers of pay. All workers, part-time and full-time, will win wage increases of USD 2.75 per hour, and increases USD 7.5 over the length of the contract. Current part-timers will win raises of up to USD 1.5 per hour on top of new hourly raises. This is a major improvement from the abysmal hourly increase of USD 0.50 per year that UPS proposed before Teamsters declared that a strike was imminent.
Other major wins include air conditioning in all UPS package trucks purchased next year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday for the first time, and the hiring of 30,000 new full-time jobs.
This agreement is tentative until it is ratified by union membership. Due to its historic nature, it is widely expected to pass the scrutiny of 340,000 UPS Teamsters. Member voting begins August 3 and ends August 22.
“This is a historic victory, all thanks to new leadership and 100s of thousands of Teamsters. The rank and file who were out there adding pressure every week,” Antonio Rosario, 29-year UPS Teamster and member of the International Steering Committee for the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, told Peoples Dispatch. “One of the best parts of all of this is that we are raising standards for all the working class. Our fight was a fight for all!”
