Strikers tell UPS: Part-time America won't work! AFL-CIO pledges $10 million per week

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the August 16, 1997, issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

UPS strikers across the country were buoyed by the announcement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney that the labor movement had pledged loans of $10 million a week to the Teamsters union to pay strike benefits. "I can tell you that before the week is out, we will have enough loan commitments from unions large and small to finance the worker side of this confrontation for a long strike if that's what it takes," Sweeney told an August 12 press conference on the steps of Teamsters union headquarters in Washington. "Many, many weeks at $10 million a week," he emphasized. Sweeney said all American families are indebted to the nearly 200,000 UPS workers who have been on strike since August 4. "This struggle is over basic issues facing every worker," he said: "Part-time jobs and half-time pay. Eliminating family health care benefits. About increased outsourcing and decreased retirement security. And it's about a greedy, profitable employer who wants to make more money by shortchanging workers on their wages and benefits."

UPS hires 2,000 pilots who belong to the Independent Pilots Association. "When the strike hit, 300 of our members were stranded in different cities," Rich Henry, who co-pilots a UPS Boeing 727, told the World during a rally in Jersey City, NJ. "We were willing to lay over in case the strike was settled quickly - but UPS refused to pay our hotel bills." He added that the IPA laid out more than $150,000 to get its members home. "UPS has been hollering for years about government interference with their business - and now they're trying to get President Clinton to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act and order the Teamsters and us back to work," Henry continued.

The decision of the AFL-CIO to guarantee additional financial aid to the UPS strike came as the strike neared the end of its second week with UPS threatening to eliminate 15,000 jobs even if the strike ends. This threat, coming on the heels of an earlier announcement that the company would "accommodate" any UPS worker who wants to return to work, has given a new urgency to the strike. Solidarity actions have become the order of the day as unions and their supporters have rallied to Sweeney's call that, because the UPS fight "is our fight, we are making this strike our strike."

Although the struggle between the nation's largest private sector union and the nation's 37th largest company centers on the union's demand for more full-time jobs, it has become apparent in recent days that UPS has a hidden agenda - the demand that the company no longer contribute to existing union pension programs but be allowed to set up their own. Union members in cities across the country have been visiting UPS customers to explain the issues in the strike. "This is one way of countering the company's demand that Clinton break our strike," Dan Kaminski, a UPS driver for 30 years said.

Kaminski ridiculed the demand by UPS that the union allow a vote on it's "last, best and final offer." "We already voted," he said, pointing to the overwhelming strike vote by UPS workers.

UPS has facilities in 2,500 locations in all 50 states and raked in $1.1 billion in profit last year.