Teamster delivery: Victory for UPS strikers fuels labor's comeback

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the August 23, 1997, issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

When the smoke lifted in the early morning hours of Aug 18, it became clear that after nearly four days of continuous bargaining the "New Teamsters" had given a whipping to UPS, the nation's 35th largest corporation. In a hard-hitting, well-organized, 15-day strike, the 185,000 Teamster union members who work for UPS forced the company to agree to a five-year contract that creates 10,000 new full-time jobs, protects and improves pensions, limits subcontracting and provides substantial wage increases. Another key provision of the tentative contract maintains the right of UPS workers to respect the picket lines of other unions - a provision that takes on additional importance as UPS pilots threaten a Christmas walkout unless they win a contract before then. UPS also failed to change the "innocent until proven guilty" grievance procedure.

In an early-morning press conference at union headquarters, a tired but jubilant Teamster President Ron Carey said, "American workers have shown that we can stand up to corporate greed. After 15 years of taking it on the chin, working families are telling big corporations that we will fight for the American Dream. This is not just a Teamster victory - this is a victory for all working people."

Carey's statement that the fight with UPS "shows what working people can accomplish when they stick together," was a tribute to rank and file Teamsters who rejected the company's divide-and-conquer strategy of pitting part-time worker against full-time worker, and of offering a UPS-only pension that, while sweetening benefits for UPS retirees, would have gutted the pension funds of other Teamsters.

"We fought for each other and for workers everywhere," Michael Purdue, president of Teamster Local 177 in Hillside, New Jersey, said. "It come down to us and we did it."

Carey elaborated on the strike's significance when he compared it to the 1981 PATCO strike that was broken when President Reagan fired the strikers and banned them from government employment for life.

"I remember in the 1980s when the air traffic controllers' union was wiped out," he said. "For 15 years after that, employers all across the nation cut jobs, cut pensions, cut health coverage and stepped on workers' rights. Working people were on the run, but not any more. This strike marks a new era."

The significance of the strike and its future impact was debated by friend and foe alike, with each side giving its own spin.

As expected, UPS attempted to throw cold water on any celebration. James Kelly, CEO at UPS who provoked the strike with a "last, best and final offer" on July 31, threatened to retaliate by laying off 15,000 workers . UPS spokesperson Ken Sternad struggled to keep a poker face when he told reporters, "No one wins in a strike."

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney took a more realistic view when he called the strike "a wake-up call to employers." He said the strike was about issues that workers all across the country relate to: part-time work, outsourcing, protecting pensions and health insurance. "It was more than PATCO," Sweeney said.

Public opinion polls taken during the strike showed a 2-to-1 margin in favor of the union and that only 21 percent of those surveyed thought that President Clinton should intervene to end the strike.

Michael Belzar, who follows labor developments at the University of Michigan, said UPS miscalculated if its leaders thought the company could exploit political differences within the union.

"They thought workers would cross the line and that they knew their employees better than the union knew their members. They were incorrect." Nelson Leichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of Virginia summed up his view of the settlement in few words;: "It was," he said, "a slam dunk for the union." Leichtenstein said the strike "ends the PATCO syndrome - a 16-year period in which a strike was synonymous with defeat and demoralization."

Teamster leaders lost no time in taking advantage of the strike's momentum, to announce plans to step up efforts to organize the 110,000 workers at Federal Express. "They will be wowed and wooed by the UPS thing," one leader said.

Leichtenstein said he "could assure reporters" that there were discussions going on among the executives of outfits like Wal-Mart, KMart and FedEx about how to blunt union efforts to organize their employees.

The UPS strike came only days after settlement of the 10-month strike by 4,500 members of the Steelworkers union against the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation. Both were important battles in a much larger war - and that war will continue so long as there are the Ron LaBows of Wheeling-Pitt and James Browns of UPS.

Michael Baroody, a senior vice president of the National Association of Manufactures, made it clear that Big Business has not thrown in the towel. "What we have is a more aggressive labor movement. Whether we have a more effective one remains to be seen," he said, in a not-so-veiled threat of tests to come.

While not discounting future battles, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said the UPS strike "clearly signals something new....something of a water shed. But only the future will tell how much of a watershed it is."