[PEN-L:11738] NYT on Part-Timers

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

When I tried to post this previously, I screwed up.  I apologize for the garble.

August 12, 1997
Part-Time Workers Looking for a Leg Up
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

NEW YORK -- Before the strike against the United Parcel Service began,
Christopher
Holdip, a muscular 29-year-old Brooklynite, worked three sweaty hours an evening
unloading 15 trucks, and earned $120 a week -- not enough, he complains, to
allow him to move
out of his mother's apartment.

Miriam Corbblah, like Holdip, is a part-timer at UPS' hulking Manhattan
sorting center, at 43rd
Street along the Hudson River. The $190 a week she earns delivering air
packages is not enough to
lift her and her three children off welfare.

>From 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. each night, Marcellino Noriega sorts packages at
the center and neatly
loads several brown trucks. To make ends meet, he has had to take a day job
for a head-hunting
agency.

It is for part-time workers like these that the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters says it is on
strike, its main goal to win the part-timers full-time jobs that pay enough
for them to live on.
The union says the company could easily comply, for instance by combining
two four-hour sorting
and loading shifts, beginning at midnight and 4 a.m., into a single
full-time shift, lasting from midnight
till 8 a.m.

The company, on the other hand, notes that not all of its centers have
midnight shifts, and says that
in any case, its experience has been that sorters and loaders are more
efficient if limited to four
hours of work at a time.

The teamsters in turn say the company's real motive is to keep most of its
unionized workers in the
lower tier of a two-tier wage system, paying the part-timers half the hourly
wage earned by the
full-timers, most of whom are drivers.

"A lot of us have to do eight hours' work in four hours," Noriega said.
'It's not fair. I'll admit the
benefits are very good here, but it would be great if we could work full
time."

But Neil Brawley, director of human resources at the Manhattan center, says
it cannot transform
many part-time jobs into full-time work, because its day is made up of busy
bursts and long lulls.
That is how UPS depots around the country work, which helps explain why
38,000 of the 46,000
jobs that the company has created since 1993 are part time.

"We go in and out of business several times a day," said Brawley, who was
once a United Parcel
driver himself.

>From early evening until very early morning, tractor-trailers arrive at the
eight-story 43rd Street
building, which has 2,132 employees and was once the world headquarters of
the company, now
based in Atlanta.

The trucks come from UPS satellite centers around the city and from depots
in New Jersey,
Maryland and Massachusetts. The center handles 230,000 parcels a day --
jewelry shipped from
47th Street, computers going to investment banks, teddy bears going to
3-year-olds.

Part-timers who work from midnight to 3:30 a.m. unload the trucks or sort
thousands of packages.
(The sorters are clocked to make sure they each handle at least 1,000
packages an hour.) Some
300 workers on the next shift, 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., then load the packages into
hundreds of brown
delivery trucks lined up on the center's first four floors.

About 8:30 each morning, the center's 800 full-time drivers empty out,
fanning around Manhattan.
They drop off packages until roughly 2 p.m., have lunch and then fetch
parcels until 6 p.m. or so.
Then begins the twilight shift, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. More than 100 unloaders
empty the trucks, and
more than 100 others sort the parcels to prepare them to be shipped out in
tractor-trailers.
Around 8 each morning comes the handoff, in which part-timers who have
loaded the delivery
trucks confer with the drivers about any special wrinkles in how the trucks
are loaded. Some
loaders admit to feeling envy: they earn $9 an hour after two years, or
about $10,000 a year, while
the drivers, who are mostly full-timers, earn $19.95, averaging more than
$40,000 a year.

"I don't resent the full-timer drivers for earning more than us," Ms.
Corbblah said. "I came in here
knowing how much I would make. There's no tension between us. But I know one
day I would like
to be in their position."

Ms. Corbblah, a member of Teamsters Local 804, was talking while standing on
the picket line
outside the Manhattan depot, her sleeping 4-year-old daughter slumped on her
shoulder. Suddenly
several dozen workers broke into a chant: "Eight-oh-four is here to stay!
All we want is equal pay!"
Whenever a brown truck left or entered the building, the pickets booed.
Since the strike began
eight days ago, many of the center's nonunion managers, administrators,
engineers, clerks and
complaint takers, more than 400 employees in all, have been sorting, loading
and delivering the
much reduced volume that UPS is handling.

Brawley, the human resources director, says there is no reason for the
part-time workers to be
envious of the full-timers, because many part-timers can move up to
full-time jobs. He notes that
under the union contract that expired just before the strike began, the
company was required to
allot four-fifths of all full-time openings to part-timers. That, he says,
has allowed dozens of
part-timers at the Manhattan center to move up to full-time positions in the
last few years.

Noting that many of their part-time workers are unskilled, UPS officials
also say the company
offers higher wages and much better benefits to such employees than do most
companies.

George, a loader who would not give his last name, said he earned $8.50 an
hour as a part-timer
and could not afford an apartment; he stays with friends for days or weeks
at a time.
But he left his full-time $6.85-an-hour job at a Pergament hardware store
for one reason: UPS
provides health insurance, even for part-time workers. He also intends soon
to take advantage of
another company benefit: the $2,000 in tuition reimbursement that United
Parcel offers each
semester to part-timers who work the midnight or 4 a.m. shift.

"Many friends of mine," Brawley said, "say our part-timers get a better
package of benefits than
they do at their full-time jobs."

He also said more than half the Manhattan center's part-timers did not want
to work full time:
college students, people who spend much of their time taking care of elderly
parents, retirees from
other jobs seeking extra income.

But plenty of part-timers are eager for full-time work, and many say it
would be a cinch for the
company to create full-time jobs by combining a midnight-to-3:30 a.m.
sorting job with a 4 a.m.-
to-8 a.m. loading job. Another option, the workers say, would be to combine
a loader's
part-time shift with part-time work answering phones to help customers track
parcels.

While it is the part-timers who stand to gain the most from the union's
demands, the full-time drivers
pledge their support.

"They work awfully hard," said Anthony Passaretti, who worked part time for
15 years before
becoming a full-time driver. "We know what their jobs are like. They deserve
more."