[PEN-L:11799] UPS Drivers:New American Folk Heroes

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dow Jones Newswires -- August 15, 1997
 Striking Teamsters Winning Battle For America's
 Hearts,Minds

 NEW YORK (AP)--It's the polite, reliable delivery people in the brown
 shorts you see every day against the white-collared executives in their
 corporate offices. Across the country, Americans are following and debating
 the United Parcel Service strike - and largely, taking sides with the
 brown-shorts folks.

 While it hasn't hit O.J. Simpson levels, there's strong interest and
reaction to a
 12-day-old strike that affects much of the population at least indirectly and
 also is about nationwide economic issues.

 "It's four solid hours of ringing phone lines," said Dave Stone, afternoon
 drivetime host for WGST-AM radio in Atlanta. "It's jobs and it's people's
 security. Everybody can relate to that."

 Stone, who's gotten as many as 150 calls in a day about the strike in UPS'
 headquarters city, said most callers tend to side with management.

 "People view people making $20 an hour and complaining about their wages
 as crybabies," he said.

 But a series of national polls this week consistently showed the striking
 Teamsters winning the hearts-and-minds battle. On Thursday, for example, a
 USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll indicated that 55 percent of those surveyed
 supported the Teamsters, compared with 27 percent backing UPS.

 The poll of 819 adults was conducted Wednesday and Thursday and has a
 margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

 "I'm in favor of the workers," said Heidi Lecklitner, a Panama City, Fla.,
 woman visiting Atlanta on Friday. "It's the way service industries try to push
 down their costs. The working class loses out."

 Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, an Emory University business professor who's studied
 UPS and is a company consultant, said the negative public reaction is a little
 bewildering to some UPS executives. Most, including Chairman James Kelly,
 a one-time driver, worked their ways up through a company that claims a
 90-year tradition of humility and integrity among its leaders.

 Sonnenfeld said most people think of the drivers when they think of UPS. The
 drivers, on strike with sorters, packagers and varied other employees among
 the 185,000 Teamsters, have a positive image that goes beyond hard-working
 reliability.

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Teamsters,America's Heart -2: UPS Driver 'Part Of
 Americana'

 A sign hanging in the Bluegrass Regional Office of the Kentucky Lottery in
 Lexington has a message for its UPS driver on strike. It reads: "Phil, come
 back, we miss you."

 "The UPS driver has become part of Americana," Sonnenfeld said. "Folksy,
 sexy, whatever the image is, there's great bonding between the drivers and
 their customers."

 Others watching the labor-management conflict say the Teamsters are favored
 by public reaction to two key issues _ union resistance to the heavy use of
 part-time workers receiving lower wages and benefits and UPS' push to pull
 out of the Teamsters' multi-employer pension fund in favor of a UPS-only
 fund.

 The company says that would improve its workers' benefits and stop its
 subsidy of non-UPS Teamsters; the Teamsters say the company wants to get
 its hands on pension investment income.

 "The pension issue is a complicated one that's hard for a lot of people to
 understand," said Marick Masters, professor at the University of Pittsburgh's
 Katz Graduate School of Business.

 But everyday people are likely to respond to union complaints about heavy
 use of part-timers, which UPS says is essential for competitive reasons and
 because of its time-sensitive operations.

 "The part-time debate is a sensitive debate," Masters said. "Part-time workers
 earn considerably less; the threat of losing a full-time job for a
part-time job
 involuntarily; rising inequality in the workplace in general."

 "Both sides have righteousness on their side; both clearly have a legitimate
 point," said Donald Ratajczak, who heads the economic forecasting center at
 Georgia State University. "But the union has done a wonderful job of saying
 the problem is the abuse of part-time work, and the American public feels it's
 unfair."

 "American people can't live like that - four or five hours of work a day - I
 know I can't," said Ed Pellman, an office worker from New Albany, Ind.

 Sonnenfeld said the company needs to become more aggressive in publicly
 rebutting the Teamsters, but he predicted that the public tide would eventually
 turn if the strike drags on.

 "If this thing lasts long enough, and the word is filtering out there, I
think you
 will see public sentiment shift," he said.