[PEN-L:11800] Strikebreaking: A Dishonest Day's Work

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 15, 1997
 Strike Makes UPS Managers
 Sort, Load, Drive and Deliver

 By BARBARA CARTON
 Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 NORWOOD, Mass. -- Until recently, Brian McKenna supervised 140
 employees sorting and loading packages on the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift at a
 United Parcel Service of America Inc. warehouse here. He used to ease his
 new workers in a little at a time, giving them two weeks to condition their
 bodies to the strain.

 These days, the 39-year-old Mr. McKenna, whose softball-team nickname is
 "BOSA" for Best Out of Shape Athlete, is working the predawn line himself.
 He breaks into a sweat as he tries to read the ZIP Codes quickly and keep his
 head down. "If you look at the whole thing, you panic," he says of the sea of
 boxes advancing toward him. "You just have to take one at a time."

 For strike-bound UPS, package volume is down 90%, red ink is flowing and
 customers are fleeing. But Mr. McKenna and other converted managers like
 him are donning delivery browns to conduct what business they can.

                       One such reassigned manager, Floyd Parta, was
                       killed when, driving above the speed limit in
                       Nashville, he lost control of his truck and it fell off
                       an entrance ramp onto Interstate 65. Strikers'
                       Web sites gleefully recount other alleged mishaps,
                       including overloaded delivery vehicles getting
                       stuck and a UPS trailer that separated from its
 cab.

 But in Norwood and at other sites, managers appear to be keeping up without
 incident. Many have been helped by their past experience as UPS drivers,
 giving them a leg up on other managers in strike situations who never did
 rank-and-file jobs. There used to be 500 management types in the eastern
 New England district; now all but 40 of them are on the road -- and 80% of
 them started with UPS as drivers or package sorters.

 The new workday routine for Mr. McKenna and his delivery partner, Bill
 Murphy, includes being on the receiving end of both gratitude and contempt.
 Striking workers jeer them as they leave the Norwood yard at 9, and on the
 road a trucker shouts "scab"" as they pass. But merchants along Route 1 are
 delighted to be getting deliveries.

 "We're trying to protect our own livelihood by working," says Mr. Murphy.
 "But we're also trying to protect some of this business so that when it
does all
 come to an end, there are still some customers. The other guys are loaded... .
 Roadway, Federal Express -- those vehicles are packed with our packages,
 and that's scary. Any of our employees, if they're not thinking this,
something's
 got to be wrong."

 Every truck that leaves the Norwood site has two workers in it instead of the
 usual one -- for safety's sake. Each delivery team has been equipped with an
 emergency cell phone. Each carries a disposable camera, for photographing
 anyone who attempts an assault. Drivers have been instructed that they can
 signal SOS messages via their electronic clipboards, if necessary. Messrs.
 McKenna and Murphy were instructed to sprout eyes in the backs of their
 heads and never leave their trucks alone, not even for an instant.

 The trucks leave the plant in a tight military convoy of 24, advancing bumper
 to bumper out the front gate. At night, they meet at an undisclosed staging
area
 nearby and return to the plant together.

 Mr. Murphy, who in his prestrike days worked behind a desk as an assistant
 personnel manager, says he doesn't know how long the strike will last, but he
 is prepared for the long haul. He has even ordered a new pair of regulation
 brown shorts. Mr. McKenna is similarly prepared. He can still fit into his old
 uniform, but poking out below his regulation brown trousers is one giveaway
 to his real job: a pair of wing-tip oxfords.

 After finishing sorting packages, Mr. McKenna spends the rest of his day
 working out of a brown delivery truck, ferrying packages to customers as Mr.
 Murphy stays behind the wheel. Along Route 1, just south of Boston, the van
 ducks into industrial parks and small storefronts, making calls on office
 suppliers, auto shops and defense contractors.

 On busy Washington Street in suburban Newton this week, one UPS truck
 held up traffic as two deliverymen, looking lost, fumbled with an oversized
 map in the cab. But Mr. Murphy, wheeling his van past sub shops and signs
 that say things like "World's Best Margarita -- $2.95," seems to know his
 way. At Metropolitan Telephone, where the men deliver a Canon jet printer,
 dispatcher Rose Richmond greets them: "Hi guys! At least there's one
 dedicated employee that still comes to work."

 But Stephen Caggiano, who runs a medical repair shop, isn't happy. "Where
 were you guys on Monday, when you said you were going to come?" he
 demands. Before the strike, Mr. Caggiano used UPS for 90% of his shipping.

 The UPS men apologize and tell Mr. Caggiano to call a special UPS
 telephone number to get on a preferred customer pickup list. UPS is so
 strapped for manpower that locally, at least, it is only picking up from
its top
 750 shippers. The list takes into account such factors as whether they ship
 next-day air or internationally at least once a week.

 "I just took 20 packages to the post office," Mr. Caggiano complains.

 "We don't want you doing that," Mr. McKenna says. "If you've got air, I want
 to get you on that list. Call that number and ask for a supervisor."

 But Mr. Caggiano isn't placated. "They're doing what they can," he says of the
 drivers, "but they're not trained drivers. You call their customer number
up and
 the one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. They're in disarray."

 A short while later, the truck takes a turn past Mattress Discounters into
 Foreign Auto Part, where Dorothy Russell, an office worker, pokes her head
 out the door and waves at Messrs. Murphy and McKenna. She is a striking
 part-time UPS package sorter and is surprised to see her boss. "He's usually
 got his white shirt and tie on," she says.

 "I saw my immediate supervisor last week," she adds. "He was down here in a
 truck dropping off some boxes. This whole situation just stinks. I want to go
 back to work. I was very happy with part-time. It suited me. I feel sorry for
 these guys driving. They have no choice. They have to do it. They're only
 doing what they have to survive."

 Mr. McKenna says that he got six calls from workers over the weekend and
 that a number are finding jobs in landscaping, painting and construction. "I
 don't think in their wildest dreams they thought it would be more than a
 one-day strike before President Clinton would step in," he says.

 In some ways, Messrs. McKenna and Murphy enjoy their return to the
 trenches. "It's like I don't have to think," Mr. Murphy says. "In my
regular job,
 I have to deal with a whole lot of things -- issues, numbers, staffing --
things
 that are art, not science. Here, all you have to do is deliver packages."

 "The only sad part," he adds, "is that we're losing money like crazy, and that
 takes the fun out of it."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 15, 1997
 Striking UPS Workers Find
 There's Work to be Done

 By JOSEPH PEREIRA
 Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 Striking United Parcel Service of America Inc. workers may be idled from
 one job -- but there is plenty of other work around.

 With the strike 12 days old, many strikers have been looking for, and finding,
 alternative jobs -- with the encouragement of their union. On some picket
 lines, Teamsters representatives are showing up daily with job leads and
 openings, encouraging strikers to take advantage of the strong labor market.
 Nationally, the unemployment rate is 4.8%, a 24-year low.

                       The ease with which strikers are finding work is
                       an advantage for the union in the strike. "Helping
                       workers find temporary jobs certainly increases
                       the union's bargaining power to the extent that
                       they can hold out on the strike lines longer," says
                       Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University economics
                       professor and former chief economist for the U.S.
 Department of Labor.

 Alternative Work

 At the Somerville, Mass., UPS warehouse, 11 picketers signed up one recent
 morning for $13-an-hour carpentry and painting work at Boston's Wang
 Center for the Performing Arts. Others left for the Boston docks, where they
 helped fishermen unload their catches for $11 an hour. Strike benefits are
 about $55 a week.

 John Flunkinger, a shop steward at the facility, said he has cut picket
duty for
 his estimated 120-worker constituency to about four hours a day -- down
 from eight hours a week ago. "I've told them, do what you have to do; we're
 preparing for the long haul," he said.

 Michael Stone, a striking UPS driver, says he's taken up several odd jobs --
 including delivering bags of groceries to the homes of senior citizens -- since
 the strike began Aug. 4. He has worked about six hours a day earning about
 $70 a day, he says. His 14-year-old daughter is also working bagging
 groceries in a supermarket, earning $96 a week, he adds. "That helps; we're
 doing all right," he said.

 Teamsters Encouraging Jobs

 A Teamsters spokesman says the union doesn't know how many of the
 striking workers have found work, but he says the union is doing what it can to
 encourage alternative jobs.

 In previous strikes, organizers have tended to get as many workers on the
 picket line as possible, particularly in the early stretch, to show
solidarity. The
 economic hardships of striking workers that subsequently surfaced were also
 used as publicity. These days, says one Somerville striker, "The message we
 want to give companies today is that we're not hurting as bad as you."

 Labor walkouts are taking a more practical and businesslike approach, notes
 Larry Keegan, a Teamster driver who participated in a strike against
 Anheuser-Busch Cos. in 1983, when, he says, the union wasn't acting as
 employment agency in the early strike stages. "These are the 1990s. You got
 to look out for yourself," says Mr. Keegan.