[PEN-L:11802] Teamster UPS Strike: Alex Cockburn in WSJ

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

             The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 14,
                                  1997
            Edit Page Features
            'Dear Jim': What Ron Carey
            Should Tell the Boss of UPS

            By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

            Suddenly United Parcel Service has
            discovered democracy. Faced with a strike
            that is, to UPS's surprise and mortification,
            near 100% solid thus far, the UPS top brass
            is calling for a vote by all Teamster
            members on strike.

                          These members had
                          already mandated their
                          union to strike UPS if
                          contract terms didn't
                          improve, and the fact that
                          more than 95% have
                          honored the picket line
                          tells us they think
                          Teamster President Ron
                          Carey and the Teamster
                          leadership made the right
            decision. But this employer passion for
            democracy during a strike is an old trick.
            Suppose Mr. Carey said the Teamsters
            would hold a strike vote by the end of the
            week in every local in the country. Ten
            minutes later UPS would say it should be a
            postal ballot, and since such a ballot would
            take about a month to run, why not call for a
            return to work pending the vote? That's a
            good way to take the steam out of a strike.
            Nice for UPS President and CEO James
            Kelly and his colleagues, but there's no
            reason why Mr. Carey should pay the
            slightest attention. In the meantime he might
            want to drop Mr. Kelly a note along these
            lines:

            Dear Jim,

            We Teamsters get a good laugh out of your
            call for openness and democracy. You might
            want to throw your mind back to the last
            contract talks, in the fall of 1993. There we
            were, bargaining away in good faith and a
            spirit of openness, except UPS management
            had one big dirty secret: You were planning
            to raise the weight limit on packages, from
            70 pounds to 150 pounds. Jim, that's three
            times the 50-pound limit that was in effect
            when you and I were driving UPS trucks.

            Now you didn't want to tell us about the new
            150-pound limit because you knew we'd
            have major concerns about health and safety.
            So you weren't exactly open, and when you
            introduced the new super-heavy limit in
            February 1994, I had to call a one-day
            strike--against a federal injunction--to force
            you to agree that workers could refuse to lift
            the 150-pounders by themselves and had a
            right to demand that management provide
            assistance. But as old truck drivers, you
            know and I know that if a UPS driver is in
            an industrial area with four or five
            "packages" weighing around 140 pounds
            each, he--maybe she--isn't going to call back
            to the hub to get help. That's a way to get
            fired in pretty short order. The driver is
            going to ask the customers for help,
            recruiting part-time labor you don't even
            have to pay $8 an hour for.

            As you and your colleagues sat on your big
            dirty secret all through 1993, you knew
            perfectly well what the cost was going to be
            for the UPS workers whose opinions you're
            so keen to canvas now. You weren't so keen
            to canvas them back then over a decision
            that would affect the health and welfare of
            every UPS driver, sorter and loader. You
            had a plan, and it didn't have much to do
            with democracy.

            You're probably proud, Jim, of the fact that
            UPS has the biggest political action
            committee in the country, bigger than any
            union's, the American Medical Association's
            or the trial lawyers'. You spend more money
            than big oil or tobacco in buying politicians,
            government bureaucrats and anyone else
            likely to advance UPS's interests. In 1992
            you were bothered when Dorothy Strunk,
            acting head of the federal Occupational
            Safety and Heath Administration, was
            formulating new ergonomic standards,
            identifying tasks that were likely to hurt
            people and making them safer. You knew
            that your company, particularly with the new
            150-pound limit, would never meet any such
            reasonable standards.

            So you spread the money around. In 1993
            and 1994 UPS political donations jumped by
            $1.2 million over the previous two years.
            Ms. Strunk soon became a consultant for
            UPS, spending much of her time rewriting
            safety rules for Cass Ballenger's (R., N.C.)
            House subcommittee crammed with
            OSHA-destroyers whose elections you
            helped pay for. (And while we're on the
            topic of democracy, Jim, it would be nice to
            know what exactly you told all those UPS
            managers who "voluntarily" ponied up their
            $200 levy for your PAC. Did they know
            their "contributions" were buying off OSHA
            and corrupting the democratic process?)

            You've been insisting, Jim, that your key
            demand in the contract is that UPS take over
            the pension fund. You think it's wrong for
            workers to be able to change jobs and keep
            their pensions? When you and I were young
            the big shipper wasn't UPS. It was Railway
            Express. Remember the green vans? UPS
            looks big now. Railway Express looked big
            then. What would have happened to a
            Railway Express pension fund? So why
            should Teamsters have confidence in a UPS
            pension fund? Our people in the
            Teamsters-run Central States Pension Fund,
            with assets professionally managed under
            federal supervision, have seen the monthly
            pension for a 30-years-and-out retiree go
            from $1,000 a month in 1990 to $2,000 now
            and it will go to $3,000 a month after the
            strike. Would UPS have added a cent to that
            pension if you'd been controlling the
            benefits? Pardon us while we laugh. You
            haven't raised the part-time $8 an hour
            starting wage in 15 years and you want to
            freeze it for another five.

            Oh, and you want to have our people in your
            UPS health plan. That's rich, considering you
            barely recognize work injuries as a problem
            and have even made it impossible for OSHA
            to collect data on how you're hurting your
            workers. Two facts you know well: Last
            year you hired 180,000 part-timers to fill
            40,000 slots because most people couldn't
            keep up with the pace and quit. Now, in your
            health plan, you demand that health
            insurance kick in only after six months. In
            other words, the bulk of your employees
            won't have any health coverage. And we do
            know that the injury rate at UPS in 1996 was
            33.8 per 100 workers, based on a
            2,000-hour working year. That's two and a
            half times the industry average.

            Shouldn't we be asking for some
            accountability from companies like UPS for
            what they put their workers through? If UPS
            knowingly puts unliftable weights into their
            system, destroys OSHA standards,
            enforcement and even data collection, are
            not subsequent medical costs something for
            which you and your colleagues should be
            held accountable?

            So quit lecturing us, and be open about the
            one thing you and your colleagues won't talk
            about: Why the full-time drivers are
            prepared--and united--to fight for the
            part-timers against the system you've helped
            build.


            Mr. Cockburn is a contributor to The
            Nation, a syndicated columnist and co-editor
            of CounterPunch, a Washington, D.C-based
            newsletter.





                            Return to top of page


             Copyright © 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.