By Steve Halpern
I happen to be a 70-year-old school bus driver and member of the Teamsters Union. During the past few months there has been increasing interest about the contract expiration date of July 31, between 340,000 Teamster Union members and the United Parcel Service. In order to begin to understand why there might be a nationwide strike on August 1, we need to look at a bit of background.
Back in 1997 the Teamsters Union went on strike against UPS for fifteen days. The union forced UPS to come up with significant concessions.
Then in 2018 UPS demanded that the union accept a two-tier agreement known as 22.4. This 22.4 section created a second tier for new hires who would be paid significantly less than workers who had seniority. This stipulation also meant that UPS could require 22.4 workers to work significant overtime, as well as split shifts. UPS also demanded the right to hire nonunion workers to move UPS packages. Anyone who observes UPS workers on the job sees how they work at a furious pace, and this is demanded by the company.
The rank-and-file workers voted against this concession contract. Then Teamsters Union President James Hoffa, the son of former Union President Jimmy Hoffa, found a technicality in the Teamsters Constitution. This allowed him to drive through an agreement in spite a no vote on the contract.
Sean O’Brian was on the negotiating team for the Teamsters during those negotiations. He recommended that the Union reject UPS’s offer. James Hoffa then fired O’Brian.
Two years ago, Sean O’Brian ran for Union President and won by an overwhelming majority. O’Brian has said that there are several strikable issues that UPS must agree to in order to avoid a strike. One is to get rid of the two-tier setup workers are living with today. He is also demanding a significant wage increase for warehouse workers who might be working twenty hours per week for fifteen dollars per hour. Another demand is for UPS to stop using nonunion drivers.
UPS has already agreed that their new 2024 trucks have air-conditioning. Today UPS trucks don’t have air-conditioning. Recently Esteban Chavez, a 24-year-old UPS driver died of dehydration delivering packages in Pasadena, California on a 90-degree day. Clearly this is the year 2023 and UPS has no plans to air-condition their trucks that are now on the road.
Since the pandemic UPS has made about $100 billion in profits. 70% of UPS is owned by several banks. The largest investors are Vanguard and Black Rock. Carol Tomé is the CEO of the corporation, and she receives $19 million per year.
So, we can ask the question, Since UPS has made so much money in profits, why are they so reluctant to grant the concessions the Teamsters Union is demanding? We might also consider that the UPS Corporation moves packages that represent six percent of the economy in the United States.
The drive to maximize profits
Karl Marx wrote his analysis of the capitalist system over 150 years ago. Marx reported that the capitalist system needs to continually grow in order to survive.
Literally every commodity that has ever been produced was produced by the working class of the world. For each of those commodities, capitalists profited. Capitalists rarely if ever actually produce the goods and services they profit from. So, the wealth capitalists use to grow the economy always comes from the working class. How is this reality relevant to the Teamsters Union today?
Up until the 1970s manufacturing corporations, like the auto companies, dominated the economy of the United States. Then, for various reasons banks began to take a more dominant role in the economy. The result was that millions of jobs were eliminated through automation or by moving manufacturing jobs overseas.
Back in the 1990s I remember reading a quotation by a corporate executive where he argued that the wages of workers in this country would not increase until those wages went down to the wages of workers in Korea and Brazil. Well, the reality of what happened was much more sinister than this executive imagined.
At that time, China had some of the lowest wages in the world at two dollars per day or less. So, banks invested huge amounts of money in nations like China where wages might be two dollars per day. The wages in Brazil and Korea were about five dollars per hour at that time. We might also consider that robots that eliminated jobs do not receive wages.
So, while much of the production in the world happens outside of the United States, commodities need to be transported to consumers here. Although production costs have dramatically decreased, prices continually go up and UPS is demanding more and more concessions from the workers who create literally every penny of their profits.
UPS CEO Carol Tomé
While UPS warehouse workers are paid fifteen dollars per hour oftentimes for a twenty-hour week, UPS CEO Carol Tomé argues that UPS salaries are about $93,000 per year. We might call this tactic the bait-and-switch. In their negotiations with the Teamsters Union UPS has made it their priority to ensure that only a tiny minority of the workers get the $93,000 salary. Then they argue with pride that they pay $93,000 to workers, as if all UPS workers are paid that salary.
We might also consider that Carol Tomé is a woman. Many women argue that she and other women who are CEOs of corporations are examples of how women have advanced since the 1970s.
The problem with this perspective is that there are thousands of women who are members of the Teamsters Union and move packages for UPS. These women do not benefit from the fact that Carol Tomé has a salary of $19 million per year. In fact, these women might very well go on strike because they refuse to go along with the demands of Carol Tomé.
In preparing for a possible strike, I listened to a YouTube presentation by Farrell Dobbs who was a leader of a 1934 Teamsters Union Strike in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In my opinion, it is useful to understand what happened in 1934 in order to deal with what is happening today.
In 1934 Teamsters Union members had salaries of about $15 per week in Minneapolis. This was not enough money to support a family. For that salary workers were expected to carry hundred-pound bags of coal sometimes up three and four flights of stairs. If a worker didn’t like that, the boss merely hired another worker. These were the years of the depression when there was widespread unemployment.
Eventually the workers organized a strike. From the strike headquarters they organized flying pickets that would harass any truck that moved in the city without permission from the union. The headquarters also had a canteen that provided striking workers with meals. A doctor and nurses volunteered to support the strike. This became necessary because of the violence brought on by the police department.
Initially a demonstration of women protested a truck that was being moved for a local newspaper. The police beat these unarmed women with clubs. The strikers and their supporters responded in another instance by sending about 200 police officers and their deputies to the hospital.
Since beating workers proved to be ineffective in stopping the strike, the police then used shotguns. On a day in July of 1934 known as “Bloody Friday”, police officers fired their shotguns at unarmed union members and their supporters. In all, the police injured about 67 people and murdered two demonstrators. About 40,000 people attended the funeral of Henry Ness who was one of the murdered victims.
Yet the strike remained strong even after the armed attack by the police. So, the allegedly pro-labor Governor Olsen sent the National Guard to Minneapolis and declared martial law. The National Guard proceeded to arrest Union leaders. The Guard didn’t need to file charges against the union leaders because of martial law.
Yet the strike remained strong, and the companies finally granted many of the Union demands. The Teamsters Union in the city went from about 100 members to over 7,000.
Farrell Dobbs went on to organize over-the-road drivers all over the mid-west. Because of the growing pro-union consciousness, a new union federation called the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was organized. Millions of workers joined unions in those years and there were more battles for union recognition.
How things have changed
The union battles in the 1930s and 1950s greatly improved the standard of living in this country. Today workers routinely live in homes with dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and air conditioners. Most workers have cars. However, in order to have all these things workers need to continually go into massive debt. Since the higher paying jobs require a college education, large numbers of workers are saddled with massive college debt.
So, in my opinion is it useful to look at what Karl Marx had to say when we think about all the challenges we face today. Workers produce and transport literally all commodities. Profits are derived from the production and transport of all those commodities.
The surplus derived from all these commodities allows for the existence of entire enterprises. Profits are only one part of this surplus. Banks, insurance companies, advertising agencies, landlords, corporate law firms, and the government all are totally dependent on the production and distribution of all goods and services.
While these enterprises have raked in trillions of dollars, there are about 34 million people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat. While corporations are dependent on the lowest paid workers of the world, 30,000 children die every day of preventable diseases.
Understanding this reality, we can say that the 340,000 Teamster Union members working for UPS are in the forefront of the struggle for human dignity for workers all over the world. Clearly, we aren’t raised to think in those terms. However, that is the way I see it.
Today, thousands of Teamster Union members are Black, Latino, women, Native American, gay, or transsexual. These union members experience routine discrimination. In my opinion, for the union to advance it also needs to battle against the routine discrimination all these workers face. This is the way we can begin to have the class unity we need.
The banks that own UPS are nervous. Several banks have gone bankrupt. Jerome Powel, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve knew this would happen when he raised interest rates. So, banks and all corporations are faced with the problem of needing to grow the world economy when there are fewer and fewer sources of profitability. These are the pressures placed on the executives of UPS.
There is another way. Instead of working to grow the world economy, if we had a different political economic system, then we could make a priority of human needs over profits. When we walk into any supermarket, we see enormous amounts of food. Clearly there is no shortage of food, yet 34 million people struggle to find enough to eat.
The possible Teamsters Union strike against UPS is one of many signs that the world economy is in a state a crisis. Workers all over the world are beginning to realize this. Instead of working so billionaires have lots of money, we can work to organize so there will be no poverty in the world. Everyone would have a lifetime right to everything we need. We would work fewer hours and have the right to retire at a younger age.
For now we need to do everything in our power to support the Teamsters Union in getting a decent contract.
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