The Teamsters demonstrated that, despite banal sermons of "labor experts," the strike weapon is not dead. It's one of the most powerful weapons workers have. The victory against UPS was won by the rank-and-file fighters on the picket lines and in the streets, where all labor battles are decided.

It's clear the bosses underestimated the capacities of the UPS workers to think more broadly than themselves and put up a fight. They believed their own propaganda, which seeks to pit workers among themselves: between full-time and part-time, between veterans and new hires, between UPS workers and other Teamsters sharing the same pension plans. But "we" prevailed over "me." Working-class solidarity rolled over the company's ridiculous fraud of the "UPS family."

Their expectations buoyed by hefty company profits and relatively low unemployment, the striking unionists pushed back most of the UPS owners' aims. They won significant wage increases for both part-time and full-time workers, showing the potential for reversing the general decline in workers' real wages in the United States. The Teamsters won a company pledge to convert 10,000 part-time jobs into full-time positions over the life of the contract. They pushed back the parcel giant's reactionary attempt to pull out of a multi-employer pension plan -which gives Teamsters greater protection - and create one solely for UPS workers. The main concession by the union is acceptance of a five-year contract instead of the previous four-year term. As Atlanta Teamster Craig Nelson put it, "It ties us up for too long."

The biggest worry for all employers is the impact the wage settlement won by the Teamsters can have on the national economy, especially in view of today's stagnant labor productivity and the volatile bubble of paper values on Wall Street, whose jitters were felt in the August 15 stock dive. For the U.S. ruling class, it is crucial that average hourly real wages continue to decline as they have for the last quarter century. Despite what we're told by the bosses' propagandists, wage increases don't cause inflation. Higher wages come out of the employers' profits -all of which is value produced by workers' labor. The proportion of wages and profit depends to a large degree on what workers are able to wrest from bosses in the class struggle.

Warnings of inflation notwithstanding, it is deflationary pressures that are growing in the world capitalist economy today. This economy, mired in depression, is marked by the long-term decline in corporate profit rates and the resulting intensification of price competition among capitalists.

In this volatile situation, a reversal of the pattern of wage decline that the bosses counted on can upset their apple cart. In the lead article of issue 10 of New International magazine, titled "Imperialism's March toward Fascism and War," Jack Barnes points out, "We should always remember that big political explosions in the world - not just stock market collapses, banking crises, sudden shortages, and so on - will continue to trigger economic and social catastrophes in the capitalist world politics is concentrated economics; economic phenomena don't simply run their course irrespective of class struggles, wars, and revolutions."

It is because of these problems they face that the U.S. rulers targeted the Teamsters in the hope of dealing the entire labor movement a big blow. In this conflict, the Clinton administration was not neutral, much less a friend of labor. The U.S. government, faithfully representing these billionaire families, came to the aid of the UPS owners. Instead of overt strikebreaking measures like the antiunion Taft-Hartley law, which carried political risks, Washington resorted to more disguised intervention - the U.S. Postal Service, which sought to ease the strike-induced burdens on business and thus protect UPS from pressures to settle quickly. But the strikers held firm and dealt a crippling blow to the package bosses, forcing them to back off.

The power of the Teamsters' example won them deep support throughout the working class, as well as widespread sympathy among professional and middle-class layers such as the pilots union at UPS and even some small businesspeople. Their action inspired greater willingness by many postal, airline, and rail workers - subjected to overtime and speedup in order to deliver extra packages - to put up some resistance themselves.

Now, as the loaders, sorters, and drivers return to work, the company is trying to intimidate them with threats of 15,000 layoffs. They are warning workers to cooperate with management to bring back "our" lost business and not get too uppity. With the workers back on the job, the bosses will try to undercut the gains won through the strike, such as the number of full-time jobs created. A number of issues will be fought out on the job.

The employing class will continue to counterpunch against labor, as the recent court ruling against the newspaper workers in Detroit and boss offensives against organizing drives in North Carolina and California demonstrate.

The Militant salutes the Teamsters as they continue the fight to assert their dignity on the job. This newspaper will continue to spread the truth about their ongoing struggles. It will open its pages to reports sent in from UPS workers on what they face today. We urge working people everywhere to continue to talk to Teamsters at UPS, to exchange experiences in our common fight against the employers' assaults, and to join together in other working- class fights and battles for social justice.  
 
 
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