BY DANNY BOOHER AND FRANK FORRESTAL
CHICAGO, Illinois - "We beat Big Brown! We beat Big Brown!" chanted many workers at an impromptu rally of 100 the morning of August 19 as Teamsters members gathered to picket the UPS depot in Maspeth, Queens, one of the largest company facilities in New York. They broke into cheers after Tony Gallo, trustee of Teamsters Local 804, gave a brief report on the tentative settlement between United Parcel Service and the Teamsters union that had been announced hours earlier.

The 185,000 Teamsters members at UPS struck the world's largest parcel delivery company and set up pickets at its 2,400 delivery centers nationwide for 15 days, bringing operations to a virtual halt. The sentiment that workers scored a victory for the union was widespread at picket lines throughout the country.

"After two weeks on strike the tentative agreement sounds pretty good," said UPS striker Stacey Stenson, 21, in front of the Jefferson facility in Chicago. "From the beginning we were willing to stay out as long as it took to get a fair contract."

The morale of strikers on the line here was high. Most felt they won this battle. Some were a bit cautious, however. "I hope we got what we struck for," said Lamont Beck, a sorter and part-time UPS worker with three years on the job at the Jefferson plant. "I imagine there was some compromising on both sides. I won't go back without a contract. Even if I were a full-timer I'd be out here on the line. We'll have to see what the agreement says." A few Federal Express truck drivers drove by honking in support. There were a lot of thumbs up and victory signs.

Teamsters Local 705, the largest among UPS workers with 11,500 members in the Chicago area, has a separate contract with the company. Local 705 officials were still negotiating with UPS August 20, two days after the nationwide settlement was announced. Strikers said they expected an agreement would be reached soon, patterned after the national deal.

Discussions on the settlement began late at night on August 18 on the West Coast. Outside the UPS terminal in San Francisco, strikers plugged in a radio to get the latest information as news of the tentative accord broke out. Soon local television crews began ascending on the picket line. Billy Ragsdale, a UPS striker there, told Militant reporters, "The strike itself has unified labor in the United States. A lot of the middle class in America realize there is a shift in the making in resisting corporate greed."

Picketing continued at the San Francisco facility through the morning of August 19. Workers began autographing picket signs and strike T-shirts they said they planned to keep as gestures of solidarity with one another. Around 9:30 a.m., a Teamsters union official spoke to the crowd from the back of a flatbed truck. He urged workers to spread out in the city and visit UPS customers telling them they would be back at work soon and thanking them for their support. He also encouraged strikers to come to a union meeting that evening where contract details would be spelled out. The crowd began dispersing shortly afterwards.

"I would call the settlement a victory," said Craig Nelson, a UPS striker in Atlanta. "When the company saw we had the majority of the public behind us, they wanted to end the strike. I'm glad to hear we will be getting 10,000 new full-time jobs. We won on the pension too. But I don't like the five-year contract, that ties us up for too long."

Terms of settlement
After five days of negotiations, with the direct involvement of Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, Teamsters officials announced a tentative agreement with UPS by midnight on August 18. The union's 50-person bargaining committee and officers from 200 Teamsters locals ratified the accord next day. Union members, who began returning to work August 19, will vote on the contract in a mail-in ballot that could take several weeks. Although the details of the settlement have not been released as we go to press, here are some of the highlights reported so far:

Workers held back the company attack on the union pension plan and made some headway on the wage package, which narrows slightly the gap in hourly pay between part- time loaders and sorters and full-time drivers. They also got a company pledge that 10,000 new full-time positions will be created over the life of the contract. The agreement is for five years, instead of the three or four Teamsters negotiators initially sought.

The starting hourly wage for part-time loaders, who currently earn $8 per hour, a rate that hasn't changed since 1982, will be immediately raised to $8.50 per hour. Roughly 60 percent of UPS jobs are filled by part-time workers. Wages of part-timers - who average $11 per hour - will be raised by $4.10 per hour over five years. According to strikers, part-time workers average between $6,000 and $15,000 a year.

Full-time employees - who average $19.95 per hour - will get a $3.10 hourly increase over the same period. The contract does not include cost of living adjustment provisions to make up for losses from future inflation. The August 20 Investor's Business Daily said the raise for full- timers is "3.1% over five years, which is in line with inflation" at the moment. The company initially offered raises of $2.50 per hour for part-time workers and $1 an hour for full-timers plus bonuses.

The union was demanding the company create 2,500 new full-time jobs per year, while the company had offered a mere 200 such positions annually. The tentative settlement requires the company to convert 2,000 part-time jobs to full- time positions each year for five years, for a total of 10,000. "But the fine print in the contract allows UPS an out if sales don't grow enough to support full-time positions," according to the August 20 Investor's Business Daily. "The biggest gain the company made was to prevent any effort to limit its ability to hire new part-time workers. There are no such restraints under the pact."

Management did abandon what it had declared as one of its top goals. That was to pull out of the Teamsters multi- employer pension plan and create one just for UPS workers. More than 8 million workers participate in such plans, mostly in trucking, construction, and other highly fragmented industries. Teamster members were adamant in fighting this assault for a good reason. Workers in single employer plans who switch jobs end up with smaller retirement checks because their pension from the first company is frozen and they must start over again. Under federal pension rules, an individual who works for nine such employers over 40 years can end up with no pension.

Union officials interviewed on CNN said the tentative pact pushed back the company's drive to expand subcontracting.

Teamsters president Ron Carey said the biggest concession the union made was agreeing to a five-year contract. He also said, "This is not just a Teamster victory, this is a victory for all working people." Carey said the Teamsters will now try to organize workers at Federal Express - one of the main competitors of UPS - and at other companies.

Battle will continue on the job
In 1994, the union staged a one-day walkout to protest UPS's unilateral decision to increase the maximum weight a worker could handle from 70 pounds to 150 pounds. The July 30 "final offer" by UPS said the "company can increase weight limit above 150 pounds at any time without the union's agreement." Associated Press reported that the new contract would require the company to bargain with the union before any future increases in weight limits.

Many disputes over speedup and other working conditions will probably have to be fought out on the job as the new relationship of forces unfolds. It's not clear, for example, what the new pact says regarding "cardinal sins," that is infractions of company rules where innocent until proven guilty does not apply. Management was seeking to expand the list of such regulations.

"One of the rules the company wants to impose is that anyone who yells back at a supervisor will be fired," said Kirk, a striking loader on the picket line at the Newark, New Jersey, airport, who gave only his first name. He added that he thought the company would face a lot of resistance from workers if they tried to implement such a rule, especially with the confidence they had gained during the strike.

On a recent visit to the UPS hub in Willows Spring, Illinois, the largest UPS center in the world, there was barely any business going in and out of the sprawling complex. The plant sits right next to the largest truck-rail facility in the world. "UPS employs between 5,000 and 6,000 workers here, nobody knows exactly," said John Boettinger, a part-time worker there for eight years. "This an oppressive place to work. There is one supervisor for every 20 workers. UPS's philosophy is simple: you're a piece of s - t. Be glad you have a job and shut up. In October 1995 we went on strike against UPS for one day here over 100 unsettled grievances."

Boettinger described how the packages UPS workers lift don't indicate weight. "It could weigh 50 pounds, or it could weigh 100 pounds. I got a hernia lifting one of them and was out for six weeks." Concerns over health and safety on the job were high among strikers.

Before the strike, the company sought to implement speedup by timing workers. Drivers, for example, are expected to walk at a pace of three feet per second. "So, based on the number of packages they have to deliver and the distance they have to walk from the van to each delivery point, supervisors can work out exactly how long they should take to complete their rounds," said an article in the August 16 Financial Times of London.

Roger Ellias has worked at UPS's Jefferson terminal in Chicago for six months. "They are like slave drivers in there," he said. "When you first start they time your work. You're supposed to do so many by the second. You have to keep up with the belt. UPS is the tightest slave ship in the business."

Tensions high back at work
As Teamsters members got back to work, many reported a very tense atmosphere with supervisors. "The harassment continues," Mathew Patterson told Militant reporters as he got out of work the night of August 20. He is a part-time sorter for ten years and union shop steward at the Hialeah UPS center in Miami. "About 100 warning letters" were given to workers by the company, including one to himself, Patterson said. About 800 people work in that depot. After two warnings, the company can suspend a worker; after three warnings the employee can be fired.

"I found out today for the first time in four years that I can't wear an earring," said Tom Oliver, a young part-time UPS worker, coming off the 4:00 a.m. shift August 20 at the Maspeth facility in Queens, New York. "Every rule there has to be followed now. That's the way it's going to be for a couple of months."

Oliver said Teamsters members will strike again if the 2,000 UPS pilots who have not settled with the company yet decide to walk out. Other workers expressed similar views. "If the pilots hadn't honored our picket lines, UPS would have kept more of their business going," said Mike Wolf, a striker at the UPS center in Burtonsville, Maryland. "With a possible strike looming the pilots can count on our support."

Big business is not pleased
Big business was not pleased with the outcome of the Teamsters strike. The capitalist media tried to downplay its implications for capital-labor relations, but could not hide the obvious concerns of the ruling class that this victory for labor may boost the confidence of other workers to resist employer demands for "belt tightening."

At an August 19 news conference at UPS headquarters in Atlanta, company chairman James Kelly said, "The bottom line is that we have a contract that is good for our people, gets back in business, and will keep us competitive in the coming years." UPS said it may now have to lay off 15,000 workers as a result of the strike, claiming it may have lost up to 5 percent of its business to competitors because of the walkout. Kelly was quoted in other publications less upbeat. "There are nothing but losers," Kelly told the August 20 Wall Street Journal. "We lost. Our people lost, our customers lost." According to CNN, the company lost $640 million during the strike.

Other big-business dailies tried to downplay the significance of what's registered in the settlement by claiming UPS is very different than other companies. "There are special features of this dispute which limit its broader significance," quipped an editorial in the August 20 Financial Times.

"UPS pact fails to shift balance of power back toward U.S. workers," was the headline of a front-page article in the August 20 Wall Street Journal. But its kicker continued, "Still, it's important to labor after two long decades of waning influence." "Ever since [former U.S. president Ronald] Reagan hired nonunion workers to replace air-traffic controllers, management's hiring of nonunion members has been a regular and successful strikebreaking weapon," the article said. "UPS didn't seek that option.

"Public opinion also helped the Teamsters. The UPS strike is the first major labor battle for years in which polls favored the picketers."

Widespread solidarity for strike
Widespread working-class solidarity was evident in the spirited strike support rallies, "walking" and "roving" pickets that followed management-driven UPS trucks, and in the growing numbers of other unionists who visited picket lines. Support from the central leadership of the AFL-CIO was a weighty factor in this process.

Some 1,500 strikers and supporters rallied August 18 in Burtonsville, Maryland, for example, at one of the UPS hubs. The rally included contingents from a dozen unions and was sponsored by the D.C.-Maryland AFL-CIO. Many similar actions took place throughout the country during the 15-day walkout.

One event that captured headlines was the marriage of UPS striker Deborah Burdette on the picket line in Anderson, South Carolina. When the couple learned that many of their guests would be on the picket line, "she decided to take the wedding to them," reported the Associated Press.

Robert Miller, a production worker and member of the United Auto Workers at the Ford plant in Edison, New Jersey, said, "At least half a dozen of my co-workers visited strikers on the picket lines during the strike. Some joined with me when I invited them to go together, and others went on their own." Miller is the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of New Jersey.

In many cities Teamsters members reached out and got support or sympathy among small businessmen who are UPS customers.

Feeble attempts by the company to hire scabs also fell apart. In Philadelphia, for example, UPS organized homeless residents to work at their facility for $5 per hour. In response, Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KRWU) and the Teamsters Local 623 held a press conference to denounce the move. "The KRWU stands in unity with organized labor and the striking Teamsters and calls for an end to using welfare recipients and homeless people to replace union labor," a statement said.

"Organized labor is going to benefit from this strike, both inside UPS and outside," striker Craig Nelson said in Atlanta. "UPS wants eight hours work done in four hours. I'm going to make it my business that everyone knows their rights."

Mary Martin, member of the International Association of Machinists, and Candace Wagner, member of United Food and Commercial Workers in Washington, D.C.; Mike Italie, member of Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees in Atlanta; Norton Sandler, member of International Association of Machinists in San Francisco; Michael Pennock, member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers in Minneapolis; Ruth Robinett, member of United Transportation Union in New York; and Rollande Girard in Miami contributed to this article.  
 
 
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