BY FRANK FORRESTAL AND CAPPY KIDD
CHICAGO - "I've never been so happy driving a UPS
truck," said Juan Campos, a full-time UPS swing driver from
Northbrook, Illinois. Campos is one of the 185,000 Teamsters
who recently scored a victory against UPS, the largest
package handler in the country, after a 15-day national
strike. "People look up to us like we did something for the
little guy. Everybody was honking and giving us the thumbs
up."
Along with Campos, who is 29 years old with eight years on the job, Militant reporters interviewed two former UPS strikers from the Chicago area. Eugene Phillips, 43, is a full-time feeder driver, with 25 years seniority. Fiore Auriene, 23, works part-time at UPS's hub in Willow Spring as a bulk package handler. Willows Spring is the largest UPS hub in the country, employing 5,000 to 6,000 workers. Only a handful of the sorters and loaders inside the depot, however, are full-timers.
These former strikers are members of Teamsters Local 705. This union local, the largest nationally organizing 11,500 UPS workers at 12 different worksites in the Chicago area, has a separate contract with the parcel delivery giant. As a result, the strike lasted two days longer in the Chicago area, until August 20.
Although Local 705 members have not seen the actual contract yet, several say the agreement contains many of the same elements in the national contract. In the local settlement, UPS agreed to create 600 new full-time jobs by combining existing part-time jobs. The company agreed to create 40 to 50 new full-time jobs at Willows Spring.
The union won gains in wages similar to those in the national accord. Hourly wages of full timers will increase $3.10 over five years, and part timers got a $4.10 hourly raise spread over the same period.
Teamsters Local 710, with 4,100 members in Illinois, is the other local with a separate contract with UPS. Unlike 705, the central Illinois local did not go on strike. At first, its members did not honor the picket lines set by the national Teamsters walkout. Once Local 705 organized its own pickets at 710-organized plants, UPS workers did not cross the line. Recently, Local 710 extended its expired agreement with UPS until September. The current contract contains a no- strike pledge.
"Among the Teamsters," said Campos, "it was smiles, hand shakes, and high fives" when word came down about the settlement around midnight on August 18. "It was like your favorite team had just won. We feel united, like we did something together. Now we realize we can do a lot of things."
"By striking we got a better offer," said Fiore Auriene. "The part-timers got what they wanted, which was more full- time jobs; and the full timers got what they wanted, which was the union pension fund."
Auriene said he was glad he went through the strike experience. "Sometimes it takes courage to make a change," he stated. "When you stand up for what you believe in, it's better."
The union was stronger than the company had anticipated, Auriene said. "People think of UPS as the guys in the brown uniforms and the brown truck, but the majority of UPS is part-timers, sweating away in these centers." Some 70 percent of UPS workers in the Chicago area are part timers.
Fighting for better working conditions
Auriene said he hopes that with a strengthened union now
the injury rate will go down. "There are more people injured
at UPS than any other company in America," he said. "We
average over 40 injuries a month on the day shift alone, one
of four shifts."
Not everyone is back at work, Campos explained. "The company is trying to minimize staffing so they can justify the layoff of 15,000 they have been talking about."
UPS has taken out ads in the big-business dailies apologizing to its customers for inconveniences during the strike. One full-page ad says: "We're just as happy to have them back as you are," referring to UPS workers.
At the same time, UPS management says it does not know how many jobs it will cut "permanently."
But this latest company stance is beginning to backfire. UPS hired 400 part-time workers at their Willows Spring hub "in what could be the first of several waves of hiring," reported the August 27 Chicago Tribune.
"The first days back they picked on everything, your hair, your shirtsleeve, your mustache," said Campos. "They are bitter. They have an awful taste in their mouth.
"We finally did something," he continued. "These guys used to look down their noses at us and say you've got to work for a living while they sat on their fat as - s. They would have liked for us to have crawled back, but it didn't happen."
Auriene said the company failed to divide full-time and part-time workers. "They even installed separate bathrooms and cafeteria, but everyone ignored them."
After his first day back, Auriene said he ran into one guy who had crossed the picket line during the strike. He told me he had plans "to become a supervisor and thought striking would have reduced his chances."
Auriene's first day back was "normal except that I was asked to work a double shift and the company had workers walk through a metal detector on the way into work." Campos said his first day back was marked by tension. "We yelled at the scabs," he said. "Every time I see one of those guys I think of dinner being taken away from one of my kids. They are little mice. There is no excuse for their behavior." Only a few thousand workers among the 185,000 production employees crossed the Teamsters picket lines since the strike began August 4.
UPS has fired 45 - 50 Teamsters nationally for union activity during the walkout claiming these strikers "committed criminal acts of violence during the strike." Nine UPS workers were fired in Warwick, Rhode Island. They were targeted, according to an Associated Press report, because "they followed UPS trucks along delivery routes, then marched around the vehicles with strike signs - a strategy called `ambulatory picketing'"
Coleman Shelley, a UPS shop steward at the company's Hialeah center in Miami, said that in south Florida "UPS has given out hundreds of warning letters for `violent' activity on the picket line." Shelley, who is still working, said the notice he got accused him of "conducting terrorist threats." Shelley noted that the company letter was dated August 15, but one of the incidents cited is August 18. The union is fighting these victimizations, he said.
In response to the recent government ruling to void the reelection of Ron Carey to the Teamsters presidency last year, UPS worker Eugene Philips said union members "need to get the union back so it can do what it is supposed to do," he said.
Philips, however, rejected government intervention into the Teamsters' internal affairs. The government needs to "get out of the union's business," he stated. Phillips said the White House-engineered investigations become an obstacle to dealing with the next challenges facing union members.
Referring to Carey, Campos said, "Everyone I have talked to believes that this move [by the government] is aimed at downgrading the victory of the strike."
Recent press coverage underlined Campos's point of a government-led effort to knock the wind out of the strike. In an article titled "Win One, Lose One" in the September 1 issue of Time magazine, reporter Bruce Van Voorst wrote, "The ruling took some spring out of labor's step in making the UPS strike a springboard for organizing efforts, even as the Teamsters were staging Action Day for Good Jobs rallies across the nation."
In addition to the ruling, the federal board that oversees the Teamsters union, launched a major probe August 26 into the union's top leadership.
The three-member board was created allegedly to purge "corruption" out of the union as part of the settlement of a federal "antiracketeering" suit in 1989. One of the board members is William Webster, former FBI and CIA director.
James P. Hoffa, whom Carey narrowly defeated in last year's election, urged the board to recommend the removal of Carey from his union post.
On August 27 the National Mediation Board blocked the 2,000 UPS pilots from striking until 1998.
Cappy Kidd is a member of United Auto Workers Local 980 in Chicago. Rollande Girard and Janet Post from Miami also contributed to this article.