BY NORTON SANDLER
SAN FRANCISCO - What attitude should class-conscious workers have taken toward UPS's competitors during the recent Teamsters strike against the parcel delivery giant? Militant reader Nick Gruenberg raises this question in a letter published on page 15.

"It seems to me that the decision by almost all shippers to try to send their packages other ways was a victory for the strikers," Gruenberg says. "That competitors of UPS were able to carry most of it was an advantage for the strikers... It doesn't seem to me that UPS's competitors were handling `struck work.'"

I don't believe class-conscious workers should be concerned with whether "shippers" - who in this case included computer companies, home appliance producers, clothing stores, and other employers - were able to move their merchandise around. A strike is a work stoppage. Workers use it as their most powerful weapon to defend themselves from attempts by their exploiters to siphon off even a higher portion of the value we produce. By stopping production, which often requires help from workers in other industries, union members put pressure on the boss and on other employers who use the company's products or services. Being able to keep or get production going - in this case shipping packages - helps the boss, not the strikers.

The government and most big business did use the U.S. postal service, the major airline and railroad companies, and smaller shippers to move freight around to ease the pressure on UPS and other employers and give the bosses some breathing space to see if they could defeat the Teamsters. Their effort proved futile, but it was strike breaking nevertheless.

The walkout against UPS showed that the wealthy who rule this country can develop tactical differences among them in a major class battle. UPS, Washington, and other employers didn't see eye-to-eye in how to handle the strike.

Washington tried to break strike
Most in the ruling class hoped the strike would result in a crushing defeat for the Teamsters, one that would send a chill through the working-class. They hoped and worked to inflict blows on the Teamsters on a scale that could dwarf the impact of the defeat of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981. That's when then president Ronald Reagan fired 12,000 PATCO members for daring to strike. The rulers are girding their teeth to accomplish this against a large number of industrial workers, preferably organized by a sizable union nationwide. They badly need to inflict such a defeat on the union movement as part of reversing their declining profit rates. The 185,000 workers who struck UPS seemed a good target for such a foray.

A PATCO-style defeat of the Teamsters would have led to lower expectations in the working class as whole in terms of wages and working conditions, and reinforced the notion employers have been putting forward for years about the "strike weapon" being a thing of the past. A victory for the bosses in this case would have been the springboard for deeper assaults on the unions and the entire working class.

The owners of UPS, whose long-term goal is also to crush the Teamsters union, in this instance called for the Clinton administration to invoke Taft-Hartley legislation and force union members back to work. The White House opposed the demand and preached neutrality, while working overtime to help UPS weather the walkout by other means. Through its postal service, the U.S. government became the major player in trying to alleviate the crisis the employing class as whole faced. We should remember that UPS carried not only small personal packages but important freight for big business. Being able to use the post office as a strikebreaker was crucial in any plans the rulers had to muster enough staying power in the battle to impose a PATCO- style defeat on the Teamsters.

Postal workers, airline workers, and some rail workers, felt the impact of what the bosses were striving for as soon as the strike began. The post office began to move as many parcels as it could through the mail. Days off were canceled in postal facilities like the one at the San Francisco Airport where I work. The government opened 20 new package- sorting facilities around the country, hired part-timers, extended their hours, and added Sunday deliveries for some categories of priority mail.

Much of the mail in this country is moved by the major airlines. Airline workers had to deal with peak summer luggage volume. On top of that, our bosses demanded that the planes be socked full of mail.

The attempted speedup also affected workers at other parcel delivery companies as their owners scrambled to chew off some of UPS's customers.

Union members and other workers had no stake in working harder than usual as the bosses tried to deal with their crisis. As other vultures among the employers and their government tried to bite off some business, it was important for unionists to put extra attention into working safely so that injuries were minimized.

Working-class solidarity hurt bosses
Poll after poll in the big-business press repeatedly emphasized that the Teamsters at UPS had majority support in the working class and other layers of the population. If the bosses were going to go to the wall to defeat the Teamsters, they would have had to confront much more sharply not only the workers on strike but the tremendous solidarity that was building up. If UPS had tried to hire scabs on a massive scale and seek government support and police protection to escort them through picket lines, the move could have provoked a more direct confrontation with the entire working class.

Expressions of working-class solidarity were concrete and numerous. Militant readers who took part in the August 29 demonstration in New York against the torture of Abner Louima by New York cops, for example, reported that members of the National Postal Mail Handlers Local 300 distributed a flyer during the march that they had produced during the UPS strike. The leaflet explained their union local's opposition to hiring "casual workers" during the walkout so the post office could handle the increased volume. The Militant reported many other examples.

Employers priding themselves on stealing UPS business would have had to push their workers that much harder to try to achieve a victory for their class.

Teamsters union members who are drivers for Airborne Express here in San Francisco made it clear where they stood on this. About a week into the strike some 40 Airborne Express drivers circled the UPS facility here in their trucks during lunch time in a gesture of solidarity with their brothers and sisters. They weren't celebrating the new business their employer was "winning."

UPS management used the argument that the strike would cost the company long-term customers as a club to try to get the unionists to end their strike. Now the company uses the same arguments as an excuse to delay recalling all the strikers. "UPS appears to be carrying out a stupid, vindictive policy to punish local UPS workers who stood up for their rights," Teamsters spokesperson Craig Merrilees recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Even though boxes are piling up, the company is refusing to put UPS workers back on the job." But the victorious workers have gained confidence and are in a much better position to resist speedup and force the company to recall strikers and hire enough employees to handle the work load.

The strike ended because UPS management blinked. The owners of the largest company of its kind worldwide decided they did not want their business to become the employers' guinea pig in a test of the relationship of class forces, whose outcome was far from certain. The lessons of the Teamsters victory and the solidarity they won are not lost on other workers or on the employing class. The bosses fear that other battalions of workers will press wage demands that endanger their ability to keep our real average wages falling. Their nervousness over this threatens to topple the great "Wall Street miracle" of the last decade.

The management at Federal Express announced August 20 that they were going to pay bonuses to their 90,000 employees as a reward for the increased business handled by the company during the strike. I conjecture that this sudden generosity on the part of Fed Ex management has to do with the fact that the Teamsters are attempting to organize Fed Ex workers into the union.

Norton Sandler is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1871.  
 
 
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