Two-tier wages, part-time jobs, dangerous conditions, schedules that wreak havoc with workers’ lives and constant company harassment are what bosses impose on millions of workers. These are the conditions the Teamsters at UPS are fighting to change as they rally for a better contract for 340,000 delivery drivers and warehouse workers at the largest union-organized private employer, leading up to a July 31 contract deadline.
Join their rallies in cities and towns across the country. Bring your friends, family members, co-workers and fellow unionists. Help get out the word about their fight and why it is in the interest of all working people.
Building support for every labor struggle is crucial to winning victories that can set an example. Advancing the confidence and fighting capacities of all workers is necessary as bosses everywhere press down real wages and speed up production, and a looming recession threatens to throw more of us onto the streets. Every union victory today creates better conditions for a union-led fight for jobs with the wages, conditions and schedules workers need.
Workers’ struggles point a way forward for all those exploited and oppressed by the ruling capitalist families, including working farmers, who face monopoly prices, crushing debts and losing their land.
When workers join together to stand up for ourselves, bosses turn to their cops, courts and government agencies to try to defeat us. They turn to their media to spread confusion and lies about our just demands. United Mine Workers of America members at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, who were forced on strike for nearly two years, faced boss moves to ban picketing and massive government fines. Now they face a move to decertify the union.
Workers’ strength lies in acting on our common interests and mobilizing union solidarity so that no workers are left to fight alone. Despite Congress banning their strike last fall, rail workers continue to fight job cuts and dangerous conditions that threaten their safety and that of people living near the tracks. They are part of the fight by working people in East Palestine for control over their lives.
Workers learn through these battles what we are capable of. All the efforts of the bosses, their media and schools to tell us we aren’t worth anything are a lie. As Malcolm X said, through struggle we learn our self-worth. We can change the world!
Every one of today’s labor battles is class against class. Join the fight of the Teamsters at UPS! Build the fighting labor movement workers need.