UPS Teamsters ready to stage America’s biggest strike since 1997, with solidarity as the main sticking point

somethingoddinsod:

elfwreck:

progressivefriends:

ol-knock-knock:

grison-in-labs:

mostlysignssomeportents:

Unionized UPS Teamsters – 260,000 of them – are set to strike in the
biggest American strike since UPS’s unionized drivers walked out in
1997.

Superficially, the issue is about the company moving to seven-day
delivery, but the issue that’s forcing the strike is the sizable cohort
of union members who are unwilling to accept a two-tier workplace where
established workers get the full protection of the union and younger
hires are given a worse deal. This has been a traditional way that
employers have split, weakened and ultimately killed their workers’
unions – by buying off the long-established employees with better deals
that make the workers who’ll replace them feel that unions have nothing
to offer them, which establishes divisions that can be exploited later
to lay off those higher-paid workers, leaving only the lowest-paid
employees and no union they can use to press for better pay.

It seems like some of UPS’s Teamsters have figured out that solidarity pays.

https://boingboing.net/2018/06/06/divide-and-rule-2.html

Yo, if they do strike, don’t listen to the media bitching about those workers being uppity or what the fuck ever. Transit and shipping is a increasingly huge industry in the US, and the Teamsters should be cheered on and congratulated for demanding solidarity and support for junior workers–formal union members or not.

If you’re waiting longer on Amazon packages or whatever, of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t complain–but frame your complaints to aim at UPS management for failing to treat its workers well and negotiate, not at the workers themselves. In this Second Gilded Age, that’s the only way we’re ever going to see any kind of improvement from the exploitation of the nation by the uber-wealthy–and UPS certainly qualifies.

Solidarity, motherfuckers.

Fucking a

If you scroll back to January, I called this on this blog. Granted, I had inside information.

Thing is, this isn’t just for UPS. This is the largest labor contract in all of the Americas. This is so very important symbolically. This is for all of your unions too. Join the Teamsters. Just shut this shit down.

How to support a strike:

1) Don’t cross the picket line to use the service/buy goods.

2) Stand and march with them, if you can – if you have time, if you have energy and the ability. Even a little while helps.

3) Bring snacks; bring coffee; bring supplies appropriate to the location and weather: sunblock and water for a summer strike; extra pair of gloves or a scarf to give away for one in winter; rain poncho if it’s wet, and so on. Basically, look at where the strike is happening and ask yourself, “If I were camping in these conditions, what would I need?”

4) Visit if you can; tell them you support the strike. Honk to show support; smile and thumbs-up as you walk past on your way to school, and so on.

5) Don’t buy any of the corporate lies about how strikes will cost you money or make your life worse – they do this “play the workers against each other” trick where they tell YOU that those OTHER WORKERS are the ones causing you problems, not the corporations that refuse to cover decent health care for everyone that would allow you to pay higher prices for shipping. Remember:

(Source)

The guy making $12.50 an hour who’s striking to make $15 an hour plus dental is NOT why your UPS shipments cost so much.

Following up on this:

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/ups-authorizes-teamsters-to-call-strike-after-july-31-14614039

UPS Authorizes Teamsters to Call Strike After July 31 – UPS workers have authorized their union, the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters, to call a strike for the first time since
1997.

And in proof that threatening to strike leads to action being taken:

http://www.ttnews.com/articles/union-touts-tentative-ups-deal

“Negotiations were scheduled to resume between UPS Inc. and
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters after they reached a
tentative five-year labor agreement last month covering 250,000 drivers,
loaders, package sorters, dockworkers and operations team members.

The union said numerous supplemental agreements included
in the deal must be worked out during a July 9-12 negotiation period
before their current five-year contract expires at the end of this
month.“

Teamster members will still need to vote to approve the contract and if the terms don’t go far enough it might not pass – but they are seeing action on demands!