We won because we reached out and made this the best supported strike in decades. We won because UPS Teamsters stuck together and surprised the company-which underestimated the unity, determination and will-to-win of
Now we move forward to spread this spirit, this victory. We can start with the upcoming national freight contract and move on to every part of the Teamsters and the labour movement. Now we move forward to build that reform movement - to bring out the best in unionism, and to make possible innovative struggles, fresh leadership and Teamster victories. If we do that, this will be only the first of a string of new Teamster victories that help make labour into a Teamsters for a Democratic Union, PO Box 10128, Detroit, Mich. 48210-0128. Tel. (+1. 313) 842-2600
APEC versus
Leaders of states responsible for 50 per cent of the world's population, half the world's gross national product and 70 per cent of world trade come together in Vancouver next month for the APEC Economic Leaders Summit. APEC opponents will also converge in the city to mobilise, protest and make their voices heard -"Against APEC and For Humanity" Harold Lavender APEC achieved global renown in 1993, when the United States hosted a well publi cised "economic leaders meeting" in Seattle.
Court orders new leadership election
A federal official has overturned Teamsters President Ron Carey's re-election, following an eight-month investigation into alleged fund-raising abuses by his campaign. The effect of the decision is to force a new election between Carey and his opponent, James P. Hoffa, son of long-time corrupt union boss Jimmy
The ruling came just four days after the Teamsters declared victory in their strike against United Parcel Service
Ron Carey narrowly defeated Hoffa junior in December. As a result of a 1988 deal to end corruption in the 1.4-million-
According to activists on the left of the union, Carey's big mistake was in hiring consultants who usually work for the Democratic Party and are used to
Carey has said he will fire any Teamster who had any connection with the dirty money. The campaign paid the money back in March 1997.
Labour reformers pinned their hopes on Carey when he was first elected in 1991. He has thrown out the heads of 72 locals he said were corrupt, sold the unions corporate jets and ended the free lunches and other perks at head-
Since then, APEC has been moving towards the creation of an open regional free-trade bloc The goal has been set to achieve full free trade or tariff liberalisation in the developed countries by 2010 and in the so called "developing countries by 2020.
APEC is not as tight a grouping as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the European Union. Each APEC member economy is only required to produce an action plan towards compliance with APEC's goals. Commitments are described as "non-binding". This is formally true - APEC has no enforcement powers or dispute resolution process. However, it does apply enormous pressure on members to open up their economies and speed up the removal member union, underwritten with $22 million in public funds and held under the auspices of a
Barbara Zack Quindel, a court-ap- December, in which only about one-third pointed federal election overseer, has of Teamsters voted exposed a complex network of schemes to funnel illegal donations to Carey's campaign, including a plan to swap Teamsters contributions to political candidates and organisations in exchange
Martin Davis, a consultant to Carey's campaign, even told William Hamilton then the unions political director, that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had made unspecified commitments in exchange for more than $1 million in contributions to state and local party affiliates. DNC officials deny there was any such arrangement.
Hamilton resigned suddenly in July, saying he would no longer co-operate with the federal grand jury in New York. The FBI has charged Davis with exploiting the Teamsters' general treasury and hiding illegal donations to Carey's election fund. 10 International Viewpoint #292
But he failed to unite rank-and-file members, beating Hoffa by less than 4 percentage points in a mail-in ballot last
The Hoffa forces claimed that the illegal campaign contributions tipped the close election in Carey's favour and
Hoffa supporters have close ties to the Democratic Party (even its most "liberal" wing, such as Congressman John Conyers from this area as well as the right-wing politicians. The Wall Street Journal has also been campaigning for a
Regulations for the re-run are even stricter than last December. Neither candidate can take money from anyone
This means that Hoffa will have far more access to big money than Carey. But the incumbent will have Teamsters for a Democratic Union behind him. And, of course, his reputation for successful leadership of the UPS strike [JD/AP] * of restrictions. New members are accepted only if they fully comply with the APEC agenda. This includes:
• minimal controls on big business
• unrestricted foreign investment
• unlimited export of profits • privatisation of state assets, utilities and
• competitive (i.e. low cost and de-unionised) and flexible (i.e. temporary, part time contract-based) labour markets • destruction of sustainable community- based production in favour of costly and ecologically unsound cash crops for
• rampant exploitation of natural resources
Such economic policies have anti-people, anti-social consequences. They deepen inequality around the world, increase poverty for women and indigenous peoples, cut real and social wages, intensify unemployment and attacks on workers rights and sharply reduce the quality and access to public services, health care, and education.
Not surprisingly, many of the region's non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are critical of APEC. Parallel summits have been
part-time work in the Midwest, while Eastern locals including Ron Carey's struck over the issue. By 1982 UPS used part-timers everywhere, there was a national UPS-Teamsters sion. This tracks the union pre-strike pro- • Safety contract, and it wasn't too hard to get International officers to agree to a second-tier wage year in their "Last, Best and Final." Five of the union pre-strike proposal. In partifor part-timers.
full time jobs will be created from every cular, the company cannot increase the
UPS part-timers do the behind-the-scenes six full-time equivalents of part time weight limit without first bargaining with work of sorting packages and loading them work. This was the union's proposal. The the union.
on the little brown trucks for delivery. It's intense, dangerous work, lifting and placing thousands of parcels of wildly varying size
A high proportion of sorters and loaders only last a few days or weeks. Those who stick it out, and avoid injury, may get trained to drive the delivery trucks where they're still pushed to run through the workday.
From there they have a chance at the less-draining intercity tractor-trailer runs
(called "feeders" in UPS parlance). But it's a pyramid with a huge base relative to the number of full-time driver jobs.
The Teamsters fought to slow or reverse posal. The company offered 200 per company had demanded that four jobs be created from five equivalents.
The company was defeated in its attempted take-over of pension moneys. Increased money into our union pension plans, and health & welfare plans, will provide pension hikes as indicated earlier in union and TDU bulletins. This tracks the union pre-strike proposal. • Subcontracting
Limits on subcontracting along the lines of the union pre-strike proposal.
Five annual increases of 62c/hour for
The new agreement follows the lines A solid victory
The union's main concession was to agree to a five, rather than four year deal. The company's 163 page "Last, Best and Final" offer of July 30th turned out to be "First, Worst and Bogus."
Among the take-aways and concessions which the company was unable to introduce were: reducing picket line rights; expanding use of part-time labour to deliver ground packages; institutionalising the "team concept"; gutting innocent-till-proven-guilty rights; and increasing ways to subcontract jobs. * the sharp expansion at the bottom. Even full timers and 82c/hour for existing part Source: TDU Press release, August 19, 1997. though the UPS sorter and loader jobs are fairly good on the pitiful scale of part-time pay - around $9 an hour plus health benetits - the call for full-timing struck a cord. The union also wanted good raises, including the first increase in the part-timer starting rate in over fourteen years.
The Teamsters put their case for "decent full-time jobs" to a public increasingly sensitised to the growing problem of part-time, contingent work. Every young worker and every parent of a twenty-something knows that it is hard to find full-time, decent-paying work that will last. (Recent strikes at General ment and union consciousness ran among UPS Teamsters. Fewer than three percent broke ranks in the first week.
By holding strong, with widespread public support on their side, strikers shut down the company's only profitable operation. A business which it couldn't possibly move overseas. Even in America today, fifteen days on strike proved to be enough. *
For more information: see the July issue of Labor Notes, and Alexander Cockburn's article from the August 11th issue of The Nation/ This article reprinted from issue #67 of Against the Current. Note 1. Teamsters for a Democratic Union was formed in 1976, to fight for "reform of our union, decent contracts and an activated membership • TDU supported the Ron Carey election campaign, and many TDUers are on the union's executive board. The current is a "sandwich," with a militant presence in the Teamsters leadership, and a rank-and-file movement. Unfortunately, the union has a lot of old guard still left in the middle hierarchy.
UPS health and safety record
Motors, too, have focused on turning contract work into regular jobs.)
UPS has a rate of occupational injury retire from their fleet trucks that have
Meanwhile, in demanding control of
UPS workers' three times higher than the transpor-only single cylinder brakes.
pensions from the Teamsters multi-employer benefit funds, the company aimed to differentiate its treatment of feeder drivers, who tend to be older and have sometimes organised for higher pensions, from the rest. And handling the investment of several billions of the workers' dollars would surely be a handy thing for management, even if they couldn't keep all the dividends.
The point of multi-employer pension funds is mutual protection. When the freight industry consolidated in the eighties, the contributions paid by UPS and other successful companies helped ensure retirement income for thousands whose companies closed and left a debt to the pension fund. Now UPS asked its union employees to turn their backs on other Teamsters, and bet that Big Brown will stay just as healthy over the next thirty years as over the last.
Teamsters retorted that since UPS has had problems getting their paycheques right;
why trust them with a pension fund!
Events showed how deeply strike sentitation industry as a whole. The company is one of the most persistant violators of hazardous materials regulations.
A class action lawsuit has even been filed against UPS for violating the rights of disabled workers. Workers who suffer eye injury are entitled to be transferred to other jobs, but UPS has refused or failed to accommodate their disabilities
Unlike its competition in the package delivery business, UPS has even refused to invest the $55 per vehicle it would cost to equip their fleet with articulated mirrors at the rear of the trucks. As a consequence, children have been injured and killed because drivers were unable to see them behind their
UPS has consistently stonewalled union demands for appropriate safety equipment such as decent seat belts, seats, and tires, and has refused to
Packages presently can weigh up to 150 pounds (68kg). The company has refused to bargain over weight limits reserving the right to require drivers to unload, alone, packages that sometimes exceed 200 pounds (90kg). When challenged, management told the union that if the driver needed help, s/he could ask the customer to assist. Young, inexperienced workers are becoming disabled for life from injuries received at UPS often their first real job
One UPS employee is killed on the job every month. In Chicago a new employee serving his 30 day probation died of heat exhaustion while unloading a truck during a Chicago heat waves. The company was fined $5,000. * Source: Carolyn Robinson, the first (and only) woman to serve on the national UPS negotiating team for the leamsters. She chairs the sub-committee on satety & health.
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TDU comment The new deal 10,000 new full-time jobs created by combining (and thus eliminating) part- time jobs. This is in addition to normal job growth due to attrition and expan- timers. This is more than twice as high as the company's "Last, Best and Final" proposal of five annual increases of 30c/hour and two bonuses. The union's pre-strike proposal was 65c/hour.