Striking Teamsters say 'part-time America won't work'

PORTLAND, OR -- Approximately 2,700 members of seven Teamsters local unions affiliated with Joint Council of Teamsters 37 are involved in the nationwide strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), crippling operations at the world's largest package delivery company.

Striking drivers, package sorters and loaders shut down UPS facilities across the country starting after midnight Aug. 3, hours after a final effort to hammer out a five-year contract collapsed in a dispute over full-time jobs, better wages and pensions, subcontracting and job safety and health.

UPS' major Oregon hubs are at Swan Island, Portland International Airport and in Tualatin, and also in Springfield/Eugene, Vancouver, Longview and to the coast.

Although it made $1.15 billion in profits last year, and although its profit margin of 19.4 percent is much higher than other truckers, UPS is demanding takeaways. The company wants more use of cheaper part-timers to deliver packages, more contracting out, and it even wants some of the over-the-road drivers to buy their "semis" and become independent contractors. More than half of UPS' workforce is part time.

The company made what it termed its last, best and final offer before the strike began, and has refused to change that offer, insisting that the Teamsters put the offer before its membership. The stoppage was the first national strike in the 90-year history of the company, which employs about 300,000 workers in the United States -- 185,000 of them Teamsters. In addition to the national master agre-ement, the Teamsters have negotiations open on a Western Supplement Agreement and Joint Council 37 riders for part-timers, pre-loaders and sorters at UPS.

Any further local negotiations will depend on the outcome of the national talks, said Darel Aker, president of the Portland-based Joint Council of Teamsters 37.

Skeleton crews of managers, non-union employees and scabs are operating the company�s massive delivery system with little success.

"We're 100 percent solid on the picket lines in Oregon," said Aker.

Members of the Machinists Union, which also has a collective bargaining agreement at UPS, are honoring the Teamsters picket line, reported Dave Plant, directing business representative of Machinists District Lodge 24.

John Sweeney, president of the national AFL-CIO, announced that its affiliated unions will provide loans to cover strike benefits for "a long UPS strike, if necessary."

"The overwhelming number of UPS Teamster employees have chosen not to work," a UPS spokesman told a national news conference.

UPS, with $22.4 billion in annual sales, normally handles about12 million packages a day, or 80 percent of the nation's total, and delivers to corporate offices, small businesses, hospitals and households across the country.

UPS is pressing President Clinton to intervene and call an end to the strike. Federal labor law allows the president to step in when labor disputes pose a threat to the nation. The company sent letters to all members of Congress claiming the strike is causing serious economic damage.

But President Clinton said the effects were not severe enough to cause him to intervene.

"At this time, I don't think any further action by me is appropriate," he said. "UPS is a very important company to our country and there are a lot of employees there and I hope they'll go back to the table."

Sweeney has asked the president not to provide an escape hatch for UPS negotiators.

"Once it is made clear to these giants of private enterprise that they can't count on rescue by government, they will bargain in good faith and the strike will be over soon," Sweeney said.

Teamsters President Ron Carey said the company "is testing us to see whether working people will fight for their future. It's a crime that they are putting their employees and their customers through this. It's clear that good jobs for working families are going to be won on the picket line and in the community -- not at the negotiating table."

Carey said the union is seeking subcontracting language that would ensure that UPS jobs grow as the company grows. Workers want pension improvements, he said, while management is demanding control over decisions about union members' retirement benefits. "Under management's proposal, extra investment income from pension funds would go to the company instead of to maintaining and increasing workers' pensions."