Alamogordo NM
7-11-2023 10:05pm

Alamogordo UPS Teamsters Members Practice for Potential Strike

Local UPS employees practice and go through the steps of a potential strike at the local UPS headquarters. Don’t worry if you purchased during the Amazon Prime Days Sales, local small businesses encourage locals to shop local but if you haven’t or don’t; UPS is still on the job!

Deliveries are indeed still being made locally and nationwide and UPS is still on the job! At least for now.

Negotiations broke down this week between UPS and its Teamster-represented workers, weeks before their contract is set to expire.

As a potential strike looms, UPS workers across the country and locally in Alamogordo have been holding "practice pickets," holding signs that say, "Just practicing for a just contract." Folks de

Here's what you need to know about the labor situation and the impact of a potential strike and the potential impact. 

The UPS Teamsters contract covers more than 340,000 full- and part-time workers for the shipping giant and is set to expire on July 31, according to the union.

Following the latest round of negotiations on Wednesday, each side accused the other of walking away from the table.

"Following marathon negotiations, UPS refused to give the Teamsters a last, best, and final offer, telling the union the company had nothing more to give," the Teamsters said in a statement.

The union claimed that UPS "walked away from the bargaining table after presenting an unacceptable offer," which the UPS Teamsters National Negotiating Committee "unanimously rejected."

No additional negotiations are scheduled, according to the Teamsters.

The Teamsters have said they want an agreement that "guarantees better pay for all workers, eliminates a two-tier wage system, increases full-time jobs, resolves safety and health concerns, and provides stronger protections against managerial harassment."

The two sides have made some progress since negotiations began earlier this year, including reaching an agreement on heat safety that UPS said would equip all newly purchased U.S. small package delivery vehicles with air conditioning starting Jan. 1, 2024.

The sides also agreed to end a two-tier wage system for drivers, establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a full holiday for the first time and end forced overtime on drivers' days off, according to the union

UPS is among the largest shipping companies in the U.S. According to Pitney Bowes, UPS shipped 5.2 billion U.S. parcels in 2022, representing nearly a quarter of all parcels shipped in the country.

Should the UPS Teamsters go on strike, there's "no doubt" the economy would be impacted, from businesses to individual households, Thomas Goldsby, a professor in logistics at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville's Haslam College of Business.

Some UPS demographic facts:

  • UPS has 481,000 employees about 340,000 are covered by the Teamsters Contract 
  • 29% of UPS employees are women, while 71% are men.
  • The most common ethnicity at UPS is White (63%).
  • 16% of UPS employees are Hispanic or Latino.
  • 12% of UPS employees are Black or African American.
  • The average employee at UPS makes $41,684 per year.
  • UPS employees are most likely to be members of the Republican Party interesting fact given UPS is a union shop. 
  • On average, employees at UPS stay with the company for 3.9 years.

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