August 11, 2010: Hoffa and Hall surrender one of the biggest gains of the 1997 strike.

Teamster members united to win labor’s biggest victory in decades in the 1997 UPS Strike. But Hoffa and Hall have surrendered one of the biggest gains of that strike: full-time combo jobs.

Uniting under the slogan Part-Time America Won’t Work, members demanded that the company create good-paying full-time jobs by combining low-wage part-time jobs. We won and UPS was required to create 20,000 full-time combo jobs from 1998-2008.

Surrender

Hoffa and Hall surrendered this victory in the last contract by allowing UPS to erase the full-time job creation language from Article 22.3. UPS is still required to maintain the 20,000 jobs we won as a result of our strike. But they are no longer required to increase that number each year.

Weak Enforcement

Even worse, Hoffa and Hall are not enforcing the contract language that requires UPS to maintain the 20,000 full-time jobs. UPS has eliminated thousands of these full-time jobs by forcing combo Teamsters back to part-time and refusing to fill many 22.3 positions when they go vacant.

Thousands of UPS Teamsters signed petitions to Hoffa and Hall. Members across the country filed grievances. Not a single one has even been heard at the national panel.

Ken Hall told a national conference call of concerned Teamster members that it’s “not the right time” to enforce Article 22.3.

UPS holds us to the contract in good economic times and in bad. Is it too much to expect Hoffa and Hall to do the same?

Laid-Off for a Year and a Half

“I took a $3 an hour pay cut when UPS eliminated my 22.3 job. I’ve been working a split shift at part-time wages ever since.

“When my union asked me to strike in 1997, I didn’t ask if it was the right time. I picked up a picket sign and I hit the street.

“Hoffa and Hall have left us hanging out to dry for more than a year and a half.”

Karen Berry, Local 767 Laid off 22.3, Dallas