November 29, 2012: The International Union has given UPS Freight a new Letter Of Agreement (LOA) which allows the company to have two different wage scales for clerks at various terminals. This is supposedly a national master agreement.

The surprise deal gives clerks at a number of terminals a 2.5% lower wage scale than the master provides for; they also lose five months of 3.5% retroactive pay. 

A full-time clerk making union scale will lose about $1100 in retroactive pay, and about $1000 every year going forward.

The new LOA states that clerks who were organized into the Teamsters prior to the June 27, 2012 deadline for card check, but after the master contract was voted on, get the lower scale. Instead of a 3.5% raise, which the master contract calls for, they get a 1% raise. And they get retro pay only back to June 1, instead of January 1, 2012.

The point of a master contract is to treat all Teamsters equally, regardless of which terminal they work at.

And when locals went to clerks and asked them to join the union, they showed them the master contract, with the 3.5% raise in it, retroactive to January 1. Now those affected locals have to try to explain this mean-spirited deal to their new members.

That's no way to treat any Teamster—especially these newly-organized sisters and brothers.

The money involved in this deal is chump-change to UPS. But it's a lot to the clerks, many of whom don't get full-time hours or full union scale.

This injustice should be corrected in bargaining. Bring everyone up to union scale.

Click here to read the one-page memo dated May 23, 2012, specifying the 3.5% raise.

Click here to read a new two-page LOA which eliminates that clause (Section 14(a)) in the contract and substitutes a 1% raise, for affected Teamsters.