UPSers Teamsters are organizing to win MLK Day as a paid holiday and to end part-time poverty, discrimination and harassment.

UPS Teamsters in Rhode Island Local 251 passed out more than 400 whistles and “blew the whistle” on harassment at UPS. The very next day, a top supervisor who serially harassed employees was removed from his position.

UPS reported record-shattering $24.9 billion in fourth-quarter revenue and $7.8 billion in operating profits after taxes for the year. The corporate windfall makes the givebacks imposed by Hoffa & Co. in the 2018 contract an even more bitter pill to swallow than it was already.

In a surprise move, UPS has sold UPS Freight to TFI, a Canadian trucking and logistics corporation. 

Every year, workers at the Postal Service and UPS expect to work long hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas. “This is like our Super Bowl,” said Kimberly Karol, president of the Iowa Postal Workers (APWU). “Employees really do rally together.”

But this year has been like no other. Workers were still catching their breath from last year’s holiday peak when the pandemic struck and online ordering ratcheted up. It was like Christmas all over again—and it never stopped.

Click here to read the story at LaborNotes.org 

Twenty-three years ago, Teamster members won labor’s biggest victory in decades in the 1997 UPS strike. What are the lessons for today?

UPS made $1.8 billion in profits after taxes in the second quarter—thanks to record volume and excessive overtime by UPS Teamsters.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Teamsters across the country have been thrust into an unexpected crisis of unforeseeable proportions. At UPS, no sooner did many of us find out that we were a part of the “essential workforce” than we were fighting on the shop floor to protect ourselves from the virus.  

The members of Local 171 in Roanoke Virginia give a shout-out to their officers and stewards for stepping up during this crisis. When any employer neglects its frontline workers, we demand action from them. And sometimes, we have to take action ourselves. We salute union leaders who do it!

On a Teamster podcast, Package Division Director Denis Taylor claims he’s negotiated an agreement for Teamster drivers to get a UPS purchase order so they can buy PPE and critical safety supplies out on their routes. Is this a real agreement or another empty promise from the Hoffa administration?