UPS

Today, Teamsters voted by an overwhelming 86.3 percent to ratify the most historic collective bargaining agreement in the history of UPS. The five-year contract protects and rewards more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters nationwide, raising wages for full- and part-time workers, creating more full-time jobs, and securing important workplace protections, including air conditioning.

The agreement passed by the highest vote for a contract in the history of the Teamsters at UPS.

All supplemental agreements were ratified as well, except for the Local 769 LAI supplement which covers 174 members in Florida.

The national master agreement will go into effect as soon as this supplement is renegotiated and ratified. The UPS Teamsters National Negotiating Committee will immediately meet with the company to work to resolve any outstanding issues with the supplement. Upon resolution, the adjusted supplement would be voted on by respective UPS Teamsters in-person.

“Our members just ratified the most lucrative agreement the Teamsters have ever negotiated at UPS,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “Teamsters have set a new standard and raised the bar for pay, benefits, and working conditions in the package delivery industry. This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention.”

https://teamster.org/…/teamsters-ratify-historic-ups…/

UPS 853 Members got thrown a curve ball last week Wednesday. The IBT needed a national bargaining chip right away as negotiations continued between the Teamsters and UPS for the master contract, which will define the UPS work agreement for the next five years.

In less than three(3) days, the Local and members had to organize a vote drive on whether or not to give the IBT permission to strike if they needed to exercise that option during negotiations.

Everyone came together and got it done. Members had to take extra time to be available to vote, and staff scrambled to put two fully staffed voting stations in place. One voting station went well past 10:00 PM to accommodate as many members as possible.

“A strong thank you to all the members,” said David Crawford, UPS Business Agent. “Everyone came together and gave Teamsters Local 853 and the IBT the tools it needed to strengthen our negotiating stance at the national level.”

The NorCal Committee met this week in Oakland California and concluded the seventh week of supplemental negotiations. The 15 locals covering a geographic area from as far south as Bakersfield California, up north to Eureka California, and spanning east to west from the Bay Area to the far reaches of Northern Nevada. We collectively represent over 15,000 strong UPS Teamsters; Teamsters who have reached out in droves this week with words of encouragement asking this body to keep fighting and standing strong for their member driven proposals and to maintain the amazing protections that they already have.

The Company continues to bring forth unacceptable proposals and has made it clear to this committee that they are not interested in moving the process forward or resolving the issues that they have created over the last 5 years. These unresolved issues continue to be the grievance procedure, pay issues, the protection of hours, and holidays. The Company holds hostage proposals that we can fundamentally agree to, by packaging them with proposals that are detrimental to our members. We have asked to bargain each proposal individually and are met with the words of, “the package is the package”.

The Company has made it clear that they will not move forward unless we tentatively agree to their “package deal”. General President Sean O’Brien and General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman have made it clear that while National Negotiations has officially begun, if the Company cannot come to find common ground and finish our Supplemental Negotiations they can and will shut down talks with the Company in D.C. We appreciate the continued support from the General President and General Secretary Treasurer and will keep working hard to get across the finish line for our members in Northern California and Nevada.

The Committee is scheduled to continue negotiations with the Company Monday, May 15th, in Oakland, California.