“Now we’re all slaves, no matter what color you are”
UPS workers oppose sellout contract, warn of union fraud to pass agreement
By
Kayla Costa
14 July 2018
Opposition is growing among the more than 230,000 United Postal Services (UPS) workers to the sellout contract agreement released by the Teamsters union on Tuesday. The proposed deal would create a new second-tier driver position that will be used to destroy well-paid full-time jobs, maintain the company’s ability to force employees to work over 70 hours a week, and do nothing to address poverty-level wages for part-time workers who make up 70 percent of the workforce.
On Tuesday, the union announced that it was indefinitely extending the deadline for negotiations until after the July 31 expiration of the current agreement, to give the union more time to wear down opposition.
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with drivers and part-time workers at a UPS depot in Madison Heights near Detroit, Michigan. Most workers had not even been informed that the union had extended the contract deadline. Many said the union was seeking to find a way to push through the sellout agreement, and that it would resort to ballot stuffing to secure a “yes” vote.
“It’s the same as the last contract in 2013,” said a worker with 10 years, five of them as a driver and five in the warehouse. “It got shoved down our throats even though we voted ‘no.’ Not one person I spoke to voted ‘yes’ on that deal, and they put it through.”
The worker said he had “read the whole damn contract, and it is BS. If you want to create a new driver job, you need to pay them like drivers,” he said. “Don’t pay them BS to do our job. It’s aimed at taking away overtime pay. The…