“The Teamsters is not a voice for us”
UPS workers respond to Teamsters campaign of blackmail
By
our reporters
25 August 2018
There is widespread opposition among United Parcel Service workers to the Teamsters’ efforts to browbeat and blackmail workers into voting for the sellout contract backed by UPS management.
It is now more than two weeks since the August 9 national conference of Teamsters executives voted to endorse the sellout contract. The union is keeping workers in the dark about when a vote on the contracts will be held in order to buy time as it seeks to wear down opposition to the agreement and intimidate workers into voting “yes.”
The Teamsters have dispatched officials across the country to threaten that workers will lose their health care coverage if they strike, that the contract is the “best they can get,” and any agreement will be worse if they vote “no.”
Matt, a 25-year-old part-time warehouse worker of one year in Madison Heights, Michigan told World Socialist Web Site UPS Workers Newsletter reporters that the Teamsters are “supposed to work for us, but it really feels like they don’t. They work for themselves. There needs to be change.”
He said that “we really have no way to relay our message.” He continued: “We’re talking to the wall if we try to tell them anything. There’s no one to hear us. The Teamsters union is not a voice for us. They say this is the ‘best they can do,’ but the ‘best’ is worse than our prior contract. So I don’t believe that.”
The proposed contract will create a new tier of lower-paid “hybrid” workers who can be shifted between the warehouse and delivery jobs. It also maintains poverty wages for part-time workers.
Matt said he had been watching YouTube videos about the…