Struggling at UPS

IN THE few years I have worked part-time at United Parcel Service (UPS), I have found that life for workers isn't like their motto, "UPS Delivers." Actually, for workers, it's quite the opposite.

UPS claims to its workers that safety is of utmost importance, but actually, the bosses' real focus is on productivity. Since the beginning of this year, the bosses at UPS have started squeezing more productivity out of workers on the pretext of the economic crisis, even though UPS has made $1.4 billion in after-tax profits in the first three quarters of 2009.

Workers at UPS have felt the attack, and levels of harassment are up by unprecedented numbers. The harassment includes discharging workers, hassling workers to work faster, cracking down on attendance, surveillance, cutting workers' hours (including through supervisors doing bargaining-unit work) and even verbally abusing workers. The bosses have also made up unrealistic "production numbers" that they want workers to comply with on a day-to-day basis, and anyone not keeping up is getting written up.

Fortunately for us workers, we have a union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), that guarantees us rights like paid vacations, paid sick days and health benefits, to mention a few.

The problem is that the IBT practices the "service" model unionism approach, where workers are kept passive while a small group of "experts" handle the affairs of the union. This has led some workers to feel hostile towards the union, and to others feeling apathetic because even "good" servicing is often not enough against an aggressive employer like UPS.

In this context, myself and a group of workers decided to meet and organize on the basis of improving our working conditions--but also on holding our union officials accountable. Our first action was to organize a petition drive that forced management to update our seniority list (as per the IBT national contract).

When we had a clear majority of signatures, a group of four workers marched to the manager's office and presented the petition to him. It was clear that the manager wanted no part of us, and blamed the lack of an updated seniority list on our union officials. Later that same day, the same workers pressured the union officials to act on this matter.

The next morning at work, our manager came to us with the news that the updated seniority list had been posted--making it clear to the workers that if we want change we can't sit around waiting, we are going to have to act and actually be the union.
Anonymous, California