UPS and Teamsters Discuss Two-Tier Wages, Sunday Deliveries
09 May 2018 - 8:29PM
Dow Jones News
By Paul Ziobro
United Parcel Service Inc. and the Teamsters union are
discussing a two-tier wage system that would allow the company to
hire lower-paid workers to deliver packages on weekends, including
Sundays, as the parcel giant seeks ways to manage the surge in
e-commerce.
The proposal, raised in recent contract negotiations, calls for
creating a "hybrid driver" position that would earn as little as
$15 an hour and top out at an hourly wage of $30. These employees'
regular schedule would be Sunday to Thursday or Tuesday to
Saturday, avoiding costly overtime.
Under the current contract, most package-truck drivers work
Monday to Friday shifts and earn higher wages on weekends. The
union says they are entitled to double-time wages in some areas for
working on a Sunday, or hourly rates of nearly $74.
The hybrid driver role would allow UPS to start regular Sunday
delivery of packages, a service the U.S. Postal Service provides
for customers such as Amazon.com Inc. UPS started Saturday package
delivery in some markets in 2017 but hasn't disclosed any plans to
start delivering on Sundays.
A Teamsters spokeswoman said the proposals between the union and
UPS were part of the negotiating process and the two sides hadn't
come to any agreement about hybrid drivers. A UPS spokesman on
Tuesday declined to comment on contract negotiations.
The two sides are negotiating one of the largest collective
bargaining agreements in the U.S., covering about 280,000 UPS
employees. UPS, which has about 454,000 workers world-wide, is
trying to complete a new contract before a five-year agreement
expires on July 31. UPS Chief Executive Officer David Abney said
recently he was confident the two sides would reach an agreement in
time.
The hybrid-driver idea has inflamed divisions within the
Teamsters, including a faction opposed to the current union
leadership, including President James P. Hoffa.
Last week, Denis Taylor, director of the Teamsters package
division, removed three members from the negotiating committee,
which he is co-chairman of, according to Teamsters United, a group
that opposes Mr. Hoffa's leadership. The dismissed committee
members opposed the hybrid-driver proposal and said they were
removed for revealing the contract proposals to union members.
"They key to negotiations of this scope is educating and
mobilizing members," said Matt Taibi, an official at Teamsters
Local 251 in Rhode Island, who was removed from the negotiating
committee. "Members need to know what it is they're fighting
for."
The rift between the Teamsters United and Mr. Hoffa's team runs
deep. Mr. Hoffa, the son of the famous labor leader with the same
name, narrowly won re-election as the Teamsters general president
in 2016 over Fred Zuckerman, who led the Teamsters United ticket.
Mr. Zuckerman and other union leaders such as Sean O'Brien,
president of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston, have called for more
transparency.
"It's unfortunate that these negotiations are some of the most
important and it seems like this leadership is focused on
adversaries," Mr. O'Brien said in an interview.
The current contract already has positions where workers can
cobble together multiple part-time shifts, from loading trucks and
sorting packages to clerical work and washing cars, into a
full-time position. Such "hybrid" positions are paid a premium to
the $10 starting part-time wages, trading up to a better jobs.
Those jobs don't allow workers to deliver packages on the
traditional brown boxcar, which is viewed as a premium position in
the Teamster ranks, with annual pay typically above $80,000 with
generous benefits.
Other issues being negotiated include raising starting wages for
part-time workers and reigning in excessive overtime. Company
executives last month expressed confidence they would reach an
agreement, avoiding the first strike since 1997.
The company, which has been spending heavily to automate its
network to handle the surge in e-commerce parcels, has also been
taking steps to curb employee costs, offering early buyouts to
managers last month and freezing pension plans for 70,000 nonunion
staffers last year.
Write to Paul Ziobro at Paul.Ziobro@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 09, 2018 06:14 ET (10:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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