The UPS-Teamsters contract — which some 340,000 workers are voting on this month — is the beachhead for what labor groups see is a bigger war: organizing Amazon and growing union ranks after years of decline.
The five-year deal for drivers, package handlers and others at Sandy Springs-based UPS is not only the largest private collective bargaining agreement in the U.S. It’s one that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters hopes will show Amazon hourly workers the union’s worth and build the case more collective bargaining can reverse rising income inequality.
Amazon and other big companies employ millions of non-union employees, many of them part-timers. Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien has emphasized the importance of improving terms for part-time workers in the UPS deal.
“We’re going to use this contract to help change the lives of people that are in this industry non-union, just like Amazon workers right now go to work unprotected, no benefits... no path to a full-time career,” he said.
Amazon declined to comment.
The tentative agreement reached last month would give current UPS part-time workers raises to at least $21 per hour immediately, according to the Teamsters. New part-time hires would start at $21 per hour and advance to $23 per hour.
The UPS deal is a template to help fuel an ambitious vision for unionization, beyond UPS, O’Brien said. “We’re going to take this contract and say, ‘This is what you’re gonna get when you join the Teamsters union.’”
Higher pay can bring more part-timers into the middle class, O’Brien has argued, rather than temporary part-time gigs that aren’t enough to pay the bills.
UPS has boasted that its part-time employees can use their work schedules as an opportunity for “kicking off a side hustle.”
“We don’t need side hustles. What we need are better wages,” O’Brien told his members. “This is why we have to fight together.”
But experts say whether the deal’s huge splash ripples across the economy or sinks without a trace depends on an unpredictable stew of demographics, law, economics, organizing strategies, worker grit and employer pushback.
Union clout has steadily shrunk since the early 1950s, when nearly one of every three workers was represented by a union. Today, it’s fewer than one-in-10.
In a mostly non-union economy and in states like Georgia, where the laws are written to the disadvantage of unions, the challenge is enormous. But so is the opportunity: Amazon has about 1.6 million employees and uses an estimated 250,000 drivers. But most are working for “partners,” not directly for Amazon.
Government data puts the median wage in metro Atlanta at about $23 an hour. Starting pay for Amazon warehouse work is about $16 an hour, according to job site Indeed.
Unlike more modest union strategy over much of the past half-century, the Teamsters are aiming to change something fundamental in the way low-wage and part-time workers struggle, Jane McAlevey, a senior policy fellow at the University of California Berkeley Labor Center, said in an interview earlier this year.
Many jobs that used to pay well enough to support a family, no longer do, she said. “The union itself is taking on a structural crisis that many American workers are experiencing, which is precarity.”
Union contracts for a relatively small group can have significant impact on other workers, both unionized and otherwise. That effect often depends on “density,” that is, what share of the workers in the area or in that particular job are union members.
Unions aside, pay is always shaped by the overall market. When it is hard to find workers, companies often raise wages and sweeten benefits to lure applicants. Pay has been going up the past several years, fueled by a perennial driver shortage and an expanding economy that came out of the pandemic with a shortage of workers for many jobs.
Under UPS’s new tentative agreement, full-time delivery drivers would get wage increases to an average top rate of $49 per hour.
Drivers were in short supply even before the pandemic. Job listings for truckers on Indeed promise pay of more than $30 an hour.
Those job listings are a sign that driver pay has climbed, said Kathryn Stewart, CEO of Performance Trucking in Lawrenceville, which has about 100 drivers. “Since driver pay and fuel expense are the top two costs of a trucking company, that’s significant.”
She wasn’t sure that the UPS deal would force her to raise pay even more. UPS-type delivery jobs, which are typically demanding, specialized and regimented, have always paid relatively well.
Drivers who come to a smaller company often have priorities besides pay.
Still, competitors to UPS are likely to be especially interested in the Teamsters-UPS deal because they often hire workers from the same talent pool.
The past several years have seen a flurry of union activity, including well-publicized efforts to organize Apple stores, Starbucks shops as well as Amazon warehouses. Only a relative few have succeeded, but the atmosphere has changed, so more employers might worry they will be the target of an organizing campaign.
They might want to get in front of that, which could be good for their employees, said labor economist Harry Holzer of Georgetown University.
“Higher pay is often meant to forestall attempts at unionization or maybe just to help them attract and retain more workers,” he said. “Walmart a decade ago made a decision to upgrade wages and benefits. It’s possible that a company like that might look at the UPS settlement and say, ‘Maybe we should do a little more.’”
After decades of waning union power, labor advocates have been looking for a win and, whatever the direct impact of the UPS deal, the contract is a symbolic triumph, Holzer said.
During the pandemic, front-line workers were told they were essential to keeping the economy humming and logistics companies like UPS recorded large profits. Teamster leaders have touted the new UPS contract as a victory.
Adding to the impact is a surge is the kind of union-to-union cooperation that is a kind of force multiplier in negotiations, said Susan Schurman, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.
Members of the union that represents UPS pilots said, as a possible strike loomed, that they wouldn’t cross picket lines set up by UPS drivers, which would have further upended UPS’ operations during a strike.
Meanwhile, Teamsters drivers have refused to cross picket lines set up by striking actors at SAG-AFTRA.
“The Teamsters are key players in the SAG-AFTRA strike,” Schurman said. “That is a phenomenon we haven’t seen much for a while. I can’t even tell you the last time we saw it. So there is clearly something happening.”
