DC Velocity - October 2013

THE LARGEST TEAMSTER UNION LOCAL REPRESENTing UPS Inc. workers has urged its 9,300-member rank and file to reject a regional contract supplement that must be approved before a national parcel compact ratified in late June can take effect.

Members of Local 89 in Louisville, Ky., which represents air and ground workers at UPS’s global air hub, met Sept. 7

to review, and ultimately rebuff, a renegotiated version of the regional supplement, according to a statement on the local’s website. Members in attendance said at the time they would try to convince their union brethren to vote down the supplement when they received their ballots, which were mailed out Sept. 18.

The tone of the statement reflects the local’s continued dissatisfaction with the language in the supplement and with the efforts of the union’s national leadership. It reserved its harshest comments for Ken Hall, UPS. The local criticized national negotiators for making only “token efforts” to improve the supplement’s language.

In June, the local voted to reject the master agreement by a 3,388-483 margin and to rebuff the supplement by a 3,520-441 margin. The five-year master contract covering about 235,000 small-package workers was ratified by 53 percent of the union’s voting members nationwide, the nar-rowest margin of approval since the two sides began negotiating national compacts in the late 1970s. UPS-Teamster contracts date back to the 1930s, but prior to the 1970s were negotiated at the regional and local levels.

In addition, the rank and file rejected 18 regional and
local addenda to the national contract; these are known as
“supplements” or “riders,” depending on the locations of
workers in the UPS system. That is believed to be the largest
number of such compacts rejected in any contract negoti-
ated by the Teamsters in its 110-year existence. Because the
national, regional, and local elements are part of one over-
all agreement, a master contract cannot go into effect until
the affected regions ratify all supplements and riders. A sec-
ond rejection means both sides return to the bargaining
table. A third rejection allows for a strike authorization vote
to be taken. At this time, only one regional supplement,
covering a relatively small group of workers in upstate N. Y.,
has been ratified.

Ballots were also mailed in September to workers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Detroit, as well as to other members in Michigan and Ohio.

AT ODDS OVER HEALTH BENEFITS

The fight between UPS and Local 89 centers on health benefits. In September, the union unveiled what appeared to be improved health-care coverage for 140,000 UPS small-package workers who will transition on Jan. 1 from a com-pany-sponsored plan to a program known as “TeamCare” co-administered by UPS and the union. The plan represents the health-care interests of UPS Teamsters in the Central region.

Under the new plan, UPS Teamsters will pay no premiums, no deductibles until the last year of the contract, and in many cases, no co-payments for medical, prescription, vision, dental, life, and disability insurance, according to several sources. There is no annual cap on the medical benefits that can be used, and the out-of-pocket ceiling of $2,000 per family is actually considered better than what was offered under the UPS company plan, according to the sources.

In the online statement, Local 89 officials acknowledged that the new plan is an improvement over a previously negotiated version that led to the local’s first contract rejection. However, they said it still doesn’t go far enough to address members’ issues or to serve as an equivalent to the current UPS plan. The local seemed especially upset over the creation of what it called a “two-tier” structure, where part-time and new full-time enrollees will have better benefits than existing members. The local said that “no UPS

worker should receive lesser benefits to its fellow members.” The small-package contract and a separate agreement governing about 12,000 workers at UPS’s less-than-truckload (LTL) division, UPS Freight, expired July 31. The situation is in limbo at UPS Freight, where union voters in June rejected their five-year contract proposal outright by a 4,244-1,897 margin. ; —Mark Solomon