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UPS Has 260,000 Union Workers and They've Just Authorized a Strike
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoThe drivers use empty water bottles to piss in because they don't have time to go elsewhere.
- wil421 8y agoOr the bushes in front of my house. As was the case a couple Christmas’ ago.
- mod 8y agoDid you care? I can't really imagine myself caring.
- soperj 8y agoEven if he doesn't care (I personally wouldn't), doesn't change the fact that the guy couldn't even take a proper bathroom break because of arbitrary time constraints.
- eximius 8y agoDo you have kids? Does his neighbor have kids? Maybe he has sensitive plants and the acidity will kill them. It doesn't matter. Some rando is pissing on his property. It isn't a huge deal, but it is unpleasant.
- jdietrich 8y agoIf someone is under so much pressure at work that they have to piss in my yard, then they're having a far worse day than me. As far as I'm concerned, they can piss anywhere they damned well like.
- gamblor956 8y agoThe point of saying that the UPS driver was pissing in his bushes was that the UPS driver doesn't have time to take a restroom break and has to grab the best opportunity he can find. It's not about the property owner's feelings. However, even that can be viewed as an externality that UPS is pushing onto third parties.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoRight, but that's probably why I wouldn't be so upset at the person, but at the company that's forcing them to.
- matte_black 8y agoA dog could piss in your bushes and not care, all the same.
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- wil421 8y agoI care more about the fact he was put in a position he had to do it than my bush.
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- ourmandave 8y agoSuppose they could always get scab workers from Amazon warehouses who would be grateful for those problems.
- nathanaldensr 8y agoI'm curious why this comment was down-voted. Is the assertion false? Have there been reports of UPS drivers doing this?
- ddppee 8y agoIt's downvoted because the users of hackernews have an irrational hatred for unions, so anything that justifies having/forming a union is downvoted
- craftyguy 8y agoNo, I think it's downvoted because it's a made up story. It's easy to make up stories on the internet that invoke the feels, much harder to verify that they are true. Stop trying to make this about "unions vs no unions." Edit: No proof has been supplied this happened to an actual UPS employee, nor has there been any official statement by the union that this is actually something that has happened. Therefore, this is fake news until proven otherwise.
- gamblor956 8y agoThere's literally a comment on this thread where someone states that this actually happened. And a similar story, though involving bushes. Ergo, not made up.
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- lallysingh 8y agoIf you don't believe the commentators here, why are you part of this community?
- craftyguy 8y agoBecause not all comments here are people making up stories / sharing anecdotes, and it's relatively easy for me to ignore them. I was merely answering GP's question about why it was being downvoted.
- barking 8y agoI've heard the same story during strikes over here by public service workers. It's a story designed to engender sympathy from a public most of whom in reality have inferior pay and conditions to the strikers. The public service are the last unionised workers in Britain and are about the only people who ever go on strike any more.
- cortesoft 8y agoI hate this sort of "there are other people worse off" dismissal when workers stand up for themselves. Change has to start somewhere, and other people being worse off is never a reason to not demand better conditions.
- barking 8y agoThe thing about the public service is that everyone is an employee. Even the top boss is. It's the last place where change will come from. With their unsackability and final salary linked pension schemes they are completely out of touch with a country where zero hours contracts have become normal while at the same time its the taxes of those people who prop up their generally unproductive jobs.
- soperj 8y agoHow is that a rebuttal?
- booleandilemma 8y agoSo you’re saying we should feel good when UPS workers shit themselves and pee in bottles?
- barking 8y agoThey don't really do that, you know. It happens about as often as it does in other jobs, ie rarely.
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- stevenmays 8y agoI have a family member who drives for UPS. He shit himself while driving because he wasn't allowed to stop outside of assigned breaks. They also tried to fire him because he had to take off for cancer surgery (minor melanoma). He tells some horror stories.
- Apofis 8y agoHow the fuck is a unionized company allowed to do shit like this?
- wccrawford 8y agoThings have to get bad enough to convince the workers to give up pay for a while to do the strike.
- Thlom 8y agoDon't most unions have a war chest they can pay members on strike from?
- drzaiusapelord 8y agoThis is a job that pays about $35/hr which is what the union helped them negotiate. They'd rather piss in bottles than lose $35 a day on an hour long break. Their union won't force an hour long unpaid break, so the drivers just do their own thing on the clock. The union also fights against CDL requirements for better/safer drivers and allows excessive overtime because it pays out so much. Its not a good union by certain measures, like a lot of big unions focused on low/no skill labor it can help raise salaries (and raise product cost) but also not be helpful in anything they think 'hurts' workers like mandatory unpaid breaks, CDL requirements, background/credit checks, etc. Modern unions have little in common with the unions of old that existed before we had any real safety regulations and far less labor regulation. Now they exist almost solely to return as much financial value as possible (wages) for the investment (dues).
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- beckler 8y agoI did a holiday stent with them while I was in university. I was a package runner, so I would take the packages from the truck to the house, while the driver could organize everything and get things ready for the next few houses. The worst part was the super short breaks. We would stop for maybe 5-8 minutes, piss, and grab food to go. There were a few things from my experience there that stick out in my mind: - There was this weird implied situation with running. It was iterated to me multiple times that UPS does not encourage me to run, but I needed to do everything I could to efficiently get the package to the house and back. So they were basically telling us to run, even though they couldn't specifically say it. - On my route one day, there was a van following us and stealing packages that we were dropping off. We had no idea until they scared the shit out of some poor lady, who ended up calling customer support. Apparently, she saw me, and even motioned for me to leave the package... but I never saw her- I just dropped it off. When she went to the door to get it, the thieves were taking it off her porch. I'm glad she said she motioned me to leave it, because if not, UPS wanted to hold me personally responsible for the loss. - We had to pick up packages from a handful of UPS stores in the area. We even had a bigger truck that day to hold the capacity. There was zero organization to it, it was just throw everything that could fit on the truck. We had it filled to the TOP, but we still had to do some deliveries. I had no idea where to find the packages, because they got all mixed up... So we ended up crushing some packages because we had to climb the mountain of boxes to find them. I always felt bad about that day because I stepped on a styrofoam box of omaha steaks and completely destroyed it, but we delivered it anyways.
- questionsuch 8y agoWas your route in the last case optimized? Or did you have to figure out the delivery sequence on your own?
- beckler 8y agoThings we're normally pretty well organized, except that day that we had to pick up everything. We moved all the deliveries to the front, but we had WAY more pickups than the driver expected and that's how they got mixed up. Plus other people were helping load it up and moved things around to fit better. It wasn't common for things to get that out-of-place.
- gist 8y ago> use empty water bottles to piss in because they don't have time to go elsewhere Would this be less bad if they supplied one of those bottles that is specifically for that purpose? And what is so bad about that anyway? What if there was a porta potty similar to what is on boats (or rv's) in the truck? Would you feel the same way? After all at least where I am located (and elsewhere) they are competing with the low end labor which delivers for Amazon for less cost. And those employees are driven pretty hard (and get paid less with less benefits). UPS driver is not a leisurely take your time type of job. It never has been. They have always hustled in any way they could (and I remember them from the 70's).
- s73v3r_ 8y agoIn my mind, no. It's extremely undignified. UPS needs to hire more drivers if they are pushing people to that kind of limit, where stopping to use an actual toilet is considered a luxury.
- colordrops 8y agoThat sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading? Astronauts do it too. It's not like they are cleaning out sewers in Mumbai.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago"That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading?" YES. "Astronauts do it too." Astronauts are in an entirely different environment, where they have nothing but a thin suit separating them from the lifeless vacuum of space. Not at all comparable to delivering packages. "It's not like they are cleaning out sewers in Mumbai." "Someone else has it worse" is never a justification or an argument.
- scruple 8y ago> "That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading?" > > YES. You piss in bottles on the job because the job demands it (never explicitly, of course). When you're poor, working poor, a manual laborer, etc... The power dynamics at these levels are so grossly disproportionate that you don't have a seat in the room, let alone at the table. You have to piss outside of your break times? Deal with it. Oh, you didn't get a break? Sorry, here's your last pay check, don't come back here tomorrow. That may be the extreme end of it, mostly experienced in the construction business (where I really saw the worst of it), but it wasn't far from the truth when I worked in warehouses loading trucks or in a glass plant, either. And, maybe it's a vastly different experience in a not-at-will state, maybe it's changed dramatically since the early 2000s, I wouldn't know but I really doubt it. This pissing in bottles thing is just part and parcel for manual laborers and, speaking from personal experience, I never once found it degrading. In the 8 or so years that I spent working manual labor full-time I'm not aware of any of my co-workers who did, either.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoAbsolutely everything in your post sounds horrible. There is absolutely no justification for it, none. There is zero reason whatsoever that employers cannot allow people breaks.
- tomcam 8y agoStarbucks!
- CamTin 8y agoTIL Jimmy Hoffa's son James P Hoffa is the current Teamsters president. Strange how things work out.
- sparrish 8y agoMaybe they've forgotten all the business they lost to FedEx the last time they went on strike in 1997.
- kazen44 8y agoThis does not matter to the workers if they do not get any share of the increase in bussiness. They have very little to lose while doing a strike.
- sparrish 8y agoIn 1997, the 15-day strike cost 15k UPS jobs. For the drivers, that is a lot to lose.
- kevinh 8y agoThe stakes are what give both the union and the business leverage in the negotiations.
- spectra72 8y agoI was working for UPS during that strike. We didn't lose a lot of drivers from what I recall because they had relatively nice hourly wages to come back to and could weather the storm a bit. We lost almost the entire load/unload staff though. The grunts in the truck at 12am unloading semi-truck after semi-truck worth of boxes. They were only getting ~$8/hr and couldn't afford to be out for 2 weeks. Out of 12 guys on the team I supervised I think 2 came back.
- rwcarlsen 8y agoShort term it might not affect them, but long term it could reduce the number of employees UPS needs, and they might not be able to get hired on at FedEx.
- ddppee 8y agoMaybe their workers want fair treatment.
- protomyth 8y agoA strike authorization is common during negotiations to put pressure on the company, said UPS spokesman Glenn Zaccara. Even with that, the union can’t go on strike until after the current contract expires on July 31. So, they still have a bit of time to agree on terms.
- mlillie 8y agoUnemployment is at a record low. Workers are smart to organize and strike now, as it's a (labor) seller's market.
- munk-a 8y agoUnemployment isn't as low as you may think, the number reported only includes those still actively looking for work. Anyone who has given up on the prospect of finding a job won't be counted. That said, unemployment _seems_ low, so it may add pressure to their strike.
- nkassis 8y agoYou can find numbers for those here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm They are all going down and have been almost constantly since 2008. It's at historic levels.
- user5994461 8y agoAfter 10 years of adjusting the measurement method, the number is finally going down.
- nkassis 8y agoLooking at this chart: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/u-3-unemployment-rate-was-4-1-percent-in-december-2017-u-6-was-8-1-percent.htm?view_full https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/u-3-unemployment-rate-was-... Seems like a constant decline so it's not sudden and very explainable.
- rory096 8y agoU6 unemployment is at its lowest level since 2001. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
- matt_s 8y agoIf you aren't actively looking for work and you don't have a job why should this count as unemployment? This means they aren't collecting unemployment from their state, correct? If they are disabled (mentally/physically) enough to not be able to work, that is another category. Whenever I hear/read this type of reply my answer is: so what? Why should they be counted as unemployed when they clearly are able but just aren't actively looking.
- sametmax 8y agoWelcome to France. We got postal strikes any Tuesday. You'll get used to it. Wait for the transportation infrastructure to give it a try, then the real fun starts.
- user5994461 8y agoShould also mention that it's common for a strike to last many days.
- Ar-Curunir 8y agoAs if public transit in America is any better: in SF BART and Caltrain trains are late on a regular basis already without the need for strikes...
- eqdw 8y agoAnd then people continue to wonder why Americans would prefer private vehicle transit to public mass transit
- thrillgore 8y agoAn Amtrak strike only affects the Northern Corridor, an SNCF strike affects practically all of Western Europe.
- dominotw 8y agodamn was expecting an important amazon package this week. Hope they get what they want soon!
- mikestew 8y agoThey can't go on strike until the current contract is over (July 31). Package coming or not, I too hope they get what they want soon.
- excalibur 8y agoAmazon packages are primarily delivered by USPS on Sunday (partly for laughs, and partly because the GOP wants to run the USPS into the ground so they can privatize it).
- rednerrus 8y agoShould have waited until November.
- thrillgore 8y agoWhich at that point, not only would UPS Management would have a legitimate grievance, so would Amazon and everyone shipping holiday items. That strike would be over in minutes.
- post_break 8y agoAfter UPS decided no left turns they started showing up at 4pm at my dads work. They stopped using UPS for all shipments after that. Here at my office UPS almost always shows up at 4:50pm or even 5pm on the dot to deliver something. Fedex meanwhile stops by around 10-1pm. USPS marks my packages as delivered or available for pickup and then delivers it the next day or leaves it sitting outside the locked office doors on a saturday or sunday...
- loeg 8y ago> After UPS decided no left turns They've been minimized since the 70s, but the decision to exclusively use right turns was reversed shortly after it was widely publicized. They make left turns, when they make sense, again. > Here at my office UPS almost always shows up at 4:50pm or even 5pm on the dot to deliver something. Fedex meanwhile stops by around 10-1pm. This is purely a function of your location, the nearest warehouse locations, and local delivery routes. At my house Fedex usually shows up around 6-8pm, and UPS around noon. I've also never had the experience you describe of UPS packages being marked delivered when they weren't. (Edit: sorry, misread. Nor USPS, though, for what it's worth.) I have had a Fedex driver leave a door tag and claim I wasn't home multiple days in a row, when they hadn't even rung the doorbell. That's one individual driver and doesn't necessarily reflect on the business, though.
- post_break 8y agoWe work in a busy business park, 10 minutes from the warehouse, where UPS freight comes by and loads an 18 wheeler every day full of packages from a neighbor. They used to arrive at 2-3pm daily but we are now their seemingly last stop. Dropping packages off at 5pm to a business just doesn't work. All of my examples are for work locations. Residential is always a shit show, but business customers should be held to a higher standard considering they have operating hours that are standard.
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- aaomidi 8y agoI don't understand what's with this weird hate of the working class asking for better conditions on HN? Isn't this essentially how a capitalist economy should function? If companies look at people as capital, then this capital can look at the company as their capital and try to control it by withholding capital from the company.
- jfk92n8 8y agoDo it Along with the estimated loss of “up to” 400,000 jobs due to Trump tariffs, I’m all in on front row seats to the corporate apocalypse Can’t wait to see Dayglo Orange Dingbat handles it My hope would be the same way the alien President handled the implosion of the galactic economy in Rick and Morty