One of the biggest strikes in US history is brewing at UPS

It is in our utmost interest to be attentive to current labor movements as they can affect all
aspects of business. There is an upcoming expiring contract between America’s oldest unions,
Teamsters Union, and the world’s biggest package courier, UPS. Negotiations are set to begin
in the spring of 2023 and according to CNN Business, “labor experts are predicting that the
drivers and package handlers will go on strike.”

To summarize, union employees are demanding higher wages, better working conditions as well
as better company benefits. Teamsters simply have their employees’ best interest in hand. And
as the union’s new president, Sean O’Brien, stated, “they are fed up”.

As we know, there are other shipping courier companies, for example, FedEx, the US Postal
Service, and even Amazon’s own delivery services. However, it has been calculated that none
of these companies would be able to handle the 21.5 million of US packages UPS moves daily.

Why is this important to you and us? If these strikes do happen, a major backlog everywhere
would occur. The longest the union has gone on strike against UPS was nearly a two week
protest back in 1997. With the current increase in online retail, shipments could be at
warehouses for however long this potential strike may be. There is no doubt that other couriers
will attempt to step in during this potential strike. However, whether they will be able to handle
the millions of packages UPS handles on the daily, is open for discussion.

Sources

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/05/business/ups-teamster-union-strike/index.html

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/09/06/experts-predict-350k-ups-workers-will-launch-historic-strike/ (Image)