UPS strike three years later

Three years ago this August the Teamsters union, led by reform General President Ron Carey, was sitting on top of the world. They had just defeated one of the biggest, richest and most vicious corporations in the country-United Parcel Service (UPS)-after a two-and-a-half week strike that captivated the country. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert aptly called it "a crusade against low wages."

The UPS strike touched virtually everyone across the United States. The biggest deliverer of parcel packages in the U.S. ground to a halt as 185,000 workers walked off the job and the familiar brown delivery trucks disappeared from the streets. The issues raised by the strike-corporate greed, low wages, part-time work, and job security-produced widespread support for the Teamsters.

When asked why the strike was so popular, James Kelly, CEO of UPS, unwittingly said, "Well, when you put a multinational corporation up against a hard working UPS delivery man, who would you support?" Polls during the strike regularly showed two-to-one support for the strikers. It was the most popular strike by American workers in a generation.

It was also the most important victory for the American labor movement in nearly 30 years. The centerpiece of the Teamster victory was the full-time jobs provision that would create 10,000 new full-time jobs out of existing part-time positions during the life of the agreement. This was the main thrust of the strike-to reverse UPS’s longstanding policy of destroying full-time jobs.

The Teamster victory over UPS had a much wider impact on the psychology of the labor movement. At that time, labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein wrote that the strike ended "the PATCO syndrome. A 16-year period in which a strike was synonymous with defeat and demoralization." It seemed that after 20 years of defeat the labor movement had finally made a turn in the opposite direction.

Very quickly, however, the victory began to unravel. The "Get Carey" campaign, an ugly alliance of transportation companies, the Wall Street Journal, the "Old Guard" in the Teamsters, and Congressional Republicans, kicked into high gear. They brought enormous pressure on the U.S. Justice Department, which monitors the elections in the Teamsters, to overturn the 1996 election in which Carey defeated Hoffa in a very close race. Carey and his advisers were charged with violating campaign fundraising rules.

The Justice Department overturned the 1996 election and ordered a re-run. Carey was disqualified from running for reelection and subsequently expelled from the union. Taking advantage of chaos in the union caused by the government assault, UPS nullified the full-time jobs provision of the contract in the late spring of 1998-despite its record profits. Many began to feel that the 1997 strike was a "hollow victory" and wondered out loud whether the strike had been worth the sacrifice.

In the face of the government attack on Carey, the reform movement went into disarray. The Congressional Republicans led by right-wing Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) carried out a minor but politically damaging witch-hunt of the Teamsters that encouraged the most reactionary forces in the union-the "Old Guard." These elements, led by James P. Hoffa, eventually triumphed in the 1998 rerun election for International union officers, despite the fact that reform candidate Tom Leedham won the biggest UPS and freight locals in the country.

Why did things unravel so easily? It is a testament to the problem of trying to reform the Teamsters from above. Carey was elected in 1991 in a three-way race and narrowly defeated Hoffa in 1996, but the vast majority of the union locals remained in the hands of the Old Guard, and most members (who are not covered by national contracts and have little connection to the International Union) weren’t touched by reform initiatives from Teamster headquarters in Washington.

When the attack on Carey came after the UPS strike, there was simply no rank-and-file organization capable of acting independently of the Carey administration. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, allied with Carey, began as such an organization in the 1970s but moved toward being a reform organization oriented primarily on elections during the 1990s. When Carey collapsed, the reform movement was tarnished, and widespread demoralization and cynicism set in.

What of the UPS strike three years later? There is no doubt that it had a big impact. One of the biggest bullies in Corporate America was defeated, and no matter what has happened since then, UPS can’t get around that fact. For many of the participants the strike was a life-changing experience. People who never thought they would be on strike became strike leaders. This is an important legacy. At the same time, the counterattack by UPS and the collapse of Carey also led some people to drop out of union activism.

This year UPS was defeated for a second time. It lost the arbitration cases around its failure to live up to the full-time jobs provisions of the Teamster contracts for the last two-and-a-half years. The jobs that people have fought for are finally coming through, with $90 million in back pay and benefits. This has revalidated the 1997 strike for many members, especially the part-timers who have waited so long for justice.

For the broader labor movement, there is no doubt that the 1997 strike had an impact, but it wasn’t the turning point that many were hoping for at the time. The strikes against GM in Flint and Bell Atlantic were certainly influenced by the victory at UPS. Art Reyes, a leader of the GM Flint strike, said that the UPS strike ended concessionary bargaining. It had its biggest impact on militants in the labor movement, and because of the size and publicity of the strike, it gave many workers a wider class perspective.

The UPS strike certainly changed the terms of debate even if it didn’t sharply change the balance of class forces. It is now clear that the "PATCO syndrome" was only partially broken. Many union officials and rank and filers still fear a direct confrontation with the bosses despite the very favorable conditions of low unemployment and record profits. The 1999 contracts in auto, steel, and at Boeing came and went without a real threat of a strike in any of them. There is enormous anger among rank-and-file workers, but there is also an absence of politics, organization and fighting experience to overcome years of defeat.

The 1997 UPS strike was in many ways the strike of the future. The issues of low wages and benefits, job security and corporate greed are not only still with us, but they are of greater concern than three years ago. Many more people are aware of these issues now because of the UPS strike and think in much wider class terms. The genie is clearly out of the bottle. Yet there are many unresolved issues left over from 1997. Most part-time workers still suffer with low wages, and, wait far too long for full benefits, along with a host of other issues.

The 1997 strike was also a test of political strategies. The passivity of the strike and the retreat of the reform movement in the Teamsters alienated many of the best activists in the union. Three years ago we wrote in the ISR that the UPS strike demonstrated the relevance of socialist politics in the labor movement. "Socialists are committed to building shop-floor, rank-and-file organization that can push the fight forward when union leaders fail to represent workers’ needs. The unrealized potential of the UPS strike points to the necessity of such an approach." Such an alternative still must be built.

Originally published in the International Socialist Review #13, August-September 2000.