It's official! UPS and Teamsters ratify new labor contract avoiding massive strike

Nearly one month after UPS and Teamsters reached a last-minute tentative agreement on a new five-year labor contract, the members have spoken.

The Teamsters, which represents roughly 340,000 UPS workers nationwide, voted to ratify the tentative agreement, which promises higher wages along with some 60 other changes and improvements. The deal prevents what would have been the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history.

Teamsters voted 86.3% to ratify the collective bargaining agreement, a release from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters stated. The agreement passed by the highest vote for a contract in the history of the Teamsters at UPS.

“This is the richest national contract I’ve seen in my more than 40 years of representing Teamsters at UPS,” said Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman. “There are more gains in this contract than in any other UPS agreement and with no givebacks to the company. But the hard work doesn’t end here. We will continue to fight like hell to enforce this contract and make sure UPS lives up to every word of it over the next five years.”

Teamsters have also ratified all 44 supplemental agreements except for the Local 769 LAI supplement, which covers 174 members in Florida. The national contract will go into effect immediately once this remaining supplement is renegotiated and ratified.

"Teamster labor moves America. The union went into this fight committed to winning for our members," said Sean O’Brien, International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president, in a previous release. "We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it.”

From the beginning of national negotiations in April, UPS was confident a contract would be reached without a work stoppage. However, in July, that hope seemed overzealous as Teamsters and UPS walked away from the bargaining table and strike threats rang out from the union.

Teamsters stayed ready, dangling the threat of a strike over both UPS and the American economy. The union hosted rallies with O'Brien and International Brotherhood of Teamsters Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman across the country, including in Louisville, home to UPS Worldport, the largest shipping and logistics facility in America and home to UPS Airlines headquarters.

The shipping giant estimates it "transports more than 3% of global (gross domestic product) and about 6% of U.S. GDP daily," including everything from home-ordered Amazon packages to business shipments to medical necessities. The contract consensus between the union and the company, which UPS CEO Carol Tomé described as a "win-win-win agreement," helped the company and the U.S. economy avoid a potentially crippling blow to the nation’s logistics network.

"UPS came dangerously close to putting itself on strike, but we kept firm on our demands," Zuckerman previously said. "We stayed focused on our members and fought like hell to get everything that full-time and part-time UPS Teamsters deserve."

The strife and uncertainty between the union and UPS was not missed by the company's customers. The company spent the second quarter of the year, April 1 through June 30, facing negative ramifications as the uncertainty of a work stoppage lingered.

In the U.S., UPS saw a nearly 10% decrease in average daily package volume as customers transferred their business to FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service and other regional carriers as they prepared for a possible strike. This decrease in daily volume also contributed to a roughly 7% decrease in revenue for the quarter.

Tomé said the company anticipated the labor negotiations with Teamsters, which started in April, would be "late and loud."

"As the noise level increased throughout the second quarter, we experienced more volume diversions than we anticipated," Tomé said.

Union victory is good news:UPS deal with Teamsters union is a victory for labor across the board. Here's why.

After reaching the tentative agreement on July 25, Teamsters leaders from more than 160 local union barns across the country headed to Washington, D.C., to vote and show support to members for the national tentative contract. Only one union barn dissented the tentative agreement, Teamsters Local 89, the union barn representing roughly 10,000 UPS workers in Louisville. After further discussions and the realization Local 89 was misunderstanding a contract point regarding market rate adjustment pay, the local barn encouraged members to indeed vote "yes" on the tentative agreement.

Member voting was conducted between Aug. 3 and 22 electronically.

With a new contract reached and UPS looking to build back its client base, here's a look at some of the new benefits UPS Teamsters will enjoy:

• Existing full- and part-time UPS Teamsters will get $2.75 more per hour in 2023 and $7.50 more per hour over the length of the contract.
• Existing part-timers will be raised to no less than $21 per hour immediately.
• Existing part-time workers will also receive a 48% average total wage increase over the next five years.
• New part-time employees will start at $21 per hour and move up to $23 hourly.
• Drivers classified as “22.4s” – flexible drivers who do not work traditional Monday-Friday shifts – will be immediately reclassified as regular package car drivers and placed into seniority.
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day becomes a full holiday for all Teamsters.
• Teamsters drivers won’t be forced to work overtime on their days off and will have a set driving schedule.
• Seasonal work will be limited to five weeks in November and December, and union part-time employees will have priority for seasonal work with a guaranteed eight hours of work.
• UPS will add air conditioning to all larger delivery vehicles, sprinter vans and package cars purchased after Jan. 1, 2024.
• UPS will add 7,500 new union jobs and fill 22,500 open positions.

Contact business reporter Olivia Evans at oevans@courier-journal.com or on Twitter at @oliviamevans_.