At this summer’s Fullbay conference in Phoenix, a heavy-duty repair shop owner talked about buying a seat on an airplane for a wiring harness to get it to his shop by the time the customer needed it.
Without that seat — or without reliable shipping — shops and the companies that depend on them to keep their trucks running can’t get the parts they need to keep their trucks working.
While during the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem was getting parts and materials as factories shut down. Now, though, with labor shortages and potential stoppages it’s getting the goods onto the trucks.
About a quarter of the parcels in the U.S. move via UPS. The ubiquitous brown trucks crisscross America, shipping 5.2 billion parcels per year, Pitney Bowes says. Those trucks are driven and loaded by more than 340,000 full- and part-time workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union’s contract with the company is set to expire at the end of this month and negotiations haven’t been going well.
“Following marathon negotiations, UPS refused to give the Teamsters a last, best and final offer, telling the union the company had nothing more to give,” the Teamsters say in a news release after negotiations collapsed in the wee hours of July 5.
“This multibillion-dollar corporation has plenty to give American workers — they just don’t want to,” says Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “UPS had a choice to make, and they have clearly chosen to go down the wrong road.”
For its part, UPS says it has in no way left the negotiating table and on July 7, accused the Teamsters of abandoning the process.
