A long one from me for a change... it concerns work - past and future - with special attention to the connection between fulltime and part-time jobs. Eva THE PEOPLE OCTOBER 1997 VOL. 107 NO. 7 THE 'NEW ERA' BEGINS-- WHERE TEAMSTERS 'VICTORY' LEAVES U.S. WORKING CLASS Things are not always as they seem, of course, and they are most emphatically not always as they are presented. Take, for example, the recent strike by 185,000 Teamsters against United Parcel Service and the labor contract agreed upon by negotiators that ended it. At a news conference announcing the agreement in August, Teamsters President Ron Carey declared that "after 15 years of taking it on the chin" the strike settlement should be seen as something of a watershed for the American working class. "This is not just a Teamsters victory. This is a victory for all working people." "Working people were on the run" since President Reagan broke the air traffic controllers strike in 1981, "but not anymore," Carey said. "This strike marks a new era." What kind of "new era" does the new Teamsters contract open for American workers, and how are workers to distinguish it from the "old era" when "working people were on the run"? If there is an answer it must be in how the Teamsters union conducted the strike and in what came out of it. During the UPS strike, at least one Teamsters local in Illinois, bound by a separate contract and a no-strike clause, resorted to the ploy of having managers drive UPS trucks through picket lines put up by striking locals and then having its own members climb aboard to drive delivery routes-- presumably to be able to say they honored both their contracts and "labor solidarity." That type of thing is not new with the unions, least of all with the Teamsters union. It can hardly be cited as marking a "new era" on the field of trade union tactics. Of course, what happened in Illinois was not typical of how the strike was conducted. On the whole, the Teamsters resorted to the same tactics they and other unions have used for generations. The exception may be the extent to which the Teamsters tried to use the mass media to publicize the strike-- and the extent to which the mass media accommodated the union in this regard. What prompted some of the media to be as accommodating as it was is something that may be worthy of comment on some other occasion. However, it's reasonably safe to conclude that "bad publicity" about how badly UPS treats its workers was not likely to win much sympathy for those workers among the thousands of small-time capitalists who treat their workers no better and who account for most of UPS's business. Suffice to say that the tactics the Teamsters used did not mark a major departure from the past. So that leaves the new contract that Carey is boasting of as the signal that marks the end of the old and the start of the new era. What's in it? A major issue in the negotiations was the question of part-time versus full-time employment for UPS workers. According to most sources, UPS has increased the ratio of part-time to full-time workers from 42 percent in 1982 to more than 60 percent at present. According to NEW YORK TIMES writer Louis Uchitelle, however, UPS "agreed to create 10,000 full-time jobs from part- time work." The LABOR TRIBUNE, an AFL-CIO weekly published in St. Louis, confirmed this when it reported that the 10,000 full-time jobs will be created "by combining existing, low- wage, part-time positions." This part of the agreement, more than any other, has been cited as proof that the Teamsters won the strike. At first glance, however, the implication is that these 10,000 full-time jobs will be created by combining 20,000 part-time jobs, and that 10,000 of the 20,000 part-timers will be left with no job at all. In other words, the agreement is not that UPS will "create 10,000 full-time jobs," but that UPS and the Teamsters agreed to throw 10,000 part-time workers to the wolves. Whether 10,000 part-timers will actually lose their jobs remains to be seen. Conveniently, however, the new contract provides a loophole that would allow the company to avoid adding to its full-time payroll in times of "economic downturn," and it has already been reported that the company has plans to lay off as many as 15,000 part-time workers to provide full-time jobs to the rest of its part-timers. According to a Reuters news release last month, "the union turned back the company's demand" to take control of the UPS- Teamsters pension plans and won increases in pension benefits. The LABOR TRIBUNE summed up this part of the agreement, as follows: "%Pension increases that are the same or better as the increases the company had already said it would make. But under the Teamster pension plans, not a company-controlled pension plan. Under the Teamsters' largest fund, the Central States Pension Fund, a UPS worker will be able to retire after 30 years service with a pension of $3,000 a month--50 percent more than the current amount." Here again, however, this is not the same as saying that UPS retirees will get 50 percent more than the company was willing to pay in a company-run fund. What the real dollar-and-cents difference was we do not know. What the bone of contention between UPS and the union was is clear, however, and that was which would control the fund. Apparently the union will retain control, but that can hardly be taken as a sign that a "new era" has emerged. The best that can be said is that UPS agreed to leave things as they are. Another Teamsters "victory" was agreement by the company to phase out the use of subcontractors--except during holiday shipping. The LABOR TRIBUNE summed it up this way: "Limits on subcontracting that replace subcontractors with UPS workers so as UPS grows, full-time UPS jobs grow as well." This is typical of the thinking of trade union bosses whose only aim is to control jobs. Union contracts are designed to lock out all workers except those who belong to the union. The ability of a company like UPS to "outsource" or "subcontract" is simply the obverse of the coin showing the extent to which the Teamsters have failed to organize workers of other companies. The LABOR TRIBUNE also reported that the new UPS-Teamsters pact includes "Wage increases of $3.10 an hour for full-time workers, plus an extra dollar an hour for part-timers. That's an increase of more than 15 percent for full-timers...." What 15 percent over five years means, of course, is 3 percent a year, or about equal to the rate of inflation. In effect, it adds up to no gain at all, particularly when it's remembered that the new contract contains no cost-of-living, or COLA, clause. It was also reported by the LABOR TRIBUNE that the new contract includes some "safety protection for workers who handle heavy packages, including a guarantee that if the company ever wants to raise the package weight limit again, it must first negotiate an agreement with the union on a safe way to do it." This question became an issue after UPS workers staged a one- day strike in 1994 when the company arbitrarily increased the maximum weight a worker could be required to lift from 70 pounds to 150 pounds. However, as the LABOR TRIBUNE's report makes clear in spite of itself is that the new agreement does not prevent the company from lifting the weight limit again, much less reduce it to its former level, it merely makes future increases "negotiable." Taken as a "package," the new Teamsters contract with UPS can hardly be described as a "landmark," even for UPS workers, much less for the working class as a whole. That the strike itself wasn't a total catastrophe--leaving, as it did and as all strikes do, the means of production in the hands of employers-- is due more than anything to the company's desire to settle quickly so as not to lose "market share." In today's oversaturated labor market the Teamsters bureaucracy risked the replacement of every UPS Teamster by merely calling a strike and leaving UPS trucks and facilities in the hands of the company. The Teamsters strike was hardly a watershed for U.S. workers. It merely marks another in a long trail of rear-guard actions by the existing unions designed, first and foremost, to maintain duespayers in a period when membership in these faker- led unions has been in decline--causing concern and consternation for the labor bureaucrats whose positions of power and privilege depend upon sufficient dues. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
