UPS and the Teamsters Union have reached a tentative agreement on working conditions for the shipping company’s 340,000 unionized employees, the two sides announced Tuesday.
The agreement, if ratified, would avoid a strike Biggest in 60 years.
The Teamsters called the five-year deal “highly lucrative” and said it “raises wages for all workers, creates more full-time jobs, and includes dozens of workplace protections and improvements.”
The new contract raises the starting wage for part-time workers to $21 an hour, up from the current contract wage of $15.50, and includes catch-up raises for longtime workers. Full-time workers will see their top hourly rate rise to $49 an hour.
“Rank-and-file UPS Teamsters sacrificed everything to get this country through a pandemic and help UPS reap record-setting profits,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “We asked for the best deal in UPS history, and we got it.”
The contract also provides for air conditioning in the trucks, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day pay and full-time positions. Team players.
“This agreement continues UPS’s industry-leading wages and benefits for full- and part-time employees. Report.
Pay for part-time workers has been a major sticking point in the negotiations, with many employees rejecting the two-tier pay system in the current contract—which most UPS workers rejected, but which came into effect on a technicality. New Teamsters leadership called it “unfair,” and the tiered system would end under the new contract.
Buoyed by a pandemic that has changed how Americans get their stuff, UPS has posted record profits for the past two years.
Voting on the deal begins on August 3 and ends on August 22.
