Work at UPS? Tell us what you think about the company’s wages proposal by filling out the form below. All submissions will bEarlier this month, United Parcel Service (UPS) workers voted by a 97 percent margin to strike against the logistics giant’s new labor contract proposal. The company aims to add tiers and further erode wages and working conditions for 340,000 US workers organized under the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, while pledging to strike if a deal is not in place by the time the current deal expires on August 1, has been frantically working to get a deal done before then.
Warehouse workers are the lowest paid section of the company’s workforce. Overwhelmingly part-time and hamstrung by tiers and split shift schedules, the warehouse employees would face an effective wage freeze under the company’s initial compensation proposal. (See “UPS demands new tiers, massive wage concessions in next contract with Teamsters union”)
Jay spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the terrible working conditions in a UPS hub in central Virginia. His name has been changed to protect his identity, out of concerns of management harassment.
“In the warehouse, the water’s not good,” Jay said. “The plumbing is bad. I think the water pipes are tied into the plumbing because the water will make you sick. UPS will normally bring in pallets of water, but there are a lot of dry spells. The bottled water’s not even cold, but at least we get some water that way.”
“There’s no ice,” he added. “They took out the ice machines about six or seven years ago. They said it was mildewing, but they said they didn’t have any maintenance to fix it. They didn’t want to pay anybody to clean it.
“The bathrooms are always out of order. The water’s rising in the toilets with feces sitting in it, and they just put plastic bags on it for months. They hire cleanup crews, but at one point they didn’t have a cleanup crew and you saw mice running across the floor. It just wasn’t getting clean. When the bathroom is out of order, nobody plunges. It’s unhealthy to be breathing that stuff in every day causing mold and flooding.”
“One guy filed a grievance and they took care of one bathroom,” he noted, “but there are other bathrooms in bad shape that they haven’t fixed.”
“The building is old,” Jay told the WSWS. “You really can’t extend our hub to improve it. It’s been here since the 1960s or 70s, and they have not done any renovation besides adding another level for small sort, the small items.” In general, he said, the tools and equipment were also old and in disrepair, including electric mule cars used to haul irregular, heavy packages.

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