The UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee held an emergency online public meeting Sunday evening, titled \u201cOrganize the rank and file to fight the job cuts at UPS! Unite with autoworkers, tech workers and the whole working class against layoffs!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The meeting was called in response to last week\u2019s announcement of 12,000 job cuts at UPS<\/a>. These layoffs affecting managerial and administrative positions are taking place alongside a series of job cuts at the company\u2019s warehouses<\/a> across the country, as UPS leverages automation and artificial intelligence to replace vast swaths of the workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many workers attended the call, including UPS workers from across the United States, autoworkers, academic workers and workers from other industries. There was also an important international representation from Britain organized under the auspices of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The meeting emphasized the need for a united struggle of workers across industries and national boundaries against layoffs, which are taking place not just at UPS but in industries around the world. In particular, the auto industry is laying off thousands of workers as it transitions toward electric vehicles. A public meeting last month<\/a> held by the IWA-RFC against the auto layoffs was also addressed by several members of the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opening report was given by WSWS writer Tom Hall. \u201cWhat has been announced so far is only the beginning,\u201d he warned. \u201cBy the end of the year and continuing into the next years, UPS intends to operate with a far smaller workforce which is heavily reliant on emerging new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUPS management is leveraging breakthrough technologies in artificial intelligence and automation as its main weapon in this jobs massacre.\u201d These technologies could and should be used to ease the burden of work and improve workers\u2019 standard of living, he said. But under capitalism, they are being \u201cweaponized\u201d in a bid to impoverish workers and \u201ccrush the growing wave of strikes and protests\u201d by the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The layoffs expose the contract pushed through last year by Teamsters leaders who sold the contract as a \u201chistoric\u201d victory, when in reality it was a colossal sellout. \u201cThe bureaucracy is joined at the hip with management and had to have known this was coming when the contract was being voted on,\u201d Hall said. \u201cThe bureaucracy is not simply rolling over. They\u2019re active participants in this conspiracy against workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mass unemployment is a class policy being directed from the White House, which has been involved in the imposition of every major sellout contract for the past three years, as well as the Federal Reserve and both big business parties, Hall said. \u201cThe war at home is connected with the wars abroad. In Ukraine, Gaza and now, over this weekend, new attacks directed against Iran, the US military is launching or supporting dangerous new wars in defense of the profits of US corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs everyone knows, the resources for endless and escalating war come from the backs of the working class,\u201d he said. \u201cThe war on the working class and the wars abroad are two halves of the same war, being carried out in different forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe union bureaucrats are creatures of the state\u201d and support war and dictatorship, Hall warned. He cited the United Auto Workers\u2019 endorsement of \u201cGenocide Joe\u2019s\u201d re-election campaign<\/a>, as well as the continued courting of Trump<\/a> by the Teamsters bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee rejects this entire framework,\u201d he concluded. \u201cA counteroffensive can and must be waged by the rank-and-file only to the extent that you break free from the stranglehold of the union bureaucracy. \u2026 You must take matters into your own hands, taking any and all measures you deem necessary, without waiting for permission that will never come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hall ended his remarks by citing the three founding principles proposed in a recent statement<\/a> by the UPS Rank-and-File Committee to guide a counteroffensive in defense of jobs. This includes \u201cmaximum initiative of the rank and file,\u201d rather than a perspective of pressuring the union bureaucracy; the rejection of the \u201cright\u201d of UPS to profit at workers\u2019 expense and the conversion of the giant logistics company and other major corporations into public utilities democratically run by workers themselves; and, finally, the fight for the unity of workers across the globe who are facing the same attacks on jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hall was followed by a leading member of the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee from Louisville, Kentucky. He spoke in detail about the impact of automation and other new technologies. \u201cThe working class is going to get hollowed out in the next 20 years,\u201d he warned. He urged attendees to educate their coworkers about what is taking place. \u201cIt is time for working people to stand up and organize to fight what is coming, because the people that \u2018represent\u2019 us, both in government and the union bureaucracy, do not have our backs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A member of the committee from New York City said, \u201cRight now, the union is not only stonewalling us, they\u2019re gaslighting us. At my building in mid-Manhattan, they got rid of the midnight sort. Low seniority part-timers already know their time is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A committee member from South Texas urged attendees to take action. \u201cReach out to your fellow brothers and sisters, let them know about the rank-and-file committee.\u201d He continued, \u201cThis is more than on a local level, this is on a national level, and we all need to come together \u2026 to stand up against the big corporations, to stand up against the billionaires and millionaires.\u201d Let\u2019s \u201cmake this rank-and-file committee something bigger than the IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters], than the United Auto Workers\u201d bureaucracies, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several other UPS workers spoke during the meeting. A worker from Portland, Oregon, where UPS announced hundreds of layoffs<\/a> over the weekend, spoke about the impact the cuts will have on workers at the company\u2019s Swan Island hub. He then denounced the Teamsters\u2019 \u201croundtable\u201d meeting with Trump late last month, pointing out that this meeting with a coup plotter and fascist was organized with tens of thousands of dollars in workers\u2019 dues money. Teamsters General President Sean O\u2019Brien \u201cseems more concerned with bootlicking fascists than protecting jobs on the shop floor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A UPS driver from Kansas City told the meeting he had been laid off more than a dozen times last year. Now, the union is calling a meeting with feeder and package drivers in his area, \u201cwhich they\u2019ve never done before,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m assuming that cuts are coming for us,\u201d he predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A number of significant contributions from autoworkers were made. Anna, a member of the Flint GM Rank-and-File Committee, declared, \u201cWe at [GM\u2019s Flint, Michigan Assembly Plant] are in solidarity with UPS workers and with all workers. We are facing the same problems and have the same interests internationally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greg, another member of the GM Flint committee, drew parallels between the campaigns to install Shawn Fain as president of the UAW and Sean O\u2019Brien as president of the Teamsters. Both were \u201cpraised by the media, by Bernie Sanders, and by the fake socialists in the [Democratic Socialists of America].\u201d Both of them claimed to have passed contracts that were \u201chistoric,\u201d he said, but \u201cthe reality is the exact opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTheir treachery extends to the level of the government,\u201d he continued, citing the endorsement of Biden amid the White House\u2019s involvement in the genocide in Gaza. \u201cWe don\u2019t support Joe Biden,\u201d he declared. \u201cBut Trump\u2019s fascism is just as harmful to us as Biden. We need to oppose both of these parties and fight for our independent interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greg reviewed the history of the GM committee, which fought against the limited \u201cstand up strike\u201d that was used to present the contract as the product of a fight. \u201cOur rank-and-file committee had warned workers [of the sellout] before it happened \u2026 our strength comes from telling workers the truth beforehand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He concluded: \u201cI just want to stress that these companies \u2026 are part of an international system. Workers around the world are facing the same issues. We are being made to pay for the crisis of capitalism. And so I urge everyone to talk to your coworkers like we have at Flint. Expose the truth and build a network of committees under the IWA-RFC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greg\u2019s remarks were echoed by Will Lehman<\/a>, a socialist Mack Trucks worker who ran against Fain for UAW president in 2022, on a platform of abolishing the bureaucracy. \u201cThe unions try to divide us up based on what industry we\u2019re in,\u201d Lehman said, but \u201cthe working class is the working class, whether it\u2019s in the US, in the UK, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen. It doesn\u2019t really matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to approach these issues as class issues,\u201d he concluded. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of us uniting with each other, no matter where we are, and no matter what sector we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n