WASHINGTON, D.C. — With contract talks in an “intense and critical phase,” Teamsters Union President James Hoffa said on Friday it was up to United Parcel Service to stem its business losses from shippers worried about a strike, a wire service reported.
“The company can stop the bleeding,” Hoffa told reporters as the two sides prepared for a weekend of marathon negotiations. “They can make sure that we get a good contract.”
Earlier, Atlanta-based UPS blamed anxiety over the threat of a strike by its 230,000 unionized workers after July 31 for part of its 3 percent earnings drop in the second quarter.
The world’s No. 1 package delivery company said this week it was losing business to rivals such as FedEx Corp. and Airborne Inc., particularly toward the end of the quarter, because it had not yet reached a deal.
“While we aren’t happy about that, we have told the company that the power to stop the diversion is entirely in its hands,” Hoffa said.
The statement appeared designed to reassure union members that their negotiators would not buckle as talks focus on big-ticket economic items like wages, health care, pensions and the terms covering the thousands of UPS part-timers.
The union has said its members, including those who sort, load and deliver more than 13 million packages a day, will strike if there is no deal by the time its current contract expires on July 31.
A strike in 1997 shut the company down for 15 days, shaking the nearly century-old UPS’s record for reliability and costing it $750 million in lost revenue. A major issue in those talks was the union’s goal of converting more part-time jobs into full-time jobs, which have higher pay and better benefits.
Although Hoffa said the two sides were still apart, he cited progress that had been made in resolving an array of secondary issues and refrained from criticizing UPS managers.
If a settlement is not reached over the weekend, he said he would continue to bargain. Although Hoffa has made sporadic appearances at the bargaining table since the talks began in January, becoming personally involved at this critical point adds a note of urgency to the process.
BIGGEST PRIVATE SECTOR CONTRACT
The UPS contract is not only the biggest for the 1.4 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, it is also the biggest in the private sector to come up for renegotiation this year.
“The contract settlement between the Teamsters and UPS will set the tone for collective bargaining and the conditions of working people throughout the United States and Canada,” Hoffa said. “We take this responsibility very seriously.”
Union bargaining goals are to maintain UPS workers’ full health care coverage, increase pension contributions, raise wages by more than they were raised in the last contract and convert more UPS part-time workers into full-timers.
Teamsters Union spokesman Bret Caldwell said the union has secured a $100 million line of credit to cover strike benefits that range from $85 to $230 a week.