The Upsurge

Originally published on June 29, 2023. Happy Pride Month! In this bonus episode, we're sharing the efforts that LGBTQ+ Teamsters are engaging in to fight for liberation at UPS, other Teamsters employers, the union itself, and beyond. We spoke with Andrew Rivas, a UPS package car driver and political coordinator of Teamsters Local 533 in Reno, Nevada. He is also on the board of the relatively n...

Originally published on June 15, 2023. The 1.2-million-member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) is one of the largest and most powerful private sector unions in the country. Unfortunately, it has embodied some of the worst elements of business unionism over the decades. But a reform movement is burgeoning to change that. We've covered the role of Teamsters for a Democratic Union in bri...

Originally published on May 8, 2023. Hollywood television and movie writers are on strike! In this bonus episode of The Upsurge, Teddy and Ruby will take you to the picket lines in Manhattan. Hear from a number of writers – including Ruby's dad! – why they laid down their pens. * Hosted by Teddy Ostrow Edited by Teddy Ostrow & Ruby Walsh Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership wi...

Originally published on April 13, 2023. Matt Cavagrotti is a part-time UPSer out of Teamsters Local 519 in Knoxville, Tennessee. But unlike most of his part-time union siblings, he heads to the airport for work. Matt is one of more than 15,000 "air workers" at UPS, who are responsible for sorting, preloading and unloading the millions of packages aboard the over 2,000 daily flights to 70...

Originally published on March 30, 2023 On Dan Arlin's second day back as a package car delivery driver at UPS, after a three-year stint driving tractor-trailer trucks, he was fired – without explanation – and walked off company property. The 23-year veteran of UPS is a pro at his job. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but the company didn't like one thing: his union activism. Harassment a...

The Big Three have fallen like a house of cards. The UAW's historic Stand Up strike has come to an end – for now, at least. After forty-four days on the picket line, the Auto Workers have reached tentative agreements with each of the Big Three automakers. GM was the last domino to fall on October 30, just days after Ford and then Stellantis acquiesced to their own tentative deals. 50,000 strik...

Nearly five weeks into the UAW's historic Stand Up Strike, there are just under 34,000 Big Three Auto Workers on strike in assembly plants and parts depots across the country. The latest escalation came on Wednesday, October 11, when the union called on 8,700 Ford workers at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Kentucky, to walk off the job.  For this episode, we're bringing you a UAW S...

The UAW's Stand Up Strike is alive and growing. More than 18,000 auto workers across the Big Three – Ford, GM and Stellantis – are on strike across twenty states, and just a few hours after this episode posts, thousands more will likely join them. The Fiery Labor Fall is here. In this episode, we bring you on the ground of UAW picket lines and rallies across three states – Michigan, Ohio, and...

The hot labor summer isn't over yet.  In a week's time, the United Auto Workers may launch a strike of 150,000 of its members if the Big Three automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) – fail to meet the workers' demands in a new contract by September 14.  You see, the Big Three made a quarter-trillion dollars in profits over the past decade. And with non-un...

On Tuesday, August 22, the Teamsters union announced that its members voted to ratify the national UPS contract by 86.3% –  and with record turnout. Workers won significant raises, the abolition of the two-tier driver system, air conditioning in package cars, thousands of new full-time jobs, and more.  In our previous episode, we discussed the gains of the tentative agreement and the years of Team...

UPS Teamsters nationwide are voting on the tentative agreement for the largest private-sector labor contract in the United States. The vote will end on August 22. A majority decision will determine whether the contract is ratified, or the national negotiating committee will return to the bargaining table and potentially call a strike. In this episode, we explore the highlights of the tentative agr...

On July 25, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reached a tentative agreement with UPS just days before the current contract was set to expire on July 31. If a new deal was not reached this week, 340,000 UPS workers were prepared to hit the picket line on Aug. 1 in what would have been one of the largest strikes in US history. The contract negotiations process has been a roller coaster, fil...

With one week till the strike deadline, UPS and the Teamsters have agreed to resume negotiations on July 24. A deal is still possible and workers' pressure is proving effective. The Teamsters have already won tentative agreements on several key issues. UPS has pledged to end two-tier pay for drivers, install air conditioning in new trucks, and curtail forced overtime. But the Teamsters aren’t...

The United Auto Workers' contract negotiations at the Big 3 automakers – Ford, GM, and Stellantis – just began. Their current labor contracts expire in mid-September, and the new UAW leadership has been crystal clear: they're not afraid to take 150,000 of its members out on strike if their demands aren't met. This would be less than two months after the potential strike of 340,000 Team...

Negotiations between UPS and the Teamsters have collapsed after disagreement over part-time wages. With less than a month from contract expiration, the largest single-employer strike in US history is looking more and more likely. We have another two-part episode this week. First, an update on the contract campaign. The Teamsters gave UPS two deadlines for their last, best, and final offer on propo...

The results are in: 97% of UPS Teamsters voted to authorize a strike if their demands are not met by August 1. Local unions around the country will practice picket lines starting next week. The clock is ticking. For this episode, we've got a two-parter. First, an update on the contract campaign and negotiations, which have moved onto big-ticket economic items this week. UPSers across the natio...

Amazon: The company we hate to love, for its convenient next-day deliveries, and we love to hate, for its egregious treatment of the workers that execute that miracle. It really needs no introduction. Amazon is a corporate giant with 1.5 million employees, most of which are in the Teamsters' bread and butter industry: logistics, meaning warehouse workers and delivery drivers. Only, these worke...

UPS is a patriarchal corporation – on the corporate and labor side. Whether it's sexual harassment or pregnancy discrimination, women at UPS confront particular workplace issues because of their gender. We spoke with Michelle Espinoza, a feeder driver out of Teamsters Local 135 in Indianapolis, about the gender discrimination she's battled at the company and the work she's doing to hel...

The word "logistics'' has somewhat of an impersonal ring to it. When you hear it, you think: massive container ships, cranes, eighteen wheelers, aircrafts, conveyor belts, spreadsheets, contracts, and of course, boxes. It's almost as if all of this infrastructure that moves our goods around the world, around the clock, is running by itself.  But undergirding "logistics"...

Negotiations on the national labor contract at UPS have begun. And while CEO Carol Tomé has insisted that the company and the union are "not far apart on the issues," their behavior at the bargaining table suggests otherwise. In bargaining sessions for regional contracts across the country, UPS is sometimes just not showing up, they're demanding concessions from the union, and they&#...

Things are shifting for the labor movement in the US. In the past few years, we've seen increases in unionization campaigns, strikes, and public approval of unions. But do these upticks in labor activity amount to a labor upsurge? To explore this complex and exciting labor moment, we spoke with Barry Eidlin , associate professor of sociology at McGill University and the author of Labor and the...

Justin Alo looks and sounds like your friendly, everyday UPS delivery driver in San Marcos, California. He drives the brown package truck, he wears the brown uniform, and he delivers, well, packages. But there are some key differences between him and other drivers. For example, he makes substantially less money per hour, he has fewer job protections, and he has to work on Saturdays. In other words...

It was a brutally hot day in New York City last summer for Chris Cappadona, a UPS package car driver with no AC in his delivery truck. Early on his route, his hands started to lock up, and he found himself unable to breathe. Desperate, he jumped out of the back of his vehicle, but the hundred-plus-degree weather gave him no relief. Thankfully, nearby sanitation workers saw him struggling, gave him...

Elbe Lieb is a UPS worker in Bloomington, Indiana, but you wouldn’t know she worked for the company if you saw her on the street, or even if you saw her on the job. That’s because Elbe isn’t one of the package car drivers that we all interact with. She is part of the company’s “silent majority” — the part-time warehouse workers. In this episode of The Upsurge, we're doing something different. This...

In 1997, Rand Wilson was in the war room. Though his opponent didn't really know that a war was afoot. In the Parcel and Small Package division of the Teamsters union, Rand was strategizing to prepare 185,000 UPSers to strike, if they needed to, when their labor contract expired that summer. By August, they were prepared, and they did strike. And in the end, they won. In this episode of The Upsurg...