Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 12:40:31 -0400 From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: M-I: Yearlong Effort Key to Success for Teamsters August 25, 1997 Yearlong Effort Key to Success for Teamsters By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Early on a brisk March morning, 150 brown-suited drivers and loaders huddled outside the United Parcel Service terminal just off Interstate 80 in New Jersey, chanting: "It's our contract. We'll fight for it." Though it was four months before their contract expired, four months before a strike deadline, these workers in Saddle Brook, like those at rallies in 30 other cities around the country that morning, were already gung-ho volunteers in the Teamsters' efforts to mobilize members to stand up to UPS -- and to stand firm in a strike, if it came to that. The rallies received scant attention, but they turned out to be part of an unusual -- and unusually sophisticated -- mobilization effort that was pivotal in the Teamsters' winning most of what they sought in their 15-day strike against UPS. It was labor's biggest victory in years, and it came in the nation's biggest strike in more than a decade. The Teamsters' yearlong mobilization included scores of rallies at UPS sites as well as other major efforts, like sending questionnaires to 185,000 Teamsters asking what they wanted from the UPS negotiations and collecting 100,000 signatures backing the union's demands. But the union did not neglect minor details: at one point, it distributed 50,000 whistles for use at the rallies. By the time the July 31 strike deadline approached, the Teamsters had turned their UPS membership into a well-oiled juggernaut that the company's leaders underestimated. In dozens of interviews with UPS, union and federal officials, the union's mobilization and the company's misreading of it emerge as the keys to the Teamsters' victory. UPS executives acknowledged several major miscalculations: they did not think there would be a walkout, and they thought the workers were too divided to sustain a strike. One UPS official acknowledged that the company thought it could win the showdown by getting tens of thousands of Teamsters to cross the picket lines. But those hopes were dashed by the union's efforts. Explaining the mobilization strategy, Ron Carey, the Teamsters' president, said: "First, you have to get organized. You have to have something that brings you together. When you are organized, you then create the leverage you need." Company officials asserted that the Teamsters' plans demonstrated that Carey was always intent on calling a strike, rather than settling, to bolster himself politically. They say he wanted to rally his members behind him because he knew a federal official might order a rerun of the vote in which he was re-elected as Teamsters' president last year. In an interview on Friday, the day the federal election overseer did overturn his victory because of illegal contributions, Carey denied that he had ordered the strike for personal political reasons. "That's all bull being spun out by the company," he said. Months of Mobilizing t the Teamsters' convention in Philadelphia 13 months ago, the heavyweight event was the face-off between Carey's forces and those of his election opponent, James P. Hoffa. Tucked in a booth belonging to the union's Parcel & Small Package Division, Rand Wilson was preoccupied with another, distant battle. He was buttonholing dozens of UPS shop stewards and stuffing their pockets with a booklet called "Countdown to the Contract." It contained a month-by-month calendar until the July 31 strike deadline and gave myriad tips on how to escalate pressure on the company and build a communications network to keep workers informed and involved. Ten months ago, Wilson worked with Carey and Ken Hall, director of the Teamsters' parcel division, to draft the survey that asked UPS workers what priority should be placed on creating more full-time jobs and what was more important, wage increases or improved pensions. The survey found that 90 percent of the part-time workers said creating more full-time jobs was very important. That became a bargaining priority because three-fifths of UPS workers are part-timers. On March 7, four days before the company and union began negotiating, the Teamsters flew two representatives from each of the 206 UPS locals to Chicago for a rally. Soon after, rallies began around the nation. On March 10 there were rallies at 10 UPS sites, and on March 25, there were 30. There were even more in April, May and June. All shop stewards received a seven-minute video about the UPS negotiations. The union also gave out tens of thousands of "It's Our Contract. We'll Fight For It" stickers for workers to wear. In mid-July, with the negotiations going nowhere, UPS workers voted 95 percent to 5 percent to authorize a strike. Wilson, who coordinated the mobilization, said after the strike ended that the effort had several purposes. "We believe that the best way to avoid a strike is to show the unity of members," he said. "We hope the company will be more serious about negotiating. In the event of a strike, the advantage is people are well-informed and prepared to do what is necessary to win." The Teamsters Walk s so often happens in bargaining, UPS and the Teamsters faulted each other for making little progress between March 11, when negotiations began in Washington, and the July 31 deadline. The early strategy, both sides say, was to take the three dozen outstanding issues and have them whittled to three or four shortly before the deadline. Then the tightly wound Carey and the company's courtly chairman, James P. Kelly, would thrash out the final issues and proclaim a settlement. But shortly before the deadline, a raft of differences remained over pay, subcontracting, safety and other issues. The two sides grappled over the company's demand to create a UPS-only pension plan, a move the union feared would endanger its multi-employer plans. The company balked at the Teamsters' demand to make 10,000 part-time jobs full-time. When the talks deadlocked early on Thursday, July 31, the two sides telephoned John Calhoun Wells, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, who was working in the Midwest. He jumped on a plane for Washington. "I received a call that it looked like a train wreck was possible," Wells said in an interview. At 6 p.m. he met with the Teamsters' 50-person bargaining team and 20 UPS representatives, but then he invited the chief negotiators to meet with him in his office. Making little progress, he asked the union to extend its midnight strike deadline, and Carey obliged. On July 30, the company had presented what it called its "final offer," but the union rejected it. On August 2, the Teamsters presented a new proposal, but UPS rebuffed it. The talks resumed in Wells' office at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 3. In interviews, several company officials said UPS executives indicated in that session that they might move well beyond their "final" offer. Kelly said he had expected Teamster leaders to begin serious give-and-that at that meeting. But after four hours, Carey walked out and announced the strike for 12:01 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 4. Describing the Sunday talks, Sternad, the UPS spokesman, said, "We made offers on a contract that looked remarkably similar to the one that Teamsters ultimately accepted." He said that UPS even suggested it would withdraw its pension demand. "It didn't become apparent till very late in the game that a strike was planned, that it was going to happen regardless," he said. "It was indeed premeditated." Carey strongly denies that account, insisting that the company offered nothing firm beyond its July 30 offer and nothing close to what the union ultimately accepted. He also denied that UPS had signaled it would withdraw its pension demand. "If anyone should be accused of forcing a strike, it's UPS," he said. "When we were faced with fish or cut bait, which was Thursday night, I agreed to go further. We went the extra mile." A Public War trikes, like wars, are fought on many levels -- sustaining the fighters' morale, propagandizing to court public opinion, working nonstop on logistics and probing one's opponent for weaknesses. To keep its members informed, the union updated its World Wide Web site every few hours, faxed bulletins to Teamster locals and set up a toll-free hot line for strikers. The Teamsters strained to make sure that full-timers and part-timers backed the walkout, and each other. The union convinced many full-timers that UPS's pension proposal would endanger their pensions, a contention the company ridiculed. The union also repeatedly told full-timers that the surge in part-timers endangered their own job security. For their part, the part-timers backed the full-timers' demands because many hoped to become full-time one day. Every chance Carey got, he hammered the part-time issue, knowing that it resonated with a public upset with stagnant wages and corporate downsizing. "America wants to move people from welfare to work," he said, "but with these low-wage part time jobs, UPS is doing just the opposite." Teamster leaders knew that public support was crucial to buoy the strikers' morale and to pressure UPS. The strikers gave out pro-Teamster score cards at baseball games and visited UPS customers to explain the strike. At company headquarters in Atlanta, UPS's generals had several strategies of their own. To neutralize the Teamsters' public relations, the company staged its own blitz, which included ads in more than a dozen newspapers, defending the company's pension proposals and the quality of its part-time jobs. Company officials acknowledge they thought they could win the strike by pressuring Carey to let the rank and file vote on the company's "final" offer -- a vote the company was confident it would win. In advertisements, television appearances and letters to its workers and to Congress, UPS called Carey undemocratic for blocking a vote. . In another strategy, the company pressed President Clinton to seek an injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act to stop the strike. UPS asked its many customers who were being hurt by the strike to flood the White House with letters, going so far as to provide them with sample letters. In the strike's first week, there was far more activity away from the bargaining table than at it. Wells persuaded the two sides to resume talks on Aug. 7. The talks meandered for two days, and finally Kelly walked out on Saturday, Aug. 9. "The position of the Teamsters continues to be unrealistic," he said. "Their position does not allow us to compete." The Endgame hat Saturday afternoon, Wells and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman met at the White House with John Podesta, the president's deputy chief of staff. Fearing that the strike would hurt the economy, the administration decided to upgrade its role and move Ms. Herman to center stage. On Monday, she met separately with Carey and David Murray, the company's chief negotiator. Back in Atlanta, UPS officials saw that things were not going their way. President Clinton indicated he would not invoke Taft-Hartley. Carey refused to allow a vote on the company's prestrike offer. The company was getting clobbered in public opinion polls, strikers' morale remained strong and other unions pledged millions of dollars to pay for strike benefits. And only a few thousand strikers crossed the picket line. "The company thought the full-timers and part-timers wouldn't stick together and a lot of people would start crossing the picket line," said Wayne Fernicola, secretary-treasurer of a New Jersey local. "That really took the steam out of their sails." After talking repeatedly with Ms. Herman and Wells on Tuesday and Wednesday, the two sides resumed negotiations on Thursday at the Hyatt-Regency hotel. They talked from 9 a.m. Thursday to 3 a.m. Friday, and then from 8 a.m. Friday until 5:30 a.m. Saturday. Talks resumed at 8 a.m. Saturday and went until 2:30 Sunday morning. Wells said he told the bargainers on Friday: "Do you both want to have a fight to the death? You can demonstrate to the world that you're sufficiently powerful that you can destroy each other. "I talked about two scorpions in a bottle." According to Wells, the negotiators' positions began to thaw on Saturday. Hall, the union's chief negotiator, said a breakthrough came on Sunday when the company suggested it might withdraw its pension demand. Urged by his advisers to help seal a deal, Clinton weighed in on Sunday, telling the negotiators to redouble their efforts. Early on Monday afternoon, the negotiators said, the overall package emerged as they began wholesale swapping of demands. The company abandoned its pension proposal and accepted the union's demand to make 10,000 part-time jobs full-time, but in five years, not in four as the Teamsters had demanded. The union's main concession was to accept a five-year agreement, instead of a four-year accord. Trumpeting the agreement as a watershed victory for American labor, Carey said, "In virtually every area, this agreement is much, much better than the last offer before the strike." Though UPS officials said they had a multibillion-dollar war chest to withstand a strike, they said they made major concessions because they feared a prolonged walkout would cause them to lose permanent market share to lower-wage, nonunion competitors. Company officials acknowledged that unless they waited months, they were not going to get a Taft-Hartley injunction. "There was no strategy to outlast the Teamsters," said Sternad, the UPS spokesman. "The strategy was to get back to work. It was devastating our business and our customers." 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