Light Bulb Quest
Just as I’d been predicting, there was no strike at United Parcel Service. Within 24 hours of returning to the bargaining table on July 25, the Teamster national negotiating committee unanimously endorsed a contract proposal that includes across-the-board wage hikes and catch-up raises for longer-term employees, among other economic gains. The union and the company […]
If you’ve been following the news, you know that contract negotiations between United Parcel Service and the Teamsters unexpectedly broke down in the wee hours after the July Fourth holiday. Both sides blamed the other and left the bargaining table without any agreed-on or announced plans to return. This was an abrupt reversal for the […]
United Parcel Service has a history with organized labor that extends all the way back to 1916. That’s when UPS founder Jim Casey invited the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to unionize his workforce. You read that correctly. UPS has a union because it wanted a union, from almost the very beginning. Even now, on its […]
It was supposed to be today. Monday, April 17th, was the date set for the beginning of national contract talks between United Parcel Service and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The current five-year contract expires July 31st. But it already appears that things will not be proceeding according to that mutually-agreed-upon timetable. First, a bit […]
My wife Bethany and I have been together for a long time. Today is our twenty-ninth Valentine’s Day as a couple. Twenty-nine years. That’s long past the candy-and-flowers stage. Past even the Valentine cards stage. Ours was never a storybook romance. We married young and started a family early. A child with special needs. Job […]
This week’s issue of the New Yorker magazine includes a long-form article titled, ‘UPS and the Package Wars.’ Its subtitle is a lot more provocative: ‘The company offers old-fashioned middle-class jobs and is enjoying record profits. So why is a strike looming?’ And the text of the web link is the clever, pithy phrase, ‘Can […]
It’s 2023! Like a lot of people on January 1st, today I find myself reflecting on the year that has just passed and considering the year that lies ahead. I’m a big fan of observing milestones. Crossing a finish line is a big deal for me – always an accomplishment worth celebrating. But as a […]
In the U.S. over my lifetime, Labor Day has served chiefly as a three-day weekend bracketing the ending of summer break from the beginning of the school year. I myself never gave much thought to the holiday until I started researching its origins. All across the country, all throughout the industrial era, the history of […]
In my last post I was feeling pretty good. I’d returned to training for a marathon after a long hiatus, and I believed my new(-ish) job as a UPS driver was helping me train stronger than ever before. Since I’d been setting new records in my training runs of various distances, I flew to Denver […]
In March I commented that the time had been passing quickly since I started driving for UPS. Back then I’d gone a whole month between posts. Now it’s August and I haven’t posted anything for five months! As usual, I’ve been very busy. If you’re a regular reader, you know that my job is more […]