How much money SHOULD a UPS driver make?

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 had already agreed to many non-economic changes that should improve working conditions for UPS Teamsters nationwide – including, most notably, the eventual phase-in of air-conditioned package cars.

The following week, on July 31, representatives from all but 14 of 176 U.S. Teamster locals met in Washington, D.C., to discuss the tentative agreement (TA). The initial vote among these locals was 161-1 in favor; just a few days later, the Louisville, Kentucky-based Teamster local 89 changed its lone ‘no’ vote to ‘yes’ after receiving additional clarifying information.

Now the national TA – along with all the supplemental local and regional TA’s – must be ratified by a vote of the full membership to take effect. If a majority of UPS Teamsters rejects the TA, it would trigger a nationwide work stoppage. That’s right: the possibility of a UPS strike still remains, and is just a few days away.

Earlier this month I received this letter:

The vote outcome is less than certain. There’s a fairly sizable movement online calling for this TA to be voted down. A private Facebook group, ‘Vote NO on the 2023 UPS Contract,’ has 27,000-plus members, and voices of strong opposition can be found across a variety of internet platforms.

Still, I fully expect that this tentative agreement will be ratified, and that the contract will take effect retroactively from August 1.

My confidence is justified. Up until July 25, the union and the company were adversaries. While the Teamsters sought to maximize worker earnings, UPS sought to maximize shareholder earnings. It was a zero-sum game.

Now that an agreement has been reached, however, both are on the same side. Both have strong vested interests in ratification, so now both are talking up the deal to their respective audiences. While Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman – and multiple surrogates they’ve enlisted from the rank-and-file – have been selling the TA to UPSers as an historic, ‘$30 billion win,’ UPS CEO Carol Tomé has been selling it to shareholders and the general public as a ‘win-win-win.’

The pressure is now on UPS Teamsters to go with the bird-in-the-hand. The recurring headline across various news articles lately has been that by the final (fifth) year of the new contract (2027), UPS drivers will earn an average of $170,000 in total compensation.

This is a completely strategic move on the part of the company. The more loudly and frequently it can trumpet this figure across the media landscape, the more public sympathy it hopes to generate in the unlikely event of a strike. If the TA is rejected, the strategy goes, it’s just workers being greedy – even though a majority of UPS employees are part-time and thus will never see total compensation anywhere close to $170,000 per year.

I’ve been transparent about what I’m paid as a UPS driver, and about how the union-negotiated wage progression was a decisive factor in my starting and staying with the company. While I haven’t earned anywhere close to $170,000 in any of my first three years at UPS, it’s likely that my wages, combined with company contributions to my pension and health coverage, already exceed $100,000 per year. (I can’t put a precise dollar amount on my non-wage compensation because it’s not paid directly to me.)

And under the terms of the new TA, the $170,000 figure seems realistic enough within the next five years. I recently received the following information via the UPS Teamsters app about how the proposed wage progression would be applied to drivers like me:

To summarize, between ratification and the time I make ‘top rate’ on my fourth anniversary next fall, I’ll have received four wage bumps, jumping from my current rate of $24 all the way up to $45 per hour. And an additional three bumps await me during the remainder of this contract.

Is that enough? Is it too much? It depends on who you ask.

Some say it’s too much. They’ll tell you that higher wages only drive up shipping costs, as the company passes those increases along to customers. Or they may protest that since the job doesn’t require a college degree, it doesn’t involve any specialized skills demanding a wage premium.

Others say it’s not enough. They’ll remind you that over the past five years UPS made tens of billions in profits off the efforts of its workforce – including its drivers – and it can easily afford to pay them more. Or they may point to all the ways that the long hours of hard work take a toll on drivers’ physical, mental, and relational wellbeing.

These are not just the opinions of outsiders, whether interested or disinterested, informed or uninformed. They’re also the opinions of many insiders, including my fellow drivers.

Opinions among the drivers I’m closest to – many of whom have, like me, been driving for five years or less – run the full gamut. But most have told me that it isn’t the ‘top rate’ that needs to be increased so much as wages in the first few years of the progression, and that the progression itself should be reduced from four to three or even two years. (This had been an actual Teamster proposal that got spent as a bargaining chip during negotiations.)

As for myself, I can say that I have never – not once, not even for a moment – felt overpaid as a UPS driver. I feel that every minute of every shift I work, I give my all to my job and to this company, and I deserve to be compensated accordingly. What’s more, I feel that every raise I’ve received (and have yet to receive) has been (and will be) hard-earned.

So when it came time for me to cast my ballot, I focused on my own self-interest and trusted all my colleagues to do likewise. If 50 percent plus one of them vote to reject the TA, then I’ll be joining them out on the picket line come Wednesday morning.

But with the union joining forces with the company in support of this deal, the shift in momentum away from labor is palpable. My guess is that the majority of UPS Teamsters will – however grudgingly or enthusiastically – vote to ratify, and we will all go to work on Wednesday with visions of bigger paychecks dancing in our heads.

This blog post was 100% written by a human author. Artificial intelligence was not used in any way.