I chose my career because I thought I’d have job security. I was wrong. Twice.

Twenty-six years ago I pursued a career in higher education in large part because of the security it appeared to offer. I knew I’d never get rich, but it was far more important to me to have steady, meaningful work.

Little did I realize then that academia was just as volatile as the rest of the labor market. Demographics. Economics. Politics. Culture. Technology. These forces, and more besides, made for a wild roller coaster ride of uncertainty and change in my chosen profession over the last three decades.

The coronavirus pandemic was the last straw for me. When Covid eliminated my position as a university administrator in 2020, I walked away from higher education in search of something more permanent-feeling.

At the time, working for United Parcel Service seemed like a solid, sensible career pivot. Nothing felt more secure and certain than a union-protected job in the straightforward business of moving physical stuff through physical space.

My first few years at UPS proved me right. I couldn’t have started there at a better moment. Business was booming; after just a few months I moved from working in the warehouse part-time to delivery driving full-time.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, there was always more than enough work to go around. Slowly but surely I moved my way up the seniority list, as more and more UPS drivers got hired on after me.

Even the changes of 2023 gave me reason to believe that my situation would only solidify further. The much-anticipated strike never happened. Instead, UPS Teamsters ratified a new five-year contract with historic wage increases.

That April, under the old contract, I was promoted from ‘22.4 driver’ to ‘Regular Package Car Driver’ (RPCD), putting me into a higher wage progression and a Monday-through-Friday work schedule. When the new contract was ratified in August I received my second pay increase of 2023. And in late October, on my third anniversary of driving, I got still another raise – my third in just six months.

When UPS opened up a brand new facility across town that September, I chose to join drivers transferring out there, winning my very first bid route and moving up the seniority list in the process.

Last year closed on a high note. I worked every day of the holiday ‘Peak season’ on my very own route, incident-free, enjoying the milder-than-average winter weather. Life was good!

Then the calendar turned to 2024 and so, it seems, did fortune. With a vengeance!

The annual post-Peak dropoff in volume was greater than usual, as Amazon continued building out its own delivery operations. Just last year Amazon had leapfrogged both UPS and FedEx to become the country’s largest private shipping company by total volume. Now only the U.S. Postal Service delivers more packages.

Meanwhile, in response to the increased labor costs it agreed to last summer, UPS announced it was eliminating 12,000 (non-union) management positions and closing 70 facilities by the end of this year – with 200 total closures by 2028 – resulting in permanent job loss for thousands of UPS Teamsters.

These changes were felt almost immediately in my just-opened building. Drivers started getting laid off¹ in reverse-seniority order in January. By February I’d been moved back to a Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule until further notice. There was one week where every driver with less seniority than me was on layoff – I would’ve been next.

As bad as it was for us, it was even worse for the drivers who’d chosen to stay at my old building. There, drivers with as many years seniority or more than I have were already experiencing extended layoffs.

So far I haven’t been laid off. And about half of the laid-off drivers in my building have been called back intermittently as volume picks up and/or route drivers take vacations. Still, six months on, some of the lowest-seniority drivers are still waiting to be called back to work full-time.² A few have even quit, because they can’t afford to keep waiting.

I’m not out of the woods yet. A few months ago we learned that my previous facility would be partially shut down for at least a year so they could automate operations there, to reduce the total number of inside workers necessary.

Fifteen routes have been reassigned from that building to this, bringing with them fifteen ‘bid drivers’ and five ‘cover drivers.’ All but one of those drivers has more seniority than I do. I’m one person further away from the bottom, but I’m also nineteen people further away from the top. So I’m actually less secure.

There were no new layoffs announced as those twenty drivers arrived this week. Maybe I’m safe through the rest of vacation season and back-to-school? There’s no question I’ll be working during Peak, but after Peak who knows? I’m not ruling anything out.

All the uncertainty has brought a lot of anxiety. Not to mention a lot of empathy for those other drivers who weren’t so lucky. They don’t deserve to be laid off any more than I do.

Exactly four years ago I was in limbo. Now it feels like I’ve come full-circle. Except now I’m four years older. Four years ago I felt up to the challenge of working in a UPS warehouse. Now I’m not so sure.

If the past week has taught me anything, it’s this: that no one’s job is secure forever, not even the President of the United States. Everything changes and comes to an end. Things are never not changing, both inside us and all around us.

Change can be good. It can even be exciting. When it appears to be in our favor, we seek out and welcome change.

Still, change can be scary and hard. Even those we seek out. Sometimes the change is exactly the opposite of what we (think we) want. It can make us uncomfortable or can even hurt us. Sometimes its pace can be dizzying, or its magnitude overwhelming.

Change offers us something new, but it also involves loss. We may not realize in the moment precisely what’s been gained or lost, but we do feel the impact of change nonetheless.

So often we cannot control the changes to our world and to our lives. But we can control how we respond to them.

We can accept the inexorability of change – even those changes we’d never choose for ourselves (or others) – with grace and aplomb.

We can embrace change as opportunities and challenges for ourselves (and others) to grow in new, unexpected, and surprising directions.

And we can try to prepare for change so as to absorb its disruptive impact. If nothing else, we can reflect on earlier changes that we’ve successfully navigated. In between the times that really test us, it’s easy to forget just how smart and strong we are. And how well supported by the people closest to us.

Whether or not I experience a layoff this year or next, there will come a time that I stop being a UPS driver. That time may come sooner than I hope, but whenever it does, I need to be ready.

NOTE: I am the sole author of this blog post. I did not use AI at any point or in any way.

1. When UPS drivers get laid off, by contract they have the right to return to their warehouse for ‘inside work’: reduced hours at the lower part-time pay rate, in shorter shifts that often don’t match the hours they worked as a driver. My new building isn’t a 24-hour operation, so laid-off drivers must work a split shift – before trucks go out in the morning and after they come back in the evening – if they want anything close to an eight-hour day. Laid-off drivers also displace the lowest-seniority warehouse workers, who must then stay home and collect no pay at all. ↩︎
2. Some of these drivers have (far) more time with the company than I do, having stayed in the warehouse longer before going full-time. A few of them even have more driving experience, but have a lower seniority date because of multiple spells as a driver or previous experiences in other facilities. When it comes to layoffs, only your current ‘driving date’ matters, the most recent date you began driving full-time in your current facility. ↩︎