UPS wraps up holiday peak season by announcing another building closure
Los Angeles, CA – As the holiday peak season wraps up, after workers around the country toiled away for a surge in parcel deliveries, the United Parcel Service (UPS) plans again to shutter large facilities due to automation.
On January 15, the UPS facility in Vernon, California, also known as the Grande Vista hub, will be shutting its doors for a year-long closure. The purpose of the closure is for building renovations and the automation of various classifications, part of UPS’s larger “Network of the Future” project, which aims to automate union jobs to reduce labor costs.
Grande Vista is one of 200 hubs around the country that UPS plans to close for automation. The closure is expected to affect over 1000 workers who are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
During the closure UPS has claimed that they would offer the Grande Vista employees temporary transfers to other facilities “within reasonable commuting distance.” One of the options is in a neighboring city, Bell, but the other options are 25 to 60 miles away, in San Fernando and the Inland Empire region of the state. Since bidding goes by seniority, it is anticipated that higher seniority workers will take most available spots at the Bell facility, which can only house about 160 employees, and the hundreds of lower seniority employees will be forced to go to the further buildings, choose layoff, or quit.
UPS has been slow to communicate with Grande Vista workers and the local union about the upcoming changes and options for employees. Many workers fear for their jobs and livelihood.
Some rank-and-file union members are taking matters into their own hands and have decided to fight back against this blatant effort to demoralize workers into retiring, choosing layoff, or quitting. These outspoken workers are demanding closer options for workers to commute to and pointing out that San Fernando and the Inland Empire are not “within reasonable commuting distance.” So far, they have gathered hundreds of petition signatures and say they plan to present those petitions to the company and the public.
Alejandro Orellana is a union shop steward at the Grande Vista site and said, “We have to show UPS that we are united in denouncing automation, even if this changes nothing, least we can say is that we tried rather than stood by and do nothing. We are fighting for our lives and our future. Automation kills jobs and we the Teamsters should not be complacent to the termination of Teamster jobs in favor of an automated workplace.”
Once the automation and retrofit operations are completed, many workers are expected to be reclassified to fit the company’s needs. For the Teamsters at Grande Vista UPS, fighting back against this closure and automation is part of a long fight to save workers’ jobs.