Louisville, KY – The Teamsters Local 89 E-Board has unanimously voted to recommend a “no” vote on the UPS National Master Agreement (NMA) and the UPS Central Region Supplement (CRS). Local 89 represents about 10,000 Teamsters at UPS.

According to a July 27 statement from the local, the proposed 22.4 Combination Driver classification, along with the new wage system, are major concerns in the tentative UPS National Master Agreement.

According to the Local 89 statement, “The new 22.4 classification will effectively create a two-tier wage structure that has never before been in place. We have no doubts that the Company will use this second tier in future negotiations to weaken and downsize our traditional package car jobs in favor of these lower-paid 22.4 positions. It is also clear that the Company’s intent with these jobs is not to simply lessen the overtime burden on our package car drivers but remove it altogether in order to shift it onto 22.4 drivers who will make significantly less money, therefore providing UPS with tremendous savings.”

The statement also noted, “On wages, we took the position early on that the starting pay rate should be increased to $15, with an additional bump in pay for all existing part-time workers to separate them from this new starting pay and reward them for their years of service to the Company. While the proposed changes will phase the starting pay up to $15.50 by the final year of the agreement, there is no reason that UPS cannot do so immediately. Further, the proposed changes fail to give any sort of bump whatsoever to existing part-time workers aside from bringing those who are below $13 up to that rate, which is what new hires will be making retroactively to August 1 of 2018.”

On the issue of the Central Region Supplement, it is stated “our members and those across the Region have long sought changes to Article 17, in particular 17i, which gives UPS broad authority to terminate our members for ofaten unclear violations. This language needs to be either tightly defined or removed altogether. The changes made to 17i in this proposed agreement does little and perhaps nothing to clear up the vagueness that plagues this particular language.”

The leadership of Local 89 says that these are only some of the reasons to vote against the UPS National Master Agreement (NMA) and the UPS Central Region Supplement (CRS).

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