By: A New Dayer

I am 26 years old, I have worked at UPS since I was 18, which means I’ve been a Teamster for basically my entire adult life. I consider myself a real student of UPS and the Teamster rank-and-file. The amount of time I spend reading about UPS—from quarterly reports to labor-liberal analysis of “trade union struggle” to internal UPS documentation to bourgeois logistics experts to history books to bland IBT public relations statements—is, frankly, unhealthy. I even torture myself on occasion with the idiotic podcasts about UPS. I am constantly listening to my coworkers talk about their issues with the company. I feel like I’ve gathered about as much information as any single person possibly could, yet basic facts like the average pay rate of the UPS worker are still unknown to me because the IBT and UPS systematically cover up fundamental aspects of the operation. (For instance, the number of deaths on the job in a year; as of March 5, I only know of 2 this year that were reported in the bourgeois press.) As important as it is that the rank and file “do their homework”, it can be easy to lose sight of the day-to-day grind of the trade union struggle. Therefore, I would like to lay out my own experiences with the IBT, and what I try to do differently as a trade-unionist.

My very first interaction with the union was being told on no uncertain terms yes, the union imposed a horrible sellout agreement that puts you at minimum wage, no we cannot do anything about it and we will not help you lead a slowdown. This was in 2018. I had already worked at UPS for a few years and had no contact with the union in that time, although I closely followed it in the news. I was justifiably interested in the contract negotiations, and extremely irritated when I was put at minimum wage while also having to pay union dues. I raised the possibility of a slowdown to the steward, thinking that we could force UPS to pay for its low wage via reduced productivity. The steward shot this down instantly. Me and another furious part timer (who quit UPS within a year if I remember correctly) spontaneously tried to do it anyway, completely sabotaging a belt for the remainder of the sort, but we gave up after a supervisor threatened us both and it was obvious we were completely on our own.

My second interaction was being told off by a steward after I sent an email to the BA saying someone told me their relative in another part of the building was being severely physically mistreated. (This steward would later be unceremoniously removed from duty for allegedly stealing grievance money that was meant for a person out on injury.) One thing about this conversation that always bothered me was the implication from the steward that the person wasn’t actually harmed, they were just new and did not know how things were done. The complete disinterest in the physical safety of the employee, and the willingness to accept management’s excuses at face value, and the subsequent chewing-out I got, were a permanent stain on the union local in my eyes. Yet I was still naive, and would remain that way until 2020.

Early 2020, I was told the $100 (I think) weekly bonus we had (since UPS couldn’t keep the place staffed at minimum wage) was being removed, bringing my pay rate to $13.50 and reducing my weekly check by about 25%. I distinctly remember being told this and going back into the load headed for Springfield, MA and putting on the then-new “Stop Staring at the Shadows” by $uicideboy$ and just kind of dissociating from resentment at my life. I had graduated from the nearby state university in 2019 while working at UPS and a nearby government preschool (to help pay for school) and all that I had accomplished since then was a pay cut. But once again I was completely caught off guard by my own naivete, because it got way worse over the next few months. In fact, it was then that my hope for the IBT as a supposed “trade union” meant to lead and organize us as workers was completely and irreparably shattered.

The point of no return for how I viewed the union was the COVID crisis. Volume was absolutely through the roof, to the point where work was more like a warzone. Packages would just be falling off belts onto the floor where people were walking, trucks and pedestrian doorways would be barricaded off by packages (and still are a lot of the time), injuries and sickness were rampant to the point of ambulances getting called every week, and I was making about half what unemployment paid. The union stewards had no inkling of initiative, and the higher ranking officials openly surrendered. (It has been pointed out before by the New Labor Press that the IBT and most other state unions joined with the Trump administration, state/municipal governments, and capitalists to help enforce labor discipline during the COVID crisis, but in my opinion this fact has never gotten anywhere near the recognition it deserves.) So there’s just no point, they exist just to leech off dues money. If there was one time when they should have and could have done something, it was 2020. They chose not to, so why should I waste any time or money on them when I know for a fact they won’t lift a finger even at the point of UPSers dying?

My third interaction, years after all this, was being outright threatened by unknown associates from a different local for telling workers that the IBT was lying about organizing a strike and that I and other UPSers were actually trying to organize people under a specific strike program with New Day. I was told on no uncertain terms, “You don’t have the right” and physically harassed. It’s poetic, really. The one thing common across all my interactions with the union is being told no, you can’t do that, you’re not allowed to do anything about the company or the union’s blatant corruption, and we’ll deal with you if you step out of line.

In actual fact, even basic questions are met with extreme hostility. I asked my business agent what the plan was in the event of a majority “no” vote on the contract, expecting an answer like “we will go back to negotiations” or “we will start organizing a strike,” but instead he snapped back that he didn’t know and has nothing to do with those decisions. The stewards aren’t really any better. They are kept in a state of artificial scarcity by the local (since more stewards means more grievances which means more work to do I guess) and they never have any answers for anything and frequently contradict each other and the contract. They straight up do not take the UPS workers seriously at all, offering canned responses to basic inquiries, such as whether contract negotiations would affect full time wage progression, which had been changed from 90 days to 4 years. The best thing I can say about them is that they are left completely disarmed by the IBT, so I can’t really blame them for their apathy and privilege-seeking.

A lot of them are just outright reprehensible though. The “union guys” are the ones wearing Confederate apparel and blasting Tom MacDonald over their portable speakers. They’re clowns, “good old boys” plain and simple, they don’t even bother with a superficial “progressive” facade. They essentially spent years teaching me that they have nothing to do with the trade union struggle whatsoever; then when we point this out publicly the “Marxists” think they can lecture us about unity and solidarity. It’s a complete circus. The “pro-union” people are the least safe, productive, or in any way concerned with their coworkers. They deliberately sabotage their coworkers either for their own benefit or just because they are massive pricks. In fact, they are “pro union” precisely because the state union incentivizes this behavior and makes it impossible to impose any sort of discipline that could lead to solidarity.

I hate the liberal “pro-” vs “anti-union” framing. Obviously it’s easy to be “pro-union” when the union is paying you 6 figures to do nothing, allows you to get away with petty corruption, or just shovels money into your PAC or whatever. It’s literally just a medium for the older guys to screw the younger guys out of whatever minor concessions the company is supposed to provide, or maybe make a little extra money from filing grievances. The best case scenario is that the state union works like a functional HR department dressed up in “organized labor” garb; the worst case is it’s a fascist gang; for the most part, they are a complete non-factor in day to day life. They are completely hostile to the average worker on just a personal level. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say where I work there is a union of scabs. They steal the work of people who make half their wage just because they don’t feel like doing their actual job. They trade away people’s grievances to management in exchange for petty privileges, they steal other people’s work if they don’t feel like working their actual bid, they rat people out, and are just generally awful people to work around.

In complete contrast to all this, I purposely take on the toughest work and go out of my way to aid struggling new hires. I pay close attention to the struggles of my coworkers, I give advice when I can and always propose collective action as the only real recourse we have. To the limited extent that I have established myself as a leader in the trade union struggle, this leadership is based on my outsized role in production (I recall one month I had 8k more packages loaded than the second most productive loader who did 30k), my knowledge of the technical aspects of the job and social relations, my attempts at real theoretical and practical leadership, and my consistent work for trade union unity. The Teamsters have created a perpetual war of all-against-all on the shop floor; despite this, through the shop paper I have seen glimpses of what could be.

Nothing is more rewarding for me than approaching a co-worker about our trade union organizing efforts and finding out that their friend already showed them the shop paper. (Multiple times I’ve been given a puzzled look and asked, “you’re in on it too?”) People go out of their way to get the latest edition of the shop paper or tell me they’re having this or that issue because they want to see it printed or want to know if other people are having similar problems. It is a legitimate source of pride for me that I and others are building up a platform for our coworkers to air their grievances, understand how and why they are being screwed, and actually begin to struggle collectively as workers, as part of a class. But the flipside to this is it legitimately pisses me off when the socialist intelligentsia downplays our problems, writes outright slanders against us under the guise of theoretical analysis, or just generally belittles the significance of the underground workers’ press and wildcat economic action.

The trade unions are supposed to be a school of socialist administration, class warfare, where workers can learn about their shared interests and actively pursue them, not an alternative welfare or human resources office riddled with red tape. To the workers I say, don’t wait for the state unions and the “reformist” activists to hand you the trade union struggle. This is an incorrect view of the trade union struggle. The passive attitude of waiting for the green-light from the bureaucrats or even coworkers is in fact a liquidation of trade union work.

For the vast majority of my time as a Teamster my pay was less than McDonalds crew members in the area. But I stuck with my job because I legitimately like it on some level and I want to fight for the logistics workers. I like knowing what goes where, I like the combination of physical and mental labor, I like learning all the different parts of the operation, I like talking to drivers from other states and the diverse crowd I work with daily, I like being in a workplace where I’m doing social labor but don’t have to interact with customers and can just listen to audiobooks or whatever if I want, and I like personally playing an outsized role in the economy. Millions of dollars of goods passes through my hands on a daily basis, including essentials like food and medicine. But this constitutes a real burden too.

In 2020 the entire economy was dumped into our lap and I got nothing to show for it. The things I’ve seen, and the things I do on a daily basis, are incomprehensible to the bulk of the civilian population. You don’t understand what a 500 pph (packages per hour) actually means until you’ve done it 8+ hours a day for years. People in the logistics industry and outside of it can’t even comprehend the full scope of their ignorance; I have only barely scratched the surface through my contributions to the shop paper and the shop floor organizing efforts. Ignorance is a collective problem of the logistics workers and we have barely made a dent in it, although even just a year and a half of New Day has accumulated infinitely more knowledge than the barren columns of Jacobin and Cosmonaut, where the liberal professors and aspiring pseudointellectuals write such idiotic slogans as “Tiktok as class struggle”. The Brazilians say, “He who fights the least loses the most.” I say it’s been 50 years of losing for the UPS workers under the IBT national contract, now it’s time for fighting.