Today [June 28], the International Brotherhood of Teamsters walked away from the national bargaining table and officially demanded UPS exchange its last, best, and final offer no later than June 30.
The Teamsters gave UPS a one-week notice on Tuesday to act responsibly and exchange a stronger economic proposal for more than 340,000 full- and part-time workers. UPS executives couldn’t make it one more day without insulting and ignoring union leaders and rank-and-filers as negotiations resumed on Wednesday.
“The largest single-employer strike in American history now appears inevitable,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien.
With a deadline of Friday to return a last, best, and final offer, UPS risks putting itself on strike by August 1 and causing devastating disruptions to the supply chain in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Teamsters nationwide overwhelmingly authorized a strike this month by 97 percent should UPS fail to come to terms on a new contract. UPS’s impending failure is one step closer to reality and has the potential to affect nearly all Americans.
There's one bright spot to the mainstream media being terrified of bringing attention to potential strikes: no-one in my workplace seems to know anything about this. And we depend pretty heavily on rush deliveries of specialized replacement parts for our factory machines. Our parent company has mandated that all shipments from the US into our Canadian branch be via UPS because they negotiated discounts with UPS. If this strike happens, it's going to strand a whole lot of our very expensive replacement parts in UPS warehouses.
When I saw this news I briefly debated letting co-workers know about so they could plan ahead and ship via other carriers, but I've decided "fuck it". I want to enjoy the chaos.