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Teamsters locals overwhelmingly endorse UPS tentative contract

Tentative agreement now goes to rank-and-file for ratification vote

Mark Solomon
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UPS rolls out program to mitigate package theft (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

By a vote of 161-1, Teamsters local unions representing 340,000 full- and part-time workers at UPS Inc. (NYSE: UPS) voted Monday to endorse the tentative five-year agreement reached with the delivery giant on July 25 and recommend its passage by the full membership.

Of the 176 local unions with UPS members, 14 affiliates failed to show up to a meeting in Washington, D.C., to review the tentative agreement, the Teamsters said.

The agreement now moves to the rank-and-file, which will have the chance to vote on ratification from Aug. 3-22.

The gains achieved during negotiations, which occurred regionally and nationally since January, are larger and more lucrative than any previous Teamsters contract at UPS, the Teamsters have said. 


The tentative agreement, which the Teamsters said is valued at $30 billion, establishes sizable wage increases for all workers for the life of the contract, installation of air conditioning in new vehicles, the end of a controversial two-tier wage system, catch-up raises for part-timers, Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday for the first time, and new language to prevent forced overtime on days off.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.