For the past 25 years, the heads of the Teamsters union’s small-package division have led the negotiations with UPS Inc. to hammer out five collective bargaining agreements over that span.
The upcoming contract negotiations, which begin in earnest in the first half of next year, will be very much under new Teamsters management.
General-President Sean M. O’Brien and his second-in-command, Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman, both of whom took office March 1, will be in charge of the negotiations. Johnny Sawyer, who serves as the division’s office coordinator, will likely play a minor role in implementing Teamsters strategy for the UPS (NYSE: UPS) negotiations.
The UPS-Teamsters contract, which typically runs five years, is the largest collective bargaining agreement in North America. The current contract is set to expire July 31. UPS employs about 380,000 Teamsters members.
From 1997 through 2013, Ken Hall, who served as Teamsters secretary-treasurer and head of the package division, was the union’s point person for four UPS contract negotiations. This included the 1997 accord that was ratified only after a 15-day strike in August that virtually shut down the vast UPS network.
The 2018 negotiations, which resulted in the contract that’s currently in force, were overseen by Denis M. Taylor.
Hall retired as Teamsters secretary-treasurer on March 18. He now runs Local 175 in Charleston, West Virginia. Taylor, who left the package director’s role following the recent general election, currently runs Local 570 in Baltimore.
That O’Brien and Zuckerman are taking direct control of the UPS talks underscores the elevated importance of the upcoming contract cycle, the first since the pandemic struck and occurring against a backdrop of high inflation, supply chain congestion and a perception that organized labor has more bargaining leverage than it has had in years.
The upcoming talks are “a top priority” for O’Brien and Zuckerman, according to Ken Paff, national organizer and de facto head of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a dissident group that supported the O’Brien-Zuckerman slate in 2021. TDU was also embroiled in frequent skirmishes with James P. Hoffa, who ran the Teamsters for 23 years.
The hands-on approach, Paff said, will be in sharp contrast with Hoffa’s involvement. Hoffa was “an absentee landlord who never came to negotiations with UPS,” he said.
O’ Brien’s confrontational style also stands in contrast to Hoffa’s more collegial approach in dealings with UPS. Many rank and file believed that Hoffa was too conciliatory in his relationship with the company.
Frustration with then-Teamsters leadership boiled over in 2018 when the tentative UPS contract approved by union leaders was imposed on the rank and file although the contract was rejected by the majority of those who voted on it. Under the union’s constitution at the time, a contract was required to be ratified unless at least two-thirds of voters rejected it. That provision, known as the two-thirds rule, was eliminated in 2021 and replaced by a majority-rule formula.
O’Brien and Zuckerman have long histories with UPS. As the hard-nosed head of Local 25 in Boston, O’Brien repeatedly crossed swords with the Atlanta-based transport and logistics giant. He was warned that the Teamsters will strike UPS if a tentative contract is not reached by Aug. 1.
Zuckerman headed Local 89 in Louisville, Kentucky, which because it was located in UPS’ main air cargo hub employed more UPS workers than any other Teamsters local. During Zuckerman’s tenure, Local 89 was a burr in UPS’ saddle. Zuckerman garnered enough support from UPS workers to nearly unseat Hoffa during the 2016 general election.
O’Brien on April 10 announced a restructuring of the small-package division under which the number of staffers reporting to Sawyer was increased to 38 from 21. According to a union statement, the new operating structure features a streamlined and improved process for addressing every component of the UPS National Master Agreement, which covers union workers nationwide. The contract contains numerous regional and local supplemental accords that address more localized union demands.