UPS, Teamsters Reach Tentative Agreement for 11,000 Freight Workers
UPS Inc. and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have reached a tentative agreement on a new five-year contract that will cover an estimated 11,000 UPS Freight employees, the package delivery giant and union announced July 13.
The deal comes three weeks after the two sides reached a tentative agreement on a contract that covers an estimated 250,000 UPS drivers, loaders, package sorters, dockworkers and operations team members. The freight employees are members of a different bargaining unit.
In this latest round of bargaining, the sides had been at the negotiating table since July 9 discussing economic and subcontracting issues.
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Neither the company nor the union are announcing specific details of the tentative contract until leaders from the Teamsters local unions that represent the freight workers meet in the next few weeks to review and approve it for a full membership ratification vote.
The union said once that meeting is concluded, more information will be made public.
UPS did release a short statement to Transport Topics which read, in part, “UPS’ goal for the freight and small-package agreements has been to reward the company’s employees for their contributions to its success while enabling the business to remain flexible to meet its customers’ needs.”
UPS and the Teamsters union are at the bargaining table working on several local agreements and supplemental language to the tentative deal with the drivers, loaders, package sorters, dockworkers and operations team members. While those negotiations take place, the company and union recently announced they had agreed to extend for several weeks the current contract, which is set to expire July 31. The agreed upon pay raises, which will make a driver’s base pay more than $83,000 a year, would be retroactive to Aug. 1, and the contract language changes would start once the deal was ratified.
UPS ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America.
