UPS Teamsters strike & Justice for Janitors

The following is excerpted from the book “Low-Wage Capitalism,” a Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the U.S. working class by Fred Goldstein, published in the fall of 2008. Beginning with our issue of July 1, Workers World has been running excerpts from Part 3, “Lessons from the Past for Future Struggles.” The wide range of struggles covered, from the 1930s to the present, shows the capacity of the U.S. working class to engage in militant struggle at great sacrifice. The willingness of the rank-and-file workers to fight back against the anti-labor offensive of the last 30 years shows that the decline in the labor movement was not inevitable. This week’s excerpt gives two more concrete examples of militant struggle. For information about the book, visit www.lowwagecapitalism.com.

1997: UPS Teamsters

The strike against United Parcel Service was a powerful one that fought to reverse concessions, which had begun in 1982. The company had won the right to create a two-tier, part-time system of employment. In August of 1997 the 185,000 members of the UPS division of the Teamsters union waged a 15-day strike that electrified the labor movement and the working class as a whole. Despite compromises made in the final settlement, it was understood, rightly so, as the first major victory for a significant section of the working class after two decades of defeat and retreat.

The strike was led by Teamsters President Ron Carey, who had democratized the union during his tenure. It was won by meticulous planning for a genuine class struggle, bringing in the rank-and-file at every stage. The struggle was popular in the union movement and among the working class as a whole because it was projected as a struggle against part-time and low-wage work — not just for UPS workers, but for the working class as a whole. Sixty percent of the 185,000 UPS workers were part-time workers who earned only $9 per hour, as opposed to $19.95 an hour, plus benefits, for full-time workers.

The UPS Teamster leadership prepared for the strike for over a year. In formulating their bargaining position, the leadership of the UPS division sent a questionnaire to all 185,000 workers asking for their views on the most important issues. Full-time jobs were the overwhelming priority for the workers. In addition, 10,000 of these workers were receiving part-time pay but were working 35 hours or more a week.

The union collected 100,000 signatures on a petition supporting its demands. It distributed the union’s position at workplaces, sports events, and other sites long in advance. It prepared a strong strike apparatus.

Once the negotiations were underway, the union sent a video to all UPS shop stewards to keep them up to date. During the strike, the union updated its website every few hours, faxed bulletins to Teamster locals, and set up a toll-free hotline for strikers.

The negotiations were to begin in July of 1997 but rallies were organized around the country beginning in March and continued to multiply up until the strike deadline. Carey had even gone to Germany and France and worked with the UPS unions there to support the strike. When the UPS rank-and-file marched into battle they were thoroughly unified, highly organized, and prepared for struggle against a ruthless corporate giant with a world empire. (Much of this information is from Steven Greenhouse, “Yearlong Effort Key to Success for Teamsters,” New York Times, Aug. 25, 1997.)

The strike was won through a major test of strength between labor and capital. The AFL-CIO leadership supported the strike and John Sweeney promised to back the Teamsters’ strike benefit fund with $10 million a week. During the strike President Bill Clinton was under pressure — from not only UPS but also Wall Street — to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act. The strength and broad popularity of the UPS workers pushed the Clinton administration back, even though Clinton finally pressured a settlement and leaned on the union to compromise. Nevertheless, the UPS workers forced the company to agree to turn 10,000 part-time workers into full-time employees, won raises for the lower-paid workers, and warded off an attack on pension funding.

The forward momentum of the workers’ struggle arising out of the UPS strike was soon undermined, however. Immediately after the strike, the government framed up Carey on charges of illegally funneling funds to his union election campaign fund. A federal court cleared him of all the charges, but a so-called Independent Review Board got Carey barred for life from running for Teamster office.

This board had been set up by the Justice Department in 1989 to oversee the Teamsters. It was headed by William Webster, a former director of both the CIA and the FBI. The Democratic National Committee cooperated with the frame-up, despite the fact that the AFL-CIO leadership, including Carey, had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into getting Clinton elected.

Fearing a government attack, the AFL-CIO leadership left Carey to face the frame-up and ouster alone. Instead of standing up and challenging the government to indict the entire top leadership of the union movement, and preparing the rank-and-file to defend the leader who had launched the biggest union challenge to big business in two decades, they abandoned the struggle. The forward momentum gained by the militant mass struggle of 185,000 workers, backed by workers everywhere, soon died down. What the mass struggle had won was diminished by the craven retreat of the leadership.  

2000: Justice for Janitors, Los Angeles

Workers in the Service Employees International Union, mainly immigrants, showed their militancy during the Justice for Janitors campaign against the commercial real estate industry in Los Angeles that began in the late 1980s and culminated in a major strike in 2000. They carried out strikes; waged militant corporate campaigns in which they crashed boardrooms and marched onto golf courses; held mass marches with civil disobedience and blocking traffic. They endured mass arrests and beatings, faced SWAT teams, and defied the brutal, racist Los Angeles police. They organized major networks of community support and won important contracts against giant real estate interests.

Rank-and-file organization and militancy was the essential ingredient in their victories. The willingness and ability of the SEIU leadership in Los Angeles to organize the ranks, support their militancy, and mobilize union and community support was decisive. The workers were chambermaids, porters, cooks, clerks — the lowest-paid service workers.

The union disregarded company contracts signed by the landlords with outsourcing firms and battled the owners directly. These contracts skirted legality by allowing management to hire workers below union scale, without benefits or protections of any kind, to do the same work they had been doing before. The local leadership of the SEIU got around these legal loopholes and, by directing their struggles against the real enemy, defeated this dangerous outsourcing tactic.

Nor did they get bogged down in National Labor Relations Board electoral machinery but simply signed up the workers and demanded recognition. The union victories over a period of more than a decade were fueled by the energy and determination of the workers themselves, many of whom had battled dictatorships and political repression in their native countries — Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti, among others.

Whatever the merits of the settlements, they improved the conditions of the workers. But the key point is that the workers showed their willingness over a period of a decade to risk arrest, deportation and material hardship, once they were organized for struggle and could see the possibility of victory.

Furthermore, the janitors’ victories strengthened the labor movement in Los Angeles and the whole region among immigrant workers as a whole and spread to other cities around the country.

Next: 1998: Flint Workers shut down General Motors. Send email to [email protected].