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The Center for American Progress reports
The Teamsters union represents the 280,000 UPS employees who voted overwhelmingly in favor of going on strike[paywall] if a deal is not reached before the current labor contract expires on August 1. More than 90 percent voted for a strike.
Issuing a strike authorization vote does not necessarily mean UPS workers will order a work stoppage, but it does give the union leverage over management to win their negotiations.
[...] Since UPS began offering regular Saturday delivery service just a year ago, [demands on its labor force] have increased. While the company hasn't announced plans for Sunday service, the union claims UPS has made several proposals to expand weekend deliveries.
[...] The shipments [which] UPS transports comprise an estimated 6 percent of the United States GDP. A labor strike among the company's workers would have a sizable effect on the economy and would be the largest U.S. labor strike in decades. Three bargaining sessions ago, in 1997, UPS workers went on strike for 16 days, and there were 180,000 Teamsters at UPS at that time. There hasn't been a bigger strike since.
Coverage by the World Socialist Web Site is skeptical about the union's efforts and what will be the outcome. Not surprisingly, that article closes with:
There is no progressive answer to the continual lowering of living standards outside of the transformation of industry, communications, and transportation monopolies into publicly owned utilities under the democratic control of the working class.
Also covered at Fortune in UPS Has 260,000 Union Workers and They've Just Authorized a Strike:
The labor talks are proceeding amid discussions on pay and work schedules, as UPS looks to increase warehouse automation to keep up with surging demand from e-commerce shipments. The union has proposed increasing the part-time starting wage as well as improving the overall pay structure, according to a statement on its website. It's also pushing the courier to increase contributions to health and welfare and pension funds.
A previous "big" thing (39,000 workers): Largest Labor Action in 5 Years Slated for Wednesday, April 13 Against Verizon
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday June 08 2018, @12:18PM (16 children)
(Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Friday June 08 2018, @12:45PM (13 children)
Except in reality that doesn't, because in reality most people don't have a choice
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @02:30PM (11 children)
Why are you angry at the factory owner for providing an opportunity to live?
Instead, be angry at your parents for conjuring you into a shitty world of limited resources.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Friday June 08 2018, @02:49PM (10 children)
Why are you defending the factory owner who s**ts all over you to gild his spoons?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 08 2018, @07:01PM (9 children)
Because he's got "temporarily-embarrassed millionaire syndrome." Well, that, or he's a troll account, but I'd wager the money I don't actually have it's the first.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 10 2018, @01:40AM (8 children)
In other words, they have the expectation that at some point, they'll be wealthy enough that they'll be subject to the same attacks as are being levied against the factory owner. Why would the other poster want to sabotage their own future success?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:36AM (7 children)
The problem, dear Mr. Hallow, is that those expectations are...to be polite, misplaced. To be a little more direct, he's got a snowman's chance in the Malebolge of that happening. The boot won't stomp on your face any less crushingly if you lick it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 10 2018, @11:13AM (6 children)
The two obvious rebuttals to that are first, that people jump that fence all the time. The phrase "temporarily-embarrassed millionaire" exaggerates the extent of these expectations. And I think the phrase is typical of the scorn that Marxists and the like have for those who they supposedly support (the phrase apparently originated in a non-fiction article by John Steinbeck about the 1930s where Steinbeck illustrated [100-vampirenovels.com] this scorn).
Second, anti-rich policies routinely affect those well below. Tax brackets routinely hit those who aren't the wealthiest and other schemes for targeting the rich such as the alternate minimum tax have a habit of hitting those well below (the US doesn't automatically adjust the effects of the AMT for inflation nor could afford to do so). The spending that allegedly helps the poorest has to come from somewhere, and the middle class is easier to tax than the truly wealthy. Labor policies make everything more expensive (which tends to be regressive). Luxury taxes decimate the US industries that provide those luxuries. And of course, much of such policies and spending can actually be subverted to support the rich instead of the poor since the former has better lobbyists.
Sure, it's easier to believe that most people are walking around with delusions of becoming insanely wealthy any day now (and that's why they're not falling for your crap), than to understand their viewpoints and legitimate concerns, but such cheats yourself. If you fail to understand others, you fail to understand yourself.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday June 10 2018, @07:43PM (5 children)
You wasted a lot of text to say bugger-all besides "nuh-UHHH, you're wrong!"
The "obvious rebuttal" to your buttling is this: you're being an Aspie jackoff and going "butbutbut SOME PEOPLE DO GET RICH so you're wrong!" That is hardly the point. You hear about a few cases, yes, but what you don't hear about is the millions and millions who never do make it, who claw survival daily, weekly, from paycheck to paycheck, suffering who knows what and dying out of sight and so out of (your) mind.
The rest of your post consists of "these regulations don't work, therefore there shouldn't be any." Let me try twisting this around in a way you might understand: regulation doesn't kill wealth, people misusing it does. See how that works? If guns don't kill people without an evil or misguided person pulling the trigger, neither does regulation destroy wealth without deliberate regulatory capture by the ill-intentioned.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday June 11 2018, @12:29AM (4 children)
Millions and millions is not very many. There are after all millions and millions of millionaires too. For me the problem is that our obsession with these millions and millions is that we're ignoring the hundreds of millions and hundreds of millions. I don't think it's a good idea to screw over 100 people to help one person.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 11 2018, @05:23PM (3 children)
"Millions and millions is not very many?" Go to Hell! There are not "millions and millions" of tremendously wealthy people and there are far more poor than wealthy. Rich Uncle Pennybags not being able to get his sixth gold-plated yacht isn't anywhere near as much of a problem as someone not being able to feed their kids, and the fact that you equate them says a lot about you personally, none of it good. Stop trying to pretend you have some kind of moral high ground here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 11 2018, @09:44PM (2 children)
Why shit out a new term when we already had "millionaires" in play?
However tremendously interfering with Rich Uncle Pennybags ability to pay wages creates a bigger problem than someone not being able to feed their kids.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:58AM (1 child)
Pennybags doesn't pay wages, Hallow. It's a common fallacy that the ultra-wealthy are "job creators." They, by and large, are not. I know nothing I say will bring you back into reality; I do this for the sake of the people reading these exchanges who haven't completely sold their souls like you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:39AM
The defense against that accusation is truth. The "ultra-wealthy" routinely employ vast numbers of people and hence, are job creators in the meaning of the word.
Ignorance causes that. I have very limited ability to fix your ignorance.
The day you understand the ignorance in what you just wrote is the day you'll take a big step to being an ethical rather than merely moral human being. I haven't sold my soul to anyone. That delusion is all you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @05:44PM
Nobody has a choice. Science has proven many times there is no such thing as free will. Of course this applies to the business owners also. They have no choice either.
It's their fate to be rich and it is your fate to have a miserable life, dying alone in the gutter, cursing the universe. Enjoy what you can.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 08 2018, @03:25PM (1 child)
Disagree. A few decades ago, turnover was a metric among all the other metrics by which management was judged. Today - not at all. People are disposable. Turnover means just about nothing. Bring them in the door today, kick them back out tomorrow. Or, let them stay a few weeks, or a few months. It's all the same, as soon as they displease you, send them down the road. Or, just work them half to death, so that they quit on their own.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:20PM
For example, if you make workplace safety rules so onerous that only someone who breaks them can exist, then you can't get good behavior - you can't even afford to fully enforce those rules, if you wish to keep the business. In addition, that regulation game inhibits new business creation. Because they can't in theory exist, but in practice can by ignoring the right rules to the right degree, it creates a hidden knowledge that a new business would need to have in order to be a successful competitor. This is a barrier to entry, one of many.
I tire of the arguments to make things worse because there are awful businesses. The Teamsters Union is just another such business, created by yet more poorly thought out impulses to make life better for the worker, but which have the opposite effect.