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posted by martyb on Friday June 08 2018, @04:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the unhappy-workers dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 08 2018, @07:01PM (9 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday June 08 2018, @07:01PM (#690450) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 10 2018, @01:40AM (8 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 10 2018, @01:40AM (#690998) Journal

    Because he's got "temporarily-embarrassed millionaire syndrome."

    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)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:36AM (#691026) Journal

      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)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 10 2018, @11:13AM (#691072) Journal

        The problem, dear Mr. Hallow, is that those expectations are...to be polite, misplaced.

        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).

        When the stunning news of the Hitler-Stalin pact was printed, I came on one of my Communist friends in the street. He began shouting before I got near him: “Don't ask me. I don't know, God damn it. They didn't tell us.” As it turned out, the Kremlin didn't tell the American Communists anything. Someone told me later they didn't trust them.

        Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

        I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.

        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)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday June 10 2018, @07:43PM (#691166) Journal

          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)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @12:29AM (#691229) Journal
            I have to say, you can take apart a straw man like few others.

            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.

            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)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday June 11 2018, @05:23PM (#691493) Journal

              "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)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @09:44PM (#691632) Journal

                tremendously wealthy people

                Why shit out a new term when we already had "millionaires" in play?

                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

                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)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:58AM (#691783) Journal

                  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

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:39AM (#691790) Journal

                    Pennybags doesn't pay wages, Hallow. It's a common fallacy that the ultra-wealthy are "job creators."

                    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.

                    I know nothing I say will bring you back into reality

                    Ignorance causes that. I have very limited ability to fix your ignorance.

                    I do this for the sake of the people reading these exchanges who haven't completely sold their souls like you.

                    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.