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Date: 9/8/2022
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Teamsters union members across the country are protesting low pay and hot temperatures in UPS trucks and warehouses, including the facility off Riverdale Street in West Springfield.
In an online statement on Aug. 1, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters says UPS has pocketed billions in profits while workers suffer from unacceptable working conditions. They say they need those conditions to change to avert a strike.
Local workers are drawing correlations between present tensions and events from 1997, according to Danny Arlin, a tractor-trailer truck driver for UPS, and a member of Teamsters Local 404 in West Springfield. That’s the last time there was a major strike for better wages and conditions at UPS.
In large part, the pandemic’s effect on global logistics is the reason for rising tensions between workers and management. A clause in the union’s contract with UPS – originally intended to address short-term spikes in volume, such as the mailing rush around the holidays – allows UPS to schedule employees to work up to 14 hours a day, six days a week, when demand runs high.
“No one knew [how long the pandemic] was gonna last or where anything was gonna go,” said Arlin.
“UPS became kind of a lifeline for a lot of people at home because people were quarantined, and [they were] ordering everything online. From Amazon, from Walmart, all these different places, and we delivered a lot of those packages,” said Arlin.
Teamsters members have three main complaints: the forced overtime, a lack of climate control in the local delivery trucks, and low pay for the part-time workers who load and unload trucks.
“The truck is like an oven,” said Arlin. Most UPS local delivery trucks have a clear roof, intended to let sunlight in to allow the driver to easily identify the correct package. Additionally, because they are constantly exiting and entering the vehicle, UPS trucks lack air conditioning, or even a fan, subjecting the driver to the summer heat.
Tractor-trailer trucks are different, as they require a commercial driver’s license, and are subject to different regulation from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Only a normal driver’s license is required for local delivery drivers, and there is no requirement for any sort of climate control in those vehicles, not even a fan.
“I’ve had I’ve had readings in the back of my truck in the in the mid-120s,” said Arlin, adding that in hotter states like Arizona, drivers have recorded temperatures up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Your body can’t withstand more than 10 minutes at that at a time or it starts to shut down your organs and it can cause all kinds of stuff. So even though we don’t typically try to spend 10 minutes in the back of the truck, sometimes when you’re looking for [a package] you could get stuck back there for five or 10 minutes,” said Arlin.
In July, a 24 year old man in Los Angeles delivering packages for UPS died from the effects of hyperthermia while on the job, according to The New York Times. Highs that day were in the 90s. With temperatures reaching up to 100 degrees this summer in Massachusetts, drivers based in West Springfield didn’t have it any easier.
“Working 10- to 12-hour days, five, six days a week, your body wears down and it can it makes you very susceptible to heat-related injuries and even to the point of heat-related deaths,” said Arlin.
A representative for UPS, Carmen Ballon, said that the company considers the health and safety of its employees its highest priority, adding the company has taken steps to mitigate the risk of heat-related injuries including issuing “new uniforms with wicking dry-fit shirts and performance fabric shorts,” and cooling towels, similar to the kind sold under the brand name Chilly Pad, which help increase evaporative cooling.
UPS also says it’s “accelerating the installation of fans in UPS vehicles across the country,” but did not respond to a followup question on how many fans have been installed so far.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration reported that nationally, it received 333 complaints from UPS workers in 2020 and 219 in 2021.
“Two complaints were received for the UPS facility located at 120 Wayside Ave., West Springfield, MA, one on April 3, 2020, and one on July 7, 2020. Both were closed following satisfactory phone/fax investigations,” according to Department of Labor Press Secretary James Lally.
The problems of the hot trucks is compounded by the strain put on the warehouse workers who load the delivery trucks — a task which, done haphazardly, can add significant time and confusion to the delivery of goods. The people who do this job are called preloaders. In West Springfield, UPS preloaders are full-time workers, though in other warehouses this is not the case.
UPS employs part-time preloaders in Pittsfield, for example. Union leaders say with increased demand, workers are being pressured by management to do more work in the same amount of time.
In addition, they say the pay is too low at $16 per hour to start. Even for a full-time worker, that’s less than half of the
Massachusetts median wage of about $36 per hour, which works out to a full-time salary of $75,077 per year for a single-earner household, according to 2022 figures from the Census Bureau.
“I have another job. Most people do,” said Lillian Zavatsky, a part-time UPS preloader in Pittsfield.
Preloaders face some of the same interior climate challenges as drivers.
“It’s not a climate-controlled environment,” said Zavatsky. It gets hotter than the outside in the summer, and in the winter “we’ve recorded it down to 32 degrees,” she said. “And you’re supposed to be picking up packages, using your fingers to like peel off the pallet label and put it back in a spot that’s visible, right? So how are you supposed to do this? When it’s just that cold?” said Zavatsky.
“The drivers’ job has gotten harder, and we get blamed for their working conditions, we get blamed for their long hours, we get blamed for having missed loads which is when the wrong package is on the wrong truck, and then another driver has to deliver it to the right place and that adds time to their day,” said Zavatsky. “So they do this divide and conquer thing, but it’s not our fault that our volume has gone up. You know, it’s not our fault that [local drivers] have to spend time in the back of the hot trucks looking for packages, it’s because the package plant is so slammed.”
She continued: “I want an end to the harassment that we experienced in the workplace ... I know that we’re all united as UPS employees, Teamsters, that we can win the things that we deserve and ... end poverty wages for part-timers.”
Figures released by UPS show the company has seen massive growth recently, with a fourth quarter 2021 consolidated operating profit of $3.9 billion, up 91 percent from the previous year.
For their part, Ballon says UPS is aware of “these, and many others, are important topics that we will discuss as part of our negotiation.”
“UPS and the Teamsters have worked cooperatively for almost 100 years to meet the needs of UPS employees, customers, and the communities where we live and work. We have built UPS into the world’s leading package delivery company together, which has also bolstered Teamsters membership over the years. We believe we’ll continue to find common ground with the Teamsters and reach an agreement that’s good for everyone involved,” said Ballon.