On Strike?

UPS Teamsters vote has the potential to affect our daily lives

At one time it wasn’t all that unknown for labor strikes to have a real impact on parts of America—sometimes even the whole country.

The Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886—which included both Arkansas and Texas—saw some 200,000 workers and brought rail transport to a halt. Pullman workers went on strike eight years later and shut down all trains west of Chicago.

A coal strike in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1902 brought the industry to a standstill for six months and required intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt and banker J.P. Morgan to end.

The steel strike of 1919 saw 350,000 workers walk off the job. Three years later, 400,000 railroad shop workers went on strike. About 400,000 coal miners went on strike in 1946. Half a million steel workers took to the picket line in 1959.

More than 200,000 postal workers went on strike in 1970. President Richard Nixon called in the National Guard to deliver mail.

A smaller but probably the best-known labor action of modern times was when the air traffic controllers and President Ronald Reagan faced off in 1981. Reagan ended up firing more than 11,000 workers and banned them from working for the federal government for life.

Strikes still happen, but we haven’t seen many huge ones of late. The last really big one was in 1997 when the 185,000 Teamsters squared off against UPS. The union won that battle. And now another is brewing.

This week about 90 percent of the 260,000 Teamsters working at UPS voted to authorize a strike if an acceptable deal is not reached by the end of July when their current contract expires.

The disagreement is about UPS expanding to seven-day delivery. The company has already started Saturday deliveries and is expected to begin Sunday deliveries some time in the future, though no official announcement has been made. There are also issues with pay and health and welfare fund contributions.

Now, the strike vote could be just a negotiating tool. And with any luck the union and UPS will reach a deal they can both live with.

Because a strike would have a real affect on the U.S. economy. We live in a world where online shopping is only growing. And a lot of orders are delivered by UPS. A strike wouldn’t be something in the abstract that just affects the company, the workers and their families. It would affect the daily lives of a lot of folks right here in Texarkana and across the nation. A blast from the past, so to speak.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.