Because of Low 44% Turnout - Teamsters Bureacratic Misleaders Defy 'No' Vote - Declare UPS Contract Ratified - 6 Oct 2018

6 October 2018

On Friday, UPS workers voted to reject a sellout contract backed by the Teamsters union leaders and UPS management. The union bureaucrats, however, have announced that it considers the contract ratified and will seek to impose it in the face of mass opposition.

The ballot results were released last night, with 50,248 workers (54.7 percent) voting against and 42,356 (45.74 percent) in favor. Workers at the subsidiary UPS Freight voted against a separate contract by 4,255 to 3,794, a margin of 62.06 percent. Both votes follow the “no” vote by 1,300 UPS airline mechanics in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday, meaning all three of the Teamsters’ contracts have been defeated.

(The UPS depot in Madison Heights, Michigan)

 

The Teamster misleaders are citing an anti-democratic clause in its constitution that provides the bureaucracy with virtually unchallengeable authority against the rank and file workers. The clause states that if turnout on the contract vote is less than half, a two-thirds majority of workers is required to reject the final agreement. Voter turnout on the national UPS agreement was 44 percent.

The Teamsters leadership's statement cynically attempts to blame those workers who did not participate in the vote. “As we saw in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election,” it declares, “winning the popular vote does not necessarily win the election when the Constitution requires you to win the Electoral College vote. As Teamsters, we too must abide by the rules in our Constitution. Thus, the National Master UPS Agreement has been ratified.”

Nervous of a wildcat strike, the Teamsters leaders statement threatens: “You are reminded that the terms of the 2013 Agreement remain in effect, including the no strike/no lockout clause.”

In effect, the union tops are counting those workers who did not vote as votes in favor of its agreement. No organization that was in any way accountable to workers could have such rules. Why is a two-thirds majority not required to ratify the agreement, rather than to reject it?

From the beginning, the Teamsters leadership has done everything it could to force through a sellout agreement over mass opposition. In July, workers voted overwhelmingly for strike authorization, by 93 percent, a vote that the union has simply ignored.

After reaching a sellout agreement with the company, the Teamsters tops then dispatched local officials across the country to threaten workers with the loss of health insurance if they went strike and declared that rejecting the contract would lead to a worse deal. It has spent workers’ dues money to hire the marketing firm BerlinRosen to promote leadership lies. And it has kept workers on the job for three months without a contract to buy time to wear down overwhelming anger over its sellout.
Many workers have raised concerns about the integrity of the voting process. Several workers reported on 5 October, the final day of voting, that they had still not received their form in the mail providing an electronic online voting code. This is the first year that the Teamsters has used electronic voting on its contract.

Now, to justify the union bureaucracy efforts to repudiate the clear will of UPS workers, the Teamsters bosses are claiming that it is merely upholding its constitution. However, during the vote on the last contract, the Teamsters leadership ignored overwhelming defeats of local supplementary agreements to push through the national master contract, violating its own statutes. In that case, the Teamsters leadership amended the constitution to override the votes at locals.

The Teamsters leadership is also refusing to call a strike at UPS Freight, where the turnout was approximately two thirds of the workforce. It has declared that it will request further negotiations with the company—and will force workers to vote again. We need labor union leaders who think like workers, not like bosses; we need labor union leaders who aren't afraid of going to jail.  Old school Jimmy Hoffa, for all of his problems, understood the role of a union leader during negotiations for 'more' and during a strike.  "If you're not going to jail, you're not doing your job," Hoffa said.