Chicago, IL
With its nationwide strike against United Parcel Service, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has taken on a fight on behalf of every working family in America.
Working families all across our country are being squeezed by companies converting good paying, full-time jobs with health benefits into low-paying, no benefit, no security part-time jobs.
The trend is accelerating and in the last two years alone, the number of part-time workers in our workforce grew by 11.5 percent. Today, one out of every four jobs in the United States is filled by a part-time, temporary or contingent worker.
These workers are most often paid far less than full-time workers and only 29 percent of part-time or temporary employees are covered by employer-sponsored health plans --- compared to 64 percent of all private sector full-time workers. Women workers are being hit particularly hard --- two out of three part-time workers is a woman and women part-time workers earn 23 percent less, on average, than full-time women workers.
As one of the largest employers in our country, United Parcel Service has been leading the trend towards increased exploitation of part-time workers. Since 1993, 38,000 of the 46,000 new jobs created at UPS have been part-time jobs, which now make up about 60 percent of all the company's unionized workers. By paying these workers half the wages of full-time workers, the company has been able to rack up record profits --- $1 billion in the last year alone --- and carve out over 80 percent of the small-package delivery market in the United States.
The AFL-CIO believes the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is justified in striking UPS in order to stop the practice of replacing full-time, full-benefit, full-pay jobs with part-time positions that undermine our economy and prevent workers from being able to provide a decent standard of living for their families. Further, we believe the Teamsters union was compelled to strike in order to stop the growing practice of contracting out jobs and to quell rising health and safety problems at UPS, where the injury rate is two-and-one-half times higher than in the rest of the industry.
The AFL-CIO and its affiliates will dedicate whatever it takes in terms of time, energy and resources to help the Teamsters win this important strike. Further, we will actively generate support for the strike among our allies in the academic, religious, political and student communities in this country and with our counterparts in the labor movement throughout the world. The courageous members of the Teamsters union made the right decision to stand against this giant employer and all of the labor movement is proud to stand with them.