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INDIANA – UPS has reached a tentative contract with its 340,000-person union, potentially averting a strike that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.
The contract, if ratified, would avert a strike. Voting on the contract begins Aug. 3 and ends Aug. 22.
The agreement was announced Tuesday, the first day that UPS and the Teamsters returned to the table after contentious negotiations broke down earlier this month.
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Negotiators reached tentative agreements on several issues but continued to clash over pay for part-time workers, who make up more than half of the UPS employees represented by the union.
The Teamsters called the five-year contract “overwhelmingly lucrative,” adding that it “raises wages for all workers, creates more full-time jobs, and includes dozens of workplace protections and improvements.”
The new contract raises starting pay for part-timers to $21 an hour, up from the current contracted pay of $15.50, and includes catch-up raises for longtime workers. Full-time workers will see their top hourly rate go up to $49 an hour. The agreement also provides for air conditioning in trucks, paid time off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and an increase in full-time positions.
“Rank-and-file UPS Teamsters sacrificed everything to get this country through a pandemic and enabled UPS to reap record-setting profits,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it.”