The UPS Strike, Two Decades Later
Twenty years ago, workers ground one of the world's largest corporations to a halt. And workers in the logistics industry could do it again today.
UPS workers in Madison Heights, Michigan picket on August 4, 1997. Jim West / Labor Notes
Twenty years ago, the Teamsters’ national strike against United Parcel Service (UPS) produced panic, if not outright hysteria, in the corporate boardrooms of the United States.
The editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal were at their wits’ end:
The UPS strike is so weird it’s hard to know where to begin. Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the mighty Teamsters has suddenly decided it must paralyze the nation’s parcel-distribution system to have it out over mostly voluntary part-timers and various pension arcana. These matters may be worth an argument, but Armageddon? What’s this weird, awful strike about anyway?
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