After months of contract negotiations between UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union’s chief negotiator announced that the union had reached a preliminary agreement. But as soon as the details of the contract were released, Hoffa and his negotiating team faced scrutiny: the reform caucus Teamsters United (TU) and the longstanding union reform organization Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) were not happy.

TDU argued that workers wanted stronger wage increases, more full-time jobs, clear language around managerial harassment, and an end to forced overtime that currently has many employees working up to seventy hours a week during peak season, the period between November and January when UPS experiences the highest shipping volume. Instead, the proposed agreement included a new two-tier wage system for drivers, effectively paying one classification of workers less to perform the same job tasks as their full-time counterparts. The agreement also included a starting wage that falls $2 short of the union’s proposed $15 per hour rate, no clear penalties for managers harassing workers on the job, and language that makes it harder for new workers to join “the 9.5 list,” a classification which protects them from being forced to accept overtime.

Once the contract details were released, a number of union locals began using TDU and TU materials to form “vote no” contract campaigns that were aimed at keeping the preliminary contract agreement from being ratified. Nowhere was this campaign more successful than Local 804 in New York, where 95 percent of workers voted down the contract. This vote of no confidence was achieved by rank-and-file UPS workers convincing their coworkers that this contract did not deliver the goods.