On August 1, if UPS workers haven’t yet reached an agreement with the company on our next contract, 340,000 of my coworkers and I will go on strike. If that happens, President Joe Biden needs to allow us to exercise our right to strike and refrain from intervening.

When the COVID-19 National Health Emergency was declared in March 2020, UPS Teamsters continued to show up for work every single day. Workers and their family members got sick; some even died. Parcel volume ballooned. Package cars were filled to the brim, and it became normal for drivers to work brutal hours — up to fourteen hours a day and sixty hours a week typically, and then seventy hours during peak holiday season, the legal maximum number of hours per week enforced by the Department of Transportation. The pandemic was a dangerous, frightening, and exhausting experience for UPS Teamsters on the trucks and in the warehouse, but we kept America running throughout the crisis.

Our hard work during the pandemic earned UPS historic profits. In 2022, the company saw an operating profit of $13.1 billion, up from $6.5 billion in 2019. Teamsters were the ones moving the packages, yet we were never rewarded for the company’s success. Instead, UPS is expected to give its shareholders over $8 billion in dividends and stock buybacks in 2023 alone, and CEO Carol Tomé took home an average of $23.3 million per year in 2021 and 2022. Meanwhile, we just saw our working conditions worsen.