‘They’re fired up’: Teamsters president on looming UPS strike

Sean O’Brien has a long family legacy at the Teamsters: his great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all Teamster union members in Boston. O’Brien joined the union after dropping out of college at age 19 to haul equipment on construction sites in 1991. Thirty-two years later, he is on the verge of leading the union in one of the biggest – and costliest – strikes at a single private employer in US history.

The Teamsters have 1.2 million members, making it one of the largest unions in the world. Its membership is diverse, ranging from police to bakers, but it is most famous for representing freight drivers and warehouse workers. The shipping and logistics giant UPS is the single largest employer in the Teamsters Union.

Under O’Brien, the Teamster’s general president, the contract negotiations between the two have become a test case for a union giant that is flexing its muscles after corporations have stonewalled nascent labor movements at Starbucks and Amazon with long delays toward a first contract.

“We are going to set the tone – and we have – for how organized labor should deal with corporate America, with politicians, and how they should stand up and fight. We will set the example through this situation with UPS whether we get a deal or if UPS chooses not to do the right thing to strike themselves,” said O’Brien.

UPS’s 340,000 workers have authorized industrial action unless the two sides can agree on a new contract by the end of July. Talks have broken down and the US faces its largest strike since about 675,000 telephone workers walked off the job in 1983 – a strike that could cause chaos in a country still feeling the after-effects of the pandemic’s supply chain crisis.

Economic estimates of a UPS strike’s impact suggest it could be the costliest in at least a century, with an estimated $7bn in losses for a 10-day work stoppage. Consumers reliant on home deliveries, medical supplies and business inventory will all be hit. But O’Brien argued the responsibility for the effects of a strike on the public falls on UPS – and that other corporations should take note.

“UPS knows what our members’ wants, needs and demands are, and if there is a labor strike over this, I want to be clear: the public should know this and everybody else should know that UPS will be striking. They know what our members want. They know what our members deserve.”

The looming strike could lead off a summer of labor unrest in the US as thousands of hotel workers in California, TV and film writers, and most recently, thousands of TV and film actors have walked off the job. Additionally, 150,000 autoworkers are prepping for a possible huge strike in the fall in the lead-up to new contract negotiations.

O’Brien had a meteoric rise at the Teamsters. He was elected president/principal officer of Local 25 in 2006 at the age of 34, the youngest to achieve that feat, and became eastern region vice-president of Teamsters International in 2011. But his career was almost derailed after a clash with James Hoffa, the longtime Teamsters president and son of the notorious Teamsters boss and mafia associate Jimmy Hoffa.

O’Brien had been the Teamsters’ top negotiator with UPS during its union contract negotiations for 2018. But Hoffa fired him in 2017 after only six months in a move some saw as political payback for his championing of Teamsters members who had not supported Hoffa in his last presidential election – allegations that Hoffa’s supporters denied.

Discontent with the past UPS contract catalyzed a changing of the guard among the Teamsters’ leadership. The following union leadership election in 2021 was the first time in 25 years that James Hoffa was not on the ballot. O’Brien ran for president of the union and won by a landslide after campaigning on taking a more aggressive approach toward UPS and new organizing efforts at Amazon.

“We had weak leadership in the past administration, and we just wanted to make certain that we enrolled our members to fight for what is right and just,” said O’Brien. “The previous administration didn’t have its members’ best interests at hand and that’s when I made my decision to run for general president.”

Since assuming leadership of the Teamsters, O’Brien has taken a more aggressive approach toward anti-union animus from corporations and politicians. The Teamsters are trying to organize Amazon, which has successfully fought grassroots labor movements to a standstill. “You have an employer like Jeff Bezos taking a joyride into space, and he bangs on his workers to be able to fund his trip,” O’Brien said last year.

O’Brien hasn’t been shy in taking on Washington DC either. During a Senate hearing in March 2023, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, got into a heated argument with O’Brien over the senator’s opposition to union organizing. Mullin called the Teamsters boss a “loudmouth bully” and challenged O’Brien to a charity mixed martial arts cage match. “Anyplace, Anytime cowboy,” O’Brien replied on Twitter.

“He’s a juvenile delinquent, he has a big ego and a small mind. He’s one of 100 people in this country who should be setting an example, and unfortunately, he wants to be a schoolyard bully, and that’s OK, at some point in time that will be addressed. But the cage fight I’m more focused on right now is the cage fight on behalf of 340,000 members at UPS,” said O’Brien.

As the 31 July deadline for a deal approaches, UPS workers around the US have held practice pickets and rallies to highlight demands of the workforce and prepare for a possible strike.

“They’re fired up, but most importantly they’re fed up,” said O’Brien. “To say the least, it’s one of the most impressive campaigns I’ve ever been involved in.”

The union has secured agreements with UPS on some significant issues such as installing air conditioners in delivery vehicles, but the union and UPS are still far apart on economic issues.

On 5 July, the Teamsters were in negotiations with UPS, pushing for higher wages for part-time employees, higher wages for new hires, higher wages for full-timers, an increase in more full-time jobs, and protecting and improving pensions and healthcare benefits. O’Brien said about 95% of the contract was resolved when UPS walked away from the negotiating table, claiming it had nothing left to give.

UPS accused the union of walking away from the negotiating table. “We remain focused on reaching an agreement with the Teamsters that is a win for UPS employees, our customers, our union, and our company before Aug 1. While we have made great progress and are close to reaching an agreement, we have a responsibility as an essential service provider to take steps to help ensure we can deliver our customers’ packages if the Teamsters choose to strike,” a UPS spokesperson said in a recent statement announcing that the company is currently training managers for business continuity plans if a strike occurs.

Talks are now back on, but as 1 August approaches, the issues remain.

O’Brien said that UPS had reported record profits during the course of the current five-year contract, reaching a record $100bn in revenue in 2022 and reported profits of $12.89bn in 2021 and more than $13bn in 2022. With the recent strike threat looming, UPS has pushed back its second quarter earnings date to 8 August, the latest date it has ever posted mid-year earnings.

“That answer is unacceptable on behalf of our members, especially when you made $100bn and everyone else that didn’t touch a package, didn’t deliver a package especially during the pandemic, got rewarded with very, very lucrative stock options provided to upper management in the hundreds of millions of dollars, investors got paid dividends at 50% higher than they were in January 2020,” he said. “All the while, everybody that touched and forwarded packages and provided goods and services to this company have yet to be rewarded and they just want our piece of the pie.”