UPS-Teamsters Talks Yield No Progress

WASHINGTON —  United Parcel Service of America Inc. and Teamsters officials broke off contract talks Friday night and set another session for today in their effort to end the five-day Teamsters strike against the nation’s largest package-delivery service.

“We have not made any significant progress,” said UPS Chairman Jim Kelly after Friday’s negotiations.

The message from Ron Carey, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was the same.

“None whatsoever,” he said when asked if negotiators made any progress Friday. “We’ve been looking at all sorts of alternatives. We’re not able to reach any agreement on any of those areas.”

The talks ended for the night amid growing pressure from business leaders for White House intervention to resolve the strike, which has crippled the flow of about 12 million packages a day.

Virginia Gov. George Allen and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad each sent letters to President Clinton asking him to intervene to end the strike, saying it is threatening the jobs of employees in their states at mail-order companies that are unable to ship products to customers. Allen called for federal action, saying the economic effects of the strike “are equal to those in the American Airlines dispute in which you intervened earlier this year.”

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said the White House is feeling the pressure of lobbying over the UPS strike. But he said Clinton is hearing from both sides, not merely from businesses and political leaders who favor intervention.

“We have had a heavy to moderate volume of mail on this, really on both sides of the dispute,” McCurry said. “We certainly have heard from the small businesses that have been concerned about or affected directly by the strike. We’ve also heard from supporters of the Teamsters union who uphold their right to strike under our nation’s labor laws.”

The U.S. Postal Service said it plans to add Sunday delivery in an effort to handle a 75% jump in business for its Express Mail and Priority Mail services. Package volume was up 25% this week, officials said.

Clinton has said he has no legal authority to order an end to the strike without evidence of greater economic upheaval than has occurred so far.

About 183,000 Teamsters struck UPS on Monday after failing to reach a contract to replace one that expired July 30.

The two sides are to meet at 9 a.m. today for a third straight day of talks, as the strike enters its sixth day.

Before Friday’s negotiations began, Dave Murray, UPS’ top labor relations official, said the company was returning to the table “for the sake of our customers.” It’s time for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to put the company’s last offer, unveiled a week ago, to a vote by its UPS members, he said.

The strike represents a “lose-lose situation” for customers who aren’t receiving delivery service and UPS employees who aren’t working, said Kelly.

He said the company’s last offer was still the basis of discussion. But that is just the problem, said Carey, who added that it was up to the company to make a move.

Friday’s talks took place at the offices of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. The agency’s director, John Calhoun Wells, is mediating the talks.

Wells said the two sides are so entrenched perhaps because this is the biggest strike in a quarter of a century.

“This is not easy,’ he said. “This is a very, very, very difficult situation.” Wells declined to discuss the sticking points in the discussions.

Two main issues dividing the company and the union: the company’s increasing dependence on part-time workers and the pension proposal that was part of UPS’ “last, best and final” offer unveiled a week ago.

Since the Teamsters last contract was signed with UPS in 1993, more than 80% of the new hires have been part-timers, the union says. And part-time workers now make up 60% of the UPS work force.

The company argues that 60,000 of its part-timers made more than $16,000 each last year and that part-time workers are entitled to most of the same benefits as full-time employees, including medical coverage and paid vacations.

The pension proposal would create a new plan for UPS’ Teamsters, which the company said would increase benefits for its employees by an average of 50%. However, the plan would require the Teamsters to break from their long-standing tradition of pooling pension benefits from multiple employers and providing benefits uniformly to union retirees.

“The Teamsters, as a union, are obviously nervous about losing a healthy employer” in their multi-employer plan, said Ron Gebhardtsbauer, senior pension fellow with the American Academy of Actuaries.

Also, under the current plan, Gebhardtsbauer said, “Teamster employees know they’re still in the same pension plan, even if they leave UPS before they are vested.”

Since the strike began, Atlanta-based UPS has lost 90% of its business, UPS spokeswoman Gina Ellrich said Thursday, even though the number of UPS Teamsters crossing the union picket line to go to work has grown over the course of the week. About 7,000 of 185,000 union employees crossed the lines Thursday, she said.