Teamsters President: ‘UPS Will Be in for a Hell of a Fight' After Layoffs
The announcement from UPS that it would lay off 20,000 employees in 2025 generated some blowback from its largest union.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents more than 300,000 workers at the parcel delivery company, suggested in the hours after the call took place that it was ready to take legal action if any layoffs violate the terms of their current five-year contract.
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'United Parcel Service is contractually obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under our current national master agreement,' said Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien in a statement Tuesday afternoon. 'If UPS wants to continue to downsize corporate management, the Teamsters won't stand in its way. But if the company intends to violate our contract or makes any attempt to go after hard-fought, good-paying Teamsters jobs, UPS will be in for a hell of a fight.'
Two years ago, the Teamsters and UPS agreed to the contract after a contentious bargaining period that saw the 1.3-million-member union threaten to go on strike.
As the bill from the contract racked up—UPS said it paid $1.4 billion more in compensation and benefits expenses in 2024 due to the deal—cuts had to be made elsewhere. The courier laid off 12,000 employees to start that year, with most of those roles coming from management, as well as some contractors.
But those layoffs came along before last year's introduction of UPS' Network of the Future, the company's logistics network consolidation designed to flow more volume into automated warehouses. Under the plan, UPS is closing roughly 200 facilities, namely sortation centers. The company aims to close 73 sites this year.
From a longer-term perspective, the automation push sows some concern into how many employees will get axed through the end of 2028, when the Network of the Future plan is expected to run its course.
When news first broke out that UPS would temporarily shutter a package processing facility in Portland, Ore. on July 1 amid an automation deployment, Teamsters national vice president John Palmer admitted to The Oregonian that the union should have done a better job negotiating contracts that protect workers.
'If you're going to get displaced, based on your years of service there ought to be some sort of severance,' Palmer said. 'Automation is a real thing. There's only so much we can do to stop progress. But the other side of it is when you have a corporation like UPS that makes billions of dollars in profit every quarter.'
Additionally, Palmer had suggested that the Teamsters should have sought a contract that promised longtime employees the chance to train for maintenance of automated sorting machines.
The scenario in Portland is happening across dozens of facilities that are getting renovated to fully or partly incorporate automation.
Reports of a possible brewing partnership with robotics startup Figure AI, in which UPS would use humanoid robots within its warehousing network, are likely to add insult to injury for the Teamsters.
UPS never confirmed the partnership talks, or the use of a humanoid robot, but company brass hasn't been shy about admitting that the automation crusade is going to end up impacting jobs.
'The end result will be a much more efficient operation with less dependency on labor,' said Nando Cesarone, president U.S. at UPS, in Tuesday's earnings call.
The UPS-Teamsters deal, which lasts through July 31, 2028, is supposed to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs, with 7,500 of them being full-time gigs. The master contract has no mention of automation or robotics.
UPS isn't the only logistics player in the Teamsters' crosshairs.
O'Brien took aim at another one of his common targets, Amazon, in a post on X Tuesday following the White House's blasting of the e-commerce giant for reportedly planning to show added tariff costs on consumer products.
'News flash: Amazon has ZERO allegiance to the United States. Decades after free trade politicians sold out American workers, Amazon has built an international empire fueled by industrial slavery managed by the Chinese Communist Party,' wrote O'Brien, in a reference to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's insistence that the company 'has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm.'
Amazon later denied that any tariff-displaying plans were in place.
O'Brien's mini-rant came a week after a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board ruled Amazon must collectively bargain with Teamsters-affiliated warehouse workers at a San Francisco distribution center.
'While here in the U.S., it neglects, abuses, and disowns an American workforce to further inflate its profit margins,' O'Brien said in his post. 'What Jeff Bezos and Amazon are really afraid of is sharing their wealth with the people who created it. Hold Amazon accountable to American workers!'
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