Teamsters at U.P.S. Agree to Plan for a Strike
With time running out on a current five-year contract with UPS, the 230,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters at the company voted overwhelmingly yesterday to authorize a strike the day after their contract expires on July 31 if no settlement is reached. Labor experts say that a strike is unlikely to occur, as both sides took heavy losses in the fifteen-day strike---the first since the company started business eighty-six years ago---that led to the current contract. Among the major contract issues for the union members, only forty percent of whom are employed fulltime, is getting a contractual guarantee that UPS will convert 3,000 part-time jobs to full-time jobs in each year of the contract.
See "Teamsters at U.P.S. Agree to Plan for a Strike", STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times, May 20, 2002