Every union contract negotiation is a game of chicken. Both the workers and the company try to suss out how far the other side is willing and able to go to get what it wants. Success comes not only from strength, but from your foe’s belief that you are strong. A union’s ideal victory comes not by winning a hard strike, but by pushing a company into backing down without ever having to strike at all. With this metric in mind, it is safe to say that the power of organized labor in America is at its strongest level in years.
For months, unions have been anticipating a Summer of Strikes. The screenwriters of the WGA and the actors of SAG-AFTRA are already out on picket lines, shutting down Hollywood and lending the labor movement a dose of star power. The United Auto Workers are threatening to strike major U.S. automakers in September. And between those events sat the biggest possible strike of all: 340,000 Teamsters at UPS, the largest single-employer union in the country.
UPS’s very decision to offer the Teamsters this deal tells us a lot about corporate America’s reading of the balance of power in our never-ending class war.
But yesterday, just days from an Aug. 1 strike deadline, the Teamsters triumphantly announced that they had reached a tentative contract agreement with UPS, which includes significant wage gains for both full- and part-time workers. That contract will not be official until Teamsters members vote on whether to accept it, a process that will take several weeks; but UPS’s very decision to offer the Teamsters this deal tells us a lot about corporate America’s reading of the balance of power in our never-ending class war.
Just five years ago, the Teamsters’ leaders at the time used technicalities to force their members to accept a weak UPS contract that most members had voted against. How quickly things change. The backlash to that sellout propelled the election of Sean O’Brien, a hard-bitten reformer with a bald head and a thick Boston accent, to the Teamsters presidency in 2021. From the beginning, O’Brien struck an aggressive stance toward UPS, pairing furious internal organizing with a pugnacious tone toward the company that only grew more militant as the contract deadline neared. The union refused to grant the company any breathing room, walking away from the negotiating table a month before the old contract expired, saying UPS’s offers were insulting, and forcing the company to come crawling back, begging for negotiations to resume. “Practice pickets” were held across the country, in a visible demonstration that workers were ready to strike.
All of it served to keep the company on its back foot. The Teamsters successfully forced a $200 billion corporation into the defensive crouch that is usually reserved for workers who are trying to protect themselves from an employer’s economic might.
UPS knew that the Teamsters would strike. They knew that a strike would cost billions of dollars in a matter of weeks. And — perhaps most significantly — they knew that a strike that enormous would rally a huge amount of support from the labor movement, from the political establishment, and from the public at large. The company had no chance of winning either the logistical battle to keep its trucks running, or the public relations battle for sympathy. And so they settled. Only the vote of the members can determine for sure whether the contract is adequate, but the union says that the contract represents $30 billion in gains. That is not something you get without being genuinely ready to go to war.
It is important to note here that this is how collective bargaining is supposed to work. UPS did not “lose” these negotiations; if the contract is ratified, the company successfully secured the services of its labor force for the next five years. And UPS remains one of its industry’s leading companies — in part thanks to, not in spite of, its union workforce.
Ronald Reagan was fond of speaking about “peace through strength.” He failed to mention that the concept applies not just to militaries, but to labor as well. Over the past half century, unions have grown so weak in America (only 6 percent of private sector workers are union members) that the idea that working people have the power to raise their own wages has been lost in the public mind. Generations have been raised to see the economy as a machine driven by mighty corporations, restrained only by periodic financial crises, in which most working people — apart from a small layer of superstars — are wholly at the mercy of companies’ needs. The labor movement, which has been showing tentative signs of resurgence since the pandemic, has before it the task of reminding Americans that this extremely helpful tool called “unions” exists, and that they might want to try it out. As meaningful as the Hollywood strikes are — for their visible display of union power, and their demonstration that even the most glamorous of industries are being hollowed out by finance-driven greed — the Teamsters not having to strike may have sent an even more profound message. Ronald Reagan, the president most responsible for accelerating the modern decline of unions and rise of inequality, was fond of speaking about “peace through strength.” He failed to mention that the concept applies not just to militaries, but to labor as well. The Teamsters were strong enough to pull off the biggest strike in decades. So they didn’t have to. UPS and its corporate peers are canny observers of power. The weaker labor is, the more money companies can snatch back from their workers and send to their investors. They do not offer big wage gains unless they feel that they have no choice. This spectacular nonstrike, therefore, is a testament to the ideal of labor peace through labor strength. It is something that millions of workers could have, if they can get unions of their own. The best fight is the one you win without having to fight at all.
Hamilton Nolan
Hamilton Nolan is a journalist who writes about labor and politics. 
