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    UPS Workers Authorize Teamsters Union to Call Strike

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    A walkout is possible after the contract for more than 325,000 workers expires this summer. Negotiations began in April but have yet to resolve pay.United Parcel Service workers have authorized their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to call a strike as soon as Aug. 1, after the current contract expires, the Teamsters announced Friday.The Teamsters represent more than 325,000 UPS employees in the United States, where the company has nearly 450,000 employees overall. The union said 97 percent had voted in favor of strike authorization.Many unions hold such votes to create leverage at the bargaining table, but a much smaller percentage end up following through. “The results do not mean a strike is imminent and do not impact our current business operations in any way,” UPS said in a statement, adding that it was “confident that we will reach an agreement.”A UPS strike could have significant economic fallout. The company handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of parcels shipped each day in the United States, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. And while UPS’s competition has grown in recent years, rivals would be hard-pressed to replace that lost capacity quickly, leaving some customers in the lurch and others facing higher costs.“What happens when you try to stuff 25 percent more food into a stomach that’s 90 percent full?” said Alan Amling, a fellow at the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute and a former UPS executive.The two sides have reached tentative agreements on a number of issues since they began negotiating a national contract in April, most recently on heat safety, including a requirement for air conditioning in new trucks beginning in January and additional fans and venting for existing trucks.But the negotiators have yet to tackle pay increases, which the Teamsters say are overdue amid the company’s strong pandemic-era performance. The company’s adjusted net income increased by more than 70 percent from 2019 to last year.The union has also focused on revisiting pay disparities for a category of driver who typically works on weekends.The UPS chief executive, Carol Tomé, who started in that position in 2020, said on a recent earnings call that UPS was aligned with the union on “several key issues.” She added that outsiders should not put too much stock in the “great deal of noise” that was likely to arise during the negotiation.Looming over the talks is the political standing of the Teamsters’ leader, Sean O’Brien, who during his campaign for the union’s presidency in 2021 repeatedly accused his predecessor, James P. Hoffa, of being overly conciliatory toward employers.Mr. O’Brien complained that Mr. Hoffa had essentially forced a concessionary contract onto UPS workers in 2018 after union members voted down the deal. He criticized his opponent for the presidency, a Hoffa-aligned candidate, for being unlikely to strike.“You already conceded that in your 25-year career, you only struck six times, so UPS knows you’re not going to strike,” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidates’ debate.Mr. O’Brien has largely maintained his aggressive stance on UPS since taking over as president last year. Speaking in October to activists with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reformist group that backed his candidacy, Mr. O’Brien vowed that “this UPS agreement is going to be the defining moment in organized labor.”Compensation for UPS drivers is generally higher than pay at the company’s competitors. UPS said that the average full-time delivery driver with four years’ experience makes $42 an hour, and that part-time workers who sort packages make $20 an hour on average after 30 days.The groups receive the same benefits package, which includes health care and pension contributions and is worth about $50,000 a year for full-time drivers, the company says.Beyond overall pay levels, the union has said it wants to eliminate a category of driver created under the 2018 contract.The company said the category was intended for hybrid workers who performed jobs like sorting packages on some days while driving on other days, especially Saturdays, to address the growing demand for weekend delivery.But the Teamsters said these workers never followed the hybrid arrangement and simply drove full time from Tuesday to Saturday, for less pay than other full-time drivers. The company says that the weekend drivers make about 87 percent of the base pay of regular full-time drivers, and that some employees have worked under a hybrid arrangement.In the event of a strike, deliveries to consumers, such as e-commerce orders, would probably be among the first to be disrupted. But experts said the supply chain could suffer, too. Some suppliers would struggle to quickly ship goods like automotive parts to manufacturers, potentially causing production slowdowns.Even a short strike could take a toll on UPS. Many customers long relied exclusively on the company, but that started to change after the Teamsters last went on strike in 1997, Mr. Amling said. After that strike, which lasted just over two weeks, more customers began to work with multiple carriers. The consequences were masked by gains from the rise of e-commerce and fewer competitors to choose from, but the company may not be so fortunate today.Niraj Chokshi More

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    Supreme Court Backs Employer in Suit Over Strike Losses

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    The justices ruled that federal labor law did not block state courts from ruling on a case regarding damage caused when workers walked off the job.The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that federal labor law did not protect a union from potential liability for damage that arose during a strike, and that a state court should resolve questions of liability.The majority found that if accusations by an employer are true, actions during a strike by a local Teamsters union were not even arguably protected by federal law because the union took “affirmative steps to endanger” the employer’s property “rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk.” It asked the state court to decide the merits of the accusations.The opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Brett M. Kavanaugh.Three conservative justices backed more sweeping concurring opinions. A single justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.Some legal experts had said a union setback in the case would discourage workers from striking by making the union potentially liable for losses that an employer incurred during a work stoppage.“It will definitely lead to more expensive-to-resolve lawsuits against labor unions,” said Charlotte Garden, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who was an author of a brief in support of the union. Professor Garden did note, however, that the decision was less far-reaching in discouraging strike activity than it could have been.Others have argued that the ruling was necessary to prevent workers from intentionally harming an employer’s property, an act not protected by federal labor law, and that such restrictions do not jeopardize the right to strike.“Damages from intentional destruction of property are not inherent to the act of striking,” said Michael O’Neill of the Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group that submitted a brief in the case. As a result, Mr. O’Neill said, the law does not shield workers or unions from liability for such damage.The case, Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, No. 21-1449, involved unionized employees of a concrete mixing and pouring company who walked off the job during contract negotiations, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. The employer argued that it suffered substantial monetary losses because the abandoned concrete was unusable.The union argued that it had taken reasonable steps to avoid harming the employer’s property, as federal law requires, because workers kept their trucks running as they walked off the job. That allowed the company to dispose of the concrete without damage to the trucks. The union said the lost concrete amounted to the spoilage of a product, for which unions were not typically held liable.At issue were two key questions. The first was procedural: whether the case should be allowed to go forward in state court, as employers generally prefer. The alternative is that the state court — in this case, Washington — should step aside in favor of the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency responsible for resolving labor disputes.The second question was about what economic damage is acceptable during a strike, and what amounts to vandalism — which federal labor law does not protect — of property or equipment.The two issues are linked because under legal precedent, the labor board is supposed to elbow aside state courts when the alleged actions during the strike are at least “arguably protected” by federal law.The Supreme Court ruled that the union’s actions, as alleged by the employer, were not arguably protected because the spoilage of the product was not merely an indirect result of the strike. Instead, the employer contended in a lawsuit, “the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product” and then waited until the concrete was inside the trucks before walking off the job.“In so doing, they not only destroyed the concrete but also put Glacier’s trucks in harm’s way,” the majority opinion said. It sent the case back to Washington State court to be litigated.Sean M. O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, issued a defiant statement after the decision was announced. “The Teamsters will strike any employer, when necessary, no matter their size or the depth of their pockets,” he said.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the court “got it right” in ruling that federal law “does not pre-empt state tort claims against a union for intentional destruction of an employer’s property during a labor dispute.”In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed that the Washington State court should be allowed to take up the case. He wrote that in a future case, the Supreme Court should reconsider whether the National Labor Relations Board should have such wide latitude to take the first pass in such cases.Justice Jackson noted in her dissent that the labor board had issued its own complaint since the case was first filed in Washington State. In issuing its complaint, the labor board’s general counsel found that the strike activity was in fact protected. This by definition meant that the activity was “arguably protected,” Justice Jackson wrote, requiring the state court to stand down.The decision, which some experts said could cause unions to reconsider striking or take a more cautious approach when a perishable product could be harmed, followed a series of rulings that appeared to scale back the power of unions and workers.The court ruled in 2018 that companies could prohibit workers from collectively bringing legal actions against their employers, even though the National Labor Relations Act protects workers’ rights to engage in so-called concerted activities.In the same year, the court ruled that public-sector unions could no longer require nonmembers to pay fees that help fund bargaining and other activities that unions do on their behalf.In 2021, the court deemed unconstitutional a California regulation that gave unions access to agricultural employers’ property for recruitment.In interviews, union leaders said that the ruling on Thursday would further tilt an already uneven playing field toward employers, and that it was often not a strike itself but the threat of a strike that helped unions win concessions.“Without the threat of a strike, you have little leverage in negotiations,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has organized successful strikes.Mr. O’Neill’s group, the Landmark Legal Foundation, argued that a ruling against the employer could have jeopardized the labor peace that the National Labor Relations Act was enacted to assure, “placing workers and the public at risk” by essentially blessing acts of vandalism and sabotage.Unions and workers often deliberately plan strikes to exploit employers’ vulnerability — for example, Amazon workers walked out during the holiday season — and rely on an element of surprise to maximize the economic harm they inflict, and therefore the leverage the union gains.In the near term, unions that are contemplating strikes or already striking, such as unions representing Hollywood writers or United Parcel Service employees whose contract expires this summer, may have to take greater precautions to insulate themselves from legal liability.Such precautions will typically weaken the impact of strikes, said Ms. Garden, the University of Minnesota professor. “You could get unions prophylactically adopting less effective tactics — things like giving advance warning about strike, which gives the employer a lot more time to hire replacement workers,” she said.Other unions may simply decide not to strike at all out of fear of heightened legal exposure, she said.Further out, unions and their political allies may seek to enact legislation that explicitly exempts workers from liability for certain types of economic damage that arise during a strike.“There will be efforts in blue states to make the best of it, to do something protective,” said Sharon Block, a former Biden and Obama administration official who is a professor of practice at Harvard Law School.But even these laws could wind up being challenged before the Supreme Court, experts said.Adam Liptak More

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    Biden Devotes $36 Billion to Save Union Workers’ Pensions

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    The money comes from last year’s Covid-19 relief package and will avert cuts of up to 60 percent in pensions for 350,000 Teamster truck drivers, warehouse and construction workers and food processors.WASHINGTON — President Biden announced Thursday that he was investing $36 billion in federal funds to save the pensions of more than 350,000 union workers and retirees, a demonstration of commitment to labor just a week after a rupture over an imposed settlement of a threatened rail strike.Mr. Biden gathered top union leaders at the White House to make the commitment, described by the White House as the largest ever award of federal financial support for worker and retiree pension security. The money, coming from last year’s Covid-19 relief package, will avert cuts of up to 60 percent in pensions for Teamster truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction workers and food processors, mainly in the Midwest.“Thanks to today’s announcement, hundreds of thousands of Americans can feel that sense of dignity again knowing that they’ve provided for their families and their future, and it’s secure,” Mr. Biden said, joined by Sean M. O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, and Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., as well as Marty Walsh, the U.S. secretary of labor.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A New Primary Calendar: President Biden’s push to reorder the early presidential nominating states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its effects on global markets, in the months and years to come could determine Mr. Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The pension investment came just a week after Mr. Biden prodded Congress to pass legislation forcing a settlement in a long-running dispute between rail companies and workers, heading off a strike that could have upended the economy just before the holidays. While the agreement included wage increases, schedule flexibility and an additional paid day off, several rail unions had rejected it because it lacked paid sick leave. A move to add seven days of paid sick leave failed in Congress before Mr. Biden signed the bill.The showdown over the rail settlement left Mr. Biden in the awkward position of forcing a deal over the objections of some union members even though he had promised to be the “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” The pension rescue plan announced on Thursday put him back in the more comfortable stance of allying himself with organized labor, a key constituency of the Democratic Party.The $36 billion, drawn from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last year, will go to the Central States Pension Fund, which is largely made up of Teamster workers and retirees. The fund has been the largest financially distressed multi-employer pension plan in the nation. As a result of shortfalls, pensioners were facing 60 percent cuts over the next few years, but the White House said the federal funding will now ensure full benefits through 2051.Many of the affected workers and retirees are clustered in Midwestern states that have been battlegrounds in recent elections, including Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as other states like Missouri, Illinois, Florida and Texas.In his remarks, Mr. Biden expressed sympathy for workers and retirees facing cuts not of their own making. “For 30, 40, 50 years you work hard every single day to provide for your family. You do everything right,” he said. “But then imagine losing half of that pension or more through no fault of your own. You did your part. You paid in. Imagine what it does financially to your peace of mind, to your dignity.”Mr. O’Brien hailed Mr. Biden’s move. “Our members chose to forgo raises and other benefits for a prosperous retirement, and they deserve to enjoy the security and stability that all of them worked so hard to earn,” he said in a statement. While much of public policy is determined by big corporations, “it’s good to see elected officials stand up for working families for once.”Republicans called it a politically inspired payoff. Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, dubbed the rescue plan “the largest private pension bailout in American history,” saying it rewarded those who mismanaged their pensions.“Despite years of bipartisan negotiations and recommendations, Democrats rejected protections for union workers in other underfunded multi-employer plans that are not as politically connected as the Teamsters’ Central States plan,” Mr. Brady said. “Now, American taxpayers are being forced to cover promises that pension trustees never should have been allowed to make.” More

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    Reno Is Booming. Some Workers Feel Left Behind.

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    Companies are flocking to the Nevada city, but the rising cost of housing, gas and groceries is making daily life a struggle for many who work there.As an employee at a UPS warehouse outside Reno, Nev., Christina Pixton spends her nights moving thousands of heavy packages on their way to far-flung locales like San Francisco, Phoenix and Chicago.But the warehouse is not air-conditioned, and one night last month, there was no relief outside, either, with smoke from a California wildfire more than 100 miles away causing hazardous air quality. For Ms. Pixton, who has asthma, the irritation to her lungs was the latest challenge she had to learn to navigate in Reno.These are boom times in and around Reno. Warehousing and casinos have long been the city’s main businesses, and the surge in e-commerce since the start of the pandemic has companies snapping up facilities as fast as they can be built.Yet Reno and the surrounding area have also seen the cost of things like housing, gas and groceries rise, making daily existence in this growing metropolis increasingly difficult for many of the people who live here, like Ms. Pixton.Christina Pixton, a UPS worker, and her husband make six figures combined, but struggle with the daily costs of living. While gas prices have fallen to an average of $3.91 a gallon across the United States and $5.34 in Nevada, the average in Reno is $5.75, according to data from AAA. It costs Ms. Pixton $70 to $80 a week to fill up her Toyota Highlander, she said.In the past five years, home prices in the area have risen 70 percent, according to Zillow. That’s good news for homeowners like Ms. Pixton. The typical home in Reno is worth $568,103, up 10.2 percent over the past year. But average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Reno has increased 10 percent compared with last year and 40 percent from three years ago, according to data from Zumper, which tracks housing data.And while homes and planned communities are being developed where farmland once was, affordable housing has become a much-discussed issue among residents and policymakers. Reno’s City Council approved additional affordable housing projects in March. In neighboring Sparks, Mayor Ed Lawson has pushed for denser development — building up and not just out — and more development on federal lands.Housing developments are popping up all over Reno and the surrounding area.Other changes are affecting the way of life in Reno. By the time Ms. Pixton, 37, wants to go shopping after her shift ends around 11 p.m., stores that were once open are now closed after scaling back their hours during the pandemic. When she does make it to Walmart or Target, she often finds scant offerings on the shelves because of continuing supply chain issues and the fact that the Walmart, one of the few locations for miles, draws people from neighboring cities.In a city whose economy is partly driven by getting goods to people across the country expeditiously, Ms. Pixton is left scrambling to find Uncrustables frozen sandwiches for her two sons and the right brand of dog food for the family’s Labrador retriever.“This isn’t a sustainable pattern,” said Ms. Pixton, whose husband works as a foreman at an HVAC company. “We make six figures, and we’re still stuck in this struggling pattern.”In May 2021, Ms. Pixton received a raise to $19 an hour, up from $16. It was a market-rate adjustment that UPS put in place across the country to stay competitive when hiring and retaining workers.But in January, it went back down to $16. As a union steward, Ms. Pixton found herself telling other workers the bad news. Fifteen people quit that week, she said.“It’s been quite hellish,” Ms. Pixton said. “It was not a completely livable salary, but it was something where we could struggle and not have to get a second job.”A spokesman for UPS said that, starting on Oct. 2, another market-rate adjustment brought hourly pay for part-time workers back to $19 an hour.The area offers plenty of affordable land for warehouses, along with access to an interstate and an international airport.In recent years, e-commerce companies have flooded the market. The Reno-Sparks area, with a population of about half a million, ticks a lot of boxes for companies seeking to expand back-end operations. There’s no state income tax, cheap land is available, there’s access to a main interstate and an international airport, and it’s close to California, whose huge economy and millions of people are significant draws for consumer companies looking to easily connect with their customers.In 2014, when Elon Musk came to Nevada to celebrate the opening of Tesla’s giant Gigafactory warehouse, meant to build batteries for his company’s electric vehicles, he encouraged other executives to follow.“What the people of Nevada have created is a state where you can be very agile, where you can do things quickly and get things done,” Mr. Musk said at the time, standing among the state’s legislators.And follow they did. Chewy, Amazon, Thrive Market and Apple have opened or expanded warehouses in the area over the past decade. Third-party logistics companies like OnTrac and Stord have also propped up new facilities in town.Reno’s highways and back roads are dotted with “Now Hiring” billboards.Reno has just a 0.5 percent vacancy rate for warehouses, according to data from the real estate service firm CBRE. About 8.8 million square feet is under construction in the Reno-Sparks area, according to CBRE, and about 80 percent of it is already leased.“We were a good market on a great trajectory averaging four million square feet, probably going to five,” said Eric Bennett, senior vice president of CBRE, which helps lease space to companies. “The pandemic obviously increased the absorption.”Some of these companies have set up their own distribution channels to get their products where they need to go. Others use UPS. All of them need hundreds of people to complete the strenuous work of moving their goods through the facilities and getting them to consumers.“Now Hiring” billboards dot Reno’s interstate and back roads. A chocolate factory was willing to pay as much as $25 an hour. A sign outside a Petco warehouse says a starting salary could be as high as $22 an hour. Hidden Valley Ranch’s plant says its starting hourly wage is $21, with other benefits including a 401(k), paid time off, and health care with dental and vision. Many retailers like Walmart are also trying to attract seasonal workers.Those opportunities are siphoning off potential UPS workers and creating more manual labor for those who remain, said Ross Kinson, a business agent for the local Teamsters.Ross Kinson, a business agent for the local Teamsters, said the increased competition for workers had left some UPS shifts short staffed.Workers like Ms. Pixton.Like many in Reno, she is a California transplant. She moved from Chico with her now-husband, John, in 2008, when Reno was reeling from the housing crisis. Casinos filed for bankruptcy. New construction ground to a halt. She worked in the medical and fast food industries before turning to warehouses.She started at UPS in 2018, attracted by the health care benefits and pension package, and initially made about $13 an hour. She works part time, usually 28 to 32 hours per week. Even though other companies have offered higher wages, she has stayed at UPS because the health benefits cover her children and her pension will vest in about a year.Ms. Pixton has stayed with UPS because of the health care benefits that cover her sons.When the pandemic hit, she felt the impact of millions of stuck-at-home shoppers buying all kinds of merchandise. Before Covid, about 70,000 packages would flow through her hub on a normal summer evening. During the pandemic summer of 2020, that number rose as high as 240,000, though it’s now around 115,000 to 140,000 packages a night.“We’re handling the most amount of packages of any shift because we are getting all of the inbound local businesses. We’re getting the transfers from Sacramento and Oakland and Salt Lake City,” she said. “We’ll get all inbound stuff from other states and have our outbound stuff as well.”Six people are considered a skeleton crew in her department, but Ms. Pixton said that often only three or four were working.As the holiday season approaches, UPS says it plans to hire about 100,000 workers, and is speeding up the process by eliminating interviews and allowing candidates to apply online. At the hub where Ms. Pixton works, UPS is looking to add 400 workers.UPS plans to add seasonal workers for the holidays and has been advertising on online job boards.The current contract that UPS has with the Teamsters went into place in 2018 and expires in 2023. Mr. Kinson said the union would push to formalize language regarding the market-rate wage adjustment for part-time workers for the next contract.“We’d negotiate on good faith,” a UPS spokesman, Glenn Zaccara, said. “The wages they are receiving is industry-leading.”Reno is known for its casinos, but warehouses have long been an economic engine as well.But in a city like Reno that has seen rapid growth, workers argue that the terms of the contract haven’t kept up with reality.“In this area it’s got to be $19 an hour,” Mr. Kinson said. “It has to be or it won’t work.”Loni Goddard works at Kerala Ayurveda, a wellness company, and rents an apartment in Reno. In 2020, her one-bedroom apartment cost $950 with internet and cable. When she re-signed her lease in April, the rent rose to $1,490 — not including internet and cable.“During the pandemic, everyone was getting temporary raises in Reno,” Ms. Goddard said. “At the beginning of 2022, most or all of the raises disappeared and so did the people.”At her UPS job, Ms. Pixton is bracing for the holiday rush. But, she noted, every day has essentially become peak season, considering how much work there is and how few people there are to do it. And while she wishes that more people would join UPS to alleviate some of her workload, she understands why some look elsewhere for employment.“If you’re making less than what you’re paying in gas,” she said, “what’s the point of going?” More

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    Washington State Advances Landmark Deal on Gig Drivers’ Job Status

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    Lawmakers have passed legislation granting benefits and protections, but allowing Lyft and Uber to continue to treat drivers as contractors.The Washington State Senate on Friday passed a bill granting gig drivers certain benefits and protections while preventing them from being classified as employees — a longstanding priority of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft.While the vote appears to pave the way for ultimate passage after a similar measure passed the state House of Representatives last week, the two bills would still have to be reconciled before being sent to the governor for approval. Gov. Jay Inslee has not said whether he intends to sign the legislation.Mike Faulk, a spokesman for Mr. Inslee, said Friday that the governor’s office usually did not “speculate on bill action,” adding, “Once legislators send it to our office, we’ll evaluate it.”The Senate legislation — the result of a compromise between the companies and at least one prominent local union, the Teamsters — was approved 40 to 8.The action follows the collapse of similar efforts in California and New York amid resistance from other unions and worker advocates, who argued that gig drivers should not have to settle for second-class status.Under the compromise, drivers would receive benefits like paid sick leave and a minimum pay rate while transporting customers. The bill would also create a process for drivers to appeal so-called deactivations, which prevent them from finding work through the companies’ apps.But the minimum wage wouldn’t cover the time they spend working without a passenger in the car — a considerable portion of most drivers’ days. And like independent contractors, they could not unionize under federal law.One especially controversial feature of the bill is that it would block local jurisdictions from regulating drivers’ rights. A similar feature helped ignite opposition that killed the prospects for such a bill in New York State last year.Looming in the background of the legislative action in Washington State was the possibility of a ballot measure that could have enacted similar changes with weaker benefits for drivers. After California passed a law in 2019 that effectively classified gig workers as employees, Uber, Lyft and other gig companies spent roughly $200 million on a ballot measure that rolled back those protections. The legislation is still being litigated after a state judge deemed it unconstitutional. More

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    United Auto Workers reformers prevail in vote to choose president by direct election.

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    Members of the United Automobile Workers union have voted decisively to change the way they choose their president and other top leaders, opting to select them through a direct vote rather than a vote of delegates to a convention, as the union has done for decades.The votes on the election reform proposal were cast in a referendum open to the union’s roughly one million current workers and retirees and due by Monday morning. About 143,000 members cast ballots, and with 84 percent of the vote counted on Wednesday night, a direct-election approach was favored by 63 percent, according to a court-appointed independent monitor of the union.The referendum was required by a consent decree approved this year between the union and the Justice Department, which had spent years prosecuting a series of corruption scandals involving the embezzlement of union funds by top officials and illegal payoffs to union officials from the company then known as Fiat Chrysler.More than 15 people were convicted as a result of the investigations, including two recent U.A.W. presidents.Reformers within the U.A.W. have long backed the one member, one vote approach, arguing that it would lead to greater accountability, reducing corruption and forcing leaders to negotiate stronger contracts. A group called Unite All Workers for Democracy helped organize fellow members to support the change in the referendum.“The membership of our great union has made clear that they want to change the direction of the U.A.W. and return to our glory days of fighting for our members,” said Chris Budnick, a U.A.W. member at a Ford Motor plant in Louisville, Ky., who serves as recording secretary for the reform group, in a statement Wednesday evening. “I am so proud of the U.A.W. membership and their willingness to step up and vote for change.”David Witwer, an expert on union corruption at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, said the experience of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which shifted from voting through convention delegates to direct election in 1991, after an anti-racketeering lawsuit by federal prosecutors, supported the reformers’ claims.Dr. Witwer said the delegate system allowed seemingly corrupt union leaders to stay in power because of the leverage they had over convention delegates, who were typically local union officials whom top leaders could reward or punish.“Shifting the national union election process from convention delegates to membership direct voting was pivotal in changing the Teamsters,” he said by email.At the U.A.W., leadership positions have been dominated for decades by members of the so-called Administration Caucus, a kind of political party within the union whose power the delegate system enabled.Some longtime U.A.W. officials credit the caucus with helping to elevate women and Black people to leadership positions earlier than the union’s membership would have directly elected them.But the caucus could be deeply insular. The Justice Department contended in court filings that Gary Jones, a former U.A.W. president who was sentenced to prison this year for embezzling union funds, used some of the money to “curry favor” with his predecessor, Dennis Williams, while serving on the union’s board.Union officials have said Mr. Williams, who was recently sentenced to prison as well, later backed Mr. Jones to succeed him, helping to ensure Mr. Jones’s ascent. More

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    Teamsters Vote for Sean O'Brien, a Hoffa Critic, as President

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    Sean O’Brien scored a decisive victory among union members after criticizing the current leadership as too timid in UPS talks and Amazon organizing.Sean O’Brien was a rising star in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2017 when the union’s longtime president, James P. Hoffa, effectively cast him aside.But that move appears to have set Mr. O’Brien, a fourth-generation Teamster and head of a Boston local, on a course to succeed Mr. Hoffa as the union’s president and one of the most powerful labor leaders in the country.A Teamsters vice president who urged a more assertive stand toward employers like the United Parcel Service — as well as an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon — Mr. O’Brien has declared victory in his bid to lead the nearly 1.4 million-member union.According to a tally reported late Thursday on an election supervisor’s website, he won about two-thirds of the votes cast in a race against the Hoffa-endorsed candidate, Steve Vairma, another vice president. He will assume the presidency in March.The result appears to reflect frustration over the most recent UPS contract and growing dissatisfaction with Mr. Hoffa, who has headed the union for more than two decades and whose father did from 1957 to 1971. The younger Mr. Hoffa did not seek another five-year term.In an interview, Mr. O’Brien said success in organizing Amazon workers — a stated goal of the Teamsters — would require the union to show the fruits of its efforts elsewhere.“We’ve got to negotiate the strongest contracts possible so that we can take it to workers at Amazon and point to it and say this is the benefit you get of being in a union,” he said.David Witwer, an expert on the Teamsters at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, said it was very rare for the Teamsters to elect a president who was not an incumbent or backed by the incumbent and who was sharply critical of his predecessor, as Mr. O’Brien was of Mr. Hoffa.Since the union’s official founding in 1903, Dr. Witwer said in an email, “there have been only two national union elections that have seen an outside reformer candidate win election as president.”During the campaign, Mr. O’Brien, 49, railed against the contract that the union negotiated with UPS for allowing the company to create a category of employees who work on weekends and top out at a lower wage, among other perceived flaws.“If we’re negotiating concessionary contracts and we’re negotiating substandard agreements, why would any member, why would any person want to join the Teamsters union?” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidate forum in September in which he frequently tied his opponent to Mr. Hoffa.Mr. O’Brien has also criticized his predecessor’s approach to Amazon, which many in the labor movement regard as an existential threat. Although the union approved a resolution at its recent convention pledging to “supply all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a division overseeing that organizing, Mr. O’Brien said the efforts were too late in coming.“That plan should have been in place under our warehouse director 10 years ago,” he said in the interview, alluding to the position of warehouse division director that his opponent, Mr. Vairma, has held since 2012.The outcome appears to reflect frustration over the union’s growing dissatisfaction with the tenure of James P. Hoffa.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesIn an interview, Mr. Hoffa said that the union was broke and divided when he took over and that he was leaving it “financially strong and strong in every which way.”He said he was proud of the recent UPS contract, calling it “the richest contract ever negotiated” and pointing out that it allows many full-time drivers to make nearly $40 an hour.He said Mr. O’Brien’s critique of the union’s efforts on Amazon was unfair. “No one was doing it a decade ago,” Mr. Hoffa said. “It’s more complex than just going out and organizing 20 people at a grocery store. He sounds like it’s so simple.”Mr. O’Brien did not elaborate on his own plans for organizing Amazon, saying he wanted to solicit more input from Teamsters locals, but suggested that they would include bringing political and economic pressure to bear on the company in cities and towns around the country. The union has taken part in efforts to deny Amazon a tax abatement in Indiana and to reject a delivery station in Colorado.Mr. O’Brien, who once worked as a rigger, transporting heavy equipment to construction sites, was elected president of a large Boston local in 2006. Within a few years, he appeared to be ensconced in the union’s establishment wing.In a 2013 incident that led to a 14-day unpaid suspension, Mr. O’Brien threatened members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform group, who were taking on an ally of his in Rhode Island. “They’ll never be our friends,” he said of the challengers. “They need to be punished.”Mr. O’Brien has apologized for the comments and points out that the reform advocate who led the challenge in Rhode Island, Matt Taibi, is now a supporter who ran on his slate in the recent election.The break with Mr. Hoffa came in 2017. Early that year, the longtime Teamsters president appointed Mr. O’Brien to a position whose responsibilities included overseeing the union’s contract negotiation with UPS, where more than 300,000 Teamsters now work.Understand Amazon’s Employment SystemCard 1 of 6A look inside Amazon. More

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    Sean O'Brien, a Hoffa Critic, Claims Victory in Teamster Vote

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    The head of a Boston local who urged a more assertive stand toward employers like the United Parcel Service — and an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon — declared victory Thursday in his bid to lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.If the result is confirmed, the victory by Sean O’Brien, an international vice president of the Teamsters, would put a new imprint on the nearly 1.4 million-member union after more than two decades of leadership by James P. Hoffa, who did not seek another five-year term.The outcome appears to reflect frustration over the union’s most recent contract with UPS and a growing dissatisfaction with the tenure of Mr. Hoffa, whose father ran the union from 1957 to 1971.With about 90 percent of the ballots tallied, Mr. O’Brien had more than two-thirds of the vote in his race against Steve Vairma, a fellow international vice president who had been endorsed by Mr. Hoffa. The election was conducted by mail-in ballots that were due Monday.Mr. O’Brien, 49, railed against the contract that the union negotiated with UPS — where more than 300,000 Teamsters work — for allowing the company to create a category of employees who work on weekends and top out at a lower wage, among other perceived flaws.“If we’re negotiating concessionary contracts and we’re negotiating substandard agreements, why would any member, why would any person want to join the Teamsters union?” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidate forum in September in which he frequently tied his opponent to Mr. Hoffa.Mr. O’Brien has also criticized Mr. Hoffa’s approach to Amazon, which many in the labor movement regard as an existential threat. Although the union approved a resolution at its recent convention pledging to “supply all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a division overseeing that organizing, Mr. O’Brien said the efforts were too late. More