By The New York Times This year, workers across industries in the United States have increasingly walked off the job or threatened to do so. In July, tens of thousands of actors joined screenwriters on the picket line, bringing Hollywood to a halt. Meanwhile, a summertime strike of more than 300,000 United Parcel Service workers […] More
Walkouts by screenwriters and actors have meant less work in fields that cater to the TV and film industry.One reason the August employment report wasn’t stronger: Television and movie production has largely halted since a deadlock in contract negotiations between major studios and unions that represent screenwriters and actors.The motion picture and sound recording industry subtracted 16,800 jobs in August. That’s not a huge share of its approximately 438,000-person work force, but it underestimates the total impact of the labor stoppages, given how much spending power the film industry creates in Los Angeles specifically.The shutdown started when 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May. In the second quarter alone, according to Los Angeles’s film office, activity was down 28.8 percent from a year earlier.The stoppages spread when SAG-AFTRA, which represents more than 160,000 actors and broadcasters, struck in July after its contract with the largest film and television studios expired.Striking actors and writers, however, don’t translate one for one into payrolls. For one thing, many of SAG-AFTRA’s members work for television news stations and aren’t on strike. Those who do act in movies and TV shows usually sign contracts, sometimes for a day or a week, rather than entering into a continuing employment relationship.Between intermittent gigs, they’re used to taking second jobs, like waiting on tables or designing websites. During the strike, they’re also allowed to work in theater and commercials, as well as on a handful of independent projects that have agreed to abide by the union’s demands.Even with no work, most earn at least some money through residuals — although that revenue has shrunk with the rise of streaming, and will fade as the months drag on.“We’re used to being freelancers, and just being able to go along,” said Jodi Long, president of SAG-AFTRA’s Los Angeles local. “For now, what’s really going to affect the job market is the people on set — the hair and makeup people, the gaffers and the grips and the people in production.”Ms. Long is right: The support services required to make movies and shows have largely shut down. Some serve other industries as well, but many have grown up around the needs of film production. Even if the industry becomes very busy when the strike ends as studios restock their pipelines, months of income will be hard to replace.Take Limelight Catering. Its owner, Steve Michelson, mostly mothballed the business in May when the writers’ strike started, laying off 50 staff members, nearly all of them represented by the Teamsters. Since then, he has been repairing trucks and doing other maintenance at his facility in the northern reaches of the Los Angeles area.“We’re kind of the side effect,” Mr. Michelson said. “We depend on the film industry, but we get nothing out of this. The actors and the writers, hopefully they’ll get a nice raise, but we get nothing out of it.”Unlike striking workers in California, those who lose their jobs as collateral damage of labor disputes are eligible for unemployment insurance. (New York State does allow workers on strike to collect unemployment checks.)That’s what most of Mr. Michelson’s workers are doing. Many of those who were in more physical jobs, like carrying heavy cameras and lights around, are using the time to take care of occupational injuries by claiming disability benefits.Bill Bridges, a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has worked as a grip for 25 years. Getting through the Covid-19 shutdown was hard enough, he said, and then he needed a year off for a total knee replacement. During that time, Mr. Bridges became licensed to drive a truck, and applied for jobs with the long-haul freight lines — but he said they paid only $650 a week for someone with no experience.After recovering from surgery, he was able to drive film trucks, and sometimes earned $1,600 a day. That stopped when the talent went on strike. This time, he’s back on disability to get bunion surgery.Mr. Bridges supports the strikers, but said he was way behind on bills, barely sustaining his wife and 11-year-old son. The union has started a mutual aid food pantry and a GoFundMe appeal for its members.“This is probably financially the lowest point in my life,” he said. He worries about his own union’s contract negotiations, coming up next year: “If there’s another strike, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” More
The United Auto Workers union is seeking big raises and other gains in contract talks with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.The United Auto Workers union said on Friday that 97 percent of its members had voted to authorize strikes against General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis if the union and companies were unable to negotiate new labor contracts.The result gives the union’s president, Shawn Fain, the power to tell workers to walk off the job once the current contracts expire on Sept. 14.Strike authorization votes are normally formalities that pass by significant margins and do not ensure strikes. But this vote comes as the newly energized U.A.W. takes a more assertive stance with automakers, part of a larger shift in organized labor.G.M., Ford and Stellantis have posted strong profits for about a decade. That has emboldened Mr. Fain and his members to call for substantial wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments, and improved pensions and health care benefits.“This is our time to take back what we are owed,” he said on Facebook Live on Friday. “We are united, and we are not afraid,” he added.Mr. Fain, who was narrowly elected president this year in the union’s first direct election of its top leaders, appears to have united the union’s members. He appeared at rallies with workers in Detroit on Wednesday and in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday and Friday. About a dozen similar events are planned over the next two weeks. Such events were rare in contract talks over the last 20 years.“There’s nervousness, but there’s excitement,” Luigi Gjokaj, a vice president at U.A.W. Local 51, said at the Detroit rally. “If the company comes to the table and they’re fair, we’ll have an agreement. If it has to go to a strike, we are prepared.”Mr. Fain spoke to about 100 workers at that rally from the bed of a pickup truck just outside a Stellantis plant that makes the Jeep Wagoneer, a highly profitable sport utility vehicle.“We’re not asking to be millionaires,” he said to loud cheers. “We just want our fair share.”In a statement after the result of the strike vote was announced, Ford said it hoped to work with the U.A.W. toward “creative solutions during this time when our dramatically changing industry needs a skilled and competitive work force more than ever.”This month, Mr. Fain sent the companies a list of demands, including the possibility of working only four days a week and wage increases of 40 percent, noting that the chief executives of G.M., Ford and Stellantis have been awarded bigger compensation packages over the last four years. New hires at auto plants start at about $16 an hour and over several years can work their way up to the $32 an hour earned by veteran workers.G.M., Ford and Stellantis have suggested they will probably agree to some form of higher wages. In a fresh indication of how the talks may go, an Ohio battery plant owned jointly by G.M. and LG Energy Solution, a South Korean battery maker, agreed on Thursday to increase the wages of 1,900 U.A.W. workers by 25 percent on average.Mr. Fain had repeatedly criticized wages at the plant, which had started at about $16 an hour, as being too low. The plant is covered by a separate bargaining agreement from the one the union is negotiating for workers in G.M.’s wholly owned plants. Wages there will now start at about $20 an hour.The three manufacturers aim to minimize increases in labor costs in any new contract because they are spending tens of billions of dollars on a momentous transition to electric vehicles. The companies have suggested that agreeing to all or most of Mr. Fain’s demands would leave them at a competitive disadvantage against Tesla, the dominant maker of electric cars, and European and Asian automakers that operate nonunion plants in the United States.President Biden told reporters on Friday that he was “concerned” about a potential strike by autoworkers. “I’m talking with the U.A.W.,” he said.Mr. Biden said the transition to electric vehicles should not shortchange workers. “I think that there should be a circumstance where jobs that are being displaced are replaced with new jobs,” he said, adding that the pay for those new jobs “should be commensurate.”Former President Donald J. Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, has seized on autoworkers’ unease about the switch to electric vehicles to court the U.A.W., which typically backs Democrats but has declined to endorse Mr. Biden so far.Despite the costs of investing in electrification, the three automakers are enjoying healthy profits.G.M. said in July that it expected to earn more than $9.3 billion this year, about $1 billion more than a previous forecast. Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam and owns Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and other auto brands, made 11 billion euros (about $11.9 billion) in the first half of this year, a record. Ford expects earnings before taxes of $11 billion to $12 billion this year. All three companies make most of their profits in North America.“Regardless of what other opinions might be, business profits enable future investments, which support long-term job security and opportunities for all,” said Gerald Johnson, G.M.’s executive vice president for global manufacturing and sustainability, in a video message to employees last week.The U.A.W. typically names one company that it will focus on in negotiations and make the target of a strike if it cannot reach an agreement. The union has not done so thus far, although Mr. Fain has publicly sparred the most with Stellantis.After Mr. Fain presented his demands, Stellantis responded with proposals that would increase how much workers contributed to the cost of health care, reduce the company’s contributions to retirement accounts and allow the company to close plants temporarily with little advance notice.In a Facebook video, Mr. Fain angrily denounced the Stellantis proposals and tossed a copy in a wastebasket. “That’s where it belongs, the trash, because that’s what it is,” he said.Stellantis’s chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said in a letter to employees that he was “incredibly disappointed” by Mr. Fain’s remarks. “The theatrics and personal insults will not help us reach an agreement,” Mr. Stewart said.Tensions between the U.A.W. and Stellantis, which was formed in the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot S.A., have been simmering since the automaker idled a Jeep plant in Illinois. One of Mr. Fain’s key objectives is getting the company to reopen the factory. More
The vote by members of the Teamsters union removes a potential threat to the economy.Averting a strike that could have shaken the U.S. economy, the union representing more than 300,000 United Parcel Service employees announced Tuesday that its members had ratified a new labor agreement with the shipping giant.The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said that its UPS members approved the five-year contract with more than 86 percent support.The Teamsters have said that the agreement includes wage gains of at least $7.50 an hour for current employees over its five-year term. It also raises the minimum pay for part-time workers to $21 an hour from under $17, and raises the top rate for full-time delivery drivers to about $49 on average.Under the previous contract, which expired on Aug. 1, full-time drivers made an average of about $42 an hour after four years on the job.In a statement, the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, said the contract was the most lucrative ever at UPS and would serve as a model for other workers that the union is seeking to organize. “This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” Mr. O’Brien said.The Teamsters have made unionizing Amazon a top priority in recent years, and Mr. O’Brien said while running for the union’s presidency in 2021 that doing so would first require big, concrete gains at other companies.Despite the ratification, the new UPS contract will not take effect immediately. The union said in its statement that a group of workers in Florida voted down a supplement to the national contract that covers about 175 members — one of 44 supplements that the union also negotiated.The union said its negotiators would immediately meet with UPS to resolve the remaining issues so that those Florida members can vote again. The national contract will take effect once the supplement is approved.UPS declined to comment beyond a brief news release noting the ratification vote and stating that the Florida supplement would be “finalized shortly.”The Teamsters had been aggressive in mobilizing members and ratcheting up pressure on the company in recent months, including picket-line practice and training sessions for strike captains. Mr. O’Brien has frequently referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate” and argued that “this multibillion-dollar corporation has plenty to give American workers — they just don’t want to.”UPS moves about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages shipped in the United States each day, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. Its adjusted net income rose more than 70 percent from 2019 to last year, reaching more than $11 billion.The negotiations on a national contract began in April, and the union announced in mid-June that its members had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.The two sides resolved many key issues by early July, including eliminating a lower-paid category of full-time driver that had angered many UPS employees, and requiring air conditioning in new trucks to improve heat safety. But then negotiations broke down, with the Teamsters arguing that the company had not offered sufficient improvements in pay for part-time workers, who make up more than half of the union’s UPS members.Mr. O’Brien and the union spent the next few weeks condemning what they sometimes referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs, before the sides resumed negotiating in late July and quickly finalized a tentative deal.UPS employees represented by the union began voting on the agreement in early August. While some part-time workers continued to argue that the wage gains should have been even larger and urged a “no” vote, the final margin suggested that most were satisfied with the deal. More
Pushed by angry members, unions representing actors, autoworkers and UPS employees are becoming increasingly assertive under new leadership.Shawn Fain is not a typical president of the United Automobile Workers union.Mr. Fain recently declined a symbolic handshake with the chief executives of the major Detroit automakers, a gesture that traditionally kicks off contract negotiations. He is seeking an ambitious 40 percent wage increase for rank-and-file members — in line, he says, with the pay gains of those corporate leaders over the past four years. And in a video meeting with members last week, Mr. Fain threw a list of proposals from Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler and Jeep, into a wastebasket, saying it belonged in the trash “because that’s what it is.”On one level, the circumstances that produced the union’s more aggressive leadership are idiosyncratic. Mr. Fain, who won his position in March, is the first president in the union’s history, dating back nearly 90 years, to be elected directly by its members. The change took place after a major corruption scandal engulfed two of his predecessors and several more union officials.But on another level, the forces that swept Mr. Fain into power are the same ones that have borne down on unions across a variety of industries: a feeling among members that they have spent years enduring out-of-touch leaders, meager wage growth and concession-filled labor agreements, which forced some to do similar jobs as co-workers for less pay.“We kept being told, ‘This is a good contract,’” said Shana Shaw, a U.A.W. member who has worked at a General Motors plant in Missouri since 2008. “And our members are saying, ‘It’s not a good contract!’”The long-simmering rage helps explain why, in addition to Mr. Fain, several prominent unions are now in the hands of outspoken leaders who have taken their membership to the brink of high-stakes labor stoppages — or beyond.Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has repeatedly referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate” and warned that a strike of the union’s 300,000-plus United Parcel Service members appeared inevitable. (The union recently reached a tentative agreement that members are voting on.)Just after a union of more than 150,000 Hollywood actors called a strike in July, Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, said that she was “shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us.” She added: “It is disgusting. Shame on them!”The companies, including UPS and the automakers, have indicated that they are willing to increase compensation but cannot jeopardize their long-term viability. The large Hollywood studios have offered actors pay increases but say they must be able to adapt to the decline of traditional television.Some executives have called out the unions’ more confrontational gestures. “The theatrics and personal insults will not help us reach an agreement,” Mark Stewart, a top Stellantis official, said in a letter to employees after Mr. Fain literally discarded the company’s proposals.And channeling members’ anger is not without risk: It can raise expectations and make it difficult for leaders to finalize contracts. Mr. O’Brien is facing a “vote no” campaign organized largely by UPS part-timers who argue that the union did not secure large enough raises.The populist approach is not unique to labor unions. The 2008 financial crisis and the grindingly slow recovery produced a more militant style of politics that upended established institutions around the world. The crisis helped lay the groundwork for the unexpected support of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race.If anything, unions were slower to adapt to the rising anger than other institutions, largely because they were less democratic.In 2018, UPS employees voted down a labor contract negotiated by the Teamsters leadership, which created a new category of lower-paid drivers. The union’s president, James P. Hoffa, who had served in the position for nearly 20 years, used a procedural rule to impose the contract anyway.But even the change-averse labor movement could not withstand a final blow: Covid-19, and union members’ anger over their perilous working conditions as corporate profits grew at one of the fastest rates in decades.“There’s a historical memory of all the concessions they made,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, referring to union members. “And they feel shafted. The C.E.O.s are sitting pretty with all this pandemic money that didn’t go into their pockets.”Many nonunion workers saw their wages rise rapidly thanks to a tight job market, but contracts negotiated before the pandemic often locked union members into smaller wage increases as inflation surged.Mr. O’Brien has tapped into that resentment.A vice president and ally of Mr. Hoffa in the mid-2010s, Mr. O’Brien ran to replace him in 2021, deriding his predecessor for foisting concessionary contracts onto members. He vowed to raise pay for part-timers at UPS — an unusual concern for a would-be Teamster president, even though part-timers make up a majority of the union’s members there — and secured a significant wage increase.Fran Drescher, center, president of SAG-AFTRA, came to channel her members’ anxiety over declining pay because of the rise of streaming.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesOther union leaders have followed a similar arc. In 2021, Ms. Drescher ran for president of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union now on strike, on the union’s moderate slate and narrowly won. But she came to channel her members’ anxieties over the rise of streaming, which has led to longer gaps in work for many actors and more limited royalties as shows are reused less often.“The streaming contracts negotiated back at the beginning of this, when certain individuals thought this would be a fad, set us up for failure,” said Linsay Rousseau, a SAG-AFTRA member who works primarily as a voice actor. She said Ms. Drescher’s outspokenness had won over even members who voted against her.In some cases, outraged rank-and-filers have taken matters into their own hands. Edward Hall, a rail worker and local union official in Tucson, said he decided to run for the presidency of the more than 25,000-member Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen in early 2022. The union’s longtime president had arrived to hold a town-hall meeting about labor negotiations that had dragged on for over two years. But, Mr. Hall said, he was unable to provide frustrated members with a timetable for a deal. (Dennis Pierce, the former president, declined to comment.)Mr. Hall was elected last fall, shortly after Congress intervened to enact a labor agreement that members of several rail unions had voted down. Many workers felt the agreement did not go far enough to rein in a system of railroad operations that sought to minimize equipment and employees.“It was profitable for them,” Mr. Hall said, referring to rail carriers. “But for lack of a better way to put it, it made life on the railroad hell for regular employees.”The combination of agitated members and more assertive leaders can sometimes pry loose concessions from employers even without a strike, especially amid a worker shortage. This year, rail carriers began voluntarily addressing one of the workers’ biggest concerns: the lack of paid sick days.At UPS, Mr. O’Brien spent months preparing his members for a possible strike, even holding training sessions for strike captains and practice pickets. The pressure appeared to yield significant gains in the recent tentative agreement between the two sides, including more than $7 an hour in raises over the five years of the contract.In an interview last month, Mr. O’Brien said the Teamsters’ actions under his leadership had made the strike threat credible. “We’ve been striking since I took over,” said Mr. O’Brien, pointing to other companies where the union represents workers. David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg who represents employers, said the strident rhetoric of union leaders often reflected a genuine shift in workers’ attitudes. Still, he added, negotiations more often hinge on fundamentals like a company’s profitability and the union’s ability to disrupt operations through a strike, making it wise for employers to ignore the bluster.“A lot of times that stuff stops: They go out and say what they wanted to say, they send up a signal flare and move on,” Mr. Pryzbylski said. “If you start responding, it stays in the news cycle.”Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in white, has repeatedly referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe full-throated demands can also backfire in economic terms. Yellow, a trucking company with 30,000 employees, declared bankruptcy several months after talks with the Teamsters broke down. The company’s chief executive said in a statement that the Teamsters’ intransigence drove Yellow out of business, though analysts note that the company showed signs of mismanagement for years.The risks may be even higher in industries under pressure to embrace a new business model.The major U.S. automakers have said that they need the ability to team up with nonunion battery manufacturers to secure additional capital and expertise. But Mr. Fain, the new U.A.W. president, has said that the failure to organize more battery workers was a major failure of his predecessors, and that battery workers must receive the same pay and working conditions that union workers enjoy at the Big Three.Many U.A.W. members say the tension between the automakers’ goals and the union’s indicates that a strike will be hard to avoid when their contract expires in mid-September. But they do not appear to be shrinking from that possibility.“We have an extremely well-oiled machine,” said Ms. Shaw, who also serves as a co-chair of the organizing committee of Unite All Workers for Democracy, a reform group within the union that assembled the slate of candidates Mr. Fain ran on. “We’ll be ready to go if happens.” More
From meatpackers to home health aides, workers are struggling in sweltering temperatures and productivity is taking a hit.As much of the United States swelters under record heat, Amazon drivers and warehouse workers have gone on strike in part to protest working conditions that can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.On triple-digit days in Orlando, utility crews are postponing checks for gas leaks, since digging outdoors dressed in heavy safety gear could endanger their lives. Even in Michigan, on the nation’s northern border, construction crews are working shortened days because of heat.Now that climate change has raised the Earth’s temperatures to the highest levels in recorded history, with projections showing that they will only climb further, new research shows the impact of heat on workers is spreading across the economy and lowering productivity.Extreme heat is regularly affecting workers beyond expected industries like agriculture and construction. Sizzling temperatures are causing problems for those who work in factories, warehouses and restaurants and also for employees of airlines and telecommunications firms, delivery services and energy companies. Even home health aides are running into trouble.“We’ve known for a very long time that human beings are very sensitive to temperature, and that their performance declines dramatically when exposed to heat, but what we haven’t known until very recently is whether and how those lab responses meaningfully extrapolate to the real-world economy,” said R. Jisung Park, an environmental and labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And what we are learning is that hotter temperatures appear to muck up the gears of the economy in many more ways than we would have expected.”A study published in June on the effects of temperature on productivity concludes that while extreme heat harms agriculture, its impact is greater on industrial and other sectors of the economy, in part because they are more labor-intensive. It finds that heat increases absenteeism and reduces work hours, and concludes that as the planet continues to warm, those losses will increase.The cost is high. In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure, according to data compiled by The Lancet. Another report found that in 2020, the loss of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about $100 billion, a figure projected to grow to $500 billion annually by 2050.A U.P.S. delivery in Manhattan on Monday.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesOther research found that as the mercury reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit, productivity slumps by about 25 percent and when it goes past 100 degrees, productivity drops off by 70 percent.And the effects are unequally distributed: in poor counties, workers lose up to 5 percent of their pay with each hot day, researchers have found. In wealthy counties, the loss is less than 1 percent.Of the many economic costs of climate change —- dying crops, spiking insurance rates, flooded properties — the loss of productivity caused by heat is emerging as one of the biggest, experts say.“We know that the impacts of climate change are costing the economy,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, and a former global executive for environmental and social risk at Bank of America. “The losses associated with people being hot at work, and the slowdowns and mistakes people make as a result are a huge part.”Still, there are no national regulations to protect workers from extreme heat. In 2021, the Biden administration announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would propose the first rule designed to protect workers from heat exposure. But two years later, the agency still has not released a draft of the proposed regulation.Seven states have some form of labor protections dealing with heat, but there has been a push to roll them back in some places. In June, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law that eliminated rules set by municipalities that mandated water breaks for construction workers, even though Texas leads all states in terms of lost productivity linked to heat, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by Vivid Economics.Business groups are opposed to a national standard, saying it would be too expensive because it would likely require rest, water and shade breaks and possibly the installation of air-conditioning.Martin Rosas, the vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union International. “When it’s extremely hot, and their safety glasses fog up, their vision is impaired and they are exhausted, they can’t even see what they’re doing,” he said of the workers he represents.Brett Deering for The New York Times“OSHA should take care not to impose further regulatory burdens that make it more difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and create jobs,” wrote David S. Addington, vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, in response to OSHA’s plan to write a regulation.Marc Freedman, vice president of employment policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said, “I don’t think anyone is dismissing the hazard of overexposure to heat.” But, he said, “Is an OSHA standard the right way to do it? A lot of employers are already taking measures, and the question will be, what more do they have to do?”The National Beef slaughterhouse in Dodge City, Kan., where temperatures are expected to hover above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the next week, is cooled by fans, not air-conditioning.Workers wear heavy protective aprons and helmets and use water vats and hoses heated to 180 degrees to sanitize their equipment. It’s always been hot work.But this year is different, said one worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The heat inside the slaughterhouse is intense, drenching employees in sweat and making it hard to get through a shift, the worker said.National Beef did not respond to emails or telephone calls requesting comment.Martin Rosas, a union representative for meatpacking and food processing workers in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, said sweltering conditions present a risk for food contamination. After workers skin a hide, they need to ensure that debris doesn’t get on the meat or carcass. “But when it’s extremely hot, and their safety glasses fog up, their vision is impaired and they are exhausted, they can’t even see what they’re doing,” Mr. Rosas said.Almost 200 employees out of roughly 2,500, have quit at the Dodge City National Beef plant since May, Mr. Rosas said. That’s about 10 percent higher than usual for that time period, he said.Maria Rodriguez, who has worked at the same McDonald’s in Los Angeles for 20 years, walked out on July 21.Jessica Pons for The New York TimesBut even some workers in air-conditioned settings are getting too hot. McDonald’s workers in Los Angeles walked off the job this summer as the air-conditioned kitchens were overwhelmed by the sweltering heat outside.“There is an air-conditioner in every part of the store, but the thermostat in the kitchen still showed it was over 100 degrees,” said Maria Rodriguez, who has worked at the same McDonald’s on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles for 20 years, but walked out on July 21, sacrificing a day of pay. “It’s been hot before, but never like this summer. I felt terrible — like I could pass out or faint at any moment.”Nicole Enearu, the owner of the store, said in a statement, “We understand that there’s an uncomfortable heat wave in LA, which is why we’re even more focused on ensuring the safety of our employees inside our restaurants. Our air-conditioning is functioning properly at this location.”Tony Hedgepeth, a home health aide in Richmond, Va., cares for a client whose home thermostat is typically set at about 82 degrees. Last week, the temperature inside was near 94 degrees.Any heat is a challenge in Mr. Hedgepeth’s job. “Bathing, cooking, lifting and moving him, cleaning him,” he said. “It’s all physical. It’s a lot of sweat.”Warehouse workers across the country are also feeling the heat. Sersie Cobb, a forklift driver who stocks boxes of pasta in a warehouse in Columbia, S.C., said the stifling heat can make it difficult to breathe. “Sometimes I get dizzy and start seeing dots,” Mr. Cobb said. “My vision starts to go black. I stop work immediately when that happens. Two times this summer I’ve had heart palpitations from the heat, and left work early to go to the E.R.”In Southern California, a group of 84 striking Amazon delivery workers say that one of their priorities is getting the company to make it safe to work in extreme heat. Last month, unionized UPS workers won a victory when the company agreed to install air-conditioning in delivery trucks.Amazon delivery drivers striking at the company’s Palmdale, Calif., warehouse and delivery center on Tuesday.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Heat has played a tremendous role — it was one of the major issues in the negotiations,” said Carthy Boston, a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters representing UPS drivers in Washington, D.C. “Those trucks are hotboxes.”Many factories were built decades ago for a different climate and are not air-conditioned. A study on the effects of extreme temperatures on the productivity of auto plants in the United States found that a week with six or more days of heat exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit cuts production by an average of 8 percent.In Tulsa, Okla., Navistar is installing a $19 million air-conditioning system at its IC Bus factory, which produces many of America’s school buses. Temperatures on the floor can reach 99 degrees F. Currently, the plant is only cooled by overhead fans that swirl high above the assembly line.Shane Anderson, the company’s interim manager, said air-conditioning is expected to cost about $183 per hour, or between $275,000 and $500,000 per year — but the company believes it will boost worker productivity.Other employers are also adapting.Brad Maurer, who leads a construction contracting business in Michigan, where heat has caused his employees to stop working hours before quitting time at some sites.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesBrad Maurer, vice president of Leidal and Hart, which builds stadiums, hospitals and factories in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, said managers now bring in pallets of bottled water, which they didn’t used to do, at a cost to the company of a few thousand dollars a month.Rising heat around Detroit recently caused his employees to stop working three hours early on a Ford Motors facility for several days in a row — a pattern emerging throughout his company’s work sites.“It means costs go up, production goes down, we may not meet schedules, and guys and women don’t get paychecks,” Mr. Maurer said. Labor experts say that as employers adapt to the new reality of the changing climate, they will have to pay one way or the other.“The truth is that the changes required probably will be very costly, and they will get passed on to employers and consumers,” said David Michaels, who served as assistant secretary of labor at OSHA during the Obama administration and is now a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health.“But if we don’t want these workers to get killed we will have to pay that cost.”David Gelles More
United Parcel Service faced a potential walkout by more than 325,000 union members after their five-year contract expires next week.United Parcel Service announced Tuesday that it had reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract with the union representing more than 325,000 of its U.S. workers, a key step in averting a potential strike.The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, reported in June that its UPS members had voted to authorize a walkout after the expiration of the current agreement on Aug. 1, with 97 percent of those who took part in the vote endorsing the move.UPS handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages that are shipped daily in the United States, and the strike prospect has threatened to dent economic activity, particularly the e-commerce industry.Representatives from more than 150 Teamster locals will meet on Monday to review the agreement, and rank-and-file members will vote on it from Aug. 3 to Aug. 22, according to the union.Negotiations had broken down in early July, largely over the issue of part-time pay, before resuming Tuesday morning.“We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it,” the Teamsters president, Sean M. O’Brien, said in a statement. “UPS has put $30 billion in new money on the table as a direct result of these negotiations.”The company said it could not comment on the dollar value of the deal ahead of its second-quarter earnings call in early August.The Teamsters said that under the tentative agreement, current full- and part-time UPS employees represented by the union would receive a $2.75-an-hour raise this year, and $7.50 an hour in raises over the course of the contract.The minimum pay for part-timers will rise to $21 an hour — far above the current minimum starting pay of $16.20 — and the top rate for full-time delivery drivers will rise to $49 an hour. Full-time drivers currently make $42 an hour on average after four years.The company has also pledged to create 7,500 new full-time union jobs and to fill 22,500 open positions, for which part-time workers will be eligible. The company has said that part-time workers are essential to navigating bursts of activity over the course of a day and during busy months, and that many part-timers graduate to full-time jobs.“Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers,” Carol Tomé, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “This agreement continues to reward UPS’s full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive.”The union had cited the company’s strong pandemic-era performance, with net adjusted income up more than 70 percent last year from 2019, as a reason that workers deserved substantial raises.It had especially emphasized the need to improve pay for part-timers, who account for more than half the U.S. employees represented by the Teamsters, and who the union said earn “near-minimum wage” in many areas.The path to the agreement appeared to be paved weeks ago after the two sides resolved what was arguably their most contentious issue, a new class of worker created under the previous contract.UPS had said the arrangement was intended to allow workers to take on dual roles, like sorting packages some days and driving on other days, especially Saturdays, as a way to keep up with growing demand for weekend delivery.But the Teamsters said that the hybrid idea was never actually carried out, and that in practice the new category of workers drove full time Tuesday through Saturday, only for less pay than other drivers. The company said that, under the previous contract, the Saturday drivers made about 87 percent of the base pay of other drivers and that some workers did work in a dual role.Under the tentative agreement, the lower-paid category of drivers will be eliminated, and workers who drive Tuesday through Saturday will be converted to regular full-time drivers.The deal also stipulates that no driver will be required to work an unscheduled sixth day in a week, which drivers had at times been forced to do under the existing contract to keep up with Saturday demand.The two sides also agreed on several key noneconomic issues, such as heat safety. Under the proposed deal, new trucks must have air-conditioning beginning in January, while existing trucks will be outfitted with additional fans and venting.Whether it passes will partly be a political test for Mr. O’Brien, who was elected to head the Teamsters in 2021 while regularly criticizing his predecessor, James P. Hoffa, as being too accommodating toward employers and toward UPS in particular.Mr. O’Brien argued that Mr. Hoffa had effectively forced UPS workers to accept a deeply flawed contract in 2018, even after they voted it down, and accused his Hoffa-backed rival of being reluctant to strike against the company.Since taking over as president last year, he has frequently said the union would be aggressive in pressuring UPS and suggested on several occasions that a strike was likely.A few days before the agreement on eliminating the hybrid worker position, Mr. O’Brien said in a statement that the Teamsters were walking away from the table over an “appalling counterproposal” and that a strike “now appears inevitable.”The company sought to reassure customers and the public that a deal would be consummated despite the occasionally heated pronouncements.On an earnings call in April, the UPS chief executive, Ms. Tomé, said that the two sides were aligned on many key issues and that outsiders should not be distracted by the “great deal of noise” that was likely to arise in the run-up to a deal.The deal, if ratified, removes a serious threat to the U.S. economy. Economists say a strike by UPS employees would have made it harder for businesses to ship goods on time, and the resulting restrictions in supply chains would probably have stoked inflation just as it had shown signs of easing.“It would have been devastating to the economy, just given the size and scale of UPS,” said Mike Skordeles, head of U.S. economics at Truist Advisory Services. “You can’t just pull out a player that big without causing disruption and prices to go up.”A 10-day UPS strike would cost the U.S. economy about $7 billion, according to an estimate from the Anderson Economic Group.Small businesses were most at risk from a strike as UPS might be their sole or primary shipping provider, meaning they would have to scramble for alternatives. Large retailers tend to have more diversified delivery providers and are more likely to have contingency plans to soften the blow.Mr. O’Brien had explicitly asked President Biden, who has called himself “the most pro-labor union president,” not to get involved in the negotiations. A group of over two dozen Democratic senators also pledged not to intervene.The Biden administration helped broker a deal that headed off a freight rail strike last year. Many union members involved in that dispute saw the deal as leaning too heavily in favor of the major rail carriers.In 1997, about 185,000 UPS workers staged a strike for 15 days. That time, the company reported that the strike cost it more than $600 million. But the last strike happened when e-commerce was in its infancy. UPS has benefited from the e-commerce boom: In 2022 it reported more than $100 billion in revenue, compared with $31 billion in 2002.J. Edward Moreno More
With the Teamsters contract set to expire Aug. 1, pay for part-time workers is a major hurdle. A walkout could rattle the U.S. economy.Barely a week before the contract for more than 325,000 United Parcel Service workers expires, union and company negotiators have yet to reach an agreement to avert a strike that could knock the American economy off stride.UPS and the union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, have resolved a variety of thorny issues, including heat safety and forced overtime. But they remain stalemated on pay for part-time workers, who account for more than half the union’s workers at UPS.A strike, which could come as soon as Aug. 1, could have significant consequences for the company, the e-commerce industry and the supply chain.UPS handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages that are shipped daily in the United States, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. Experts have said competitors lack the scale to seamlessly replace that lost capacity.The Teamsters have cited the risks its members took to help generate the company’s strong pandemic-era performance as a reason that they deserve large raises. UPS’s adjusted net income rose more than 70 percent between 2019 and last year, to over $11 billion.The contract talks broke down on July 5 in vituperation. The two sides are to resume negotiations in the coming days, but the window for an agreement before the current five-year contract expires is tight.In a Facebook post this month, the union said the company’s latest offer would have “left behind” many part-timers, whose jobs include sorting packages and loading trucks. The post said part-timers earned “near-minimum wage in many parts of the country.”UPS, which says it relies heavily on part-timers to navigate bursts of activity over the course of a day and to ramp up its work force during busier months, said it had proposed significant wage increases before the talks broke down. According to the company, part-timers currently earn about $20 an hour on average after 30 days as well as paid time off, health care and pension benefits. The company noted that many part-timers graduated to jobs as full-time drivers, which pay $42 an hour on average after four years.The union has gone out of its way to highlight the challenges facing part-time workers. In television interviews and at rallies, the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, has emphasized what the union calls “part-time poverty” jobs. He has frequently been joined by leaders of other unions and politicians, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat.UPS said Wednesday that it was “prepared to increase our industry-leading pay and benefits.” But it is unclear if the company will satisfy the union’s demands.“UPS certainly wants to reach an agreement, but not at the expense of its ability to compete long-term,” said Alan Amling, a former UPS executive and a fellow at the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute.Professor Amling estimated that it would cost the company $850 million per year to increase wages $5 an hour for all part-time employees represented by the Teamsters.The company, which normally reports its second-quarter earnings in late July, has delayed the report this year until after the strike deadline. UPS said that the timing was within the required window for reporting its earnings and that it had never published a date other than Aug. 8 for the coming release.The sometimes-volatile negotiations began in April, and the Teamsters announced in mid-June that their UPS members had voted, with a 97 percent majority, to authorize a strike.Less than two weeks later, the union said that it was walking away from the table over an “appalling counterproposal” from the company on raises and cost-of-living adjustments and that a strike “now appears inevitable.”The two sides resumed their discussions the week before the Fourth of July and soon resolved what was arguably their most contentious issue: a class of worker created under the existing contract.UPS said the arrangement was intended to allow workers to take on dual roles, like sorting packages some days and driving on other days — especially Saturdays — to keep up with growing demand for weekend delivery.UPS handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages that are shipped daily in the United States.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesBut the Teamsters said that the hybrid idea hadn’t come to pass, and that in practice the new category of workers drove full time Tuesday through Saturday, only for less pay than other drivers. (The company said some employees did work under the hybrid arrangement.)Under the agreement reached this month, the lower-paid category would be eliminated and workers who drove Tuesday through Saturday would be converted to regular full-time drivers.That agreement also stipulated that no driver would be required to work an unscheduled sixth day in a week, which drivers had at times been forced to do to keep up with Saturday demand.Despite progress on these issues, Mr. O’Brien could face a delicate test persuading members to approve a deal if it falls short of the lofty expectations he helped set. He won the union’s top position in 2021 while regularly criticizing his immediate predecessor, James P. Hoffa, for being too accommodating toward employers.Mr. O’Brien argued that Mr. Hoffa had effectively forced UPS workers to accept a deeply flawed contract in 2018, even after they voted it down, and accused his rival in the race to succeed Mr. Hoffa of being reluctant to strike against the company.He began focusing members’ attention on the contract and a possible strike even before formally taking over as president in March last year, and has spoken in superlative terms about the union’s goals for a new contract.“This UPS agreement is going to be the defining moment in organized labor,” he told activists with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a group that backed his candidacy, in a speech last fall.The union under Mr. O’Brien has held training sessions in recent months for strike captains and contract action team members, who rally co-workers to help pressure the company.And he has strongly urged the White House not to wade into the contract negotiation. In his Boston youth, “if two people had a disagreement, and you had nothing to do with it, you just kept walking,” he said during a recent webinar with members. “We echoed that to the White House on numerous occasions.” (Administration officials have said they are in touch with both sides.)In some ways the context for this year’s negotiations resembles the circumstances of the nationwide Teamsters strike at UPS in 1997. UPS was also in the midst of several profitable years, and the rapid growth in its part-time work force loomed large.Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, right, at the Los Angeles rally. He was elected in 2021 after criticizing his predecessor as having been too accommodating toward employers.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesBut while a reformist president, Ron Carey, had mobilized the union for a fight, its ranks appeared divided between his supporters and those of Mr. Hoffa, who had narrowly lost an election for the union’s presidency the year before. The union may have more leverage this time because its members appear far more unified under Mr. O’Brien.Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal who studies labor and follows the Teamsters closely, said that while the ramp-up to the current contract fight had lagged in some parts of the country, where more conservative local officials are less enthusiastic, Mr. O’Brien had no serious opposition within the union.“Not everybody is a fan of O’Brien, but they’re not actively organizing to undermine him the way people were with Ron Carey in the ’90s,” Dr. Eidlin said. “It’s a huge, huge difference.”Still, for all his pugilistic statements, Mr. O’Brien remains an establishment figure who appears to prefer reaching a deal to going on strike, and he has subtly acted to make one less likely.Earlier in the negotiations, Mr. O’Brien had said that UPS employees wouldn’t work beyond Aug. 1 without a ratified contract, and that the two sides needed to reach a deal by July 5 to give members a chance to approve it in time. But last weekend he said UPS employees would continue working on Aug. 1 as long as the two sides had reached a tentative deal.“This isn’t a shift,” a Teamsters spokeswoman said Friday by email. “This is how you get a contract. Our pressure and deadline on UPS forced them to move in ways they hadn’t before.”Niraj Chokshi More
