UPS Strike Officially Averted, Union Has Words for Amazon

As online sellers look ahead to peak shopping season, there’s one issue they won’t have to worry about – the prospect of delivery disruption from a potential UPS strike. On Tuesdays, UPS announced via Twitter that its Teamsters-represented employees voted to overwhelmingly ratify a 5-year agreement.

Days before the contract was set to expire in July, the parties reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement, and now it’s official – strike averted.

In a press release on the union website, Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien warned Amazon to take heed: “Teamsters have set a new standard and raised the bar for pay, benefits, and working conditions in the package delivery industry. This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention.”

Amazon was in the headlines last week over its expansion of a shipping service that news outlets said would have it competing with UPS and FedEx – sellers weighed in on the EcommerceBytes Blog.

In our earlier reporting on the then-looming strike, we noted that UPS handles about a fourth of all packages in the US, according to the Guardian, having shipped 5.2 billion parcels in 2022, ahead of rival FedEx’s 4.1 billion packages.

Lower labor costs could help Amazon if it has shipping-carrier ambitions – though lower wages could lead to other challenges.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She’s a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of “Turn eBay Data Into Dollars” (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, “Blogging Heroes” (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 – present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 – present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.