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A UPS driver puts his seat belt on before driving following a rally in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 19, 2023.
Logistics giant UPS announced hundreds of layoffs across the United States as 2023 drew to a close. Based on press reports and on information provided to the World Socialist Web Site, the layoffs appear to be concentrated among part-time warehouse workers, especially those working daytime sort shifts.
Only three days after Christmas, the company announced it would eliminate the entire day sort shift at Louisville’s Centennial Hub, a ground facility which employs over 2,000 people. Approximately 225 workers are affected by cuts, according to one Centennial worker who spoke with the WSWS. Centennial is separate from the much larger Worldport facility, also in Louisville, which is central to UPS’ shipping network.
The Centennial layoffs have been widely reported, but less well-known are layoffs at other facilities. Another daytime sort shift has been cut at the Alderwood facility in Portland, Oregon, affecting about 100 people. The company also announced it would eliminate the day sort at its 81st Street facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, according to a statement by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 135.
It is not clear as of this writing whether day sort operations are being eliminated at other facilities.
A Louisville-area member of the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee, founded last year to oppose the Teamsters’ sellout contract, told the WSWS: “I’ve heard rumors that some of this volume is going to be diverted to Lexington, Kentucky,” more than an hour away. “According to the contract, workers should be offered to be relocated in order of seniority, but who’s going to relocate to follow a part-time job that pays $21 an hour?”
The elimination of these shifts are not due to seasonal variations as the company exits its peak holiday delivery seasons. They are part of deep cuts to the workforce, particularly concentrated among warehouse workers, which comprise most of the 340,000 workers who are members of the Teamsters at UPS. Warehouse workers are a highly exploited, mostly part-time segment, with starting pay at only $21 per hour—up from as low as $16.65 an hour before the ratification of a new contract over the summer.
UPS intends to use massive job cuts to offset the costs of modest pay increases under the new contract, which still leaves part-timers making far less in real terms than what they made in the late 1970s. A major factor in this assault is the implementation of new automated technology. Last November, less than three months after the new contract was passed, the company opened a massive robotic facility in Louisville. Called “UPS Velocity,” the warehouse uses over 3,000 robots but employs only 200 people. It is expected to process 350,000 packages per day.
The sort jobs impacted by the layoffs are among those most vulnerable to being replaced by automation.
“UPS is going to try to trim down the fat that they see in the company,” the committee member continued. “They’ve already changed operations in Dallas, Texas; Rockford, Illinois and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where sort went to completely nighttime operations. We’re going to see a continuous slowdown in the economy, and UPS is going to cut jobs. It’s directly correlated to volume for them.
“Now, are they diverting to the new automated facilities? Yeah, I could see that. Obviously, these facilities over time are going to cut labor costs. I see this as a huge push in their long term. We’re at the precipice of a new age of work with this technology. They are going to get rid of people, and they won’t have to pay these machines healthcare, pensions. People need to pay attention to what’s going on. The alarm bells are ringing all over the place. I think we’re probably looking at what some view as a fourth industrial revolution.”
The layoffs are also an exposure of the role of the Teamsters bureaucracy, which sold the new five-year UPS contract to members as supposedly the “richest” in history, which would reverse decades of sellouts by previous union administrations. The Teamsters administration under Sean O’Brien used empty threats of a national strike—which workers overwhelmingly wanted but which the officials never had any intention of calling—to paint the deal worked out behind the scenes with management as the product of a pressure from “below.”
In reality, the contract did not meet any of workers’ demands, including a bare minimum starting wage of $25 per hour and full funding for pensions and healthcare. Most significantly, it contains no protections against job losses due to automation.