A 57-year-old UPS driver in Texas died after collapsing in the heat while making deliveries
A 57-year-old UPS driver in Texas died after collapsing in the heat while making deliveries
Following months of negotiations with Teamsters, UPS announced in June that it would install air conditioning in new trucks starting next year. The company said it would send new trucks to the hottest parts of the country first, if possible. The company also said it would retrofit its existing package cars with cab fans, exhaust heat shields, and cargo area ventilation.
"While these improvements will make a difference in the months and years ahead, we had to fight like hell to secure them," the Teamsters union said in its social media post Thursday. "Chris Begley should still be alive to experience them. All companies, including UPS, need to remember that their past failings to protect workers can have deadly serious consequences in the future."
Chris Bagley should still be alive and it's a damn shame the Teamsters failed to protect him from social murder. Only new trucks? Only next year? They drove trucks without fans, heat shields, and ventilation? What the fuck.
The Teamsters could have, at the very least, demand a total halt on driving trucks without fucking fans. "Oh but that'll cause package delays!" Well I guess we just have to murder drivers for the sake of logistics.
If anyone tells me how great and historic the new contract is one more fucking time I'll fucking lose it.
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Remember to refuse unsafe work. I know it's Texas where the state doesn't give a rat's ass about labour protections, but the union is there to protect you from reprimands when you report that your workplace is unsafe.
The demand that EVERY truck nationwide, from Wisconsin to Florida to California needs to be fitted with A/C before work resumes is not a practical demand for the union to make since it's needed way more in some places than others. Stop putting the blame of what UPS needed to do to prevent worker heat exhaustion deaths on the union. As a worker, if it's above 37C/97F you've gotta put your tools down a few times a day, drink water and cool down, and call up your union rep or labour board if you don't have a good place to be able to work safely.
Curiously when Trump appointed Gorsuch, a case came up in which a truck driver chose to abandon his truck and not freeze to death and was fired for it. Gorsuch ruled in favor of the company.
Don't act like the union had to make this compromise. They chose to because they didn't want to strike and hurt the company, because class collaborationist unions always seek to reach a happy middle ground.
UPS should have been dragged over the coals, not compromised with.
86.3% voted in approval to ratify this contract, so I don't see how this was a compromise, really.
OP doesn't understand yet that life and all its petty squabbles are far more complex than what appears on the face. They don't yet understand that cooperation between entities of such vast size requires give and take. The tiny tankie in their heart only has the "take" part down.
Votes don't happen in a vacuum. The rank-and-file were heavily encouraged to ratify and told this was as good a deal as they could get, all radical elements have been purged so there wasn't exactly an organized "vote no" campaign to push for more radical demands, and the new contract is legitimately better than the old one.
This is a sad example of American workers being too beat down to imagine justice.
That's kind of why I feel like I need to highlight this tragedy. American workers need to be made to see how bad things actually are so they stop settling for sellout contracts.