Short-Lived Strike Against UPS Has Little Impact on Deliveries : Labor: Union calls off its job action after the company compromises on new weight limit rules.

A Teamsters union strike against United Parcel Service that threatened a major disruption of the nation’s package delivery system ended in its first day Monday when the two sides agreed to ease the burden of the company’s new package weight limit of 150 pounds.

The short-lived strike, which defied a federal court order, had scattered impact in Teamster strongholds in Seattle, New York, Boston and Pittsburgh, where workers walked off the job in large numbers.

However, UPS workers in most parts of the country, including California, remained on the job and service was only mildly affected, the Atlanta-based company said.

Only 300 out of about 12,000 union members at UPS operations in Southern California and Nevada honored the strike, said Mike Riley, president of Los Angeles-based Teamsters Joint Council 42.

“There was a restraining order by the federal courts that said we had to go to work,” Riley said. “A violation of that order could have had serious consequences for our members.”

However, the company’s agreement to accommodate the union on the new heavier packages enabled Teamsters leaders to claim victory.

A prolonged strike at UPS, the world’s largest package delivery company, would have snarled a wide assortment of shipments, ranging from auto supplies to mail order lingerie. The privately held company handles an estimated 12 million packages and documents a day.

“There is not enough capacity in the transportation business to fill the hole that a nationwide walkout against UPS would create,” said Douglas Rockel, a transportation industry analyst at Merrill Lynch Global Securities Research.

Teamster President Ron Carey launched the Monday morning walkout to protest the big jump in the weight limit, which had been 70 pounds.

UPS said various competitors-including Federal Express--operated under a 150-pound limit and that hand carts and customers would help with lifting the heavier packages.

But the Teamsters said increasing the weight limit would also increase injuries among its 165,000 UPS members.

“The courage of Teamster members won this agreement,” Carey said in a statement. “No corporation has the right to break workers’ backs just to make another buck.”

Until a final negotiated settlement is reached, UPS and the Teamsters agreed that union members will be entitled to get help and appropriate equipment in lifting packages that weigh more than 70 pounds. Such packages must also be labeled by customers.

UPS also agreed not to discipline any of the strikers and to drop its effort to have the union fined and leadership held in contempt for violating the federal court order.

“We certainly are pleased that we’re going to be back to normal” today, UPS spokesman Bob Kenney said. “It will be business as usual.”

Some labor experts characterized the settlement as a victory for the Teamsters leadership, even if many locals defied the call to strike.

Stephen I. Schlossberg, a former deputy undersecretary of labor and a former general counsel of the United Auto Workers, said it is hard to persuade workers to strike over a single issue, particularly when they are only midway into the life of their contract.

“It reflects well on them that they were able to make a deal,” Schlossberg said of the Teamsters’ leadership.

Contributing to this report were staff writers Stuart Silverstein and Greg Johnson and researcher Edith Stanley in The Times’ Atlanta bureau.