Union Workers Strike UPS

I admire the management team at UPS for standing firm in the latest round of negotiations with a union composed of highly paid, risk-averse, lazy blue-collar workers (Aug. 4-5).

What is at stake here is an equitable division of the economic pie consisting of huge profits generated by UPS in recent years. These profits emanated from timely investments in capital and technology and cannot be attributed to any assumption of economic risk by union members. All union members did during that time was deliver parcels and grumble. Since the union members assumed no economic risk for this corporate transformation, they should not be privy to any risk-related reward.

If these workers don’t like their $50,000-a-year salaries, there are others waiting to fill their jobs.

SANDEEP S. SHETH

Sherman Oaks

Bravo to Alexander Cockburn (Column Left, July 31)! I was one of the “lucky” ones working at UPS last Christmas as a three-hour-$24 temp. The atmosphere at UPS is pure fear and adrenaline. No one has job security. The majority are temporary, very part-time and seasonal workers, hired and fired at whim.

Three hours was a good night. If the packages were processed in two hours or one hour, you were sent home early. The agency that hired me out paid my last days of work 2 1/2 months after my last day, then only after repeated phone calls. Shortly before Christmas many of us were “dumped.”

“At will” employment--the “booming ‘90s” economic reality. I hope management had a good holiday--we sure didn’t. Every time I hear how great things are I think of the millions of us who can’t find full-time permanent employment. No benefits, no security, no future. Corporate America is destroying us in the name of obscene profits. And the government is in the business of making sure it stays that way.

APRIL O’HARA

Anaheim