Punching In: Behind the Scenes of UPS Efforts on Strikebreakers

Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.

Behind the UPS Curtain|NLRB Injunctions Update

Ian Kullgren: UPS was racing behind the scenes to retrain 70,000 workers as strikebreakers last month as it negotiated with the Teamsters, according to an internal document obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The document, which offers a rare window into how UPS was preparing for the largest private-sector strike in the nation, shows that the shipping and delivery giant had trained just 38% of its replacement workforce as of July 23, two days before the company settled with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

It’s unclear whether the race to retrain workers influenced UPS’ decision to settle, but logistics experts say a shortfall of qualified workers could have tarnished the brand if it kept trying to deliver packages. “You have to know all the routes, all the people on the routes, all the practices for delivery,” said Michael Belzer, an economics professor at Wayne State University who specializes in trucking.

UPS spokesman Malcolm Berkley said in a statement that the company was on schedule to retrain 70,000 workers by Aug. 1, when the contract with the Teamsters expired, and it “did not influence decisions made at the negotiating table.”

The Teamsters have until Aug. 22 to vote on the tentative agreement, which would raise the minimum wage for workers to $21 an hour and provide across-the-board raises over the five-year agreement. It’s expected to pass despite some members waging “vote no” campaigns.

The target of 70,000 strikebreakers was well short of the 340,000 Teamsters who would have walked off the job. Many of those temporary workers likely would have been used to clear a backlog of packages sent in the days before the strike, said Jeremy Tancredi, a supply chain consultant for West Monroe who previously held several roles at UPS.

“They would have tried to do anything they could to get those packages out,” he said.

Read More:

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• Local Teamsters Leaders Sign Off on Tentative UPS Labor Pact
• ‘They Blinked’: UPS Call Led to $30 Billion Teamsters Win
• LA Strikes Embody Widespread Anxiety Over Worker Pay, Rise of AI

UPS workers and Teamsters members practice picket outside a UPS distribution facility in Madison Heights, Mich., on Tuesday, July 18, 2023.

Photographer: Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg

Robert Iafolla: The NLRB top lawyer’s campaign to obtain immediate court orders against Starbucks Corp. faces important tests in the coming weeks, following a recent win in an appeals court challenge.

Starbucks’ aggressive discovery strategy continues to be the chief obstacle slowing federal court rulings on National Labor Relations Board requests for speedy injunctions as administrative proceedings in underlying cases grind forward.

NLRB lawyers and Starbucks’ counsel from Littler Mendelson PC will square off at an Aug. 23 hearing in a Buffalo-based injunction case that’s been pending for 419 days. Another hearing is set for early September in a case in Brooklyn that’s been open for 257 days.

The board has authorized NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to sue Starbucks 10 separate times for 10(j) injunctions, which are named after the section of the National Labor Relations Act permitting the agency to go straight to federal court when there’s harm caused by alleged labor law violations that can’t be fixed by an eventual administrative ruling. Those orders dissolve when the NLRB rules in their underlying cases.

Not all of the agency’s bids for swift court injunctions against Starbucks have been held up by discovery disputes, however. The NLRB has won two of the three injunction petitions that judges have ruled on, with that trio of decisions arriving an average of 80 days after the request was filed.

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld one of those injunctions last week, rejecting Starbucks’ argument that the order wasn’t necessary because the union won an election where the alleged unfair labor practices took place. That order stemmed from the company’s termination of a group of workers dubbed the “Memphis Seven.”

Starbucks challenged the other 10(j) injunction, which was granted in connection with the firing of a union activist in a Michigan store. But that appeal never got off the ground—the company received three 60-day extensions to file its opening brief—and has apparently been mooted by the NLRB’s Aug. 9 decision holding that the termination was illegal.

The NLRB and Starbucks settled an injunction case in Georgia about two months after the agency filed its petition with the court. The company also reached an interim agreement with the agency in a Pittsburgh case that, provided it complies with the deal, will forestall an injunction petition.

The long-running Buffalo case has mainly been delayed over Starbucks’ subpoenas for information from Starbucks Workers United. The union and the NLRB failed to convince a federal appeals court to nix those subpoenas.

An administrative law judge held in May that most of those subpoenas violated federal labor law by seeking information that’s out of bounds for an employer. Starbucks responded by accusing the NLRB and agency officials of unconstitutionally abusing prosecutorial power to usurp a federal court’s authority over the 10(j) injunction case.

The company’s counterclaim is one of several open matters that the Buffalo federal court will likely address during the Aug. 23 hearing.

The NLRB declined to comment. Starbucks didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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