[We are happy to re-publish the full August edition of New Day at UPS, which can be read in the original PDF here, to share not only the content with our readers, but also to highlight what a well-structured and comprehensive shop paper edition should cover informationally and present politically.]

By Frank Loader (WORMA)

UPS 2025 Q2 Earnings Call

In July, UPS released its quarterly information for investors:

• 2025 Q2 revenue: 21,221m (down from 21,546m last quarter and down from 21,818m in Q2 2024)
• 2025 Q2 operating expenses: 19,399m (down from 19,880m last quarter and down from 19,874m Q2 2024)
• 2025 Q2 operating profit: 1,822m (up from 1,666m last quarter but down from 1,944m in Q2 2024)

This is exactly what anyone familiar with UPS should have expected, namely, a decline in operating expenses thanks to layoffs and automation and a decline in overall revenue from decreased volume. The investor presentation claimed 74 buildings have been closed so far in 2025 and there was a 23% year over year decline in Ground Saver volume. Actually, volume is down across the board for logistics (no doubt exacerbated by tariff increases)-ocean freight from China to the US declined an estimated 20-50% year over year and many smaller logistics companies have filed for bankruptcy this year. [See “How Tariffs Are Driving Facility Closures and Layoffs Across U.S. Logistics in 2025” on TRADLINX for specifics on bankrupt logistics firms and the international decline in shipping volume.] Thus, the overall picture is of a contraction in the logistics industry which at UPS is being passed on to the UPSers in the form of layoffs, automation, and the continued transformation of the UPS workforce into a large number of high-turnover, low-paid part-timers whose hours wildly fluctuate according to the daily needs of the UPS operation.

IBT Election: O’Brien Openly Integrated into Trump Admin, Reformists Integrate into O’Brien Admin

It must be noted that there have been major changes to UPS-related government and non-government organizations since the start of the Trump administration. The most important of these is the explicit legal recognition of the regulatory agencies’ existence as an extension of the executive branch, and NOT a neutral third party as was previously (and fraudulently) claimed. This was formally enshrined in the executive order published under the title “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” aka 14215 and is backed by supporters of the so-called “unitary executive theory”. But what is relevant for UPSers is that now, expecting bodies like OSHA, the NLRB, the Department of Labor (recall that in his first term Trump rewarded Alex Acosta, the Florida prosecutor who first let Epstein off the hook in the early 2000s, with Labor Secretary) to be anything but a means for the Trump administration to persecute its enemies and perceived undesirables is simply wrong

And what is the attitude of the IBT towards this? Sean O’Brien personally has chosen to become a propagandist for the Trump regime. O’Brien has leveraged his position as IBT General President into a podcast called “Better Bad Ideas”, where he hosts such clowns as Josh Hawley, Trump’s Special Ambassador to Hollywood Jon Voigt (recall that the IBT has important contracts in media production),

Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Labor Secretary/Boston mayor Marty Walsh. O’Brien even appeared at a Senate hearing for the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation to defend Trump’s tariffs. That is how that degenerate spends his time and the generous six figure salary we pay for. ANY SEPARATION BETWEEN THE POLITICS OF O’BRIEN AND THE POOR CONDITIONS AT UPS EXISTS ONLY IN THE IMAGINATION.

One would think this would be an issue for the Teamsters officials, who saw their organization lose 18 thousand members last year. (Aka 1.5% of the entire union in a single year, the year after one of their largest contracts at Yellow was liquidated when the company went bankrupt!) But that would be wrong. The Teamsters are concerned exclusively with preserving their own salary and no-work jobs. There is not even a whiff of opposition in the IBT to O’Brien’s policy of converting the organization into an appendage of the Trump administration for deceiving the logistics workers and hindering the exercise of their trade union rights. The closest thing to an organized opposition, Teamsters Mobilize, has put forward a transparently fraudulent “election platform” which consists of the same nonsensical “demands” Teamsters for a Democratic Union campaigned on. The sole purpose of this platform is to maintain their image as an “opposition” to O’Brien—but they aren’t even running a candidate against him! So much for “boring from within” the IBT. The 2026 IBT elections will have no candidate representing the UPSers.

The IBT contract “legally” strips the UPSers of our basic trade union rights. For instance, article 8 section 2 bans the right to strike (and recall local 170’s BA explicitly said no to getting rid of that clause in 2023), article 6 section 1 bans the right to negotiate an agreement with the employer, article 19 severely limits freedom of the press to whatever the IBT “authorizes”, etc. Therefore, any defense of the UPSers’ trade union rights must be waged outside the framework of the IBT collective bargaining agreement. Anyone claiming to be fighting for the right to strike inside the context of an NLRB-certified, IBT-backed collective bargaining agreement—as Teamsters Mobilize and Teamsters for a Democratic Union do—is either delusional or a liar. In this sense, a UPS employee has fewer rights than a random civilian who doesn’t have to confine their activities within the additional rules the IBT forces on the UPSers. This is why the IBT elections shouldn’t be taken seriously by any labor organizer.

Outstanding Grievances and the DVSP

Organizing at UPS, like all labor organizing, must be based in the concrete demands of the masses of unorganized workers. At UPS, we have the following unresolved grievances:

• National layoffs, successful reduction of headcount through automation and transfer of work away from old buildings with full-timers/seniority workers and towards new automated buildings staffed by part-timers.
• Forced OT for some, lack of OT for others. Inconsistent scheduling in general not aligned with the procedures laid out in the collective bargaining agreement.
• Lack of full-time jobs for part-timers who want them, no clear path to full-time employment. Ridiculous four year wage progression with almost all the raises at the very end for those who are able to find full-time employment.
• Supervisors stealing bargaining unit work.
• Harassment over work rates/random contract procedures UPS takes issue with, including inside workers not punching out for lunch per the New England supplement.
• Seniority violations (including in distribution of OT, cutting hourlies, preferred work).
• Lack of climate control, particularly extreme heat for drivers in the South, but really all UPSers are subject to extreme heat and humidity in the summer and extreme cold and unsafe driving conditions in the winter.
• Lack of break periods. (Varies wildly throughout the country, but everywhere UPS is constantly pressuring people to work through them.)
• Constant speedups, which creates huge safety issues, particularly overheating motors/ripping belts and lack of egress. Jobs which are safety-focused (for instance, hazmat responders who clean up spills) are constantly cut or see their hours reduced as part of UPS’ cost-cutting drive.

It must be noted that virtually all of these grievances, the IBT had a hand in creating OR have deliberately allowed to fester in spite of contract clauses banning them. For instance, management harassment and over-supervision is explicitly banned in the national master agreement, specifically article 37 section 1. Yet on Friday July 11, when WORMA managers decided to take another crack at the full-timers and threaten discipline for following the contract, the union steward went around with management saying “we’re probably gonna end up punching out for lunch anyway”. The classic one-two punch from UPS and the IBT! This is how the IBT protection racket functions: the UPSers paychecks and benefits are tied to the IBT CBA, which conveniently bans any exercise of our trade union rights not “authorized” by the IBT. Then, when UPS breaks the CBA, instead of facing consequences, it gets referred to a joint committee of half-IBT half-UPS representatives who rule in favor of the company. Then at the bottom level, when management needs to change something in the contract or just wants to intimidate UPSers into doing what they want (contract sanctioned or not), the IBT is there to say “there’s nothing we can do”. And then the final layer of this racket is in the “socialist” groups that demand all organizing efforts be spent towards advancing the “socialists” further through the IBT bureaucracy. All of this flagrant criminality is backed by the military power of the state, who will send police the second a strike or picket or whatever is established by the workers. If UPSers can be disciplined for following the contract, but management won’t be disciplined for breaking the contract, then obviously this contract is just a racket. These are the unfortunate facts of employment at UPS that nobody wants to acknowledge.

On that note, consider the response of the IBT to the Driver Voluntary Separation Program. According to O’Brien, these buyout offers are a violation of the contract. But only weeks ago he was denying that UPS was in violation of the contract, pledging to go to war “if” it did so. So the very real contract violations—stealing bargaining unit work, retaliation and other abuses of the discipline system, seniority violations, etc—those don’t count because only the UPSers are affected, not O’Brien. Top rate drivers being offered a buyout—and by extension potentially no longer paying the elevated dues rate top rate UPSers have–THAT is a serious violation apparently! This is an actual protection racket. The Teamsters aren’t mad that UPSers are being laid off, they aren’t mad that some UPSers are being offered a concession while others are not offered the same concession (i.e. the inside workers are just laid off without severance pay), they are mad that UPS offered a concession to the UPSers at all without IBT approval! This is how local 638 framed it: “We urge you [the UPSers] not to make a shortsighted decision that could jeopardize your retiree health coverage, pension, and financial future—while giving UPS exactly what they want: fewer Teamsters.” [from https://www.teamsters638.com/views/local-638-statement-on- dvsp ] According to local 638, apparently it’s UPSers taking the DVSP money who are to blame for all these problems, not the IBT that negotiated them! This is the reality of the DVSP: UPS wants to prevent united opposition to layoffs by offering some drivers chump change to quit of their own accord. The IBT is opposed to the DVSP not because they are opposed to layoffs, but because they are opposed to UPSers dealing with the company directly instead of through their sham “union”.

During a typical heavy day at UPS, loaders will be barricaded into trucks by parcels and bulk items in violation of OSHA regulations.