by Samuel Messidor
Shortly after calling his supervisors to complain of heat-induced distress and vomiting, a UPS delivery driver lost control of the package vehicle he was driving and crashed into trees on the side of the road in McKinney, TX last week. He was released from the hospital with minor injuries.
The Teamsters union local representing the driver told monopoly media that the supervisor had instructed the driver to bring the truck back to base in response to his distress call, hours away from his location. These instructions went against company policy, according to the union. On Wednesday, UPS Teamsters rallied outside the McKinney, TX UPS facility demanding air conditioned delivery vehicles in response to the crash.
The contract secured after the UPS-Teamsters contract talks in 2023 was praised by the union bureaucracy for including a company promise to upgrade to an air-conditioned fleet. However, the contract language left the upgrades at the sole discretion of the company, which promised to ensure any new trucks they purchase will be air conditioned rather than retrofitting old trucks with air conditioning. As of late June, a grand total of zero air conditioned vehicles had been secured by UPS.
Texas is the number one state for worker heat-related deaths and injuries in the country, with the lion’s share in the unregulated construction industry. However, logistics workers are not exempted from the dangers, with fast work tempos imposed by management and temperatures inside delivery vehicles often far higher than the outside air making a dangerous combination.
In response to the McKinney protest, the company bragged that it had a few hundred air-conditioned vehicles in their fleet—out of the over 200,000 vehicles they have nationally—and said they encourage workers to take heat breaks and drink water. It is unclear if the protest included demands for heat breaks and safety in the warehouses, where the majority of UPS Teamsters who work as part-timers were given scraps in the new contract, or what measures the union bureaucracy would take to force the air conditioning issue, considering the company has no plans to purchase new trucks, and is in fact laying off workers across the country as part of the bourgeois reaction to their crisis of overproduction.
