UPS Worker Correspondent
I work third shift at the Louisville, Kentucky freight facility at the United Parcel Service (UPS) Worldport, the largest cargo airport in the world.
Management always says safety is the most important thing, but then forces us to work in dangerous conditions. My coworkers push cans and pallets that can weigh thousands of pounds onto rollerbeds and docks to be loaded onto planes. We also break down shipments onto skids, down-stacking large amounts of packages from dangerous heights.
My coworker was almost crushed to death a couple weeks ago when an unsecured crate over seven feet tall fell over while workers were attempting to secure it to a skid. It’s a laugh among the workers now, but you can tell the dread lingers.
Management often says we cannot say no to them and refuse orders, but we can say, “I don’t feel safe doing this”. They are supposed to find another solution, but they rarely do.
My coworkers and I are happy to have a union, Teamsters Local 89, and count ourselves lucky we don’t have to work at FedEx or Amazon. However, the union has little presence in our building and only shows up if someone is written up. Maybe they’ll throw business cards outside the front door.
I attend our local’s general meetings, but I am the only one from my building that attends.
While we are glad to have the benefits of the union contract, like good insurance, so many of us are still struggling and most work multiple jobs to survive.
Most of us are part-timers and our hours are constantly getting cut. Our contract guarantees part-time workers only three and a half hours a day with overtime for more than five hours. They never give us overtime. I’d say 90% of us are part-time. To be hired on full-time, you have to work 10+ years to even be considered.
My coworker in the area next to mine works three jobs with ten kids to feed.
While UPS pays for the college of some of my student coworkers, many of them worry about their job prospects after graduation, fearing they will work at UPS for the rest of their lives. It’s a reasonable concern since many older workers that have graduated remain here.
We have 25 “mods”, or work areas, in the building: Mods A to Y. I recently asked a coworker why we never take anything to Mod X, and she shared that’s what had been used for the Middle East. It’s been shutdown since the start of the criminal war of aggression against Iran.
My coworkers are parents, grandparents, students, and lovely people who I enjoy seeing every night, but we’re so tired of this. We work from midnight into the early hours of the morning trying to make ends meet, take care of our families, and get some good sleep. But grocery and gas go up while our hours get cut. We feel suffocated.
We are looking for worker correspondents: cashiers, drivers, nurses, construction workers, cleaners, warehouse staff—anyone who wants to report on what’s really happening at work. Share a story, a tip, a victory, or a fightback. We’ll help you turn it into an article. Contact us at theworkerpaper@proton.me.
Image: The UPS Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky, 2015. Credit: Lt. Col. Kirk Hilbrecht, Kentucky National Guard Public Affairs Director, retrieved from Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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