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The UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee is holding a meeting this Sunday at 6pm eastern to support the fight by 22,000 Yellow freight workers. Register for the event by clicking here.
With the company on the verge of bankruptcy and refusing to pay pensions and healthcare, a strike at the company could begin as soon as Monday. Whatever happens, however, Yellow workers deserve and require the support of all logistics and delivery workers. The battle at Yellow is a critical one which will affect workers everywhere.
The fight at Yellow is part of the biggest movement of the working class in decades, which has already produced the strikes by writers and actors in the entertainment industry. It is also a direct prelude to the fight at UPS, where an August 1 strike deadline for 340,000 workers is little more than a week away. UPS workers are pushing for strike action to demand major wage increases and better working conditions. In the post office, tens of thousands of letter carriers are fighting against massive cuts under the “Delivery for America” plan, which involves tens of thousands of job cuts. Rural carriers have seen their wages slashed this year by as much as $20,000 under a new compensation formula.
The unity of logistics and delivery workers is not just a slogan. It requires the self-organization of the rank-and-file to prepare a fight against both management and the corrupt union bureaucracy, and to defeat attempts to isolate each section of workers from each other. That is being prepared by rank-and-file committees which are being formed all over the world, including at UPS, in the auto industry and elsewhere. In Britain, Royal Mail workers have formed a Committee to fight against a sellout contract imposed by the CWU bureaucracy.
Workers are determined to fight, but the bureaucrats are preparing sellouts. The Teamsters have offered no strategy to Yellow workers except to let the company go bankrupt, leading to thousands of job losses. They are also reopening talks at UPS next week, in a last ditch effort to avert a strike. At the post office, the unions are working with management to carry out cuts, in some cases without even the fig-leaf of a vote.
Above everything hangs the threat of government intervention. Trillions of dollars are shoveled every year sight unseen to Wall Street and to war, while the Biden administration works with both parties to ban strikes and impose sellouts. The White House has been involved in all major contract talks to impose pro-company settlements, and Biden is meeting regularly with the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, and others.
The ability of workers to defeat the threat of government interventions depends on their unity. Workers’ real allies are their brothers and sisters in the working class around the world, not strikebreaking Democrats and Republicans.
This Sunday, join workers from around the country to review the situation and work out a common strategy at Yellow and in the logistics industry as a whole. All attendees will have the opportunity to speak from the floor.
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