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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a fair deal.

$2.75/hour immediate bump and +$7.50/hour over the next five years; $21/hour floor for part-time workers; eliminating 22.4s, which Bloomberg describes as "a class of drivers who earned less" [1]; air conditioning in new vehicles; MLK Day as a paid holiday; and the "creation of 7,500 new full-time Teamster jobs at UPS and the fulfillment of 22,500 open positions."

Well done to both sides for getting in a room and cutting a deal.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-25/ups-teams...

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I don't think so. The air conditioning bit was a big point*, and it doesn't look like they've moved at all since June. The deal says they'll put AC in vehicles purchased from 2024 forward, but no retrofits except for a "heat shield" for the cabin. Unless UPS plans to replace its fleet in 2024 (it does not), it will be years before the vast majority of drivers have AC. More are going to die.

*because multiple deliverymen have died of heat-related illness while on the job, and it's otherwise a major long-term health concern

> Unless UPS plans to replace its fleet in 2024 (it does not), it will be years before the vast majority of drivers have AC

This is what makes it a fair deal. Give and take. A maximalist position from labour would demand UPS churn or retrofit its entire fleet overnight. That's obviously not feasible, even if it makes for great PR.

> no retrofits except for a "heat shield" for the cabin

Maybe I'm reading "all cars get two fans and air induction vents in the cargo compartments" incorrectly?

I dont know why you're so heavily downvoted. The second point is entirely correct and your first other than claiming something is not feasible without data to back it up (although i admit it probably isnt feasible), it seems very true and fair.

> other than claiming something is not feasible without data to back it up

Fair enough. UPS operates 125,000 trucks in America [1] with a useful life of 5 to 15 years [2].

So the question is, do you spend hundreds of millions of dollars retrofitting the current fleet, or, spend that money accelerating the purchase of new vehicles, which presumably come with additional perks beyond just air conditioning?

[1] https://www.herbertellis.com/blog/what-happens-when-ups-truc....

[2] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001090727/0...

A fair deal doesn't externalize costs to risking peoples' lives, that's probably where the negativity is coming from.

Compromise in middle grounds assume the two sides have reasonable baselines. Disregard for human life isn't a reasonable baseline. I don't know all the details but I'd argue for some options to allow flex time in driver schedules with non-retrofitted vehicles to stop by somewhere, take a short snack break and cool down, not be so pressured they have no option but to stay in the heat or be fired. That seems like a reasonable middle ground, to me.

I disagree. What would make it fair is that they put air conditioning in vehicles that service areas that have a high probability of being very hot during the summer. UPS should pay a price for neglecting the welfare of its workers for so many years and pay up to put air conditioning in its vehicles.

Give and take does not always mean a fair deal. Some negotiating positions are just plain wrong. If it is infeasible to retrofit vehicles then one has to accept that but this doesn't make it fair.

> What would make it fair is that they put air conditioning in vehicles that service areas that have a high probability of being very hot during the summer

Or pause delivery by ambient-temperature vehicles during the hottest parts of the day. There are a number of solutions which, while not suited to Twitter, can be worked out between adults not drawing red lines for the public's consumption.

Note that we don't have the NMA. We're going off highlights, one bullet point among which reads "safety and health protections, including..."

This entire thread is a brilliant illustration of why compromise cannot be made in public anymore.

I think you didn't read carefully what I wrote. I will state the last sentence again. If it is infeasible to add air conditioning then that is a reality but the compromise is not fair.

My overall point though was that the act of compromising does not make a deal fair. Some compromises are still unfair.

It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather. There may be no other feasible alternative but let's not declare this part of the outcome fair.

> It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather

Why? (Honestly.)

This reminds me of the windowless-apartment debate in New York. Community board members in rent-controlled units complain it's not fair for the poor to have no windows. As a result, the cheapest (legal) apartment was a bells-and-whistles deal. Meanwhile, I (illegally) subletted a windowless room in a full-floor loft for $900/month; even when (years later) I had a window, I put blackout curtains over it. The loft was a fair deal for me. Even if it offended another's sensibilities.

Give and take doesn't make a deal fair. But it indicates both sides have bargaining power. Given a trade-off between more hours, higher pay, a faster roll-out of electric vehicles, and/or more hires, on one hand, and A/C retrofitting, on the other hand, there are valid--even fair--tradeoffs the parties could have made that differ from yours or mine.

> It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather

Why?

Because my sense of what was is fair tells me this is not fair. To you it is fair. So be it.

But it indicates both sides had bargaining power.

It does not indicate this. Consider an extreme example.

Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.

Labor takes deal because they, in reality, had very little relative bargaining power. But a compromise was made! The act of compromising does not, in and of itself, indicate anything other than that a compromise was agreed upon. It does not indicate fairness, relative bargaining power, or anything else without further information.

My point was to object to original characterization of this being fair since it was a compromise.

I don't know what the tradeoffs were in the UPS bargaining. I do know that requiring someone to drive in an airconditionless vehicle in hot weather is not fair.

> Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise. Labor takes deal because they, in reality, had very little relative bargaining power. But a compromise was made!

Except this doesn't reflect the reality of the deal. Real pay bumps, hiring commitments, a new paid holiday--these aren't minor concessions. There was palpable uncertainty around whether there would be a strike. Teamsters estimates the value of concessions around $30bn; that's 20% of UPS's market cap, delivered to drivers over five years.

Clearly you are not reading what is being written. As stated several times. My objection is your original characterization that the issue of air conditioning was fair because it was a compromise.

Not all compromises are fair. Not all compromises indicate relatively equal bargaining power. Not all compromises....

The point is, you don't know whether it was fair either and you have no idea about the relative negotiating powers of the parties.

Maybe the AC portion of the deal translated directly into wage dollars on the negotiating table. Maybe it was a "pick 3 out of 4 deal".

Your posts are just pointless pedantry about an article where we (as the public) have very incomplete information about the preferences and the negotiating powers of the involved parties.

I don't know I can't even begin to call negociating on long term health fair just wtf. But let's call it pedantry ...

My complaint is that people often times think something is fair because both sides compromised. That thinking is sloppy and incorrect. A deal isn’t fair because it involved compromise. It’s like when people say, “both sides are unhappy with the deal so it means it’s a fair one”. That’s dumb thinking and inaccurate. It might be correct most of the time but not all of the time.

That a compromise was made does not make it fair. The act of compromising in and of itself does not necessarily imply fairness.

I’m not being a pedant. I’m claiming the original reasoning for believing this part of the deal is fair because it involved compromises. I also claim that requiring people to drive all day in hot weather in an air conditionless vehicle is inherently unfair.

>But it indicates both sides had bargaining power.

>It does not indicate this. Consider an extreme example.

>Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.

Well, no because if they had no bargaining power management could have told them to fuck off, or pay them even less. "Had bargaining power" =/= "had the upper hand"

Pick a dollar amount greater than $0.01 then in my example. Pick the smallest value such that you believe it provides an example of where a compromise is reached but the compromise does not indicate relatively equal bargaining power.

The claim you responded to was "both sides had bargaining power", not "relatively equal bargaining power".

In the original example I gave a compromise was made. Namely the $0.01 increase in pay. I claim one side didn’t really have bargaining power. Do you believe all instances of compromise indicate bargaining power on both sides? I don’t. Sometimes one side budges very little and has way more power than the other. So much so that it’s not accurate to say both sides had bargaining power.

From the site:

> "We’ve hit every goal that UPS Teamster members wanted and asked for with this agreement. It’s a ‘yes’ vote for the most historic contract we’ve ever had.”

While the issue of fairness is subjective, it seems objectively good that the union was able to get what they wanted and asked for. Seems fair to me.

Given that quote, it does indeed seem like a fair deal overall. I was objecting to the characterization that the part of air conditioning had to be fair because there was an agreed upon compromise.

Also, I think its unfair to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather.

Except that doesn’t reflect economic reality. See: my local domino’s starts their workers off at 20/hr + tips.

My kid was job hunting. The local coffee shop offered him $5/hr + tips. Guess where he went?

As a result, the coffee shop is now closed, whereas the dominos has my orders waiting for me in under 8 minutes.

Sometimes labor has very little pricing power for their labor. There are many instances of this being true. If you don’t agree with this then please read up on labor history.

Situations can change? Supply and demand are fluid?

I’m shook.

What are you going to tell me next, that the sky is blue?

Then what was the point of the comment you originally made that I responded to? It appeared to be sarcasm and saying that if management only offer $0.01 raise then get a job elsewhere. That sort of simplistic reasoning doesn’t work in all situations. Namely it doesn’t work if labor overall has very little pricing power for the cost of their services.

The sky isn’t always blue. Which is ironic given your response.

Fans are not equivalent of air conditioning, particularly on hot and humid climates where the ability for the human body to conduct evaporative cooling significantly decreases with increasing humidity.

They aren’t. But forced convection still significantly lowers temperatures in metal and glass vehicles and this is enough to make a big difference in risk.

> This is what makes it a fair deal. Give and take

I disagree that give and take alone makes something fair.

The logic reminds me of finding the truth somewhere between the extremes of "the Earth is flat" and "the Earth is an oblate spheroid." We'll just say the Earth is a cube and if both sides are unhappy, we know it's a job well done.

> This is what makes it a fair deal. Give and take. A maximalist position from labour would demand UPS churn or retrofit its entire fleet overnight.

So the "maximalist" labor position is "stop killing any of us" and the compromise "ok, just kill fewer of us" is a good thing?

Meeting in the middle is not always a moral position.

"Fair" does not mean "central, between horrible and tolerable".

>That's obviously not feasible

Your curt dismissal belies that it's actually not just feasible, but a necessity. I would like to see UPS spend the money to replace/retrofit, rather than fighting lawsuits from the relatives of dead or disabled workers, only to have to replace/retrofit anyway.

I agree that it's not a strong win. But from this:

> All cars get two fans and air induction vents in the cargo compartments.

It sounds like all existing vehicles at least get a retrofit to have fans / air in the back?

Air conditioning was fairly easy for both parties to agree on, due to a very successful PR campaign that the company wants to bury. Something like an accelerated schedule to retrofit current vehicles would be expensive to negotiate and result in sacrifices elsewhere.

Cabin AC won't fix cargo areas hitting 140s, and most drivers wouldn't agree to lose $5/hr for AC today or something like that. The heat shield is for the cargo compartment, along with improved air intakes / ventilation and possibly other mitigations - they get absurdly hot and have minimal airflow.

I’d love to see unions start agitating for climate change initiatives to counteract investor demands for profit at all cost. Union members as low and medium income individuals will be disproportionately impacted by climate change.

In this case, people making $21 an hour are not worried about climate change. They're worried about putting food on the table, making rent etc. Climate change is a problem for the elites/big corps/government. The idea of making it a problem for the lowest in society - who are also generally the lowest co2 emitters - is unfair.

> The idea of making it a problem for the lowest in society - who are also generally the lowest co2 emitters - is unfair.

It is a problem for the lowest in society even if they are the lowest emitters. They are the ones sweltering in the heat or freezing in the winters because of insufficient insulation, getting flooded out of their homes built too close to waterways, etc etc.

In this specific article they mention the lack of A/C in the vehicles as a major bargaining win.

Whether they are responsible for the emissions or not (and you and I agree on this point that they largely are not), the lowest in society, by virtue of being most impacted, need to use their large numbers to hold elites accountable and make change.

uh huh, they need to hop to it

"The problem is mostly caused by the very wealthy and large corporations, but because the poor are and will be disproportionately victims of it, they need to be the ones spending their time and money to fix the problem, thereby leaving them even poorer and more exhausted than they already are!"

...Yeah, I don't think you've entirely thought this one through?

I don’t think this quote is a fair interpretation of what I was saying. I don’t think the poor should fix it. I think they should force the hands of the wealthy to fix it. The wealthy aren’t and won’t do it on their own because they aren’t impacted the same way or to the same extent.

This won't work because climate change mitigation is a prisoners dilemma. You could negotiate for $x to be spent on climate change mitigation, or for $x to be spent on your ingroup (ie. union). In the former case, the benefits are spread across all 8 billion people on earth, whereas in the latter case the benefits will only be spread among your ingroup (tens of thousands of people?). Sure, a ounce of prevention might be worth more than a pound of cure, but at these scales (ie. 8 billion vs tens of thousands), it's basically guaranteed that the numbers won't work out. They can certainly try to negotiate for climate change mitigation, but doing so will be economically irrational and will basically be an act of altruism.

That’s how unions work at blogs. In the real world, in Teamster type jobs it’s usually about how can they move jobs and pay around to look like they gave you more than scraps. How do I know? I was a Teamsters through many contracts.

Those 25,000 + 7,500 jobs will probably make it harder for Amazon to hire drivers in some areas.

https://archive.is/cyWUm <- for bloomberg blurb

As long as amazon drivers get the same sort of benefits.

I wonder if this will just make amazon's transition from ups -> amazon vehicles faster?

or are amazon workers already paid well?

EDIT: to clarify:

sorry, I thought several steps ahead without connecting the dots.

I think this is a good deal. I like UPS too.

But I worry that UPS makes an enormous amount of its revenue from amazon, and it will make UPS more expensive.

An analogy might be us manufacturing jobs treating their employees right while china is cheaper without worrying about employees. And then all the jobs migrate to china. The answer would be - china treats employees right.

> As long as amazon drivers get the same sort of benefits

How does the fairness of this deal depend on negotiations between Amazon and its drivers?

I think it is reference to the durability of the deal

I can't imagine that Amazon pays any workers well. (They wash their hands because the delivery folks are independent contractors.)

I would imagine that people drive for an Amazon affiliate for a couple years with the goal of being hired by UPS for the higher pay and better benefits. The result is that Amazon will always have a lower quality of service than UPS. (I am sure HN hates UPS, but every driver I've interacted with has been super friendly, and they can sneak packages into buildings like they're ninjas. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for, and honey attracts more flies than vinegar. https://xkcd.com/357/)

> delivery folks are independent contractors

Wait what? FedEx was forced to make all their contractors employees:

    On July 8th, 2015 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit adopted the decision of the Kansas Supreme Court in Carlene.M. Craig, et al v. FedEx Ground Package Sys., Inc. This decision holds that FedEx Ground drivers are employees and not independent contractors under the Kansas Wage Payment Act (KWPA). The Seventh Circuit now joins the Ninth Circuit in ruling against FedEx Ground on this issue,. In August 2014, the Ninth Circuit made the same finding in two cases against FedEx under California and Oregon law.

How is Amazon exempt?

I thought Amazon outsourced their delivery to entire companies, and then it's up to that company to obey local labor laws and all that. Could be wrong. There's a lot of Amazon branding all over everything, so maybe it's theirs.

That's exactly how FedEx worked -- the "contractors" were usually small companies of 5-10 delivery trucks and a little more employees. FedEx just provided them access to tracking scanners, training etc.

Didn't persuade the court.

Here in Western NJ, Amazon drivers don’t seem to have any training at all. One took out a statue at the top of our driveway at high speed. They routinely park on dangerous blind curves. They hop out of the drover’s side of their vans right into traffic without looking.

The majority here at least are a menace.

By comparison the UPS folks all seem to be professional drivers as a rule and know what they’re doing.

"One took out a statue at the top of our driveway at high speed."

Maybe he really wanted to get you your package quickly. It's admirable..

Maybe it was an ugly statue.

It was a concrete griffin, about three feet tall. Left wing was sheared off.

If I were someone who owned a house guarded by griffins... I would cast many curses upon a driver of such ilk.

>one took out a statue

Sounds like a typical ups/fedex driver to me. My third mailbox agrees.

Eh, Amazon pays their workers pretty well, if you only base "well" on "dollar amount per hour relative to other unskilled labor jobs". Their conditions are terrible, but the money is far from bad.

Have you done anything to help Amazon drivers unionize? What’s stopping you? (Not rhetorical, genuine questions)

(I provide logistical and financial support to the Starbucks workers union, for example: https://sbworkersunited.org/)

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