Labor secretary urges UPS, union to resume talks

August 11, 1997
Web posted at: 8:20 p.m. EDT (0020 GMT)

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Labor Secretary Alexis Herman met with both sides in the Teamsters' eight-day-old strike against United Parcel Service on Monday and urged them to return to the bargaining table. Meanwhile, UPS and small businesses stepped up calls for government intervention.

In a statement, Herman said that during her separate meetings with Teamsters and UPS officials, she discussed "in detail ... what it would take to get them back to the bargaining table. I made it clear that everyone involved must show greater flexibility and a willingness to compromise."

Emerging from his meeting with Herman, Teamsters President Ron Carey said he asked her to urge the company to bargain on the union's key issues of full-time jobs, subcontracting and increased wages.

"The company has to get the message that the government is not going to intervene on their behalf," Carey said. "They've been playing games. They haven't been serious."

UPS' chief negotiator David Murray, leaving a meeting with Herman that lasted more than two hours, thanked her for taking a personal interest in the standoff.

"However, we still believe the correct solution to this is for the Teamsters to put our people back to work and our offer out for a vote," Murray said.

UPS repeated Monday that the union's refusal to accept a proposed UPS pension plan for its employees is the issue keeping 185,000 employees on strike.

UPS spokeswoman Gina Ellrich urged the Teamsters leadership to "let our people vote on our generous contract proposal."

"They have voted on it," Carey said. "They are voting today by walking the pavement, by letting the company know that they are not about to have any contract jammed down their throat. This is the new Teamsters. We do not operate as was done in the past."

Gingrich responds to UPS letter

UPS, which has been pushing for President Clinton to call an end to the strike since it began, said Monday it had sent a letter to members of Congress detailing its offer and urging an end to the strike.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich responded quickly, urging Clinton to ask the Teamsters to put the "last best offer of UPS management" to a vote of the rank and file. However, Gingrich said he wouldn't advocate congressional action in the strike.

Carey said he does not want Congress to "take sides in this." Rather, he said, UPS should come to the bargaining table. "The more they try these diversionary tactics, the more they try the misleading information -- that only separates the parties," he said.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry repeated Monday that the conditions for presidential intervention under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act had still not been met.

"The standard in the statute hasn't changed in the last week -- it's 'imperil the national health and safety' -- and we monitor the strike conditions and the economic conditions to see if that standard has been met. So far it has not," McCurry said.

McCurry said the longer any strike goes on, the more economic impact it has, and the White House was concerned about that.

"But we can't solve a labor-management conflict for the parties. Ultimately the two parties have to negotiate their own agreement," he said.

UPS, which normally handles 80 percent of the nation's shipping, estimates its weekly losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Its shipping capacity has fallen to 10 percent of normal. Analysts say the strike is bound to also hurt the economy as a whole.

UPS has said that the strike means 5 percent of the nation's entire economy is not moving.

Small businesses complaining

The Small Business Administration issued a statement in which it said small companies "are being hard hit" by the strike.

National Small Businesses United, a Washington-based policy group representing some 65,000 small businesses, sent a letter to Clinton Monday saying "something has to be done."

"Businesses are literally starving out there," NSBU President Todd McCracken said.

Across the country, union members remained on the picket line. Striking UPS workers will receive $55 a week in strike benefits beginning this week, at a cost to the Teamsters union strike fund of $10 million.

While the money is inadequate to support a family, one striking New York worker said most striking employees had planned ahead for the pay cut, putting money aside to cover their actions.

"We are ready for a long fight if they want to go that way," he said. "You can't give in, you just can't give in. We'll make it one way or another."

UPS has estimated 7,000 union members crossed picket lines, a number the Teamsters say is greatly exaggerated.

Tractor-trailer driver killed

In other strike developments:

A UPS tractor-trailer wrecked in Nashville, Tennessee, Monday morning, killing its driver, who the company said was a senior driver-trainer for UPS. The truck toppled over a freeway ramp retaining wall and fell onto Interstate 65; the cab landed on its roof. The wreck appeared to be unrelated to the strike, but police were still investigating.
Metro-Dade police in Miami charged three UPS strikers Monday with attempted murder for allegedly using an ice pick to attack a UPS employee last Thursday as he sat in his UPS delivery truck. A fourth man was charged with aggravated battery. The man they allegedly attacked is recovering from his injuries.
Two dozen striking UPS workers in Washington, Pennsylvania, briefly picketed their own union local to protest the nationwide walkout. The strikers said Sunday they were unhappy at not being given a chance to vote on the company's proposal to replace the contract that expired on July 31.

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