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Small businesses feel brunt of UPS strike

Everything from cookies to textbooks affected

August 13, 1997
Web posted at: 3:05 p.m. EDT (1905 GMT)

(CNN) -- With the United Parcel Service and striking Teamsters digging in for a potentially long standoff, small businesses with small profit margins say their very survival is on the line.

"I've had many phone calls and letters from customers, particularly our smaller customers," UPS Chairman James Kelly told CNN in a live interview on Wednesday. "Small businesses are really being hurt because of this strike."

A L S O :

UPS strike: Talking but no talks

UPS competitors say they are besieged by UPS customers eager to sign up. Some post offices are hiring temporary workers. FedEx says its employees are working long hours to try to keep up.

Some examples of the effects of the strike:

The lemon knot cookies made by Judy's Bakery in Evanston, Illinois, are usually gobbled up in seven Midwestern states but the UPS strike has made them too expensive to ship out of state. "(Sending them via) FedEx would (cost) more than the cookies cost," says owner Judy Hooper.

Fans of Judy Hooper's lemon knot cookies are going hungry because of the UPS strike
3 min. VXtreme videos

"We were baking six days a week ... and now we've cut back to five days a week," she told CNN in a live interview. The work day for her employees also has been reduced by two hours. "If (the strike) doesn't end this week, I'll start laying people off this week," Hooper said.

Her husband, Bill, also fears losing customers. "If the product's not there and they can't get it, they might be trying something else."
The making of artificial limbs for amputees has slowed at Progressive Orthopedics in Southfield, Michigan, because the company can't get all the parts it needs.

The strike is delaying the production of artificial limbs.
1 min. VXtreme video

Deliveries from UPS competitors cost more but have kept work from shutting down completely. Still, says Progressive Orthopedics' Robert Bacon, there have been delays. "We use an awful lot from a company in Ohio," he said. But what used to be next-day delivery with UPS can take up to four days from other delivery services, he said.
In nearby Detroit, the lack of UPS deliveries means students and teachers at St. Scholastica Elementary School may have to get by without new textbooks when classes begin in a couple of weeks. "Some of the supplies we ordered ... have not arrived yet," said principal Eric Westley.

"No more books?" Maybe, at one Detroit school.
1 min. VXtreme video

Without books, he said, teachers will have to get creative and "devise ways to help children learn those things they wanted to learn anyway."
Can't find the toy you're looking for? It may be in one of the stacked up boxes at a warehouse in Tampa, Florida. During a normal week the Imex Model Company spends between $3,000-$5,000 on UPS. The firm imports model toys and distributes them to toy stores nationwide.

Trouble in toyland.
1 min. VXtreme video

Imex President Bill Molyneaux says half of his 14 employees have been put on half-shifts because of the strike.