Strike support waning among some UPS employees

August 13, 1997
Web posted at: 4:08 a.m. EDT (0808 GMT)

From Chicago Bureau Chief Jeff Flock

CHICAGO (CNN) -- It's not that Bobby Dodge doesn't like playing basketball with his children. It's just that right now, he would rather be working.

"We're losing customers, and I'm losing money right now," says Dodge, a top driver for UPS for the past 22 years. "And in a couple of weeks, my kids will be going back to school and there's nothing. I have five kids to take care of. I have to eat."

Dodge needs -- more than wants -- to return to work. To him, the picket line chants of "Part-time America just won't work" are beginning to ring hollow. He's becoming tired of the rhetoric.

"It's just a power thing right now, (and) we're stuck in the middle. At least give it to the rank and file. Let's vote on it, you know?" Dodge says of the tense contract negotiations between management and the Teamsters Union.

That call by UPS management for a vote on the company's last proposal is aimed right at drivers like Dodge. If union leaders are so sure they have rank and file support, management asks, why keep them in the dark and not let them vote?

On the picket lines, strikers say they've already voted.

"There's no sense for them to even ask, because we voted by being out here picketing," says one striker. "We are voting. We are voicing our opinion."

But how long can the picketers hold out?

"As long as it takes," says another.

Dodge, however, has other concerns.

As he sits at his dining room table and looks at the contract proposal mailed directly to him by UPS, he likes it.

"I've been around a long time and I've experienced a lot of things," he says. "No one is going to win in this one. Nobody wins in a strike, bottom line."

• Message Board: Can UPS and Teamsters reach an agreement?

Related stories:

• Teamsters gear up for long fight with UPS - August 12, 1997
• Teamsters: UPS strike will cost them $10 million a week - August 12, 1997
• Labor secretary urges UPS, union to resume talks - August 11, 1997
• Strike talks break down between UPS, Teamsters - August 9, 1997
• UPS driver stabbed; strikers charged - August 9, 1997

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Related sites:

• United Parcel Service (UPS)
  • Teamsters Labor Update
• Teamsters Union
• AFL-CIO Home Page
• U.S. Department of Labor

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