Category: UPS News

The leadership of the Louisville-based Independent Pilots Association, which represents pilots flying for Louisville-based UPS Airlines, has called on its members to authorize a strike against the company.

If approved, the five-pilot executive board of the Independent Pilots Association would have the authority to request a release from federally mediated negotiations with United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS), a news release said.

UPS said the vote is legally irrelevant because of federal law. The pilots’ union disagrees.

Renowned African wildlife defender Jane Goodall has sent a letter to United Parcel Service Inc. to ask the Atlanta-based shipping giant stop shipping the carcasses of exotic wildlife slaughtered by trophy hunters.

In her letter to UPS International President Jim Barber, Goodall notes the domino effect Cecil the Lion’s recent death has had on his cubs and how major airlines, including Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) have since stopped shipping big-game trophies. However, UPS (NYSE: UPS) says it follows U.S. and international laws, not public opinion, in determining what it will and won’t ship.

Multi-hub strategy to keep UPS ahead of competition, says Asia-Pacific head

When Nando Cesarone started working as a delivery driver for United Parcel Service Inc in Canada 23 years ago, foreign courier companies were yet to expand their wings into China, something that would not happen until 2005.

Sitting in a meeting room at UPS China’s headquarters in Shanghai, Cesarone, president of the Asia-Pacific Region for UPS, said the company is poised to grow its investment and resources to improve the carriage of high-tech and high-end consumer products to and from China over the next three years.

In the face of pressure from the Humane Society International and other animal-rights groups, shipping giant United Parcel Service (UPS) stands its ground and refuses to ban the shipment of big-game trophies.

Last week, UPS public relations director Susan Rosenberg indicated that if UPS began prohibiting the shipment of things that one group or another finds offensive, there would be no end to the banning. Via email, Rosenberg wrote: “There are many items shipped in international commerce that may spark controversy. The views on what is appropriate for shipment are as varied as the audiences that hold these views.”

Over the course of seven weeks last fall, workers in Costa Rica allegedly filled 194 sacks with dried fins that had been sawed off the backs of an estimated 15,000 sharks. In six separate shipments weighing one ton each, the fins flew over the Pacific Ocean, miles above the waves. When they finally reached their destination 10,000 miles away, the small gray triangles were unloaded, sack by sack, and dropped into soups across Hong Kong.

The company hired to ferry the fins across the ocean to Hong Kong is the biggest delivery company on Earth: United Parcel Service, or UPS. And despite outcry, UPS isn’t saying how many more shipments of shark fin it makes—or whether it has plans to stop.

According to an export certificate by Costa Rica’s National Animal Health Service, UPS isn’t shipping just any old shark fin, either. The documents show that, working with China Airlines, UPS shipped the fins of several species of shark that are considered “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. The listing connotes that the species is facing “a high risk of extinction in the wild in the medium-term future.”