Category: UPS News

To protest the unfair firing of a co-worker, on Tuesday morning 150 UPS drivers in Chicago took a simple action: they didn’t go into work early.

Instead, they gathered outside with an inflatable fat cat. They grilled food, played music, and then walked in together, right on time.

This departure from routine was enough to throw their management into a panic.

“Every day is a battle on the shop floor over who’s got power and who doesn’t,” said driver Sean Orr, an elected shop steward in Teamsters Local 705. “Management loves to throw in our face the fact that they’ve got the power to fire. They’ve cost a lot of people precious income to prove a point.”

Several families gathered outside the UPS facility in Lafayette on Thursday to show appreciation to drivers.

“Our loved ones work so hard during the season,” said Sara Ripke.

It’s the perfect time of year to celebrate the men and women working long hours to make sure our holiday packages are delivered in a timely and safe manner.

“My daughter’s dad, she doesn’t get to see him very often so it’s just important that they know how thankful we are for all of the hard work they do,” said Sara Ripke.

More than 50 delivery trucks left the UPS facility in Lafayette Thursday morning with dozens of packages. CBS news reports that more than 60 percent of shoppers are buying online this year compared to 50 percent in 2019. Some people want to avoid long lines and others, because of COVID-19. In 2020 online shopping increased more than 70 percent.

Local UPS drivers banded together to deliver something special to a colleague who will spend his Christmas recovering from COVID-19 in the hospital.

Jackson Randall, a local driver for the United Postal Service and a U.S. Army veteran, is on the mend at the Quillen Rehabilitation Hospital, where he will remain throughout the holiday season.

UPS driver and @USArmy veteran Jackson Randall has been battling Covid for months and is on the mend in a rehab facility. His fellow @UPS drivers decided to give him a parade to wish him well in recovery. Good things are happening. Merry Christmas! @WJHL11 @ABCTriCities pic.twitter.com/7o5qhVSPOB

— Ted Overbay (@overbay_ted) December 23, 2021

His wife along with fellow UPS drivers organized a parade on Thursday to bring the holiday cheer to Randall, driving through the parking lot with words of encouragement and Christmas cheer.

A local UPS driver is being credited by his company with calling in a report of smoke at a Mt. Vernon home that helped prevent a small fire inside from becoming a more serious blaze.

Nathan Allen, 40, of Augusta was making a delivery Monday at a Belgrade Road residence when he smelled “something electrical” burning from the garage and noticed a light haze of smoke. And it appeared no one was home.

Allen, who has been working for UPS for the past seven months, said he could tell the difference between a woodstove smoke smell and that of the more electrical, plasticky kind he was detecting.

Louisville, Kentucky — which was a major delivery hub for U.S. carriers even before the COVID-19 pandemic turbo-charged online shopping — is suffering a severe labor shortage, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday (Dec. 22).

The Louisville/Jefferson County unemployment rate for October, the latest month for which U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data is available, was 3.2%, down from 5.0% a year earlier.

According to federal data cited by the WSJ, the Louisville area lost 93,000 jobs during the pandemic and has regained most of them, bringing the current level to 634,000 jobs.

A big factor in the region’s jobs recovery has been hiring at United Parcel Service (UPS) Inc.’s giant Worldport. Per the WSJ, the company employs more than 25,000 people in the region — about the same as before the pandemic, but they’re working more hours than pre-pandemic.