KoennenTiger
Well-Known Member
You might not like to hear it but he's right.
About "record profits". They're NOT. I know people love to parrot this endlessly but for the US package division it isn't true. By the way, every year, good economy or not, a Teamster driver receives "RECORD COMPENSATION!" too.
"1% ownership class who do nothing at all but spend fiat fake money and hoover up all the productivity increases "
They also keep you employed, and maintain the structure you have the freedom to complain about. The Teamsters are the face of UPS and deliver to the customer every day. There's no denying the tremendous value that provides, however, in the past few decades, the Teamsters did NOT:
Set up new business outside the US
Start an airline
Take the company public
Introduce internet tracking of all packages online
Arrange for the purchase of various other businesses that have truly contributed to "record profits".
Without these things, you couldn't really negotiate over whether incoming drivers will make 34 or 40 dollars an hour.
Great but ups does all those things with the profits we make and then give "raises" to the top 1% ownership class every single year while simultaneously spouting off ridiculous crap about how they can't afford to continue paying us a middle class wage. It's baloney. Meanwhile the working conditions are so bad that even with our slightly above average wage (seriously the Frito lay delivery guy on my route makes $32 an hour, gets AC, doesn't work in the elements, and is treated better) that UPS can't even hire enough drivers to fill the positions we have now without any weekend delivery at all. They can't staff the part timers, they can't staff the full timers, so clearly the market is speaking. Give better working conditions/better pay to the workers and gasp the poor poor top 1% who own stock for a living will have to 'suffer' with a smaller dividend increase.