Agreed but at the same time, a watershed moment for UPS which has since, decreased it's reliance on Teamster UPSers and the US Ground market.
It will be interesting to see what UPS US operations looks like in 20 years.
Hopefully, I'll still be alive to see that future status.
Hoaxster,
While I appreciate and acknowledge the viewpoint you're getting at, I think it's somewhat short sighted:
1) In 1997, e-commerce was in its infancy but its potential was universally recognized. This was a new, emerging market from shippers primarily with no or limited shipping relationship - the first truly open door for competition to UPS. It'd be naive - to say the least - to think that without the 1997 strike, UPS would've continued to carry this volume at a high market clip.
2) While FedEx credits the strike for its entrance into the ground arena, it had explored entering the market for many years & was already courting RPS - but was weary of its reputation. At best, the strike was a catalyst. FedEx may have otherwise built an operation from the ground up (no pun intended) ... but I'd bet that it wouldn't had made much difference in its 2013 market share. Given FedEx's disdain fro unions, you can bet they would've modeled their operation on RPS, Airborne, etc.'s incumbent independent contractor models.
3)
The strike also presented an opportunity for UPS: e-commerce grew much faster than anticipated, and RPS-FedEx Ground took on more volume than it could handle (a combination of shippers upset over the strike and willing to switch, an FedEx's aggressive pricing). As you recall, in 2000, this lead to a disastrous Holiday season for FedEx, in which thousands of people (mostly children) would up receiving their gifts after the Holidays were over ... and UPS received an incredible, last-minute volume push.
Unfortunately, they did not hold onto it. The misery continued for FedEx; for example, it could not handle NewEgg's volume (which didn't grow until after 2002), which pushed NewEgg to UPS. NewEgg openly acknowledges that it's loyal to UPS because UPS took care of them, thus they'll stick with UPS even though they could get better rates elsewhere. Kinda sad that UPS wasn't able to develop such relationship elsewhere.
4) UPS was preparing to go public when the strike occurred. UPS didn't go public to reward its employees -- it did so to reward its management. Its relationship with its employees was already changing for the worse.
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While I'm not saying this is the case that you witnessed... there will always be companies that blame everyday business decisions on events with little to no effect just to drive a political point, especially when it involves unions.