LOUISVILLE, Ky. — UPS workers in Louisville may be on strike Monday.
According to a post on social media, Teamsters President Sean O'Brien claimed the shipping giant decided to deny collective bargaining rights to UPS workers in Louisville.
"The Teamsters are fighting hard for our members at DHL right now," O'Brien said. "But Louisville is red hot. If UPS doesn't get its act together, they'll be on strike next."
He added the Teamsters Local 89 is filing unfair labor practice charges against UPS.
"This fall, approximately 35 specialist and administrative workers at UPS’s Centennial hub successfully organized with Teamsters Local 89," O'Brien said. "They voted overwhelmingly to join 340,000 UPS Teamsters nationwide who just finalized the most historic union contract this summer in the history of the company. Today, despite the ruling of an independent arbitrator, UPS shamefully laid off these workers, falsely claiming their labor should be performed by management."
Jim Mayer, the senior director of Media Relations at UPS, said they "regularly align our staffing with the needs of our business, and as a result a small number of employees are being laid off at our Louisville Centennial Hub."
"UPS respects our employees’ rights to organize and we have not committed any unfair labor practices," Mayer said. "Our ratified National Master Agreement with the Teamsters remains intact and we are committed to working with the Teamsters to resolve this separate matter with a small number of employees at Centennial. We do not expect disruptions to our Louisville operations and will continue to provide reliable service to our customers."
O'Brien said they gave UPS until Monday "to rectify this situation."
The union represents more than 2,000 workers at the Centennial hub and more than 12,000 people at the Worldport hub.
Teamsters members voted to approve a tentative contract agreement in August of this year, preventing a strike that would have disrupted package deliveries for millions of businesses and households across the country.
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