Teamsters, UPS Hint at Progress in Strike Talks

WASHINGTON — Leaders of the striking Teamsters and the United Parcel Service on Sunday offered hints of progress in their marathon negotiations, though there appeared scant hope for a quick end to the 15-day-old strike.

“We’re talking about the issues, and that to me is progress, trying to see if we can find some areas of agreement, and the talks are moving along,” said Teamsters President Ron Carey. UPS Chairman James Kelly said that although “there are dozens of issues still unresolved,” negotiators “are continuing to talk, and that’s good.” Carey and Kelly made their comments on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

Despite the cautious optimism, talks droned on Sunday in Washington without any breakthroughs in the strike by the 185,000 UPS employees who sort and load packages and drive the brown delivery trucks. The company dominates the package-delivery business--its 12 million packages carried on a typical day are 80% of the nationwide traffic. The strike has cut business to 10% of normal volume, and the company is losing $50 million a day in revenues.

“A lot of that business is not coming back,” Kelly said. “Our customers have been devastated in many ways.”

President Clinton expressed optimism that the dispute will be settled soon, though. “It’s my gut feeling they’ll settle,” he told reporters as he arrived in Martha’s Vineyard, an island off Massachusetts, for a three-week vacation. “They’re that close,” he said, holding up two fingers.

“It’s a good deal. It will set a precedent for unions,” he said.

But Matt Witt, the Teamsters communication director, said late Sunday that Clinton’s speculation was off the mark. “At this hour, the talks are continuing, but there are no agreements on any of the major issues. It’s unclear whether real progress will be made.”

Before he left for Martha’s Vineyard, Clinton said: “This strike is beginning to hurt not only the company but its employees and the people who depend on it, and I think they ought to redouble their efforts to settle the strike and they ought to do it today.”

He also spoke with Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman, who has been playing a central role by keeping the talks going. With strong prodding from Herman, the Teamsters and UPS have been meeting in lengthy sessions since Thursday. The discussions alternate between direct negotiations and private caucuses on each side.

About two hours of every 10 are spent with the Teamsters and UPS negotiators in direct discussions, Carey said. Then each side goes back to its own room to consider ideas informally offered during the meetings, and to prepare calculations of the cost and impact of the other side’s suggestions. “You spend many hours with your own folks,” Carey said.

The whole tone is tentative and preliminary, sources indicated, and both sides are far from agreeing on any formal proposal to end the walkout.

Carey took a break from the negotiations Sunday night for a teleconference to brief local union activists on the status of the meetings.

He credited the pickets with forcing the company to begin serious bargaining, but added that while many issues were under discussion, no agreements had been reached, according to Teamsters who heard the call.

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Kelly says the Teamsters should be allowed to vote on the company’s last proposal, which was disclosed after the members voted to authorize a strike. But Carey says the union is acting in accordance with the strike authorization and that there will not be a vote until the negotiators have a worthwhile agreement to bring “back to our members.”

Although the negotiations are complex, the argument boils down to two core issues: part-time workers and pensions.

Most UPS workers are part-timers, who average approximately $9 an hour, compared with $20 an hour for full-time employees.

The company insists that efficiency requires large numbers of part-time workers. “Our work is done in short spurts, in two-, three- and four-hour gaps to make our service commitments. . . ,” Kelly said.

“There are cases where we can combine that work and have combined it, but of our part-time work force, almost 50% are students working their way through college,” he said.

The Teamsters say that many of the part-timers have worked for the company for years, that thousands work 35 hours a week, and that they deserve a chance to move into the better-paid, full-time category.

Carey and the entire AFL-CIO, of which the Teamsters are a part, hope to gain the public’s support by portraying the strike as a struggle for workers across the country.

Americans “want to have a decent full-time job, be able to purchase a home,” he said Sunday. “There are no part-time mortgages, there are no part-time car payments.”

On the pension issue, the company has proposed creating a new retirement plan, limited exclusively to UPS workers.

The current plan is a multi-employer system, with UPS and other firms, large and small, contributing to 41 plans in different parts of the country. If a plan has extra funds, because stock investments have performed well, it provides additional benefits.

UPS could save money under a single company plan. If plan investments did unusually well in some years, the company could reduce its contribution.

But Carey says this would be a “grab” of money that would otherwise go to workers. The company says it needs to control pension costs as a rising expense in a very competitive business environment.

The UPS proposal could be beneficial for some longtime workers in the pension plans for the Midwest and parts of the East. Those workers could get pension increases of as much as 50%.

But the western conference of Teamsters, whose pension plan covers workers in California, already has a better pension plan, officials say. They claim that it is more generous in almost every aspect than the benefits available under the UPS proposal.

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The union also is strongly opposed to the UPS pension proposal because, union officials say, UPS is the biggest contributor to the plans and its withdrawal could undermine them by leaving them dependent on weaker companies.

Economic tolls are mounting on all fronts from the strike.

Besides the company’s daily loss of $50 million, UPS customers who cannot move their goods are losing money--although there is no precise calculation of those losses.

UPS workers, who usually are paid every two weeks, have missed one paycheck. The Teamsters are paying out $10 million a week in strike benefits, but that amounts to just $55 a week for each striker.

Times wire services contributed to this story.