Local leaders protest Southeast Queens UPS plant after 10 workers fired
/
Fired UPS workers rallied with elected officials and candidates for city office outside a warehouse in Laurelton Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Teamsters Local 804
By David Brand
Labor leaders and local lawmakers rallied in Laurelton Wednesday to support ten part-time UPS workers, including two pregnant women, fired from their warehouse jobs after they declined to work overtime.
The terminated laborers, many of whom work additional jobs or care for their children, were barred from re-entering the building after they had completed their early morning shifts and punched out without agreeing to take on additional overtime hours, union leaders said. The workers lost health insurance and benefits after the firing.
"I'm eight months pregnant trying to work. It makes no sense why I am being treated like this. I need my health insurance," said one of the workers, Annie Green.
Another fired worker, Raheem Smith, said the shipping corporation provides minimal training to workers and leans on veteran employees to show new hires the ropes without additional compensation.
“You’ve got one person doing three persons’ jobs,” Smith said. “They expect you to kill yourself and get the job done for them.”
The Laurelton warehouse workers, and UPS employees throughout the New York City area, are represented by Teamsters Local 804. Union president Vinny Perrone said UPS had exploited and “summarily discharged” essential employees who toiled throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and helped UPS stock more than double in value over the past year. UPS stock is now worth just under $201, compared to about than $96 on April 30, 2020.
“What UPS, a Fortune 500 company, has done and is doing to its essential workers is a travesty,” Perrone said. “UPS has lined their pockets during the pandemic and must stop treating our Teamsters Local 804 brothers and sisters as expendable workers.”
He and SEIU 32BJ President Kyle Bragg urged UPS to rehire the workers and provide backpay.
“These workers were responsible to their part-time jobs, but it's not right to expect overtime work that forces them to neglect additional work they need to support their families,” Bragg said. The fact that two of the workers are soon to give birth only adds insult to injury.”
UPS part-time workers are guaranteed shifts that last a minimum three and a half hours, the company said. After five hours, they begin earning paid overtime.
In a response Thursday, UPS spokesperson Matthew O’Connor said the corporation fired the employees because they walked out without asking to leave early but agreed to bring them back.
“We had reached an agreement for these employees to return to work, which was later withdrawn by Local 804,” he said. “We are open and willing to continue our dialogue to resolve this situation.”
Perrone, from the Teamsters, called that claim “a shady half truth.” He said UPS told the Teamsters they would rehire the workers with a two-day suspension and no backpay. The union said they would not accept a suspension because the workers “didn’t do anything wrong” — they simply punched out at the end of their scheduled early-morning shift.
UPS also refused to take the backpay issue to arbitration because an arbitrator might rule that the corporation cannot force part-time employees to work mandatory overtime, Perrone said. “They’re terrified of that,” he added.
The Teamsters, along with several elected officials and candidates for city office, said the terminations reflect an anti-worker stance at UPS and major corporations nationwide.
“UPS management put these warehouse workers in an untenable position: work overtime without pay or be fired and lose your health insurance,” said Queens Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer, a candidate for Queens borough president who attended the rally with his mother, a former union grocery worker. “It's plainly outrageous in a pandemic, but it's also personal for me.”
Mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia and various Queens council hopefuls, including Moumita Ahmed in Council District 24, Jonathan Bailey in Council District 26, Harold Miller in Council District 27, Aleda Gagarin in Council District 29 and Felicia Singh in Council District 32, also protested the firings.
”What they did was shameful,” Ahmed said. “We as New Yorkers get bullied every day and in every conceivable way. Today we say not today, not ever”
