After delivering UPS strike, Carey faces union blues

"I am willing to sacrifice for as long as it takes to make sure Americans know we cannot have a part-time America."
Rachel Howard, a part-time UPS deliverer and eight-year company veteran

Union workers for United Parcel Service went on a 16-day strike in August, paralyzing the world's largest parcel delivery company and creating havoc for everyone from hospitals to mail-order stores and their customers.

Despite the inconvenience, the men and women in brown won public sympathy by linking their walkout to the issue of part-time work.

The strike by some 185,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against UPS was the biggest in the United States in more than a decade.

Its effects rippled through the economy, as businesses dependent on the company were unable to send or receive normal deliveries. Competitors, including the U.S. Postal Service and Federal Express, scrambled to fill the gap, winning away some UPS customers in the process.

Teamsters President Ron Carey insisted the union was resisting the company's increasing reliance on part-time workers, who could not make ends meet on part-time pay.

That touched a nerve in a nation worried about economic downsizing and job insecurity. People could relate to the drivers in brown uniforms who regularly came to their door, increasing tolerance of the walkout.

The strike also became a broader union cause, as the AFL-CIO rallied around the cash-strapped Teamsters and set up a fund to pay strikers $55 a week.

President Clinton refused to intervene. Finally, in ending the strike, UPS agreed to convert 10,000 part-time jobs to full-time jobs over five years. The company also withdrew its demand to pull out of the union's multi-employer pension plans and create a UPS-only plan for unionized workers.

UPS suggested during the strike that Carey was trying to create a distraction from internal union problems. And days after it was over, a court-appointed federal monitor overturned Carey's election as union president because of fund-raising irregularities in the 1996 campaign.

Carey maintained his innocence. But in November, he was barred from running in the new election in 1998.

By the end of the year, Carey had announced he was taking an unpaid leave of absence as Teamsters president to fight the ruling. That same day, a government-appointed panel recommended that Carey be charged with participating in an illegal scheme to indirectly funnel $885,000 in union funds toward his re-election campaign.

A federal judge also postponed the 1998 vote to give investigators time to look into allegations of fund-raising impropriety against Carey's defeated opponent, James Hoffa Jr., who also maintained his innocence.