In an automotive industry still struggling with the tail end of semiconductor chip shortages and supply chain disruptions following COVID-19, GM may experience more logistic pressure if a threatened strike of UPS workers materializes.
Research by Anderson Economic Group (AEG) shows the UPS strike could cost upwards of $7 billion in total economic losses, giving it the biggest economic impact of any strike in the past 100 years.
A strike against UPS by the Teamsters Union would result in 340,000 workers walking off the job for an estimated period of 10 days, AEG says. The halt in deliveries would affect not only individuals but also businesses, including everything from small single proprietorships heavily dependent on shipping availability to major corporations such as The General.
The research firm also notes that deliveries would not be readily switched to alternative services such as the United States Postal Service (USPS) or FedEx. The strike would lead to “lost parts and goods within just a few days” and inflict “significant and lasting harm for small businesses” according to AEG CEO Patrick Anderson.
AEG remarks that the strike is on the same scale as the 2019 UAW strike against GM. The research firm successfully predicted the outcome of that strike and used the same methodology for its current predictions.
Even without the potential UPS disruption, GM continues to face logistical problems. According to GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra, speaking at the beginning of July 2023, logistics and delivery are the biggest obstacle the automaker is grappling with at the moment.
GM has large numbers of vehicles produced, but unable to reach dealerships with both trucking and railcar shortages preventing delivery. The automaker has planned to reduce future production to prevent the backlog from worsening as thousands of vehicles remain parked next to factories where they were produced.
As logistics struggles continue and the UPS strike looms, potentially creating more major distribution hurdles as its effects reverberate outward through the transportation sector, GM has even floated the idea of buying 400 heavy-duty trucks to carry out its own deliveries.
The UPS walkout will begin on August 1st if a deal isn’t reached by July 31st, with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien declaring “we’ve organized, strategized, now it’s time to pulverize.”
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Comments
A UPS strike will kill parts deliveries, order now if you need anything.
Here we go again. Unions holding us all hostage. They should be abolished, if not ashamed. Greedy people. Fire them all!
You’re an idiot, unions created the middle class and 40 hour work week.
No, they actually didn’t. All you’re doing is citing Big Union propaganda, which is curtailed to appeal to smooth-brained people who lack the competence to do 5 minutes of research. Individual workers in a free society are the actual reason we have the middle class and the 40 hour work week. Standards are established when employers are free to dabble with new ideas and those ideas make their place of employment appealing to free people. Unions love to witness natural change and jump ahead of it to claim they’re leading the change. Americans adopting Marxist philosophy should be treated like the enemy they are.
You’ve clearly been fed a steady diet of anti-union propaganda in the news media and talk radio for decades.
Based on how anti-union you are, I assume you’re somewhere in your late 40s through mid 60s. In that, you’ve directly benefited from union gains, whether you realize it or not, but haven’t seen your benefits and healthcare slip away like so many younger workers have because it’s been grandfathered in.
You have been told unions are the cause of all of your problems and not the billionaires who have been sucking this nation dry and sending jobs overseas to squeeze a little extra cash out of their employees .
HMK,
I agree with you, all unions should be abolished. People should be thrilled with whatever an employer wants to pay them. In fact why can’t we just bring back slavery? Nothing wrong with a dirt floor and a meal per day. I can’t make up my mind if you’re an imbecile or just ignorant. I’m leaning toward imbecile!
Look at you with your Big Union propaganda. Apparently without Big Unions citizens are somehow forced into servitude, incapable of leaving their place of employment because of some non-existent person with a gun threatening them when they choose to cancel their contract with an employer. Just tell people you’re too weak to leave a job. It’s okay.
Spoken like a true scab. You should be thankful of every morsel you get because of unions.
Do you get ot, medical, retirement, and good wages? Do you really think companies dole this out from the kindness of their hearts??
Hey smooth-brain, companies “dole this out” because it results in them being able to take advantage of a litany of deductions that have been put in place for nearly a century. It also helps their company appeal to potential employees. This isn’t rocket science. It’s quite literally economics 101.
I agree with you and you’re not an imbecile as jofa stated. There are plenty of non-union vehicle manufacturing plants in the US that are non-union where their employees are making as much or more than the union shops. I was a union member and then managed union employees. The unions just like the democratic party want control of the people. They want to tell you how much you should make, and how you should live, they want to take all the decision-making process away from you. Case in point, mandating vaccines, you need to buy an EV, eliminating gas stoves, gas water heaters, washers, and dryers, eliminating real meat for processed meat, I could go on and on. Bottom line this country is being brainwashed by the far-left elites which the UAW is a part of. In the end, there are going to be two classes of people, the rich and the poor. Wake up America!
UPS drivers don’t even get air conditioning. The teamsters union finally negotiated to add that but it’s a great example of how a company will have no issues exploiting its workers and putting them in dangerous conditions with no pushback.
People downvoting me think UPS drivers don’t deserve air conditioning. Is Air conditioning “woke” now? How does the saying go? “Go woke, go not dying from heat exhaustion while working”?
Here’s an idea — don’t work for that company if they can’t provide you with AC. Unfortunately your choices in alternative employers I’d quite limited due to the unions, corporations and politicians all working together to squeeze out any real competition.
If union members are greedy, what are the C-suite? In the heyday of unions(60’s/70’s), I think the ratio between C-suite and workers was around 50x. So the C-suite made 50 bucks to every dollar a worker did. Now I think I saw the average has gone to 500X, and if you look you regularly see payouts of 100M+ for a single year for a CEO. Now what would you call that?
“What would you call that”
Them being compensated based upon their market value. Those C-Suite executives have skills that are simply more valuable than a person turning a wrench and punching a time card, that’s how markets work. They’re not utilizing the state or federal government to inflate their market value, unlike the parasites within any given union.
Market value, laughable. The game is rigged, seriously rigged. Their pay is determined by the board, which is usually friends of the CEO. In fact, you may want to look up how the highest paid CEO’s are usually underperformers. But you are going to believe what you are going to believe. But doesn’t matter, looks like the union got some additional concessions. No bonus for C-suite this year. The CEO will have to make due with the 19M paycheck.
FedEx pilots rejected a 30% pay increase. So, maybe they’ll both go on strike and finish the country off.
Look at these adorable union-rats engaging in soft-terrorism to gain themselves more than their market-value. It’s time we make Union-busters a thing again. Purge your company of these union leeches and continue the trend of rejecting pro-union legislation on the state and federal level.
Last time UPS went on strike in the 90’s they got nothing but the Union seem to do fine. Ask a UPS person who worked in the 90’s the strike did nothing but give the Union control of their pension/retirement then years later gave it back to UPS because they couldn’t run it right.
When everything was built in the USA instead of China the average citizen was much better off. Unions are best suited for those who work in corporations and trades which remain in the US, however, government employee unions should not exist period as they produce nothing but frustration for those who are forced to deal with them.
Those of you that have called me down against unions, should take a course in economics, than come talk to me. In a year or so, be prepared to pay 50% more for EVERYTHING you consume, thanks to unions. Trust me when I say this. And don’t cry when you can’t get the goods you want, because the docks are on strike, UPS is on strike, food handlers are on strike, etc.
HMK,
Not before you take a course in sentence structure. There’s nothing an employer loves more than the uneducated.
When an unskilled worker is getting $20 an hour I think that has more to do with rising living costs than a skilled worker trying to raise a family, own a house, and send their kids to college. There are either management or scabs shouting anti union redorick in here.
Union and UPS management have settled according to the news I heard at around 9:50 AM CST.
Some unions are just a waste of money they are just liberal election slush fund, I heard of someone who had a grievance so he went to the union steward and the steward came back and told him the company told me to get back to work or the steward would be fired.
When I hear/ read about supply chain disruptions I cringe because these companies (GM) in this article have logistics people and they darn well knew the potential that UPS would strike, if they didn’t start a contingency plan then, these people should be canned
Hey Mr. Beans (and others who hold his views), You don’t need to argue free market philosophy versus Marxism, or however you see this. Just look in the real world. The unions did argue for and won the 40 hour work week. That is not propaganda, it is actual history. You probably also revile Democratic politics. I guess you don’t figure you earned your Social Security or Medicare and you decline it from the government because they were New Deal Democratic programs? If you think you would prefer living and working in a non union world I suspect you should go to China or Vietnam or Indonesia and get a job there. None of those pesky unions there. You could work way more than 40 hours a week and get paid about $2 an hour. You no doubt like the life you have in the US without realizing all the workers and organizations who fought so hard so you could have it.
One last thing. Yes, CEOs have skills and should make more income than unskilled workers. Only Marxist argues otherwise and American Unions are definitely not Marxist. In the good old days before Nixon, Reagan and the Bush family, CEOs made 25 times as much as their average worker and lived charmed lives. The CEOs and other top executives at GM, AT&T, Exxon, etc. didn’t feel poor or underprivileged. Then came the ‘trickle down economics Republicans and American executive salaries went crazy. Jack Welch at GE was cited as the ultimate smart CEO and he liked living on 25X the average American salaries, but suddenly, especially in the era of Reagan and beyond, executive salaries grew to 50 times and then 100 times the average salary. Were the new breed of executives 4 times as smart as their predecessors ? Hardly. At first the European corporations and executives marveled at those foxy American execs who rigged the system to pay them so much more than the execs they replaced. Now the Western world has adopted the Reagan/Bush system and execs around the world earn millions in a year as the employees accept only thousands. There is no perfect justice and the American worker hardly gets fair treatment compared to corporate CEOs, but unions have a legitimate role in trying to balance the scales.
Very well said!!
give me mine and my former employers money from SS contributions and I could have made my own money.Give to the feds and they invest in things like gender affirming surgeries