Central New Yorkers can expect some serious hold-ups with their deliveries if UPS workers go on strike at the end of the month, says Patrick Penfield, a professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University.
"Everything will get delayed. I mean, everything, anything that you ship via the mail," he said. "That's what a lot of central New Yorkers will see. They'll get packages, but you're going to get them later and later and later."
Online shoppers are a fraction of those who would be affected — a strike could upend everything from the hospitality industry to hospitals. All of which would be a big hit for the national economy, according to Penfield.
"You're moving 19 million packages a day via UPS, that's about 6% of the U.S. gross domestic product," he said. "So from a broader sense, it's negatively going to impact the economy. We're going to see a slowdown. We're going to see places not get things that they need in order to sell."
At the heart of the potential strike are new contracts that are being negotiated by the Teamsters union, for some 340,000 UPS employees. The union says it is trying to secure higher pay and more opportunities for full-time jobs, and that wages haven’t kept up with the profit the company raked in during the Covid-19 pandemic, which also put employees at risk when delivering packages.
Meanwhile, the company blames the union for the current breakdown of contract negotiations, over increases in pay and cost of living.
If an agreement isn't reached, and the workers do strike, it would be the largest labor strike that UPS or the country has seen in decades. The last UPS strike, in the 1990s, lasted 15 days, when more than 185,000 employees walked out, according to the Associated Press.
The current UPS contracts expire at the end of July.
The possible strike adds to the labor unrest in the transportation sector over the past couple of years.
