The current contract expires July 31, which means 340,000 UPS workers could go on strike August 1. The two sides had been trying to reach a deal to stop nervous UPS customers from starting to move their business to rival delivery services including the US Postal Service and nonunion FedEx.
A key union demand is to eliminate a two-tier wage scale that was put in place during the last contract to help UPS expand its delivery service to six days a week, up from five days. The union points to record profit that UPS recorded in recent years, which have nearly doubled during the five-year life of the current contract, from an adjusted net income of $6.3 billion in 2018 to $11.3 billion on that basis last year.