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UPS delivers 12,000 job cuts to white-collar management months after historic deal for unionized drivers—yet another sign the pendulum is swinging toward blue-collar workers

UPS delivers 12,000 job cuts to management months after historic deal for unionized drivers—yet another sign the pendulum is swinging toward blue-collar workers

https://fortune.com/2024/01/30/ups-layoffs-12000-management-union-contract/

Layoffs at UPS demonstrate the precarity of being a white-collar worker in 2023

UPS delivers 12,000 job cuts to management months after historic deal for unionized drivers—yet another sign the pendulum is swinging toward blue-collar workers

27 comments

ZooGuru

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Hooray for people losing their jobs? Celebrating something like this is missing the point.

hglman

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Creating division is why forbes wrote an article.

Alto

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Obviously the article is a bit inflammatory, but the overall message really isn't wrong.

Unionize or die, basically. Obviously not literally, but one of the clearest lessons of the last year has been unions help preserve job security. It's not a lesson that should have been needed, and frankly it'll fall on far too many deaf ears, but hopefully more people realize it.

ZooGuru

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100% agree that unions are vital. That being said, I’m a current non-union employee that was promoted from union employees who I now supervise. They are in contract negotiations and I hope they get the best deal possible. I see it as mutually beneficial. Unions are absolutely necessary for workers rights. The “maybe they used to be” argument is total BS. Businesses exists to make money and if asking someone to do something unsafe makes a business more money, they will find people to do it every time. Bit of a digression on my part all to say I think I agree with you.

OpenStars

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Yeah I was like WTF? It reads to me like "non-union workers lose their jobs while union ones don't", but then they had to somehow manufacture drama for the sake of more drama so they could add drama to their drama, when no drama needed to exist in the first place?

Fuck the for-profit media:-(.

ZooGuru

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Yeah for sure. To me it sounds like “hey, non-union employees. You better be pushing union employees to accept less or we will just cut your jobs”. The headline alone feels very much like a threat.

Patches

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Again you have to view the source. It's Forbes.

The entire point of Forbes and most media these days - is to sow discontent in the class war. It is one of the many weapons of the billionaire class.

OpenStars

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This is Fortune though - please forgive my ignorance, but is that like a known subsidiary of Forbes or something? I searched for the word "Forbes" on the page and found nothing.

Anyway, perhaps we need a community that displays news articles while excluding such known shills. While we are at it, ditch click-bait articles too:-).

The problem there is that there likely would be next to nothing left!

Dark_Arc

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I still would wager this direction is good.

Anecdotally there's seemingly been a plague of unnecessary or incompetent middle management (i.e. administrative overhead) in lots of places for lots of years.

Reducing the number of layers a bit is probably a good thing even if some people lose their jobs in the process.

Narlythotep

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Notice the words "job cuts for executives" is absolutely no where...the director of tire wear attrition services is still making 300k a year.

TransplantedSconie

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UPS driver here.

You could see the writing on the wall years ago. A vast majority of driver supervisors now have little to zero area knowledge (how the routes are looped, where to go for pickups ect) they do everything through the board. My old supervisor, 10 years ago, even said they were going to be the first cuts. "You see that board?" he said," It literally will do my job later on in your career. " That's going to be your supervisor." Oh man, how right he was. Too bad they blew over 10 billion on the stupid algorithm ORION. That money should have been spent on the fleet of trucks improving gas mileage or going electric. Nope. Get a shitty ass algorithm that decides to send you directly into school traffic right when it gets out, sends you across town on a whim, and tells you it's OK to do a 5 pm pickup at 10am lmao.

PatFussy

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I don't know about all instances but implementation of ORION was stupidly successful. I don't know what kind of back alley you work in but it did save the company a ton of money overall.

TransplantedSconie

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Sure did! Look at all the jobs they just shed lmao.

PatFussy

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Yeah except since ORION was implemented in 2016 they have added about 100k jobs.

Donebrach

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Surely that can’t be a result of, say, the massive increase in online retail in general. No, no. It’s the computer program that added the jobs.

raynethackery

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Just got word they are removing the UPS drop box on front of our building.

Shadywack

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I mean, the vibe I get from this article is that white collar IT and infrastructure roles need to unionize. Laying off other working class and then celebrating it while the executives are still shit rich is aloof. Work is work, and this sucks.

TexasDrunk

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Yep. Articles like this just pit the working class against each other. Delivery drivers vs IT guys is more exciting for executives than workers vs execs.

PatFussy

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I'll say this 500x if I have to. People who manage an employee or are supervisors can't unionize. People who make company decisions can't unionize.

Shadywack

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Traditionally white collar jobs that are lumped in with management can and absolutely do unionize. The CWA is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to exactly what this article talks about. Software developers, engineers, sysadmins, and cybersecurity techs absolutely belong in a union. I agree with you that supervisors and managers cannot unionize, but a very large chunk of marketing and IT workers fall in exactly the category of people being laid off here. Work is work.

MojoMcJojo

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I did not know that. What layer of management can unionize?

skuzz

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100% this.

Unions are on the rise: good

Thousands of people being laid off because companies throw away human lives every 3 months to pay 5 rich people quarterly rather than running responsible business: bad

We all need to unionize.

lapommedeterre

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For UPS, management also includes web, backend, IT, etc positions. Basically if you weren't a hub worker or delivery driver, you're likely non-union and structured as management.

yoast

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Making a pun about people losing their jobs in the title of an article is a bad look

fine_sandy_bottom

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Paywalled?

Regardless, I reject the premise.

UPS will lay off whomever they can. They don't terminate people according to political ideology.

Spyder

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AI to manage?

TransplantedSconie

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It's called ORION, and it sucks lmao.