Will the Biden Administration try to help broker a deal between UPS and the Teamsters?
If Biden cannot bring about labor peace at UPS before July 31st, he could use the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a strike.
With a nationwide Teamster strike at United Parcel Service (UPS) seeming more likely by the day, it should not come as a surprise to anyone if the Biden Administration steps in to try to help broker a last minute deal.
On Wednesday, after marathon bargaining over the holiday weekend between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and UPS, negotiations broke down, making the largest single-employer strike in private-sector history appear inevitable.
“No additional negotiations are scheduled,” the Teamsters stated in an early morning press release on Wednesday.
If the union does strike, it would the Teamsters first strike against the nation’s largest private-sector shipper since 1997, and it could have a profound impact on the nation’s supply chain.
“UPS delivers around 25 million packages a day, representing about a quarter of all U.S. parcel volume, according to the global shipping and logistics firm Pitney Bowes,” reported ABC News in June. “That’s about 10 million parcels more than it delivered each day in the years leading up to the pandemic.”
As the strike deadline draws nearer and given the potential risk to the economy, it would seem likely that the Biden Administration will, at some point, inject itself into the negotiations, or risk invoking Taft-Hartley to stop the Teamsters from striking—a politically risky move at best.
Interventionist In Chief?
Regarding labor relations, Joe Biden is not a laissez-faire President and he has been very vocal in his support of labor unions.
Generally, though, despite having the legal power under the Taft-Hartley Act to stop labor disputes that could harm the economy, most U.S. Presidents do not involve themselves in private-sector negotiations.
In fact, before Congress and President Biden blocked a railroad strike from occurring last year—which infuriated union members—the last time a U.S. President injected himself into a large labor dispute was in 2002, when George W. Bush intervened in the 11-day shutdown of 29 West Coast ports.
Railroads, though, do not fall under the Taft-Harley Act like UPS does.
Rather, they fall under the Railway Labor Act so, in the railroad’s case, it took an act of Congress (literally) and the President to avoid an economy-crippling railroad strike.
In the case of UPS, however, the President could order a “cooling off” period under Taft-Hartley, as well as go to court to enjoin the Teamsters from striking. Eventually, though it could come to that, that is something the Administration would likely want to avoid before going into an election year.
As Joe Biden likes to refer to himself as “the most pro-union President in history” and is positioning himself as such for re-election, enjoining the Teamsters from striking is likely to be politically unpalatable, especially to the Teamsters’ President Sean O’Brien and his members at UPS.
Rather than risking alienating the Teamsters, though, Biden could use his “hands on” approach to attempt to broker a deal, much like then-Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh tried to do with the railroad negotiations before Congress stepped in.
More recently, during the labor dispute involving the West Coast ports, current Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su flew to California to briefly offer assistance in resolving that dispute.
This week, it was announced that “long-time Democratic adviser Gene Sperling in charge of helping smooth the upcoming labor contract talks” between the UAW and Detroit Three automakers.
As the Biden Administration has shown an eagerness to insert itself into these high-profile disputes. given the risk to the economy a strike at UPS could pose, putting someone from the Administration at the bargaining table only makes political sense for the Administration.
Is Julie Su the person for the job?
Although the Administration has not announced whether it would, in fact, intervene at UPS, inserting Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su into the dispute, if successful, could be the political win the Administration needs to get her stalled nomination pushed through the Senate.
Although Su’s nomination was approved by Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee in April, her nomination has been strongly opposed by Republicans and is being held up by several Democrats who will not voice their support for her.
Su is a controversial figure for several reasons:
First, Su has grossly mismanaged taxpayer money in her prior job as California’s Labor Secretary, explained Tom Hebert in The Hill back in 2021.
Secondly, Hebert wrote, Su “has an extensive record of anti-freelancer views and a willingness to leverage government power to push her radical agenda.”
A website called Stand Against Su cites more reasons such as her “hatred of capitalism” which is evident in “her anti-business rhetoric and record,” as well as actively working to “prevent the enforcement of immigration law in the workplace.”
If the Administration were to send Julie Su to help mediate a truce between the Teamsters and UPS, even if she were to succeed, it is uncertain whether that could overcome the opposition to her nomination to become Secretary of Labor.
However, to the Biden Administration, it may be worth a try.
Were Su to fail to broker a deal between the Teamsters and UPS, and a strike were to truly be imminent, the President could still fall back on Taft Hartley to stop it from truly damaging the economy.
