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During this contract ratification campaign (being conducted so enthusiastically by both the Union and the company), I’ve heard references to the “unborn” quite frequently. People trying to sell this contract say things like “You can’t worry about the unborn,” or “This deal may be a little harder on the unborn, but you have to vote on the things that affect you directly.”

The word “unborn” in this instance refers not to fetuses or protesters at the local Planned Parenthood. It refers instead to future Union members. In this specific case, we’re being told not to care that people who come to UPS under the terms of the tentative contract.

Those workers will start out at 8.50 an hour and have to wait a year for medical coverage (18 months for family coverage). How would you feel about paying Union dues for a job where you break your back loading trucks for 8.50 an hour with no benefits for the first year? Why would you want that for anyone else?

The idea behind telling us not to worry about the unborn is an appeal to a sense of selfishness and greed that Unions were built to fight against. They hope they can offer us (the existing UPS Teamsters) enough that we won’t care what they do to those who follow us.

I’m sure that’s something past generations of Union members have been tempted to do as well. Of course, if the pioneers of the Labor movement had given in to that temptation - if they had sold out the unborn as we’re being asked to do - the movement would have vanished a long time ago.

The starting wage at UPS hasn’t changed since 1997, when it was almost 60% higher than minimum wage. Now it’s merely 17% above the minimum wage (in PA). Future UPS employees deserve better than that, and they deserve fewer obstacles to decent health coverage. At the very least, they deserve one of the two.

The “unborn” will someday be the future of our Union. What will they think of the Union they inherit? Will they talk about how we sold them out in 2007? Or will there be no Union left because they soured on the Union to the point they didn’t even care to get involved? Or will they thank us for turning down a deal that had the potential to kill our Union’s future?

We don’t need to sell out the unborn or the future of our Union. UPS doesn’t get to cry poor like GM or Chrysler; they turned a four billion dollar net profit last year. They can afford to do better than what’s in this tentative contract. And we get to tell them that, but it’s going to take all of our votes.

We’ll be receiving ballots in the mail over the next couple days. If you want to make UPS do better, vote NO.

Filed under: 2008 UPS contract criticism, 2008 contract, UPS, exposing anti-union propoganda, unionism