UPS Freight ratifies first-ever contract

INDIANAPOLIS—UPS Freight—formerly Overnite Transportation—employees yesterday ratified their first-ever contract with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) by a 107-1 vote.

The IBT said in a statement that this agreement will provide UPS Freight staffers with improved wages, benefits, and working conditions, as well as serve as a model to organize thousands of other UPS Freight employees across the United States.

"For more than 50 years, workers at UPS Freight's predecessor, Overnite, fought to win a Teamster contract," Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said in a statement. "Today the union fulfilled its promise that we would not quit until workers achieved economic justice. Now we will help thousands of other UPS Freight employees win the same protections and guarantees on the job that the Indianapolis workers have. After UPS Freight workers join the Teamster family, we will focus our future organizing efforts at FedEx Freight."

On September 30, The Teamsters and UPS Freight reached a tentative agreement, according to a Teamsters statement. The contract, said the statement, which covers 125 dockworkers and drivers who belong to Teamsters Local 135 in Indianapolis, also provides employees the protections of a grievance procedure to fight unfair management decisions.