Is a UPS strike on the horizon?
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
It’s one more piece of bad news for the wine business
UPS may know today if its drivers and package handlers will strike; if they do, it’s one more piece of bad news for the wine business.
That’s because UPS and FedEx have a near monopoly on wine shipping; if the 340,000 Teamsters at UPS strike when their contract expires at the end of the month, the wine business will be faced with yet another hurdle to overcome in this time of higher and higher hurdles.
And the rest of the economy won’t do so well, either; UPS may account for six percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
The North Bay Business Journal – given it’s a business newspaper – does a decent job of explaining why 97 percent of the unionized employees voted to strike. The forced overtime would have been enough for me. And they really didn’t have air conditioning in their delivery trucks?
I’ve been following the potential strike since last fall, given how much attention the blog plays to wine shipments and delivery. Delivery now is terrible, as we’ve noted many times (and that doesn’t include how expensive it is to not have your wine delivered). I got another non-delivery delivery the other day, at 6 p.m. or so. I was in the kitchen, a room and a half away, and never heard the knock. And neither did Churro, the blog’s associate editor, who will bark when he hears squirrels running on the front porch. But he never looked up from the sofa.
Nevertheless, there was a note on the door saying the delivery had been attempted.
If there is a strike, how will out-of-state retailers and wineries get their product to consumers? As we’ve also noted, it’s illegal for the postal service to deliver alcohol. A strike would leave FedEx –probably the worst of the two services – as the only carrier for the duration of the walkout.
Talk about non-delivery deliveries. We’d have to stand in front the house and flag the truck down — if even that would work.
More about the perils of wine delivery
• Holiday shocker: Hundreds of FedEx packages were dumped in a ravine
• Follow-up: FedEx, why won’t you deliver my wine samples?
• Is there good news for wine delivery on the horizon?
Photo: “UPS Delivery” by pscf11 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.