Teamsters, Ups Resume Talks In Bid To End Standoff But Both Sides Adamantly Refuse To Budge On Key Issues

Negotiators for the Teamsters union and United Parcel Service returned to the bargaining table Thursday for the first time since a strike disrupted package deliveries across the United States.

But the company said its last offer remained its final offer, and the union insisted that its members won’t return to work unless the package delivery giant creates more full-time jobs and drops a pension proposal.

Teamsters President Ron Carey said he was willing to stay at the table straight through the weekend if the company was willing to negotiate at Thursday’s session.

“But if it’s just a smoke screen, we’re out of here,” he declared.

UPS continued to appeal directly to its employees, distributing copies of the company’s offer to employees who collected last week’s paychecks on Thursday.

UPS CEO James P. Kelly said he was “perplexed” that the union had refused to let its members vote on the company’s proposal.

“We certainly welcome the opportunity to talk. We hope to get this resolved,” Kelly said. “However, we do have an excellent last, best and final offer on the table.”

The talks continued for more than four hours, but no one outside the session knew whether negotiations were progressing or if neither side wanted to be the first to leave the room.

Carey cast the four-day-old strike by 185,000 Teamsters as a stand for protecting good jobs, saying 10,000 UPS part-time workers put in 35 hours a week or more. “They are cheating them out of full-time jobs,” he said.

In a feisty appearance before a couple dozen television cameras set up outside the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Carey said the company should start bargaining seriously.

“If they’d just put their pen where their mouth is we could get this thing settled,” he said.

And for the first time, he suggested that the company was seeking to “undermine this union” by refusing to negotiate on the union’s key issues.

America’s Blood Centers, a network of non-profit community blood banks, said the strike was beginning to cause delivery problems of blood and blood components to critically ill patients.

The National Association of Manufacturers on Thursday joined a chorus of business and trade groups urging the White House to help resolve the dispute.

“The administration ought to be doing more,” NAM President Jerry Jasinowski said. “I think … the good offices of the White House ought to be brought to bear even more.”

But at a news conference Wednesday, President Clinton stated flatly the strike didn’t present a threat to the nation’s security or health - the test for government intervention under the Taft-Hartley Act.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said he expected presidential adviser Bruce Lindsey to get an update from the mediator or the parties after Thursday’s talks.

“We will continue to monitor the strike. The president is obviously encouraged that the parties are resuming some informal dialogue,” said McCurry.

Organized labor remained convinced the government should stay out. AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt noted it was a Republican Congress which passed Taft-Hartley in 1947.