Stress, Financial Worries Felt On Both Sides Of Strike Worker Loses His Income, While Manager Faces Strikers’ Wrath

The United Parcel Service strike moves into its third week Monday - and no one knows that better than the 302,000 UPS employees who have been thrown into warring camps.

The 192,000 Teamsters who have hit the picket lines have had to face head-on the uncertainty, financial hardship and stress that inevitably comes with an abrupt - and now prolonged - strike.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of UPS managers have had to go back to driving trucks to keep the company going - all the while facing insults from picket lines and barbs from the public.

Like wars and natural disasters, strikes bring out the best and worst in the people who get swept up in them. Here are two of their stories:

For David Nelson, the scariest part of the strike comes every morning when neighborhood drug dealers approach him with job offers as he leaves his Chelsea home to head to the picket line.

“I know many of them because I grew up with them,” the 33-year-old full-time driver said. “Every day they say: ‘Hey, Nelson. Do you need work?”’

Nelson ignores them. But he admits the easy money is tempting, given his growing financial pressure.

The divorced father of three has been relying on his $52,000 annual salary to keep his two oldest children in Catholic schools.

But without this month’s paychecks, Nelson won’t be able to afford his $500 rent plus the $485 in fees and tuition needed for them to start school in September. That means the kids may have to change to public school.

“They don’t know about it yet,” he said last week. “I’m not looking forward to telling them.”

For Nelson, keeping his children in private school is more than a matter of pride. It’s also about survival.

As a child of the streets who attended both Catholic and public schools, Nelson is well aware of the difference between the two.

“You can’t skip classes at Catholic school,” he said. “They keep an eye on you.”

Indeed, Nelson says his private education is one reason why he was one of the few children in his poor neighborhood who succeeded in joining the middle class.

His high school degree, together with his prowess on the football field, won him a scholarship at Grambling State University in Louisiana and later became a staff sergeant in the Army.

With such a stellar background, he had no trouble landing a job with UPS after leaving the service about five years ago. “They just fell in love with me,” he recalled.

For Nelson, who got a job delivering packages in the Diamond District, the feeling was soon mutual. “It’s the greatest job in the world,” he said.

The love affair is now fading. Even if the strike ends soon, Nelson’s job status is uncertain, because many UPS drivers out-rank him in seniority.

If the company follows through on its threat to lay off 15,000 workers after strikers go back to work, Nelson could end up jobless.

Nelson knows he could find other work, but nothing that pays UPS’ $20 an hour. “I can’t work for $8 an hour,” he said.

That’s why the siren call of the streets is so frightening.

“This kind of stuff will make the kindest person do wrong,” he said.

UPS training supervisor James Reiser is the flip side of the strike.

As management, the 29-year-old company veteran has been enlisted to drive a truck once again - and it has been a long, intimidating haul.

Over the last three weeks, he has been branded a “scab” by strikers and faced threats on the job. Some pro-union elevator operators have left him stranded on upper floors of skyscrapers, and one warned him, “Watch yourself.”

Scared about retaliation by strikers, he has even changed his route to work at UPS’ giant facility on Manhattan’s West Side.

“I don’t want any confrontations,” he said. “I’m trying to keep blinders on.”

But that’s impossible for Reiser and the 350 or so other managers who are struggling to keep UPS’ slimmed-down New York operation going.

They are feeling the strike physically and financially. Reiser has cuts on his hands and has lost about five pounds in the last two weeks.

With strike-related losses mounting, management stock bonuses will likely fall dramatically. Last year, Reiser brought home about $10,000 in stocks on top of his $60,000 salary.

But the biggest toll on managers is psychological. Managers are the most visible targets for supporters of the Teamsters, as well as victims of the sharp slowdown in UPS service.

A bachelor, Reiser assures his parents and grandmother in their almost nightly calls that he is not in danger.

As for the name-calling, Reiser says it doesn’t bother him. “I’ve been called worse.”

But Reiser admits the strike is beginning to take its toll emotionally. He recalls running into a striker he knows while taking the bus.

Their discussion was cordial. But it saddened Reiser to learn of the financial problems the driver was facing.

“He’s got a young family and told me he was struggling,” Reiser said.

A few days later, a distraught employee of a company that uses UPS told Reiser that he was losing his job because of the fall-off of business resulting from the strike.

“He was really shaken up. That’s when it really hits home.”