Ups, Teamsters Agree To Resume Negotiations Three-Day-Old Strike Takes Toll On Both Sides; Customers Scramble To Find Alternatives

With frustrated customers vowing to never again depend so much on United Parcel Service, the delivery giant and the Teamsters union agreed Wednesday to resume talks in an effort to end the crippling 3-day-old strike.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director John Calhoun Wells said leaders of both sides agreed to his request to return to the bargaining table today in Washington.

“We have seen no sign that the company has changed its attitude, so we are not particularly optimistic about these new talks,” said Teamsters President Ron Carey. “But we’ll be there, trying to reach a reasonable agreement that provides good jobs for American workers.”

UPS spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said the company doesn’t plan to make any major changes in what it calls the “last, best and final offer” made before the strike.

“We’re going into talks, but we still have a final offer on the table that we want taken to our people,” she said.

President Clinton, despite appeals from UPS and some business leaders, repeated Wednesday that he didn’t believe the strike called for presidential intervention.

Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, who had called Carey and UPS chief James Kelly to urge new talks, said she was encouraged about today’s planned session.

“The president and I feel strongly that both the company and the workers, as well as the American people, have much to gain in a quick resolution to this dispute,” she said.

Lynne Simmons of Marietta, Ga., was among many businesspeople hoping for a quick return of regular UPS service.

“I have learned an important lesson - don’t put all my packages in the back of one truck,” she said. She has been unable to fulfill orders for her Native South company, which uses UPS to ship 30 to 40 boxes each day of her Southern specialty foods such as peach salsa and black-eyed pea pate.

United Design, a major national manufacturer of figurines, has been able to ship only about half its normal load of more than 1,000 boxes a day from Noble, Okla. Kim Woods, a shipping clerk, said managers have already declared that UPS won’t be the company’s sole source of shipping anymore.

“I’m sorry for the UPS people, but our head honchos have already said we won’t be totally dependent on UPS again,” she said.

“This is my personal opinion, but I think that UPS has a good chance of losing 10 percent of its business permanently,” said Dwight Sigworth, a consultant for AFMS in Portland, Ore. “There are a lot of UPS loyalists, people who use only UPS, who are maybe going to change their tune a little bit.”

Greg Smith, of Colography Group transportation consultants in Marietta, said it’s difficult to predict the permanent impact of the first nationwide strike against UPS.

“We haven’t been over this ground before,” Smith said. “UPS has really grown their business. Shippers have taken to relying on them in many ways.”

UPS, which normally delivers 12 million parcels and documents a day around the country, was running at less than 10 percent capacity after the strike by its 185,000 Teamster employees in a U.S. work force of 302,000.