Teamsters seek UPS data on heat safety, overtime and staffing

The Teamsters asked United Parcel Service in June 2025 for records on heat protections, overtime violations and staffing, including the current number of full-time job positions. The union gave UPS until July 1 to respond, a sign that contract enforcement at the package giant is now tied as much to paperwork and headcount as to grievances filed after the fact.

For UPS package car drivers, feeder drivers, mechanics and hub workers, the request goes to a basic question: how many people are actually on the clock, and how often is the company pushing the rest of the workforce past safe limits? Staffing shortages usually show up as longer shifts, missed breaks and heavier overtime. That makes the information request more than an administrative demand. It is a way to build proof that can be used to show patterns in understaffing, forced overtime and heat-related exposure.

The heat records matter because the union said in 2023 it won “historic heat protections” in the national contract. Teamsters training materials said that agreement required UPS to install 2,500 water fountains and 18,000 additional building fans over the life of the contract. Those materials also said UPS must provide clean drinking water and maintain clean, working ice machines or have ice delivered. Even with those provisions in place, workers have continued to describe vehicles and buildings as dangerously hot, and Mother Jones reported in August 2024 that some UPS workers still said their vehicles were hot and dangerous.

The latest data request fits a pattern the Teamsters have used before. In August 2022, the union gave UPS a two-week notice to provide detailed information on any plan to protect employees from heat. During the 2023 national bargaining round, the Teamsters said members voted 97 percent to authorize a strike if UPS failed to reach a strong contract. On July 19, 2023, the union said bargaining would resume and noted that the current agreement was set to expire July 31.

The staffing fight has deeper roots than the heat dispute. A 2018 Teamsters release said new UPS combination driver jobs were meant to protect weekends for package-car drivers, address forced overtime and create full-time jobs. That same logic now runs through the union’s June 2025 request: if the company says it is meeting its obligations, the Teamsters want records that can prove it. The national UPS contract covers about 340,000 workers, while UPS has said about 120,000 of its U.S. employees are union represented, which makes each local staffing dispute part of a much larger enforcement campaign.