UPS spotlights seasonal worker safety during holiday rush
UPS says nearly 75% of seasonal jobs get no interview as it leans on 125,000 holiday hires and Teamsters safety rules.
UPS is hiring more than 125,000 seasonal workers for the holiday rush, and nearly 75% of those jobs do not require an interview, with job offers possible in 10 minutes. The company’s safety push around that hiring surge is aimed at the people who keep the hub and package car operation moving when volume spikes, timelines tighten, and mistakes can ripple across the whole network.
The seasonal roles cover package handlers, driver helpers and seasonal support drivers, a mix that puts new workers into sorting belts, loading areas and delivery routes at the busiest point in the year. UPS has said seasonal package drivers started at $23 an hour and package handlers at $21 an hour in 2023, part of a hiring model that has repeatedly topped 100,000 holiday workers. UPS said in 2020 it would hire more than 100,000 extra workers as it expected a record peak season, and NBC News later reported the company was again seeking more than 100,000 seasonal workers for the coming holiday period.
For regular UPS employees, how those seasonal hires are trained and supervised affects more than the temporary workforce. Package handlers already on the floor often absorb the slowdown when new hires are learning the pace of the building, while drivers and feeders face added pressure when inexperienced workers miss scans, stack freight badly or create delays that push dispatch later into the night. That is why seasonal safety is a labor issue as much as an operations issue: weak onboarding can raise injury risk, turnover and discipline for everyone.
The Teamsters’ 2023 to 2028 national contract gives that pressure a formal framework. Teamsters materials tied to Article 18 say UPS must provide clean drinking water, ice and additional building fans, and that drivers have bathroom-access protections. Union materials also say the company must install 2,500 water fountains and 18,000 additional building fans over the life of the contract. After a historic heat wave in El Paso, UPS workers won new heat-safety protections in the 2023 deal, underscoring how seasonal hiring, long shifts and heat risk can collide during peak periods.
UPS and the Teamsters also issued a statement agreement on heat safety, and Teamsters locals and affiliated safety groups circulated peak-season and heat-safety guides for workers. That backdrop matters because the same holiday surge that brings in new bodies also tests whether UPS is really investing in onboarding, pacing and supervision, or simply counting on a fast hiring funnel to carry it through the rush.
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