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[McTraveller]

I thought UPS already started adding AC? Or was that a different shipping company?

From what I saw about UPS, apparently the salaried folks' mean (or median? different and it does matter...) salary is like $95k a year, but the part-timers are at like $20/hour or something.

The bits about improving infrastructure - yeah if the company isn't committing to that, I would be much more willing to strike.  But again - if a company isn't even willing to invest in its own infrastructure...? Why not leave anyway? The wannabe entrepreneur in me is like, what is preventing some of the UPS folks to just quit and start their own business? If UPS is making that much profit, that means it should be ripe for competition...

The stuff about pilots is interesting; I didn't dig into the recent details, but I have known enough aspiring pilots to know that entry-level pilots do indeed have really poor pay for rough conditions - the idea of getting the glamorous jobs later is why young pilots stick it out. But they make like $20k a year to be glorified bus drivers with way more stress... so yeah if you're getting 42% pay bump for those guys it's not really much.  But if it's 42% across the board, and you're giving 42% bumps to the captains of international flights already pulling in a quarter million...

[delphonso]

Working conditions and swapping to freelancer positions (i.e., removing responsibility for healthcare/labor laws in general), are big trends in US companies and you should double check any new contract you sign for slightly worsening deals every year. Including stuff as innocuous as 'The Company will repair facilities within a reasonable timeframe' because reasonable is something to argue in court.

Companies are absolutely willing to switch to a constant churn of new employees and losing old ones even though that is less economic in the long term (and sometimes, even in the short term.)

It's funny, this sort of thing is why I had to suddenly find a new job. My school's new contract was 'do twice as much work for no benefit' and they refused to budge on any part of the contract.

[Lord Shonus]

I thought UPS already started adding AC? Or was that a different shipping company?

From what I saw about UPS, apparently the salaried folks' mean (or median? different and it does matter...) salary is like $95k a year, but the part-timers are at like $20/hour or something.

UPS made an offer to start including AC in new trucks, starting a couple years from now. No refitting older ones, no steps to reduce heat in the warehouse.

More importantly "I'm gonna start my own UPS!" is a pipe dream. The cost of developing even the most bare-bones network is far beyond what most investment groups could handle.


Or, perhaps a better way to put this would be "You don't have the faintest clue what you are talking about, maybe you should stop being so confident that you do".

[Loud Whispers]

Reminds me of when people were asking why doctors and nurses in the UK were rejecting 12% pay rise offers when in order to match real wage cuts vs price inflation, a starting nurse salary of £21,000 would need to be adjusted to £85,763.29, or a 408.4% pay rise. In contrast they instead get £23,000 and the 12% pay rise would bring them up to £25,760 which is economically unviable, so most people just quit and work in other industries or die. Wage labour and profit sharing should be balanced, but profit has totally and completely fucked the balance to the point where profit is driving inflation and depressing wages

[McTraveller]

You don't have to get enough investment to compete with UPS - you just need enough investment to start a company that earns you more money than you'd earn than you could working at UPS.  These are very different statements!  But yes, even to make more than $20 an hour, it's "hard work" - which people just wanting a higher salary don't appreciate.

That example of the UK nurse salary is interesting - sure it (like many other) wages lag behind inflation. But even if a single company or industry could stomach a renormalization of salary, society as a whole can't handle it all at once.

It makes me glad I'm not a policy maker or CEO, to be honest.

[nenjin]

but profit has totally and completely fucked the balance to the point where profit is driving inflation and depressing wages

It's all going according to plan.

[Frumple]

You don't have to get enough investment to compete with UPS - you just need enough investment to start a company that earns you more money than you'd earn than you could working at UPS.  These are very different statements!  But yes, even to make more than $20 an hour, it's "hard work" - which people just wanting a higher salary don't appreciate.

It's not a "hard work" issue, it's more that even in industries that don't have barriers to entry that look like a lubed up cliff face, the majority of startups fail, regardless of how much hard work is put into them, and people friggin' know that. For the sort of folks that are involved in most strikes you see in the US, they don't have the means to reasonably weather that sort of failure. Never mind it's a bad joke to suggest they're able to even give an attempt at some sort of small scale courier service. Scale, existing infrastructure, and previous contacts matter a hell of a lot for things like that, and between the major services and existing smaller operations the field is really bloody saturated.

Telling people to just go do a startup might as well be telling them to go cut off one of their legs to get disability, it's probably about the same chance of them ending up on the streets or worse.

[Maximum Spin]

It also seems like UPS doesn't want to install air conditioners in their trucks while we are experiencing record high, literally lethal temperatures/humidity.

Oh yeah. AC in vehicles is an absolute requirement in heat like this.

Huh, what are temperatures like where you live?

[MrRoboto75]

Telling people to just go do a startup might as well be telling them to go cut off one of their legs to get disability, it's probably about the same chance of them ending up on the streets or worse.

I remember the Bioshock novel, someone complained to Andrew Ryan about the heating system or some such.  Ryan tells them to just build a separate, better heating system, as if they aren't all living in an advanced underwater city.

[Frumple]

It also seems like UPS doesn't want to install air conditioners in their trucks while we are experiencing record high, literally lethal temperatures/humidity.

Oh yeah. AC in vehicles is an absolute requirement in heat like this.

Huh, what are temperatures like where you live?

It's actually been kinda' relatively cool where I'm at... raw temp forecast for the next while is mostly in the lower 90s F, heat index barely hitting 100. Fairly sedate for florida summer, really. Even at that level it usually kills a few people a year at a minimum, of course. Heat stroke's trivial even in that sort of weather.

... places further west are in the middle of a heatwave, though. Midwest and southwest are seeing raw temps 15-20 degrees higher than where I'm at. If the legal system were just, orgs like UPS would be facing criminal charges for trying to work people in those conditions sans AC, but, y'know. US.

[Maximum Spin]

It's actually been kinda' relatively cool where I'm at... raw temp forecast for the next while is mostly in the lower 90s F, heat index barely hitting 100. Fairly sedate for florida summer, really. Even at that level it usually kills a few people a year at a minimum, of course. Heat stroke's trivial even in that sort of weather.

It's cooler than normal here too, but, as I'm in the north, it's a lot lower than yours. That's why I was curious. It did get above 90 one day, but the humidity was unusually low too so that one day was actually pretty nice. More lately, the humidity has been normal while temperatures are still depressed so, you know, bugs settle on you within minutes of going out. Every place has its own individual trials, apparently.

Looking at some maps I found, it looks like there's a big low pressure zone in the upper atmosphere stretching from wisconsin to virginia (and a smaller one over Florida), with a high-pressure zone over the southwest, so that'll be the reason.

[Micro102]

You can't just look at temperatures, and you need to look at those who would be most affected. Use this table and pick spots in southern USA (Louisiana seems to be getting hit pretty hard) to get a good idea of how dangerous it would be compared to previous years. The idea is that if the humidity is ~100%, sweat can't evaporate anymore and your body has no way of cooling itself down. If it's ~100% humidity and 95+ degrees F, you are dead. It doesn't matter if you are in the shade, or how much water you drink. Your body will slowly cook. You literally need AC or maybe a pool to live.

[Maximum Spin]

You can't just look at temperatures, and you need to look at those who would be most affected. Use this table and pick spots in southern USA (Louisiana seems to be getting hit pretty hard) to get a good idea of how dangerous it would be compared to previous years. The idea is that if the humidity is ~100%, sweat can't evaporate anymore and your body has no way of cooling itself down. If it's ~100% humidity and 95+ degrees F, you are dead. It doesn't matter if you are in the shade, or how much water you drink. Your body will slowly cook. You literally need AC or maybe a pool to live.

I uh... I know how weather works, thanks.

What you're saying is not even true, though. Evaporation of sweat isn't the only route for cooling. For example, your key mistake is saying "it doesn't matter [...] how much water you drink" - that's exactly wrong. Water taken in cool and secreted back out at a higher (that is, body) temperature carries away heat. You can absolutely survive those temperatures, even working at those temperatures, and people do and have for centuries. Do you think everyone cooks to death every year in humid equatorial regions like central Africa?

I'm not arguing anything about UPS and its obligations but it's just stupid to say that "you literally need AC to live" in conditions people have lived in long before AC existed.

[EuchreJack]

Arguably, this is a discussion for Armchair Economics Thread - Re-Resurrection or some other thread, unless somehow workers not accepting their Corporate Overlord's dominion is framed in an American Political context.

These are also not new things: A hundred years ago, Henry George spoke about the same sort of things.

[Maximum Spin]

Arguably, this is a discussion for Armchair Economics Thread - Re-Resurrection or some other thread, unless somehow workers not accepting their Corporate Overlord's dominion is framed in an American Political context.

These are also not new things: A hundred years ago, Henry George spoke about the same sort of things.

I assume you mean the part about the strikes and not the part about the weather. Is there even a weather thread? AmeriWea?