An lengthy UPS strike may ruin the economy. There may just be eight weeks left.

 New York (Ups healthcare )

Over 330,000 members of the Teamsters union are currently voting on whether to authorise a strike against UPS. The largest single-employer strike in US history would occur if UPS employees went on strike. And it can occur in fewer than eight weeks.

A strike may be disastrous for the business and the US economy as a whole, which has only lately begun to recover from the burden the pandemic put on supply networks. The largest economic indicator in the United States, the gross domestic product, is thought to be transported by UPS trucks in an amount of 6%.

It won't be possible for FedEx or the US Postal Service to make up for it. Simply put, UPS (UPS) is too big—delivering an average of 17 million domestic parcels each day—for competitors to move all the things it manages.

For shops stocking up for the back-to-school shopping season and getting ready for the end-of-year holidays, the strike, if it occurs, couldn't come at a worse time.

Development at the table

The percentage wage rise that the union is requesting has not been made public. It has gone on record requesting that the new contract reduce the pay disparity between some distinct classes of employees, improve working conditions, including the installation of air conditioning in delivery vans, and provide much higher overall pay from a business whose revenues have more than doubled in the previous five years.

At UPS, the present agreement ends on August 1. The strike vote, which is being held through this Friday, is certain to pass with a large majority, as they almost always do. As a strategy for the union to have some leverage at the bargaining table, it is a common component of almost every union contract negotiation to ask for rank-and-file approval before going on strike. But the vast majority of contracts are negotiated without a strike ever happening.

Since the beginning of May, the two parties have been negotiating, and according to Teamster President Sean O'Brien, they have already established provisional agreements on 24 points.

"We have made a lot of progress at the table, which is encouraging," he said this week, according to CNN. But he issued a warning that a number of crucial subjects are still up for debate.

Things "can get very dicey, very controversial when you get into the meat and potatoes of wages and benefits," he warned.