There was a time when it might have been useful to start this story by tracing the journey of a single cardboard box. I would explain that the air fryer or couch or deeply discounted jeans you recently bought online were made and packaged in Asia, then moved by boat and container truck to a warehouse not far from where you live. I would explain that to travel the last few miles from the warehouse to your home, the box would pass through the hands of overnight sorters and loaders and the delivery driver who walks right up to your door. By now, deep as we are into the mail-order way of life, facilitated by Amazon and cemented by the pandemic, all of us already know this. We’re pros at checking the time stamps and location updates for the stuff that we buy online. The system works so well, so much of the time, that it’s easy to forget the bursts of labor required at every turn.
For the past few months, the unionized drivers and warehouse workers at UPS have tried to remind us. Collectively, these three hundred and forty thousand people handle an astonishing one out of every four packages in the U.S.—the equivalent of six per cent of the country’s G.D.P. and enough to have earned UPS fourteen billion dollars in profits last year. The majority of UPS employees belong to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and have been in the process of negotiating a new five-year contract to replace the one that expires on July 31st. The union demanded radical changes: a living wage for...
When a company promises to save the planet by 2050, it sounds reassuring. But what if that promise comes with no real plan, no credible evidence, and no accountability? A sweeping new study reveal...