Fear and Loathing at Big Brown

When a UPS cargo plane crashed on takeoff from Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky on November 11, it deepened an already growing anxiety among UPS workers about the future of the company and its safety priorities. The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo plane was thirty-four years old and had been grounded two months before the crash, and in-repair for serious structural problems for six weeks. The flight crew of three and eleven others on the ground were killed, and another twenty-three injured.

The fiery crash was captured by many people on cellphones and security cameras. The crippled and rapidly descending cargo plane came close to destroying a nearby bar and restaurant popular with workers from UPS’s mammoth Worldport, its global air hub, where the ill-fated flight was serviced and loaded on a planned flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. The Ford assembly plant, which employed thousands of workers, near the crash site was also spared. In the wake of the crash both UPS and FedEx both grounded their respective and ancient MD-11 cargo planes.

UPS released a statement on November 20:

We continue to grieve for the lives lost in the tragic accident involving Flight 2976. Before the FAA issued its Emergency Airworthiness Directive for all MD-11 operators, UPS proactively grounded its MD-11 fleet out of an abundance of caution. We appreciate the National Transportation Safety Board’s prompt release of preliminary findings and will fully support the investigation through its conclusion.

Well, UPS is not grieving that much. Absent from the statement are the names of the three members of the UPS flight crew and eleven others that died in the crash. Why are they missing from the statement? Would it make the crash more personal for Worldport workers?

I asked ground checker, and Teamsters Local 89 member, Eric Reynolds what the atmosphere at Worldport is like today, he told me:

This year the weight is a little different though. The crash settled over the place like a shadow. People do not talk about it much, but the heaviness, the darkness, is there. When a plane takes off, everyone looks up for a moment longer. The cold feels sharper because the memory sits close. The grief does not shout. It just stays. It changes the feel of the ramp in a way that does not really fade.

Magic happening?

Meanwhile the grind of work continues whether the top executives claim they are grieving or not. UPS has always had an insular cult-like culture—”bleeding brown”—that I’ve written about for years. Yet, Worldport is on another level. “UPS Worldport is a ‘one of a kind’ facility,” the UPS website cheerily reports, “but what really makes our Louisville operations special are our teams of dedicated UPSers who make the magic happen daily.”

Eric has a different take on it, especially during “peak season,” the UPS term for the Christmas shopping and shipping season:

Worldport in peak season feels like a separate planet that spins faster than anything outside the fence. While the rest of the world gathers with family and slows down for the holidays, Worldport speeds up. The place swells with bodies, lights, and noise. Wide eyed new hires show up, two energy drinks deep, standing outside the main gate at the new hire shed, vibrating in borrowed gloves. Veterans walk past with that tired half grin that says you have no idea what you walked into…but you will learn. Some of them will flame out within a week. Some will steady themselves.

But on day one they all look the same, jittery and overwhelmed, staring into the glowing ramp like they are about to enter into a different world. Thrust into package handler existence for peak. A strange world without time or edges. Hours blending together until you can’t tell where one shift ends and the next begins. Breaks get swallowed by radio calls. The lights make three in the morning look like noon. Maybe it is noon. You stop thinking about minutes and start thinking about aircraft. What’s the in and out again? Everything else falls away.

“Completely unforgivable”

Kentucky Public Media reported earlier this month,

The families of two victims of the UPS plane crash last month — Angela Anderson and Trinadette ‘Trina’ Chavez — are suing UPS along with other companies involved in the manufacturing and inspection of the plane.

The lawsuit filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court names five defendants: UPS; UPS Air; General Electric, the engine manufacturer; Boeing, who acquired the original plane manufacturer; and VT San Antonio Aerospace, Inc., who conducted inspections and maintenance on the plane before the crash.

Attorney Robert Clifford said UPS was saving money and aircraft downtime by keeping “old, tired” planes in the air while not increasing the number of inspections. “This plane should have never been airworthy to be in the air that day, and this crash was preventable,” fellow attorney Bradley Cosgrove said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We hope to find all of the reasons why it was preventable.”

An interim report by the National Transportation Safety Board found fatigue and stress fractures most likely led to the plane losing an engine on takeoff and crashing. “We think that those would have been long standing defects that should have been found and fixed long before this aged aircraft continued to be pressed to its max by UPS over and over with more than 21,000 cycles under its belt,” said Cosgrove.

Bloodbath

During the last year UPS has closed 93 buildings and laid off 48,000 workers, there is great foreboding that at the end of peak season, there will be another and deeper round of layoffs and closures. Several UPS workers I’ve talked to from across the country are all expecting a “bloodbath” starting in mid-January. This is quite a change for UPS where for nearly its entire modern history was the jobs machine for the package industry and for the declining Teamsters union. UPS massive expansion from the 1970s onward cushioned, but never quite replaced what it lost in the freight industry following deregulation.

With a marginal and faltering campaign at Amazon and a diminishing presence at UPS, the Teamsters face a grave crisis. UPS not only provided the jobs but also the financial contributions that kept the health and welfare funds a float. With more layoffs, the Teamsters face a potential financial crisis. Meanwhile, the Teamsters are largely bystanders to the unfolding crisis. Issuing memes and threatening to strike but never taking on UPS. Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien from his posts enjoys traveling, speech making, and hosting his podcast, while many members wonder where the union is.

If the layoffs and building closures are the bloodbath that many workers fear, how much is the union membership really prepared to put up with. The much desired package car and over-the-road driving jobs are joining the shrinking pools of high paid, blue collar union jobs, while many of the part time jobs will shrink considerably through automation. While UPS will continue to be a fabulously profitable, global behemoth, many are wondering what is the future for the worker there? The cargo plane wasn’t needed to bring to the surface the growing anxiety among UPSers, it was already there.

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