This does not matter to the workers if they do not get any share of the increase in bussiness.

They have very little to lose while doing a strike.

In 1997, the 15-day strike cost 15k UPS jobs.

For the drivers, that is a lot to lose.

The stakes are what give both the union and the business leverage in the negotiations.

I was working for UPS during that strike. We didn't lose a lot of drivers from what I recall because they had relatively nice hourly wages to come back to and could weather the storm a bit.

We lost almost the entire load/unload staff though. The grunts in the truck at 12am unloading semi-truck after semi-truck worth of boxes. They were only getting ~$8/hr and couldn't afford to be out for 2 weeks. Out of 12 guys on the team I supervised I think 2 came back.

Short term it might not affect them, but long term it could reduce the number of employees UPS needs, and they might not be able to get hired on at FedEx.

I don't think anyone believes a strike is a great business move.

Strikes are to be avoided if possible but they're a forcing function to improve work conditions, not a strategy to boost revenue.

Maybe their workers want fair treatment.

Also maybe they dont care. When you make it clear that you aren’t going to share the wealth with your frontline employees. They probably don’t care what your wealth looks like.

I grew up with many union democrats around my father. A lot of them had the opinion this is a multiple million person metro if you won’t spread your gains then die off and someone else will move in.

And fedex will gladly go on a hiring spree to meet the new demand! Its not like they have dormant capacity to just swallow a permanent 10% bump in packages.

Or they're betting company leadership remembers and will cave to their demands