That plastic yellow thermometer was provided by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union that represents 350,000 UPS drivers and warehouse workers around the country. (Like all the UPS workers I spoke to for this story, Pat asked to be referred to only by his first name for fear of retaliation from UPS.) As part of the contract the union negotiated with UPS in 2023, the company is now required to provide workers with several protections against the kind of extreme heat many of them are facing across the U.S. right now. Those include readily available clean water and ice, as well as access to “cool zones” and the right to take and extend breaks when they feel overheated. The contract further mandated UPS to install fans in the largely non-air-conditioned warehouses where packages are sorted and loaded, and in the front of vehicles. Delivery trucks have also been outfitted with heat exhaust shields and vents. UPS Teamsters, though, are still waiting on some of these historic protections.
Given the lack of federal heat protections for workers, union contracts are one of the few routes for employees to ensure they stay out of harm’s way in extreme heat. As UPS drivers have learned, though, winning those protections on paper is only part of the fight. Making sure the company follows through on its promises—and encouraging co-workers to take advantage of the rights they’ve won—is an ongoing battle. For the last two weeks, Pat and other UPS workers across the U.S. who are active in a rank-and-file network of Teamsters members, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, have organized early morning meetings in the parking lots outside of UPS warehouses to inform drivers and indoor workers alike about the protections their contract provides them against extreme heat.
Still, even slightly cooler routes are no walk in the park; a thermostat in the back of his truck reached 110 degrees earlier this week. “The second you step in the back of your truck you’re gonna start sweating within 10 seconds of being back there,” he told me, “and you’re going to be back there for more than 10 seconds.”
UPS conducts regular trainings to make workers aware of early stages of heat exhaustion and dehydration, such as headaches, nausea, rapid breathing, and delirium. Besides jugs, ice and water, the company also distributes sweat towels, hydration packets and some protective clothing, and posts heat-safety information around its warehouses. UPS’s intense demands on its employees, though—which have mounted since online retailing picked up during Covid-19 lockdowns—don’t change in a heat wave. As Isaac explains, drivers might instinctually try to pick up the pace in the heat to finish up their routes faster, sacrificing safety concerns along the way. “Maybe instead of putting the packages on the cart to help you take that pressure off your body, you’ll grab them by hand. As you go in and out of your truck you might skip grabbing your handrail, and jump in and out of the truck,” he said. Between 2015 and 2022, at least 143 UPS employees were hospitalized for heat-related injuries. Some have died.
“I was a landscaping and construction worker. I was younger in those days and just powered through it. As I’m getting older, even with all the training, it creeps up on you,” he said.
OSHA mandates that employers provide for a safe workplace environment, but there are still no specific federal protections around heat. The Biden administration proposed just such a rule last year that would mandate water and rest breaks above a certain heat index, accounting for both temperature and humidity. It wasn’t finalized by the time Trump took office, and OSHA last week initiated public hearings on the rule that will last until early July. While some experts take the fact that it hasn’t already been killed as a hopeful sign, others fear the White House could finalize a weaker version that pre-empts states and municipalities from implementing their own standards. In recent years, Republican-controlled state governments in Texas and Florida have barred towns and cities there from implementing local workplace heat protections. Adding to advocates’ worries about the rule’s future, Trump has nominated former UPS and Amazon executive David Keeling to lead OSHA. During Keeling’s three years as the company’s top safety official, ending in 2021, OSHA records show that about 50 UPS workers were “seriously injured” by heat exposure and required hospitalization.
That specificity is in keeping with the elaborate array of surveillance technology that UPS has packed onto its trucks. Outward-facing cameras installed since 2022 monitor drivers’ decisions on the road, and blare noise based on their behavior. “If you take a sip of water it’ll say you’re distracted driving,” another delivery driver on Long Island, Dave, told me. “There are sensors on the doors. There are sensors on the seatbelts. The ignition has a sensor,” Mike said. DIADs—handheld computers used to collect customer signatures for certain deliveries, communicate with supervisors and receive trainings—are equipped with GPS, and track which buttons are pressed. Mike recalled being summoned to a supervisor’s office for questioning about two minutes that hadn’t been accounted for at a certain delivery address the day prior. “We saw within 13 seconds you opened your door. You shut your truck off, and took your seatbelt off,” he paraphrased his supervisor as saying. “They have that timed out all within seconds.”
“I’ve definitely noticed that the summers have gotten warmer,” Isaac, in Milwaukee, told me. “You’ll always get those peak months in August. But it seems like that ‘peak’ month has expanded a little bit more.” Conditions like the ones he drove through this week, he added, would “normally be peak heat, and we’re getting it all the way in June. The summers have started lasting a little bit longer.”
As Dave and every other driver I spoke with continue to wait on the company to deliver air conditioned trucks, they’ll keep braving dangerous temperatures. “As far as I’m concerned they have enough money to retrofit all of their vehicles in two or three years,” he said. Earlier this year, UPS announced that it plans to lay off 20,000 employees, cut $3.5 billion in costs, and deliver $1 billion to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks. “A billion dollar company,” Dave added, “shouldn’t have people dying on the road.”
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