Pirate's Cove

They can’t help themselves, the climate cult just has to involve themselves in everything

What Climate Change Has to do With the Looming UPS Union Strike

These days, UPS driver Barkley Wimpee prepares for his daily route out of Rome, Ga., with the precision of a battlefield commander. He loads up his cooler with ice, and stocks it with sandwiches, a case of water bottles, and a couple of sports drinks. He girds himself with a bandana and some plastic bags: around midday, when the sun is at its height, he will soak the bandana in ice water and wrap it around his head, Rambo style—UPS’s strict appearance rules notwithstanding. (snip)

Wimpee is not alone. Across the U.S., UPS drivers are braving one of the most immediate aspects of climate change: longer, more intense heat waves that make working long hours in wheeled ovens not just uncomfortable, but dangerous. Last summer, Wimpee succumbed to heat stroke midway through his route. He spent the night in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with severe kidney injury caused by heat. On June 25, 2022, Esteban Chavez, 24, died of suspected heat stroke while delivering packages in Pasadena, Calif., on a day that saw temperatures in the high 90s. A few weeks later another UPS driver collapsed on a customer’s doorstep in Arizona when the temperature hit 110°F. More than 143 UPS employees have been hospitalized for heat injuries between 2015 and 2022, according to company records submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration obtained by the Washington Post. Still, UPS refused to air-condition their familiar dark brown trucks. Doing so, said company spokespeople, was impractical given that drivers were constantly jumping in and out of the vehicles to make their deliveries.

Summer. The word you’re looking for is summer. It’s 1.5F hotter than it was in 1850 as the Little Ice Age ended.

On June 16, UPS’s 340,000 Teamsters union members voted to strike starting August 1, unless their demands for improved working conditions, including air-conditioned vehicles and company-provided ice for coolers at the cargo centers, were included in a new, five-year contract. While climate change was not specifically cited in the union demands, UPS’s unwillingness to adapt to the new realities of global warming by providing its employees with heat-adaptation strategies formed the subtext of the campaign.

See? Totally linked. It’s a cult.