UPS Worldport schedule change causes headaches for workers

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For Malcolm Thomas, getting to his job at UPS Worldport by 9:45 a.m. Sunday means catching the first bus from his west Louisville Shawnee neighborhood at 5:37 a.m. and sometimes waiting more than an hour downtown for one of the few buses that stop at UPS' global hub on weekend days.

That assumes all goes as planned and no buses are canceled for lack of a driver, which happens frequently, he said.

"I don't like it. But it's a job," Thomas told WDRB News. "I have to get there somehow."

One of the thousands of part-time package handlers at UPS' Louisville hub, Thomas has enjoyed a coveted Monday-Friday schedule since about 2005, he said.

But now, as the 64-year-old is eyeing retirement, he and hundreds of other UPS employees are being asked to make Sunday a regular part of their work week.

In late April, UPS revealed a plan to all-but eliminate package sorting work during the day shift on Fridays, perhaps the first time the company has cut a shift since establishing the air hub in 1988.

Worldport, part of Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, is a critical hub in the UPS network where thousands of workers load and unload packages from cargo planes and tractor trailers.

The scaled-back Friday work is a response to the industry-wide decline in package volume, a UPS spokeswoman said last month.

"We're responding to where what the current market conditions are in terms of soft volume," UPS spokeswoman Michelle Polk said last month. "... And so we are making operational adjustments to really utilize this global, flexible network that we have."

UPS handled an average of 2.8 million air packages per day during the first three months of the year, down about 17% from the same period in 2022, according to regulatory filings.

Many, but not all, Worldport employees, such as package handlers, are moving as of this month to a Sunday-Thursday schedule, creating challenges with transportation, child care and religious practices, according to workers.

UPS declined to quantify the number of workers whose schedules are changing.

"We continue to talk to our team members about the changes to our operation," Polk said in an emailed statement Friday. "We know these changes can require adjustments and we do not make these decisions lightly. We are working to ensure the transportation needs of our employees are met, and will continue to address individual employee concerns as they arise."

Teamsters Local 89, the union representing rank-and-file employees at UPS, said its "options are limited" as to influencing UPS' work schedules.

"I don't have the ability to simply tell UPS they can't do this. No one in our union can," Brian Hamm, a business agent with Local 89, said in a video posted to Facebook this week. "In fact, this isn't just happening here in Louisville. There are hubs across the country that are having entire shifts eliminated and members laid off completely. Fortunately, we aren't seeing that here."

Teamsters Local 89 declined to make Hamm available for interview.

Liza Durbin, 27, has worked as a package handler for about four years, she said. She doesn't know if she will show up for her newly scheduled Sunday shift June 4 because the day care she uses for her 4-year-old daughter isn't open on weekends.

A Filipino immigrant, Durbin said she is a single mother with no local family members on which to rely.

"I am trying my best to find a day care to watch her, but it is hard," she said.

Durbin said she has raised her situation to UPS and would be willing to scale back to four days a week, if necessary, but she hasn't gotten any definitive answers regarding an accommodation.

Like many part-time workers, Durbin prizes the fulltime-level benefits, especially health insurance, that UPS provides and worries about losing coverage if she can't keep the job.

Thomas, who started working at UPS in 1998, said he is one of many workers who rely on the bus system, which UPS employees get to ride free thanks the company's deal with the Transit Authority of the River City. But the No. 28 bus line stops at Worldport only 11 times on Sundays, compared to 37 times during weekdays, according to TARC's schedule. A missed or canceled bus can mean hours of delay in getting home, Thomas said.

Thomas said he is eyeing retirement as soon as this year, so he will put up with the inconvenience of the Sunday bus schedule.

"My job is important to me," he said. "I have been there for this long; I am not going to let something trivial like this stop me from doing what I need to do."

In a statement, TARC said it only learned of the UPS changes last month, and the soonest it could adjust bus schedules is late 2023 or early 2024.

"It's important to remember that changing schedules is something TARC can only do several times a year — it isn't like flipping a switch," TARC's Alex Posorske said. "The schedule change process is complicated, part of our collective bargaining agreement and can take up to six months – due diligence is critical to make sure shifting resources don't adversely affect riders elsewhere."

Posorske added that weekend service would also require funding that the bus agency currently lacks or service cuts elsewhere:

"While acknowledging these challenges, we do want to do everything we can to support the many UPS employees who rely on our service," he said. "We look forward to dialogue with UPS officials to better determine a path forward that can work for both UPS employees and TARC riders system-wide."