UPS is a hard, dangerous place to work. No publicity department could put a positive spin on the idea that UPS workers deserve less. Forget handbilling the factory gate. The action lies inside the cathode ray tube. An astounding number of union workers have personal computers bringing access to electronic mail and the Internet.
Widespread information becomes power to the people.
Just about all of them had alternative, sometimes full-time, jobs and thus were better able to hold out than those scrambling from scratch. The UPS strike brought a wave of national stories about Generation X-ers going union. To whichever UPS corporate yahoo equated Teamsters President Ron Carey with Radovan Karadzic, the butcherous Bosnian warlord. To the sad woman who phoned me from within the state of Nevada's phone system to call unions Mafia thugs. And to the Sparks cops who busted three picketers for doing no more than asking questions.