I think their argument is that the market will sustain those jobs. UPS's earnings are up around 8.5% year over year and UPS has been doing consistently better than FedEx with the same revenue and employee headcount.

There is danger with a strike, but it might be more limited than you've suggested. Yes, companies will try and keep shipping things with alternatives during a strike. Yes, some might want to stay with that alternative. However, there are two complications with that. First, I don't think people will decide to boycott UPS because they had a strike. I think shippers want to minimize their costs, not punish a shipper because they had a strike. Companies aren't going to pay FedEx more just because UPS had a once in a generation strike (and it looks like that last one was in 1997, 26 years ago). Second, do competitors have the capacity to pick up the slack? Yes, companies can expand over time, but they probably can't for the duration of a strike. Amazon started shipping its own packages years ago and is still UPS's largest customer. Amazon can't just scale up operations overnight and they're Amazon. I'm sure that FedEx, Amazon, and LaserShip/OnTrac will make a play for marketshare, but if they're able to get a reasonable contract, I don't think others will be able to move fast enough to really take marketshare in the short term.

Now, if the contract puts UPS at a big disadvantage over the long-run, their marketshare will simply dwindle. However, as it stands, FedEx and UPS are making similar amounts of revenue (UPS is around 7% higher), but UPS is often making 2-3x the profit. Trailing 12 months: $10.2B vs 3.5B. 2021: $9.4B vs 5.6B. 2020: $5.1B vs 1.6B. 2019: $5.6B vs 0.8B.

2.9x more, 1.7x more, 3.2x more, 7x more. That's a nice run of much higher profits while having only marginally more revenue.

It kinda looks like UPS has a good business model and that the union wages haven't been a hinderance to that model. UPS is valued at 3.2x more than FedEx despite having the same revenue and UPS's P/E ratio is actually a tiny bit lower - 14.24 vs 14.86. People are paying over 3x more for UPS stock because they're making great profits that justify being worth $157B to FedEx's $48B. Wall Street isn't the kind of place where they're going to love your stock because you're a union shop - probably the opposite. However, they do like the profits that UPS is bringing in compared to FedEx.

Yep, my instinct was that UPS's fundamentals would be bad compared to newer and non-union shops. Turns out that they're making money way better than their main rival with better margins. It's surprising, but I'd say there's money for the union to go after. I'm not saying they can have unlimited demands, but if UPS is earning 2-3x what FedEx is on the same revenue, there's room for improvement in salaries. Even if the workers take only half the difference between UPS and FedEx and we look at the worst delta between the two since 2019 ($3.5B in 2020), we're talking $1.75B. Divide that by the 250,000 union workers and that's $7,000/year in more money. Even if we're talking about the 500,000 global workers, that's still $3,500/year. If UPS is looking at more expansion in the next few years (which seems likely), maybe the union can go for a bit more. Note: this isn't talking about bringing UPS down to zero profit. This is about bringing UPS down to 1.5-2x FedEx's profitability rather than 2-3x. With increases in package volume, maybe UPS could be back to 3x FedEx toward the end of the contract.

UPS's business just looks strong. They have a similar employee headcount as FedEx and similar revenue, while having way better profits.