The Independent Pilots Association, the union whose members fly UPS freighters, said the tentative contract deal reached June 30 with the company won by a vote of 56.5 percent for and 43.5 percent against.
The IPA said 2,652 pilots were eligible to vote and 98.9 percent cast ballots. Its members went through a month-long secret balloting on contract ratification that ended early Aug. 31, after four years of negotiation with UPS.
IPA President Tom Nicholson said 1,482 voted to approve the contract.
The five-year UPS deal gives top captains an initial 17.7 percent raise, and other flight crew members salary hikes of 18-25.8 percent, followed by annual 3 percent raises for the next four years and a 4 percent increase in 2011.
After that, the contract would become amendable through new labor negotiations.
The IPA vote follows an Aug. 26 four-year contract agreement between rival FedEx Express and bargainers for its 4,700 union members of the Air Line Pilots Association. That pact will soon go to ALPA members for a ratification vote.
The relatively narrow victory margin follows several recent events in which the IPA first took a tough stand against UPS and later fought within its own ranks.
Last December, union negotiators sought release from federal mediation in order to trigger a potential strike countdown and thereby put pressure on the company in the talks. However, the mediator instead put the talks into an extended recess for the second time in the past year.
When the two sides began talking again late in the spring, the union leadership fought among itself until the mediator told them to only come back with a unified position.
The mediator soon also put both parties under a news blackout to cool down the public rhetoric, and ordered them to exchange potential terms informally to make more headway before resuming to face-to-face negotiations.
Nicholson reminded a news conference call that all five IPA executive committee members joined with the union's three negotiators to endorse the pact before they took it to members. However, dissension over its terms remained, and in the end 1,141 voted against the deal.
"Is it a perfect contract? No," said Nicholson. However, he said, "we did pretty well."
John D. Boyd
