The potential for a labor strike at UPS has potentially enormous impact on ecommerce:

An estimated 6% of the nation’s gross domestic product is moved in UPS trucks every year. The explosive growth of online retail has made the company and its drivers more crucial than ever to the nation’s struggling supply chain. Beyond the company’s home deliveries, it also delivers many of the goods found in stores, factories and offices.

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It is concerning, then, that 6% of our GDP may soon stop dead in its tracks due to proposed labor strikes.

Labor at UPS

About 350,000 Teamsters work at UPS as drivers and package sorters out of a global workforce of 534,000 permanent employees. And that’s growing fast — the company has added some 72,000 Teamster-represented jobs since the start of the pandemic.

While there are competing services at FedEx (FDX), the US Postal Service and Amazon’s own delivery service, none of them have the capacity to handle more than a small fraction of the 21.5 million US packages that UPS moves daily.

What do they want?

UPS said the average pay for its delivery drivers is $95,000 a year, with benefits such as a traditional pension plan, worth an additional $50,000 a year. UPS’ semi-tractor drivers are paid even more. That’s far higher than most wages at FedEx and Amazon, where many drivers work for small independent contractors.