United Parcel Service (UPS) has announced plans to lay off an unspecified number of employees due to the closure of a package sortation shift at its Centennial ground hub in Louisville, Kentucky, effective February 16.
The decision to reduce operations comes as UPS faces declining package volumes over recent quarters. The company expressed in a statement that the alignment of capacity and jobs with the current package volume is necessary in the logistics industry. This move is also part of UPS’s broader efforts to regain package volume lost during its summer contract negotiations with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Affected employees from the facility’s day sort will be impacted by the closure. However, a UPS spokesperson noted on Tuesday that some of these workers will be given opportunities to transfer to other positions within the company.
This announcement of layoffs follows a recent incident reported by the Teamsters, where about 35 specialist and administrative workers at the hub were laid off. These layoffs were quickly reversed by UPS after the union, which recently organized these workers, threatened to strike.
Teamsters Local 89, representing over 2,000 UPS workers at the hub, stated on Friday that it is in discussions with UPS to obtain more details about the planned closure. Given that the day sort shift is relatively small, the union anticipates that most of its volume could be absorbed into other existing operations at the hub.
The union also mentioned that due to the hub’s natural turnover rate and the probability of work being shifted to larger sortation operations, it does not expect the closure to have a significant impact on its members beyond changes in shifts and schedules.
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