Workers in Anaheim Ecstatic

ANAHEIM — It was the news that striking UPS workers in Orange County had waited for, and it didn’t matter that it came from a 9-inch television set propped on someone’s pickup truck.

“A tentative agreement has been reached tonight between UPS workers and . . .” began the TV anchor, whose voice was soon drowned by whoops from three dozen Teamsters: “Alriiight!” “YES!” “YEAH.”

They hugged. They shook hands. Some embraced as emotions poured out on this night, the last in the 15-day strike that had been marked by hot tempers and accusations on both sides.

“Are we happy or what?” yelled Denise Churchill, 42, a part-time clerical worker who has been with UPS for 12 years.

“As far as what we heard so far, it is an agreement we can live with,” she said. “It affected part-timers like me, and we and the full-timers wanted to make sure we kept those jobs. We all wanted to go back to work.”

Churchill and an estimated 2,000 other UPS workers in Orange County have walked picket lines outside UPS facilities such as the giant center in Anaheim since the strike began.

Although the workers didn’t yet know the details of the settlement, Dennis Watson, a 48-year-old business agent for Teamsters Local 952, called it a victory for labor.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Watson said. “With this news, we’re thrilled to death.”

Management at the Anaheim facility did not wish to comment.

Watson and other picketers said that in all of Orange County, only about 25 UPS workers had crossed the picket line to return to work. Their names and telephone numbers were listed on a poster-size sign with the heading “Scabs.”

It will be difficult to resume relationships with those on the list, Watson said.

“Those people are nonexistent,” he said. “They were willing to take advantage of the sacrifice that others made for them. Some may be ostracized at work.”

Others on the picket line saw the accord as a national victory for labor.

Jim Estes, 54, a Teamsters truck driver at nearby Consolidated Freightways who lent his support to striking UPS workers, called it a “watershed event” for organized labor.

“You can say that labor has finally turned the corner,” he said. “What’s needed now is education for these new members,” Estes said, looking around him at younger men and women. “These members don’t know and labor hasn’t given them the education to know how or why they’re getting their $20 an hour to drive a truck. But they need to know.”

Terrence L. Rogers, national vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFL-CIO), had driven from the Anaheim Convention Center, where 1,200 delegates from his union are attending their 34th annual convention, to lend support to the striking workers.

Rogers said the federation on Monday passed a resolution authorizing $50,000 to go to striking Teamsters in support of their job action.