Heatwaves scorching the country have caused temperatures to regularly crack triple digits, and as a result union representatives say delivery workers have gotten sick or needed to be hospitalized because of the extreme heat.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents UPS workers, said the company hasn't taken proper safety measures to protect workers and is "literally sending drivers out to die in the heat."
"UPS hasn’t been proactive at all on the topic of heat, and that’s going to have to change," Sean M. O’Brien, general president of the union, told NBC News.
"By refusing to implement these safety measures, the company is literally sending drivers out to die in the heat."
The Teamsters represent about 350,000 UPS workers, and heat safety protections are a top issue in the union's negotiations as their contract is set to expire next year. The union claimed that UPS has not changed its heat safety protocols, as the company's truck do not have air conditioning and many don't even have fans.
The union sent a formal request to UPS management last week, giving the company a two-week period to provide a plan "to protect employees, combat heat illness, and install or replace badly needed relief equipment for workers amid increasingly extreme weather conditions," according to a statement.
"UPS executives sit inside their air-conditioned, C-suite offices all day while UPS Teamsters endure some of the most intense weather conditions imaginable, and this corporation needs to own up for what it is or is not doing to protect these workers," O'Brien said in a statement.
"The Teamsters aren’t asking for answers — we’re demanding them."
The statement went on to outline what steps UPS can take to better protect its workers from the extreme heat, including adding fans to UPS trucks and providing all employees with proper access to water.
"The actions proposed by the union — which the employer could easily initiate outside any collective bargaining process — include installing fans in every truck, providing water at every facility and in every vehicle, giving workers cooling neck towels and uniform materials with higher air and vapor permeability, and creating more full-time positions to give all employees more rest breaks on hot days," the statement said.
UPS has said in the past "it does not air-condition its fleet of package trucks because frequent stops and the size of the vehicles would render air conditioning 'ineffective,'" according to NBC News. "The same goes for large warehouses with loading-dock doors that are usually left open."
Some workers in Arizona and Florida told NBC News that the temperatures inside of their trucks have reached above 150 degrees, while the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors have recorded heat indexes of 126 inside the trucks.
35-year-old UPS driver Matthew Moczygemba, of Fort Worth, Texas, told NBC News that he hasn't returned to work for roughly three weeks after he went to the emergency room and was eventually diagnosed with dehydration and heat exhaustion.
"I stopped sweating and was starting to get cold," Moczygemba said. "It was a bad feeling."
"I’m nervous about going back," Moczygemba added.
A local Teamsters union in New York City held a rally last Thursday after four employees from Long Island and Manhattan had to go to the emergency room due to heat related illnesses over the course of two days. International Trustee and Teamsters Local 804 President Vinnie Perrone said in the statement that the UPS has the money to protect its workers, adding, "They need to stop making excuses and do it now."
"UPS is projected to pull in more than $100 billion in revenue in 2022 off the backs of Teamsters, and while management sits inside drooling over those figures, we’ve got members going to the emergency room," Perrone said. "These trucks and warehouses are infernos. UPS can afford to do the right thing and protect its workers. They need to stop making excuses and do it now."
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