Layoffs. Building closures. Change of operations. Declining volume. This is just some of the havoc that Carol Tomé and her “Better, Not Bigger” business model are bringing to UPS. Why is it happening and what does it mean for UPS Teamsters?

First, and most importantly, it does not mean the beginning of the end for UPS.

UPS made $8.6 billion in profits in 2025. On a whopping $88.7 billion in revenue. UPS gave $6.4 billion to stockholders in 2025. The share price is climbing. Wall Street is confident.

But UPS is shedding volume, leading to lay-offs, building closures, and uncertainty for UPS Teamsters. Why?

Why Volume Is Dropping

Part of the drop in volume is an anticipated adjustment from the pandemic boom. During

COVID, online shopping exploded and so did UPS volume.

Before the pandemic, UPS was moving around 22 million packages a day.

During COVID, volume rose to more than 25 million packages a day, and the number of Teamster employees rose to 340,000.

What we are seeing now is partly the company coming back down toward that earlier baseline.

This decline is not a freefall. It is a return to UPS’s pre-pandemic model.

Why Drop Amazon?

The second reason that volume is declining is that UPS is intentionally reducing residential volume, especially Amazon.

Residential packages are the least profitable ones because the last mile of every delivery is

the most expensive one.

UPS makes less profit per Amazon package compared to other packages. In 2024, Amazon accounted for 25% of UPS packages, but only 11% of UPS revenue.

Under Tomé, UPS made the decision to cut Amazon volume in half and focus on the packages that generate higher profit margins.

In 2025, UPS saw a 7% drop in overall volume. But UPS offset this loss by posting a 6.6% increase in revenue per package.

UPS’s Plan Going Forward

Going forward, UPS plans to stabilize volume by prioritizing commercial deliveries.

Business-to-business deliveries is UPS’s core business and the area where Amazon and FedEx cannot compete.

Amazon’s real business is selling goods, not making deliveries. It wants a delivery network to keep customers buying from Amazon.

But it does not have a commercial pickup and business-to-business delivery network that can compete with UPS for delivering packages from outside the Amazon marketplace.

FedEx does compete with UPS on business deliveries, but not effectively outside of the express delivery market.

FedEx uses third-party contract drivers with high turnover and inconsistent training. Its network is notoriously unreliable. For ground deliveries, shippers choose UPS.

Looking Ahead as Teamsters

UPS Teamsters are the foundation of the company’s core business. As Teamsters, we need to pull together to protect good union jobs at the company and fight for more.

That starts with enforcing our contract and holding UPS accountable to the agreement.

Under the contract we won in 2023, UPS is required to fill at least 22,500 new permanent full-time jobs over the life of the contract.

The company is also required to create 7,500 new full-time 22.3 (combo) jobs.

Article 22, Section 3 of the contract requires UPS to create the first 1,000 of these jobs by August 1 of this year, with 3,000 due next year, and 3,500 more created by July 31, 2028.

We need to hold UPS to the contractual commitments.

Bargaining to Organize in 2028

At the same time, we need to look ahead. We can’t stop UPS from changing its business strategy. But we can adapt to it to make sure UPS work is done by Teamsters making good union wages and benefits.

While UPS is reducing residential deliveries, it is investing heavily in new specialty logistics like UPS Healthcare.

The company’s strategy is to use nonunion segments of UPS to make these premium deliveries while avoiding paying Teamster wages and benefits.

In Stockton, UPS Healthcare workers organized and joined Teamsters Local 439.

At the bargaining table in 2028, we need to fight for the right of workers at UPS Healthcare and other UPS Supply Chain Solutions subsidiaries to join the Teamsters without UPS interference and union-busting.

It’s called “bargaining to organize” and it needs to be a big part of the Teamsters strategy to protect good union jobs at UPS going forward.

We also need to negotiate job security protections in the next contract.

UPS has a bright future, and UPS Teamsters can too if we fight for it together.