I about choked on my coffee when little brother Crusader sent me this link this morning.

And that was only the headline causing the reaction – THIS headline.

UPS drivers’ new $170k per year deal shows that unions (and Joe Biden) may just save the middle class after all

The first choke was the $170K, as you might well imagine. That is a staggering amount of cha-ching. The second thing drawing breath from my body was the unabashed Biden boosting.

Wait a minute, WHUT?!

Oh, yes – I’ll get into that in a second. But first I want to hit the particulars that have been released about the UPS contract employees are now being asked to vote “yes” on.

Some of the details were shared in a release from UPS CEO Carol Tome, and holy smokes – that $170K figure for pay and benefits is an average, not senior employees. It’s quite a jump from the $145K average prior the new contract.

Part-timers already employed by UPS will be pulling down $25.75 by the end of the contract, with full health care and pension benefits.

Suddenly, being Brown is very popular. Go figure.

I imagine UPS won’t be having any problems hiring for a while if employees ratify this contract, and I cannot for the life of me imagine them turning this golden goose down.

Speaking of “down,” what’s the downside to such an huge haul? Pretty obvious.

For starters, someone has to literally pay the freight for the new freight rates to cover this munificence. Guess who?

I thought for certain the article would refute the headline. Nope. Asserts UPS drivers will make $170k in salary & benefits after 5 years in new contract.

Props to the UPS drivers, but this is unrealistic and will further push inflation as costs are passed onto consumers. https://t.co/k2YQqkiyby

— 𝙅𝙊𝙃𝙉 𝙎𝙆𝙅𝙐𝙇𝙏 (@skjultster) August 8, 2023

Secondly, there are other eyes watching what UPS just caved to, and don’t think they aren’t going to start upping the ante.

A former high-profile contractor said FedEx Ground, the ground delivery unit of FedEx Corp., (NYSE: FDX) must address the expected widening wage and benefit disparity between UPS Inc. (NYSE: UPS) drivers and those in the unit’s network if contractors are expected to attract and retain qualified drivers.

Spencer Patton, who had played a prominent role advocating for 6,000 FedEx Ground contractors until a legal spat last summer led the company to revoke his operating routes, said there has already been 30% to 40% turnover among FedEx Ground drivers in the past 18 months. This was long before a tentative contract between UPS and the Teamsters union agreed to late last month revealed significant wage increases for UPS drivers.

If the five-year contract is ratified — rank-and-file voting ends Aug. 22 — full-time UPS drivers could earn as much as $49 an hour, while part-time drivers would see their wages bumped to between $21 and $23 an hour. All 340,000 Teamster members would get a $2.75 an hour wage increase in the contract’s first year.

By contrast, nonunion FedEx Ground drivers make between $20 and $25 an hour, depending on their tenure and geography, according to Patton. Only about 20% of drivers have benefits, he said, and amenities such as air-conditioned vehicles are hit or miss. “Some contractors provide them, others don’t,” he said.

The FedEx model is very different than UPS and might well be going the way of the dinosaur after this. We never realized it until working at my friend’s men’s store downtown, but our FedEx Ground driver had to actually lease his truck and pay for his own help at Christmas. UPS owns their trucks. John told us that if his leased vehicle broke down, he was the one footing the bill for the Penske rental until his was fixed. So, yeah, on paper he made what was then a boatload of cash, but once you took out truck payments, truck repairs, gas, paying for the part-time holiday help and thought about the hours spent on the road every single day – the FedEx hub is 52 miles from Pensacola NOT counting the route milage once you get here – he had no money and no life.

He is now a mailman.

I can see “where’s ours” turbulence ahead.

New 5 year contract gives UPS drivers $170k in pay

To put this in perspective here are some average salaries for the US

Plumber: $60k
Teacher: $75k
Accountant: $78k
Nurse: $82k
Lawyer: $145k
Doctor $290k pic.twitter.com/2KOp47HROI

— Josh Bobrowsky (@JoshBobrowsky) August 8, 2023

Now. For this Biden tongue bath of a Fortune article. This thing is a disgrace and nowhere does it say “op-ed.”

Don’t read any of this if you’ve just eaten.

…While not everyone is winning as much as these UPS workers, this represents a symbolic triumph for unions, the middle class and the labor-friendly White House (excluding German Shepherds, in the case of Joe Biden’s noshing pet, “Champ”), as it’s a testament to collective efforts to boost the middle class for the first time in a generation—or two. The public has noticed—jobs site Indeed reported a 50% surge in searches for “UPS” or “United Parcel Service” within a week of the new contract, Bloomberg reported.

Biden’s famous adoration of ice cream has really only been paralleled or eclipsed by his love for this middle class. His campaign premise to revive the average American quickly led to a new word: Bidenomics, a portmanteau (much like Obamanomics, Reaganomics before, or Hobama as of late), that refers to, in Biden’s own words: “building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.”

OMG the gooey treacle.

…Now it’s Biden’s turn at the wheel, and drivers are getting paid famously. Rather than building from the top down, Joe’s strategy of bottom up and middle out, which can be seen in his push to invest in manufacturing jobs and record-breaking wage growth for those in historically lower-compensated positions….

…But there is reason to believe in a turning of the tide. The hottest summer in 100,000 years has also been named the summer of strikes, as multiple unions in the entertainment world have joined the fight for better wages (and A.I. regulations). Next up could be a historic triple strike in Detroit as the United Auto Workers, a historic union that has brand-new leadership after a series of scandals, is determined to win a new contract from the Big Three automakers..

All she needs is a cocktail and a cigarette after that steamy load of hooey.

This is financial “journalisming”?

Even Regular Joes called her out for the over-the-top Joe Biden Middle Class bodice-ripping fantasy.

@FortuneMagazine let Chloe berger know Biden had ZERO to do with the UPS teamsters contract negotiation, Rank N File workers voted for new leadership that lead to that contract. Get your propaganda outta here.

— Mathias (@MDougy7) August 9, 2023

Joe Biden is saving the middle class

I can’t see it, no sir.

I don’t think it’s going to fly.