Today the World Socialist Web Site published an article exposing UPS dividend payouts of more than $700 million to shareholders last Thursday. The same day, the Teamsters union met in Chicago, Illinois to endorse new contracts for UPS workers that would enforce poverty-level wages and introduce major new concessions.
The $2.8 billion that will be given to UPS shareholders in 2018 would be enough to give the quarter-million other UPS workers an immediate raise of more than $11,000. This would almost double the annual salary of a part-time warehouse worker on $10 an hour and 25 hours a week.
It would take such a worker 1,000 years to make what UPS CEO David Abney was paid in 2017.
This event is an object lesson in the basic operation of capitalism. Where does this $700 million come from? It did not come from thin air; it was not made by UPS' CEO. It was extracted from the labor hundreds of thousands workers around the world.
The beneficiaries of this process of exploitation are not only the corporate executives that run UPS, but the major institutional investors and super-rich that own UPS stock. The largest UPS shareowners include the hedge funds Vanguard Group (which will receive $46 million), Blackrock ($36 million) and State Street Corporation ($24 million). These hedge funds then distribute their “earnings” to the financial parasites and billionaires that manage and invest in them.
The full article is available on the WSWS here: UPS pays out $700 million to stockholders: An object lesson in the operation of capitalism
The $2.8 billion that will be given to UPS shareholders in 2018 would be enough to give the quarter-million other UPS workers an immediate raise of more than $11,000. This would almost double the annual salary of a part-time warehouse worker on $10 an hour and 25 hours a week.
It would take such a worker 1,000 years to make what UPS CEO David Abney was paid in 2017.
This event is an object lesson in the basic operation of capitalism. Where does this $700 million come from? It did not come from thin air; it was not made by UPS' CEO. It was extracted from the labor hundreds of thousands workers around the world.
The beneficiaries of this process of exploitation are not only the corporate executives that run UPS, but the major institutional investors and super-rich that own UPS stock. The largest UPS shareowners include the hedge funds Vanguard Group (which will receive $46 million), Blackrock ($36 million) and State Street Corporation ($24 million). These hedge funds then distribute their “earnings” to the financial parasites and billionaires that manage and invest in them.
The full article is available on the WSWS here: UPS pays out $700 million to stockholders: An object lesson in the operation of capitalism
