UPS Strike and Salary Gaps

* Near the end of his column on the Teamsters strike at UPS (Opinion, Aug. 24), David Friedman makes a significant point. The UPS strike, he writes, “could mark the beginning of serious debate about how America is changing, and what we ought to do about it.”

Hallelujah. Such serious debate is long overdue. Appropriately it should begin with a discussion about how best to narrow the growing gap between America’s rich and poor. One suggestion, made by a variety of astute observers, would eliminate the tax deduction for salaries over a certain amount, say $500,000. Of course, this remains a free country, and any business could continue to pay its CEO, and others with exceptional talent, any amount, but only the first half-million could be written off on the corporate tax return. The balance would come directly from shareholders’ pockets and the rest of us would not be forced to subsidize the top 1%. What a wonderful incentive to keep salary costs, and thus inflation, in check.

JIM MAMER

Modjeska Canyon

* As a former card-carrying Teamster (I drove a truck for Coca-Cola during my college days) and frequent parcel recipient, I was happy to see the UPS strike come to an end. However, while reading “Like Old Times for Customers, UPS Drivers” (Aug. 21), about UPS driver Kelly Barton, I nearly choked on my danish over the quote, “How many jobs pay you $60,000 a year without college?” How many indeed? How many pay that with college these days?

While hitting 160-some stops in North Hollywood in the summer heat is certainly no picnic (I live in that neighborhood), $60Gs is a pretty nice salary. And, I assume, a pre-strike figure.

Keeping in mind the early hours, lower-back pain, seasonal crush, traffic, heat, etc., what does UPS now pay someone with a BA and penchant for brown socks?

D. WILLIAMS

North Hollywood

* The propaganda machine went into full swing, the headlines screaming that the increased wages in the UPS settlement will fuel inflation. It appears to me that greedy entrepreneurs raising prices on goods and services sometimes have something to do with inflation.

In truth, the full story of what the labor movement has done for America has not been told. Through collective bargaining and with organized labor insisting on decent living wages for workers, it has created a strong middle class with buying power. Whereupon the ability for consumers to purchase from business helps the business community to make a profit and to sell large amounts of merchandise and whatever else it has to sell.

Had it not been for the strong labor movement in this country, we would be very much like South America and Third World countries which have the very, very wealthy class of people at the top of the pyramid and indigent people, sometimes starving people, at the bottom of the heap. There is very little middle class in between.

ARLINE MATHEWS

Chatsworth