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UPS to close facilities in Portland and Baltimore, threatening thousands of jobs

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UPS to close facilities in Portland and Baltimore, threatening thousands of jobs

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A United Parcel Service driver sorts his deliveries, on New York’s Upper West Side. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]

UPS is set to temporarily close two more of its hubs for retooling into automated facilities, employing a fraction of the labor. The two facilities are its warehouses in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Swan Island facility in Portland, Oregon.

The Baltimore hub closure has already been widely reported and will affect approximately 540 workers when the facility closes at the end of this August. But the closure of Swan Island is being reported for the first time by the WSWS on the basis of knowledgeable sources inside the building. Swan Island employs well over 1,000 people.

According to the source, Swan Island is expected to become fully automated “as of next year.”

The closures are part of an escalating assault on jobs as part of the company’s “Network of the Future.” In a meeting earlier this year with top investors, UPS executives explained this restructuring program would aim to close 200 facilities and automate “everything.” This is on top of 12,000 mostly white collar job cuts already announced this year.

The automation-driven cuts at UPS are part of a global jobs bloodbath by major corporations. US-based companies alone have already announced around 1 million layoffs since the start of last year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. A separate study found that 4 in 10 business leaders expect artificial intelligence to be a major factor in layoffs in their industries this year. Instead of using advances in labor-saving technologies to ease the burden of work and improve living conditions for the vast majority, under capitalism they are being used to squeeze out every last ounce of profits from the working class.

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