Encyclopedia Muneerica

This story is about UPS workers who defied their supervisor and walked off the job during the 9/11 attacks. The article also talks about how workers can take their power back in the early days of COVID-19. Hint: they had a union.

In the days after 9/11, I felt more pity than anger toward Billy. Faced with a quick decision, he humiliated himself by revealing a middle manager’s instinct to put the interests of a corporation that didn’t know his name before his own life. But I felt that way because there was no third plane that day, and the only consequence of his bureaucratic bumbling was the loss of his own dignity.