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Laiza is a former part-time UPS supervisor who lives in Redmond, Washington. The daughter of a Filipina immigrant and naturalized citizen, she comes from a family that has worked at the logistics firm for decades. In late 2022, she took a job at UPS on the twilight sort at the Redmond hub. She also worked two other jobs—as a farm worker and a music teacher—to make ends meet in one of the most expensive regions of Washington State.

Redmond, best known as Microsoft’s headquarters, also houses major offices for other multinational tech companies, including Amazon’s “Project Kuiper” satellite business, and Nintendo of America. “The cost of living is pretty high,” she said. “We’re always living paycheck to paycheck. We are blessed to have had grandparents who had a little money and bought houses when it was more affordable.”

She continued: “The economy is very scary. My grandparents didn’t have to work multiple jobs. Some days I’m working 13 hours. My grandparents needed only one job and could purchase a house and live comfortably.”

Laiza says she has faced retaliation for exposing workplace abuse by management. “They are denying people’s human rights,” she said. “They deny people medical [care] and pressure them against going to hospitals when they are injured.” Because she filed numerous ethics complaints, she says, UPS tried to fire her “four separate times.”

UPS claims that she resigned, which Laiza rejects. “I still have my badge. I didn’t resign. I’m not sure what my status is at this point.”

Since then, she has set up a TikTok account, @End.UPS.Fraud, where she meticulously documents conditions inside the facility.

She described horrific injuries inside the facility. Last year, she said, an employee fell ill after encountering an unknown substance in a trailer. “He couldn’t breathe,” she said. “Nobody else complained, so they thought it was an allergy at first.” But after his break, the general manager instructed him to go back into the trailer.

“He had to go to the emergency room,” she explained. “But not before the GM kept him in the office for an hour, pressuring him not to go.”

She continued: “The next day, the part-time supervisors besides me were told to tell everyone it was the employee’s fault, because they didn’t tell us in a timely manner about his issues. The reality is that this employee told both me and our GM immediately at the start of the work day that the trailer he was assigned to was making him extremely ill.”

Laiza recounted other stories. “Another new hire’s thumb was broken, but the full time supervisor one level above me tried to keep him from going to the hospital.”

The “Network of the Future”

UPS is in the midst of its largest mass layoff program in history. Its “Network of the Future” program aims to close or automate 200 facilities. The company eliminated 48,000 jobs last year, more than any other US employer, in a year that saw 1.2 million layoff announcements, the most since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and the 2008–2009 recession. So far this year, it has announced plans to cut at least 30,000 jobs and has slated 22 facilities for closure.

The closure of UPS’ nearby Shoreline hub led to higher-seniority employees transferring to Redmond. Lower seniority workers at Shoreline were let go. To keep their full-time status, many work two four-hour “split shifts,” often with a four-hour break in between. The practice is common throughout UPS.

“That’s brutal for them,” Laiza said. “Some sleep in their cars, others will take long drives home, 30 minutes each way. They don’t have the time with their families that they used to.”

Redmond has also laid people off, including the entire night sort, which Laiza estimates is about 200 jobs. To keep their jobs, many have been forced to transfer to Tacoma, more than 40 miles away.

To keep her own job, Laiza transferred to work preload in Seattle in 2024. She had originally been slated to transfer to Redmond, but “I wouldn’t be able to afford my bills if I had to go to Tacoma.” However, she was able to transfer back to Redmond early the following year.

“There’s something funny about automation. I’ve been to Tacoma for training. The management there were telling me that there are a lot of mistakes and mis-sorts with automation. If Tacoma can’t hit the numbers, they start piling more on the human-run sort shifts. Then they lie and say the automation is doing great. So they over-work the human-run buildings after they laid off a bunch of people and push people to work faster.

“They haven’t been focusing on quality of life. I could see using it to make the job more safer. But I feel like they’re putting tons of money into robotics, and the tech isn’t even quite there yet. The robots are still extremely slow. They’re skipping the step of making the job more safe.

“I know we’ve had a lot of injuries lately. There were at least six injury reports in one year in Seattle. That’s supposed to be bad. But a lot of injuries don’t get reported at all, due to pressure, or workers just being used to being sore. Workers are afraid of filing reports.

“When I got transferred back to Redmond, in the first few months, a guy on my team had a 70-pound package hit him on the back of the head. His face was smashed into a pallet jack, breaking his nose. The GM was the last [supervisor] near him. They tried to blame me for that, but I was on the other side of unload. They pressured him against going to the hospital, when he had a possible concussion and was gushing blood. I started crying.”

Widespread forgery

Lazia said that she eventually became aware that UPS management had been forging signatures on documents for dozens of workers. “A lot of these documents are used in the firing or disciplinary process, and could affect health benefits. They would use it to try to prove that going to a hospital was your fault. They would say that you yourself signed a document acknowledging you’re not following procedure, and things like that.”

She said she discovered that her father, who also works in the facility, had his signature forged on a document from last summer. Eventually, they were able to discover another forged signature on a write-up from 2023. “When they write you up, they’re supposed to talk to you and inform you that they’re doing it. They never did that with my dad.”

As many as 30 other workers discovered forged documents while reviewing their records on UPS computers. They took videos and photos of the computer screens as well as printouts of the forged documents as evidence. However, Laiza has been told that UPS has refused to provide entire personnel records upon request.

Laiza says she has filed both an ethics complaint and a police report. She is encouraging workers across the Redmond facility, and nationwide, to request their own records for this reason. Recently, she campaigned on this outside the entrance to the facility.

A culture of intimidation

After Laiza began filing ethics complaints, she and her team were subjected to intense harassment. “Aside from verbal abuse, they would slam my team’s area more than anyone else’s. It was obviously bullying. They would get overworked.”

“I’d have to shut off the belts for safety reasons. The full-time supervisor told me, ‘I’m not co-running this floor with you. If employees get hurt, packages damaged, then it’s your fault.’”

Laiza says the same supervisor also sexually harassed her and she filed a complaint. “The UPS ethics hotline claims it will be kept confidential, but the internal security official blabbed it to the people I filed against. They knew things they didn’t need to know.”

“UPS told me they’d keep him away from me. But he kept coming near me anyways.” In July, when the general manager was on vacation, Laiza was escorted out of the building and had her badge taken away. The next day, she said, “I asked on what grounds and on whose authority was I fired? HR took a day to respond, when they told me I wasn’t terminated, they just needed me out for the investigation.” Laiza took this as an attempt to force her out of her job. They kept her home for four months.

Teamsters cooperate with management

As a part-time supervisor, Laiza is not a member of the Teamsters union. Although she has uncovered significant evidence of management abuse, Local 174 has done little in response. “We just got a new business agent. He claims he’s trying to focus on the Redmond preload, but it seems like they are not happy with him there. People have reported the signature forgeries, and I went to the union hall to report on it. But so far they have not said anything.

“There was a grievance meeting with a management rep and the union BA. When the BA brought up signature forgeries, the management rep said that that’s none of the Teamsters’ business because there’s nothing in the contract. I’m paraphrasing here. But that’s crazy because these docs are used to build a case against them and this is a crime.”

“The union reps seemed to be more focused on being friends with management,” she said. “They told one woman that she’s a troublemaker because she’s the only one who’s grieving. The stewards have been brushing grievances off. They responded to one grievance with a warning the worker was harassing a part-time supervisor.

“The preload shop steward in Seattle seemed to care about people. He was always helping a disabled employee pay his rent, for instance. But I suspect that the Teamsters tried to get him to step down. They let a new employee who hadn’t even reached his seniority date call a new election, which was very odd. He won reelection, though.

“Another steward in Redmond I was told was forced to step down because UPS didn’t like him winning all these grievances. So the union made him step down.”

“There’s power in numbers”

At the end of the interview, the discussion turned towards the ICE operations in Minneapolis, where agents terrified immigrants and killed two community members, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

“These are human rights abuses. They’re abusing people. And we’re supposed to pretend otherwise. It’s just hurting people and taking away American freedoms. People should realize this is taking away freedoms, and abuse.”

“Everybody’s freedoms are at stake,” she added. “My mother is Filipina and went through the process of becoming a citizen. Even though immigrants have legal status, many are still getting abused. Nobody should. You can’t treat them less than animals.”

“We need to make sure we all stand together,” she concluded. “I’ve seen people get singled out. People need to get together. There’s power in numbers.”