Major Shipping Company To Cut 20,000 Jobs: Will MA Facilities Close?

MASSACHUSETTS — United Parcel Service plans to cut thousands of jobs and close dozens of facilities as it scales back on the amount of Amazon shipments it handles, the company announced Tuesday.

A UPS facility in South Boston is one of the 73 facilities that will close as part of the move, CBS Boston reported this morning.

The Summer Street facility will close permanently and cut jobs on May 23. It appears that up to 62 part-time employees will be out of work.

Nationwide, the company employs about 443,000 people and has cultivated a reputation for competitive pay and benefits packages with the average driver earning $95,000 annually and up to $25,000 of tuition assistance for part-time employees, according to the company.

The shipping and receiving chain will slash about 20,000 jobs this year and close 73 leased and owned buildings by the end of June. UPS said the company is still reviewing its network and may identify additional buildings to be shuttered. It's the first major U.S. company to slash its workforce in response to the trade war. As a major part of the nation's supply chain, the cuts are being watched closely as a gauge of consumer and corporate sentiment.

"The world hasn't been faced with such enormous potential impacts to trade in more than 100 years," CEO Carol Tome told investors on the company's earnings call.

This month, President Donald Trump placed a 145 percent tariff on goods from China, a major source of goods for retail giant Amazon, UPS' largest customer.

The cost-cutting effort is linked to fewer deliveries from Amazon. In January, UPS announced it had reached a deal with Amazon to lower its volume by more than 50 percent by the second half of 2026.

"We've been partnered to Amazon for nearly 30 years, and we hold that company in high regard," Tome said in the company's 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call. "Amazon is our largest customer, but it's not our most profitable customer."

UPS expects to save $3.5 billion in 2025 with the cuts.

"As a trusted leader in global logistics, we will leverage our integrated network and trade expertise to assist our customers as they adapt to a changing trade environment," CEO Carol Tomé said in a statement. "Further, the actions we are taking to reconfigure our network and reduce cost across our business could not be timelier. The macro environment may be uncertain, but with our actions, we will emerge as an even stronger, more nimble UPS."

The Atlanta-based company, which operates in more than 200 countries and territories, announced the cuts with its 2025 first-quarter earnings report. The report showed revenue declined slightly to $21.5 billion, down 0.7 percent from the first quarter of last year. The company's operating profit, however, increased to $1.7 billion, up 3.3 percent from the first quarter of 2024 and up 0.9 percent on an adjusted basis.

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