UPS Holidays & "Non-Operating" Days: What Counts and What Your Contract Says

Members often ask two related-but-different questions: "What does UPS consider a non-operational day?" and "What days are holidays?" These sound like the same thing, but they come from two completely different worlds — the shipping/customer side of UPS and the labor contract side. This article keeps them separate so you don't get the answers crossed.

A quick, honest heads-up: the contract excerpts available for this article do not include the master holiday list (that lives in Article 15 of the National Master Agreement and in your supplement/rider, which are not in the excerpts here). So we'll cite the contract for what it does say, label everything else clearly, and point you to where to confirm the full holiday list for your area.

Two Different Meanings of "Non-Operational"

Before anything else, understand which "non-operational" you mean:

• Operational/customer side ("non-operating days"): This is UPS the carrier telling shippers that pickup, delivery, and transit clocks don't run on certain days. It's a billing and transit-time term, not a labor term.
• Contract side ("holidays" / paid holidays): This is your collective bargaining agreement defining which days you get paid for and which days you don't normally work. This is what affects your pay and schedule.

These two lists overlap a lot (most paid contract holidays are also customer non-operating days), but they are governed by different documents and can differ at the edges (for example, peak-season operations).

What UPS Tells Customers About Non-Operating Days

On the shipping side, UPS publishes its Tariff/Terms & Conditions of Service and an annual Service Guide, which spell out how service days, transit times, and billing work. These documents reference how shipments on weekends, holidays, "or other non-operating days" are handled — including that such days may, at UPS's discretion, be billed differently ^[5]. The Service Guide is the companion document that lays out service levels and transit-day calculations ^[6][7].

Generally speaking (this is general background, not from your contract), UPS's customer-facing "non-operating" or "no-pickup/no-delivery" days for U.S. ground and air service have historically included the major federal holidays where the network largely stands down:

• New Year's Day
• Memorial Day
• Independence Day (July 4)
• Labor Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day

Generally, days like Easter and certain others are also treated as limited- or no-service days, and weekend service rules (Saturday/Sunday) have expanded in recent years for some operations. Because UPS updates its Service Guide and Tariff each year, always confirm the current customer non-operating days in the official 2026 Tariff/Terms and Service Guide rather than relying on memory ^[5][6][7].

Important: a "non-operating day" for customers is not automatically a paid holiday for you. The reverse is also true. Your pay and time off come from the contract, not the Service Guide.

What Your Contract Actually Controls

For your purposes as a Teamster, the documents that matter are the National Master UPS Agreement (NMA) and your Supplement/Rider/Addendum. A few principles from the excerpts are worth knowing:

It's all one agreement. The Master, Supplements, Riders, and Addenda together form a single bargaining unit and a single contract — they're printed separately "for convenience only" ^[3]. So your holiday rights can come from the Master and be modified by your local language.

Your supplement can give you more, not less. Any lesser condition in a Supplement or Rider is overridden by the Master, but a superior benefit in your Supplement, Rider, or Addendum is preserved unless the Master specifically says otherwise ^[4]. That's why holiday lists and holiday pay can vary by region.

Holiday periods get special treatment around overtime. The Western Region supplement's overtime article (Article 19) recognizes "the desirability to minimize the number of employees working during holiday periods," and it carves out November and December (peak season) from the 9.5 grievance procedure ^[1]. That tells you the contract treats holiday/peak periods differently from normal weeks — but this excerpt does not list the actual holiday dates.

Where holidays and start times intersect. The Western Region also lets the Employer set a regular Monday start time between 9:00 p.m. Sunday and midnight without premium pay ^[1] — again, scheduling rules that interact with calendar/holiday weeks, but not a holiday list.

So — What Days Are the Contract Holidays?

Here's the straight answer: the specific paid-holiday list is not in the contract excerpts provided here. Holiday recognition and holiday pay are normally set in Article 15 of the National Master Agreement and then expanded or modified by your Supplement/Rider — none of which appear in full in these excerpts. We won't invent dates or article numbers we can't see.

Generally speaking (general background, not your specific contract language), the UPS Teamster paid-holiday slate across most supplements has historically run to roughly seven or more recognized holidays, commonly including New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas — with some areas adding days like Good Friday, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, the employee's birthday, or floating/optional ("personal") holidays. The exact count and the exact days depend entirely on your supplement and rider, which is why two members in different regions can have different holiday calendars.

To get your real list, you need the holiday article in your own agreement — not a generic web list and not the customer Service Guide.

Why You Can't Just Use the Customer List

It's tempting to assume "if UPS isn't delivering, I'm off and getting holiday pay." Not necessarily:

• Peak season (Nov/Dec) changes the rules. The contract itself flags this period as different ^[1], and operations run on days customers might not expect.
• Customer non-operating days are a billing/transit concept ^[5], decided by the company for its shippers — not a negotiated pay benefit.
• Your paid holidays are negotiated and can be better than the bare Master because superior supplemental benefits are protected ^[4].

If there's ever a dispute about whether you should have been paid for a holiday, or worked on one, that's a contract question — and it follows the grievance procedure, with local/area issues handled under your Supplement/Rider and Master-interpretation issues handled nationally ^[2].

A Note on the Business Climate (Background)

Members sometimes ask about non-operating days in the context of staffing and volume. For general awareness only: UPS reported fourth-quarter 2025 consolidated revenue of about $24.5 billion ^[8], and labor-disruption planning has been a recurring topic in the shipping press ^[9]. None of that changes your contractual holiday rights — it's just context for the broader operating picture.

What To Do Next

1. Pull your own holiday article. Open your Supplement/Rider and find the holiday section (commonly tied to Article 15 of the Master) for the exact list of paid holidays in your area — the excerpts here don't contain it.
2. For customer/transit "non-operating" days, check the current official 2026 UPS Tariff/Terms & Conditions and Service Guide ^[5][6][7].
3. Ask your steward or Business Agent to confirm your local holiday list and holiday-pay rules, especially around peak season ^[1].
4. Ask TeamstersGPT with your supplement selected so the holiday list pulled is the one that actually applies to you.