UPS STILL STRAINING TO RECOVER; DELIVERIES DELAYED IN WAKE OF STRIKE.

Byline: Dan Sewell Associated Press

Beset by backlogs, frustrated customers and worker defections, United Parcel Service is still struggling to rebound more than two weeks after its first nationwide strike.

The company has reinstated its service guarantees, but acknowledged in a statement to customers Friday that ``there continue to be some delays.''

``It's been a challenge,'' UPS spokesman Mark Dickens said.

The 15-day walkout by the Teamsters union, with 185,000 UPS members, crippled the delivery giant, and company officials say daily operations still haven't caught up. Competitors such as Federal Express Corp. and the U.S. Postal Service say they've added business as a result of the strike.

UPS estimates it has lost at least 5 percent of its customer base, but company officials say it's still too soon to know for sure.

Tens of millions of packages were stockpiled by customers who either decided to wait out the strike or couldn't line up alternative shippers, added to millions bogged down in the system by the strike.

An extremely high number of pickups, hitting 16 million a day, ``created a domino effect'' in UPS' normal operations after the strike, Dickens said. Before the strike, the company averaged 12 million deliveries a day.

This week, deliveries are beginning to outnumber pickups, with 11.2 million pickups and 13 million deliveries Wednesday.

UPS officials, who estimated at least $600 million in lost revenues during the strike, have said a 5 percent permanent loss in volume would trigger 15,500 layoffs. Dickens said Friday it's too soon to know how many layoffs there could be. He acknowledged some former strikers hadn't been called back to work.

A Teamsters spokesman Friday said some members were complaining about ``a real sour grapes, vindictive attitude'' by UPS managers.

``They have a huge backlog, and yet they haven't called everybody back,'' said Rand Wilson, a union spokesman in Washington.

``We've always felt that the layoffs was a bogus threat, but it won't be if the company doesn't get back to business,'' Wilson said.