WALKOUT TESTING SUPPLIES, TEMPERS.

Byline: Dan Sewell Associated Press 

Tensions rose Tuesday on United Parcel Service picket lines and at small businesses that depend on UPS for timely delivery of their products - including a company that stopped shipping lobsters because the crustaceans were dead on arrival.

UPS says it normally moves the equivalent of 6 percent of the U.S. gross national product each day, and so the strike's effects were beginning to ripple through the nation's economy. Hospitals and other health care facilities closely monitored medical supplies as deliveries of new equipment declined sharply.

There was no hint of a settlement in the second day of the Teamsters' walkout against UPS after a stalemate over pay, pensions and heavy use of part-time employees. No talks were scheduled, and the White House reiterated that President Clinton had no plans to intervene.

Pickets were arrested at several UPS sites around the country, and there were angry confrontations at others as management and other nonunion workers drove the brown delivery vehicles. But UPS spokesman Mark Dickens estimated the Atlanta-based company was running at less than 10 percent capacity.

``We've got a lot of management folks out there making every attempt to operate as best we can, but it's a fraction of what we've been doing,'' Dickens said. He said UPS was focusing on critical shipments such as medical supplies, and was making very few new pickups.

UPS competitors, conceding they couldn't pick up all the overflow of packages, put restrictions on customers and new business.

``The fact of the matter is this company is shut down,'' Teamsters President Ron Carey said. He was joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson at a rally outside a UPS distribution center in Burtonsville, Md., where Jackson led pickets in a chant: ``We'll march one day longer! We will not surrender!''

Carey suggested it ``makes sense to start bargaining.'' But Dickens said the company's position was that its last contract offer was final and should be submitted to the union's membership for a vote.

The Teamsters chief said he planned to talk to Labor Secretary Alexis Herman on Tuesday, but was opposed to presidential intervention.

Among the first casualties of the strike were lobsters shipped from Boston by one of UPS' competitors, which began falling behind normal schedules last week as the strike loomed.

Chicago-based Lobster Gram canceled all shipments for the week after 25 lobsters meant for a catalog photo shoot arrived dead Saturday, and customers also complained that their seafood dinners were dead.

The walkout by the 185,000 Teamster-represented workers is the first nationwide strike in the company's 90-year history.

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Photo: (Color) Customers with packages to mail start the day at the Van Nuys post office Tuesday on Day 2 of the UPS strike.

Bob Halvorsen/Daily News