Teamsters’ LTL Organizing Efforts Resume;Con-way Defeats Union at Calif. Terminal
This story appears in the Jan. 12 print edition of Transport Topics.
Elections for labor union representation resumed last week as Teamsters efforts to organize workers at two of the three largest less-than-truckload carriers do not show signs of slackening.
Con-way workers voted last week at Bakersfield, California, and rejected the union.
Elections are set for Jan. 14 at Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Jan. 15 at Charleston, West Virginia, at largest LTL fleet FedEx Freight.
More results are expected in the coming weeks.
The stakes are substantial, since FedEx Freight and Con-way combined have greater market share than the total at YRC Worldwide, UPS Freight and ABF Freight — the three largest union carriers.
Since the elections began four months ago, there have been a total of 14 votes at the carriers.
Con-way now has won five elections and FedEx has won three. The union has won six.
In addition, the union has withdrawn at least eight petitions at the last minute, leading the carriers to claim victory. The six total union wins represent just 1% of the terminals at both carriers. Votes are done one facility at a time.
“For many years, the Teamsters had nothing to hang their hat on in the LTL business,” Cowen and Co. analyst Jason Seidl told Transport Topics, as membership dropped and union fleets scaled back operations. “There weren’t a lot of victory celebrations.”
He added, “For them to win a terminal is a victory. I would be shocked if those victories don’t embolden them to continue.”
FedEx and the Teamsters declined to provide additional comment when contacted by TT.
“What we have found is that when our employees have the opportunity to get the facts, . . . they make an informed choice and reject the union,” said Con-way Freight President Greg Lehmkuhl.
David Ross, a Stifel Nicolaus analyst, said in a report last week that he believes the union organizing efforts won’t be a significant issue this year.
“I don’t see this spreading to other carriers unless there is a clean cut case with an easy victory somewhere,” Seidl said.
Fleets such as Old Dominion Freight Line that didn’t reduce compensation during the recession have very good labor relations, and organizing them would be “the path of most resistance,” Seidl said.
Michael Belzer, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, noted a contrast between UPS Inc. and FedEx Corp., which have emerged as companies with a broad range of services from small packages to heavier freight such as LTL.
“The markets are driving all the contract settlements now,” said Belzer, who specialized in economics and labor relations.
He noted market dynamics have changed since the 1980s, when Teamster-represented fleets hauled 80% or more of LTL freight. Now that total is closer to 20%.
“Union bargaining power is limited,” Belzer added. “Carriers have the bargaining power, but they have to get stable labor,” he said, noting the traditional higher turnover at non-union LTL fleets relative to their counterparts who are Teamster-represented.
In a related development, a coalition of business groups asked the U.S. District Court in Washington to block the National Labor Relations Board from speeding up union representation elections in every U.S. industry.
The suit, filed by the National Association of Manufacturers and others, responds to a Dec. 12 move by the agency to allow elections as little as two weeks after a request for a vote is filed.
Over the past 10 years, the median time period has been 38 days between petition filing and voting date.
“After being struck down once already, the NLRB has again embarked on solving a problem that it has previously recognized does not exist — unusually long delays in processing union election petitions — by truncating employers’ protected rights to communicate with employees about unionization efforts,” said Prasad Sharma, general counsel at American Trucking Associations. “ATA remains opposed to this ill-conceived rule and looks forward to judicial review of this effort to tilt the representation procedures in favor of the unions.”
FedEx Freight is a unit of FedEx Corp., which ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 For-Hire Carriers in the United States and Canada. Con-way Inc., parent of Con-way Freight, is No. 4. UPS Freight is part of No. 1 UPS Inc. YRC is No. 5, and ABF’s parent ArcBest Corp. is No. 13.
