After the last contract fiasco,........all the non-Unions raised their hourly rates to at least a dollar an hour more than ours. In some cases, a couple of dollars an hour more. They did that to put the final nail in the coffin about Union organizing.
But,.....The non-Unions having the ability to raise wages substantially,.....tells me there is an awful lot of "overhead" money in freight to work with as far as wages and benefits go. UPS Freight has no problem paying about $27 an hour top rate,....and they're kicking ABF's butts' in volume and pallet count. UPS themselves is paying......$32?....$34?.... an hour to feeders and full-time package car drivers,....with much better benefits than ours.
So,.....did our wage cut merely fund ArcBest's expansion into non-Union truckload and expedited freight? We all know it certainly funded two new corporate headquarters for ArcBest and Panther,..........They couldn't wait for the ink to dry before they started breaking ground.........How does a company plead abject poverty and the need for it's employees to give up a substantial portion of their wages and benefits,...........and then go and build a ground-up structure for their executive staff,.........(....if I need to remind anyone,.......no one there at the corporate headquarters touches, moves, or delivers any freight.........)........?
In ..."bad"...economic straits, wouldn't the "old" corporate headquarters done well enough until the company got back on it's feet to the point where they could restore the wages and benefits back to the Labor force?............(.......The people who actually DO, move, touch, and deliver freight....)?
Tyson Johnson and Gordon Sweeton,......Ol' Fric and Frac,.........were completely oblivious to ABF's motives.........(..Or, were they? Sometimes "stupidity" has it's virtues, especially when you can avoid that uncomfortable "responsibility" question...) In hindsight,....ABF/ArcBest snookered a little more than half of their employees....and maybe or maybe not, with the complicity of our so-called "leadership". One can only hope Mr. Soehl has studied the whole 2013 contract debacle,....including the made-up "YRC Buying ABF" dissemination of facts,.....and is proceeding into the contract talks with his eyes wide open, and with the knowledge that our corporate leaders are completely capable of producing "Fake News" of their own to sway a contract vote.