AREA TEAMSTERS OFFICIAL MAY GET HIS WISH: A SHOWDOWN OVER FIRMS LIKE CON-WAY
THE TEAMSTERS union this week began to survey members who are covered by its National Master Freight Agreement with the major U.S. trucking companies.
For many Teamster officials, the main issue is the growth of non-union carriers owned by the major union trucking companies.
Failure to resolve the issue could halt much of the nation's long distance trucking in coming negotiations to replace the current contract.
Frank Campanella, feisty president of Teamsters Local 375 here and secretary-treasurer of the union's New York State Freight Division, is urging a national truckers strike this spring unless major trucking firms as Consolidated Freightways and Roadway bring their non-union trucking subsidiaries under the national contract.
"They'll swallow us up unless they are stopped," he contends. He charges the trucking companies are evading their promises to pay Teamsters-level wages and benefits by transfering more and more of their businesses to the non-union companies they own.
A spokesman at the Teamsters headquarters in Washington said there is considerable sympathy for Campanella's view, both among the union's leadership and its members.
Campanella's local has been battling Consolidated Freightways, one of the major parties to the national agreement, for nearly a year. He charges it with attempting to evade its union contract by giving work to Con-Way Transportation Services, a cluster of non-union subsidiaries. In union parlance, the practice is called "double breasting." The construction unions have been fighting it with mixed success for a couple of decades. It's only comparatively recently that the practice has become widespread in the trucking industry.
Local 375 threw up a picket line in front of the Con-Way Central Express terminal at 860 Aero Drive in Cheektowaga last Oct 12. It also picketed terminals of companies where Con-Way trucks were making deliveries. There were frequent reports of picket-line scuffles and vandalism until a federal court on Nov. 26 ordered the union to cease demonstrating on the site.
Federal law sets a 30-day limit on picketing for union representation, unless a petition has been filed to hold an election among the workers to select or reject the union.
Having failed to win on the picket line, Campanella wants a victory at the bargaining table. He has considerable support from his fellow Teamsters leaders. The Teamsters have been conducting a national corporate campaign against Consolidated on the issue of double breasting since early this year.
They charge Consolidated, which is the fourth-largest trucking company in the U.S. -- behind United Parcel Service, Yellow Freight and Roadway -- with steadily depriving members with jobs by shifting more business to non-union Con-Way.
According to union figures, Con-Way revenues now make up 25 percent of the profits earned by the parent company -- up from 4 percent 10 years ago.
Roadway and Yellow Freight also have non-union subsidiaries with a growing share of the companies' business, but the Teamsters are concentrating their guns on Consolidated's Con-Way.
"Con-Way was an extreme example. That's why we're focusing a lot of attention on it," said Bernard Mulligan, union spokesman.
Since deregulation of the trucking industry began in the early 1980s, the larger trucking companies have been swallowing up smaller ones. Before deregulation, Consolidated, Yellow Freight and Roadway carried 15 percent of the long-distance freight in the U.S. Today they carry 42 percent.
The Teamsters fear that if current trends continue, most of this freight will go to the Big Three's non-union carriers.
24 years later we need another "showdown" with ArcBest or ABF Freight could end up "history" like Consolidated Freightways did in 2002! Are you listening Brother Soehl?
