At the contract meetings this weekend I pointed ot the shell game regarding the reduction of rail miles from 26% to 24% in the first year of the contract, this happens at the front door. Mean while at the back door 4% of the annual road miles is going to non-union carriers. This essentially raises the amount of work not perfromed by Teamsters from 26% to 28%. As the contract would go through it's term the rail miles continue to reduce as the allowed subcontracted miles continue to grow in such a manner as to maintain the 28% diversion of work. Basically, here you go we'll give you something and as soon as your back is turned we'll take it back and then some.

Now here is where it gets really bad.

In response to this Local 200 Sec/Treas Tom Millonzi produced and read a lengthy Letter of Memorandum regarding the "preferred companies"

Before I breakdown what I and the rest of the Brothers and Sisters heard, it must be stated that this letter was not provided as part of the material provided (i.e. NMFA and Supplement proposals)
When questioned as to why Millonzi stated he was instructed by the IBT not to hand out this Letter of Memo to the membership. Even when it was pointed out to Millonzi that this was inappropriate, by the entire membership in attendance he still refused to give us copies.

I and several other Freight brothers attending both the Saturday and Sunday meetings, we heard this letter read twice and on Sunday demanded a line by line discussion of the letter.

Here's this jist of it;

Preferred companies were defined as non-union companies that would perform the hauling in and out of terminals of specific freight.

The preferred company would be reqiuired to pay wages and benefits equal to the NMFA companies while they were performing this specific work.

The preferred companies would have to agree to Card Check neutrality should the Teamsters decide to attempt organizing. However both parties, the preferred carrier or YRCW can sever the business realtionship at any time with or without reason.

The specific freight was defined as Non-NMFA freight. Non- NMFA freight was defined as anything not currently handled or business acquired hereafter. In other words any New Business.

Now please sit down here comes the bomb;

The preferred company may be assigned Non-NMFA without limitations, restrictions or regard to road driver protections in Article 29.

Conclusions:

If the Teamsters attempt an organizing drive at a preferred company, that preferred company and/or YRCW well simply terminate the business relationship to avoid being Unionized.

All new business will be hauled by the preferred companies. And the 4% to 9% restrictions on the amount of annual miles run by the preferred carriers that the IBT is trying to tell us exists is a lie, and if you don't believe that ask yourself why won't they give the members a copy of the Letter of Memorandum.

This, in my estimation is the CF/Con-way situation all over again. Bleed off the Union carriers giving all the New Business to the Non-Union Carriers leaving the crap freight that don't pay for the Union carriers.

I'd like to hear from other freight members as to whether this Letter of Memo was presented to them at their meetings and if not get after your local leaders and ask why and ask to see the letter or at least demand a line by line discussion of it. And get this information out to the rank and file. As bad as this agreement is where we've been allowed to shine some light on it, it is even worse with all the stuff that is being hid from us. And why for heavens sake is the IBT hiding this.