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Truckers' Unionization * USA - Battle is loaded with controversy
Contra Costa,CAL,USA -The Contra Costa Times, by Gene Maddaus -13 Sept 2009: -- Jerry Moyes flew out from Phoenix to quell an uprising. The owner of Swift Transportation, one of the country's largest trucking companies, Moyes had made a big bet on the Port of Los Angeles. He invested heavily in the new, clean trucks that had just been mandated by the port. But by February, that bet was not paying off... Demand for freight hauling had collapsed along with the national economy. Moyes was losing $500,000 a month, and had lost $4 million since the Clean Trucks Program began the previous fall... Worse yet, his drivers were agitating on behalf of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters... Over the previous week, tensions between employees and management had boiled over. The terminal manager had been threatened and a tire on his vehicle been slashed. Two drivers leading the union campaign had been fired. There was also talk of a walkout - the last thing the company needed as it was trying to build up a customer base... When Moyes arrived at the Wilmington yard, he was upset. Addressing a crowd of drivers, he said he wanted to put an end to it... The Teamsters filed a complaint against Swift with the National Labor Relations Board, demanding that the four drivers be reinstated and given back pay. A hearing was held in August, and both sides are awaiting a ruling from an administrative law judge... Meanwhile, attendance at union meetings has dropped. Some pro-union drivers said they are trying to avoid giving the company an excuse to fire them. With the injunction in place, Teamsters organizers fear that any move to unionize Swift's employee drivers will be met with a wholesale shift to owner-operators. So all eyes are on the civil trial, scheduled to start in December in federal court...Labels: drivers unionization
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