Employees at truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier Dependable Highway Express are no longer unionized after an internal strife between a worker and local Teamsters officials resulted in a petition to decertify the union.
Amid the tensions, John Cwiek, an employee at the L.A.-based Dependable Highway Express, filed a union decertification petition in March with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking for a vote that would end the Teamsters’ representation.
Cwiek’s petition contained signatures from a nearly two-to-one majority of employees at the company’s Ontario, Calif. location, well exceeding the 30 percent needed to trigger a vote under NLRB rules.
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However, before the NLRB could hold an official decertification vote among the employees, Teamsters officials filed a “disclaimer of interest” announcing they were ending their representation of the work unit.
Sourcing Journal reached out to the Teamsters.
The nonprofit National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which has supported other decertification efforts, including the Teamsters, backed Cwiek in the battle.
According to a statement posted by the foundation, Cwiek sent letters to his coworkers containing publicly available Department of Labor data on Teamsters-represented bosses’ salaries in January.
A day later, a union official allegedly appeared at Cwiek’s workplace, made undisclosed accusations against him and threatened that he wouldn’t be working at Dependable Highway Express by the next contract period.
“These types of threats are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects employee speech critical of union officials, and protects employees’ right to refrain from union activities if they so choose,” the foundation said.
In February, Cwiek filed federal charges against Teamsters Local 63 over this behavior, but the charges were dropped amid the union’s disclaimer of interest.
“I am deeply troubled by the blatant retaliatory actions taken by officials at Teamsters Local 63 in response to expressing the views of myself and several other hard-working drivers at Dependable Highway Express,” Cwiek said at the time. “We will not be deterred by their bullying tactics and the baseless accusations they levy against myself and others.
Cwiek remains employed at Dependable Highway Express.
Despite the decertification, more workers are seeking out union membership to kick off 2024. During the first six months of the fiscal year, which the NLRB tracks as Oct. 1 to March 31, union election petitions filed at NLRB field offices rose 35 percent over the same period in 2023. In total, 1,618 petitions were filed during this time, compared with 1,199 in last year’s first half.
The jump is much bigger than 2023’s 3 percent full-year increase in union election petitions. But 2023 did see a solid uptick in overall organization across logistics workers. Last year, the unionization rate of transportation and warehousing employees increased to 15.9 percent from 14.5 percent in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In one such recent example, drivers at LTL carrier Hot Line Freight Systems’ facility in Milwaukee voted on March 21 to be represented by the Teamsters. Another group of drivers at BNSF’s terminal in Thayer, Mo., unanimously voted against representation on March 27.
At the same time, unfair labor practice charges filed across the NLRB’s field offices have increased 7 percent—to 10,278 from 9,612. Accounting for union petitions and unfair labor practice charges, the NLRB received 11,896 cases in the first half, up 10 percent over the year-ago period when the field offices received 10,811 cases.
Unions like the Teamsters have serious sway in the current logistics labor environment, with the organization recently negotiating a five-year labor contract for 340,000 UPS workers last year. The 1.3-million-member union, which positions itself as “the champion of freight drivers and warehouse workers” also represents employees across major logistics companies like DHL, ArcBest and TForce Freight.
The Teamsters were also in the center of the recent bankruptcy of LTL provider Yellow Corp., in which 22,000 union employees lost their jobs. But the union’s influence may have accelerated the company’s demise, with the group’s brass opting to reject proposed changes to Yellow’s operating model last year as it was running out of money.
And the union may be gearing up to take on Amazon, launching a dedicated division for the e-commerce giant in 2022. Last year, 84 employees at a former Amazon delivery partner, Battled-Tested Strategies, unionized with the Teamsters and have since picketed more than 30 warehouses.
