Teamsters at YRC debate offer

Mail ballots on a proposed new contract have reached the hands of nearly 50,000 YRC Worldwide Inc. employees, and supporters and opponents of the pact are making their cases as voting proceeds.

The Teamsters’ national freight negotiating committee last month reached the tentative five-year agreement, and more than 300 Teamsters local officers reviewing the contract overwhelmingly approved it at a Jan. 8 meeting.

In a letter to rank-and-file Teamsters members last week, the bargaining committee stated that about two-thirds of all customers in the trucking industry renew service contracts at year’s end, which gave the union’s negotiators strong leverage to get the best deal possible. The current contract doesn’t expire until March 31.

“The trucking industry is facing difficult economic conditions,” said the letter signed by Teamsters general president Jim Hoffa and Tyson Johnson, leader of the union’s freight division. “About 4,000 Teamsters are on layoff, and economists predict tough times for the industry in the foreseeable future. … Despite these challenges, the (negotiating committee) was able to win significant economic gains for members contained in the tentative agreement.”

The proposed agreement provides a pay raise of $2.20 an hour over the life of the contract, including 50 cents an hour in the first year. For long-haul drivers, the pay would increase 5.5 cents a mile over the five-year pact. Hourly wage rates will exceed $24 by the end of the contract in most parts of the country, according to the Teamsters.

The Teamsters also were able to get YRC to agree to increase pension and health insurance contributions by $5 an hour over the life of the agreement.

There are also proposals in the new contract some union members view as too concessionary, however, including the creation of a “utility employee” for shorter freight hauls.

The utility employee, who will be paid $1 an hour more than local drivers, will give management more flexibility and “will allow companies to compete better in the less than 1,000 markets of next-day and second-day delivery where there’s more growth,” Jim Roberts, president of Trucking Management Inc., told Transport Topics last week.

“It allows the companies to get away from the traditional hub-and-spoke system under which they currently operate.”

Trucking Management is the labor-bargaining arm for YRC.