Long road to vote

After decades of trying to unionize Overnite Transportation, now called UPS Freight, the Teamsters have negotiated a national contract that 53 employees in Fort Wayne can vote on Sunday.

Fort Wayne UPS Freight employees are part of a national organizing campaign that has brought 9,700 UPS Freight employees into the Teamsters since Jan. 16, Teamsters spokeswoman Donna De La Cruz said.

Brian Lytle, an organizer at Teamsters Local 414, said the highlights of the contract include better health insurance, a guaranteed 40-hour workweek for full-time employees and wage increases totaling almost $5 an hour by the end of the five-year contract. Local 414 is the union the Fort Wayne UPS Freight employees joined in February. The top wage at UPS Freight in Fort Wayne is currently $21.85 an hour. At the end of the contract, the new top wage will be $26.15 an hour.

Getting a national contract for UPS Freight employees is “very satisfying,” Lytle said. “This is a group the Teamsters have been trying to organize for 30 years.”

In the 1990s, the Teamsters tried to get Overnite Transportation Co. employees to join the union. But the organizing campaign was unsuccessful and resulted in the Teamsters declaring an unfair labor practices “strike” against Overnite that lasted three years, Lytle said. The Teamsters accused the company of violating U.S. labor laws.

Barry Craig, a road driver at UPS Freight who has worked at the Fort Wayne terminal for 18 years, said he remembers Teamsters picketing his truck then because it was a non-union facility. Craig said the goal seemed to be using the picketing to pressure the company to work with the Teamsters. Full Story.......