November 28, 2007: The Hoffa administration has cut a deal to slash the wages of 2,000 carhaul Teamsters at Performance Transportation Services by 17.5 percent.
Incredibly, these Teamsters will be denied the right to vote on the wage cut, which will be followed by a three-year wage freeze.
Instead, the International Union’s plan is to have the 3,500 carhaul Teamsters at Allied Holdings vote to cut the wages of their brothers and sisters at PTS. Even worse, each Allied Teamster will get a $2,000 bonus if they approve the PTS wage cut.
This deal will be officially unveiled by Carhaul Director Fred Zuckerman on Saturday, Dec. 1 at a meeting for Detroit Local 299, Flint Local 332, Pontiac Local 614 and Lansing Local 580 carhaulers.
If a group of union busters met to plan how to divide our members, weaken our union, and bust our national carhaul contract, they could not top this sellout.
Here’s how we got to this point.
Six months ago the investment company Yucaipa, headed by billionaire Ron Burkle, took control of Allied Holdings. Yucaipa already controlled PTS.
Hoffa and Zuckerman told Allied Teamsters that Burkle is “union friendly” and if they approved 17.5 percent wage concessions, he would look after their interests, invest in the company and build up Teamster jobs.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union and many experienced carhaulers warned the cuts would spread throughout the industry, with PTS at the head of the line. That’s exactly what is happening now.
The Allied concessions are poised to spread to 2,000 Teamster carhaulers at PTS through a scheme in which Allied will buy PTS for $67 million—and then slash the wages of PTS drivers.
The deal is contingent on Allied Teamsters voting to eliminate Section 7 of their concessions agreement with the company, which says that Allied cannot acquire work from other union carriers and then impose a wage cut on the affected Teamsters.
No PTS driver will be given a ballot by the union.
The concessionary deal with Allied is just six months old—and already Hoffa and his corporate pals are back at the table to open the door to more concessions.
When the Hoffa administration was pimping the deal at Allied six months ago, Teamsters were told that the company was penniless. Miraculously, Allied somehow found $67 million to buy PTS and another $7 million for $2,000 bonuses to buy Teamster members’ votes.
Now Hoffa and Co. are peddling more concessions, and business agents in Detroit, Flint, Jacksonville, and elsewhere have joined their chorus. Their pitch is that unless these cuts are imposed, the PTS work will all end up nonunion.
Allied and PTS control a big majority of union carhaul traffic. What happens when the other employers demand wage concessions?
Hoffa talks about Teamster Power. But his administration’s only plan for defending our master contracts is to gut the industry standards that these contracts exist to protect.
Carhaul may be the worst example, but the same concessionary trend is also at work at DHL, UPS and in the freight industry (UPS Freight).
Plenty of Teamsters know that surrendering our standards will not save our contracts.
In the original vote on the Allied concessions six months ago, carhaulers in Detroit, Flint, Jacksonville, Louisville, Nashville, Dayton, Janesville, Baltimore, St. Louis, Tampa and elsewhere voted to reject the concessions.
More isolated locals where TDUers and other active carhaulers did not reach people, voted Yes. In some cases, terminals that closed years ago recorded unanimous yes votes (Portland, closed five years, voted 12-0 yes.). As a result, the concessions were narrowly approved by 2 percent.
With a little more organization, the givebacks could have been defeated before they spread throughout the industry.
We need to build a strong national network of Teamsters who want to defend our contracts—and take coordinated action to defend our industry standards.
That’s where Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) stands. If you agree, get involved today. The contract you save may just be your own.
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