Kevin Short The Huffington Post 27, 2014 View the original piece CEO pay has skyrocketed over the last few decades, and corporate leaders are usually tight-lipped on the subject. But we were offered a rare moment of candor last month from David Dillon, chairman and former CEO of the grocery chain Kroger, who called his own eight-figure paycheck "ludicrous" during an Aspen Ideas Festival panel. Click here to read more at The Huffington Post.

Kari Lydersen In These Times 19, 2014 View the original piece Every morning, workers at Golan’s Moving & Storage in the Chicago suburb of Skokie are ordered to arrive at work by 6 a.m. to prepare trucks for the day. If they are late, they can be suspended for several days or otherwise disciplined. Yet they typically don’t even start getting paid until about 8 a.m.—when they board a truck bound for their assignment. This...

Mamta Badkar and Rob Wile Business Insider 19, 2014 View the original piece Higher driving costs and falling pay have created a truck-driver shortage that's likely to worsen in the coming years. The American Trucking Associations (ATA) estimates the U.S. is short 30,000 truck drivers — a number expected to surge to 239,000 by 2022. In July 2013, new federal hours-of-service rules went into effect.  The key provision was a limit to the use of...

Alexandra Bradbury Labor Notes 12, 2014 View the original piece “There’s a real rank-and-file rebellion going on right now,” says Jen Wallis, a Seattle switchman-conductor for Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway. “People who’ve never been involved in the union, never went to a union meeting, they are showing up and they’re joining Railroad Workers United in droves. “People are saying, ‘We have to take action now to stop it. We can’t let our union...

Truckers Justice Center Truckers Justice Center 13, 2014 View the original piece In a decision issued August 11, 2014, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) has found that truck owner Terry Unrein fired truck driver Rebecca Barnhard for refusing to drive a truck with a defective steer tire and for complaining that a headlight on the truck operated only intermittently. Unrein owned and operated five trucks, and transported goods under contract with Gulick Trucking....

Neil Irwin New York Times 11, 2014 View the original piece Swift Transportation’s 20,000 workers haul goods in almost 14,000 big-rig trucks that travel the interstates and back roads of the United States every day. The company’s performance is closely tied to the nation’s economy, which has been looking increasingly sunny lately. So it was surprising last month when Swift’s stock plummeted nearly 18 percent in a single day. The tumble came for an odd...

Jenny Brown Labor Notes 04, 2014 View the original piece “When you get up, the kids are sleeping. When you get home, the kids are sleeping.” That’s how Rich Pawlikowski, a UPS package car driver in Queens, New York, described his lengthening workday. “Only six to eight years ago, the summer months were light. [Now] they send us out with 10, 11, 12 hours of work,” he said. “It’s not healthy. You’ve got to get...

John Lovett Times Record July 31, 2014 View the original piece Fort Smith-based ArcBest Corp. reported a 14-percent increase in revenue for this year’s second quarter led by performances at its two largest operating companies, ABF Freight and Panther Premium Logistics. ArcBest’s second-quarter 2014 revenue was $658.6 million compared to revenue of $576.9 million in the second quarter of 2013, an increase of 14 percent. Second-quarter net income was $17.2 million compared to second-quarter 2013...

Justin Moyer The Washington Post July 30, 2014 View the original piece There might be something more interesting than a tennis ball in that FedEx package. File that illicit drug revenue under “miscellaneous.” That’s more or less the policy the shipping giant FedEx followed starting in the mid-aughts, according to a 15-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court in California on Thursday. According to prosecutors, the company knew the shipping services it provided to two...

Hadley Malcolm USA Today July 29, 2014 View the original piece After a holiday shipping fiasco that left thousands of customers without packages in time for Christmas last year, United Parcel Service will invest $175 million in peak operations for the rest of 2014, the company announced Tuesday as part of its second quarter earnings statement. UPS said it will increase operating expenses for "capacity and peak related projects," including for operations on Black Friday...