November 2, 2009: YRC Worldwide Inc.’s bondholders are on track to own 95 percent of the company, which could mean the resignation of seven of YRC’s nine directors, if a debt-exchange offer planned to start this week is successful. The announcement appears as an “out-of-court restructuring and a positive for YRCW’s long-term viability at the expense of current shareholders,” Longbow Research analyst Lee Klaskow said in a Monday note. Click here to read more at...

The chairwoman of the National Mediation Board has sharply criticized the federal agency's proposal to change a decades-old election rule that would make it easier for airline and railway employees to unionize, exposing a sharp rift at the agency's three-person board. In a letter sent to more than a dozen Republican senators Monday, NMB Chairwoman Elizabeth Dougherty said the process by which the proposal was drafted by her two colleagues is "flawed," and she questioned...

October 30, 2009: After years of sell-out contracts and benefit cuts, members of New York Local 814 voted by 73% to elect Jason Ide and the New Directions Slate. New Directions told members that “it’s time to get back to negotiating strong contracts and enforcing them.," and the overwhelming vote showed that the commercial movers of Local 814 agreed. Jason Ide, the president-elect, works at Sotheby’s art auction house, where he was instrumental in leading...

October 30, 2009: Just days after hundreds of Local 848 members came to the union hall to call for Jim Santangelo to resign, he was driven out of office. On Oct. 29, Santangelo resigned as the secretary treasurer of Local 848, the president of Southern California Joint Council 42, and International Vice President. Santangelo’s fate was sealed on Oct. 25, when nearly 500 members attended a meeting called to explain the $500,000 settlement of a...

October 30, 2009: The decisions from the October meeting of the National Grievance panel in San Diego are now available online. This was the final national panel for 2009 and the results for UPS Teamsters on the critical issues of excessive overtime and full-time combo job elimination were grim. Seventeen locals brought cases to the panel charging UPS with eliminating full-time combo jobs and refusing to put those jobs up for bid in violation of...

October 22, 2009: The states of New York, New Jersey and Montana intend to sue FedEx Ground Package System Inc. (FedEx) over its policy of classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, the attorneys general of the three states said Oct. 20. “Our offices have examined the work done by FedEx drivers and have concluded that these workers are in fact employees of FedEx and are not simply independent contractors,” according to the letter...

October 22, 2009: UPS announced after-tax profits of $549 million for the third quarter of 2009 (July-Sept), up from $445 million in the second quarter. It’s no surprise that in this economy, UPS’s profits are down from last year. UPS made $970 million in the second quarter of 2008. But UPS is still making big money—and still beating the competition. In a terrible economy, UPS has hauled in $1.4 billion in after-tax profits since the...

October 21, 2009: Nobody wants to admit it, but the next casualty of the Wall Street meltdown will probably be your golden years. For years corporations have been trying to choke the life out of traditional pensions, working hard to get out from under the risk—and the cost—of providing for their retirees. Between last year’s credit crunch and changes to federal pension laws, they may get their wish. Nearly $4 trillion worth of retirement savings...

October 16, 2009: The president of a national locomotive engineers union based in Cleveland has been placed on leave after being arrested on federal charges that he accepted $20,000 in bribes from a lawyer who wanted to keep representing injured members. Edward Rodzwicz, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which has about 55,000 members, has been on leave since Thursday, according to the union's Web site. Union spokesman John Bentley declined to...

October 16, 2009: Tens of thousands of Puerto Rican public workers protesting layoffs shut down the center of the capital San Juan on Thursday in a one-day strike that closed many government offices, businesses and schools. Labor unions in the U.S. Caribbean island territory called the 24-hour stoppage to protest the firing of thousands of workers by the government, which is trying to shrink a $3.2 billion budget deficit. Click here to read more at...