At the September 21 Multi-Region Change of Operations meeting in Chicago, Yellow Transportation’s VP of Labor Relations announced that the Yellow clerical Change of Operations was “withdrawn without prejudice” and that it would be “resubmitted before the end of the year.”

This was in response to a barrage of questions from Yellow’s Teamster clerical members at terminals across the country. They demanded more information from the company about the change, how it was calculated, and how their jobs would be protected from future layoffs. Teamsters from Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, and Kansas City led the way, and attended the hearing to make sure this was not a done deal. Earlier reports were that the IBT Freight Division supported the change, but rank and file members and stewards asked for clarifications. As a result, the company is reworking the change.

ABF Premium Service Change of Ops Approved

ABF got the green light in September to institute “premium service” bids throughout the Eastern, Southern and Central regions (NMFA Article 18). Their goal is to capture a bite of the lucrative one- and two-day express freight market. Some concerns were raised over details of how the new service will work. Local 728 in Atlanta won the right to have PSE freight staged in a designated area within the terminal. However, there was no agreement on how this freight would be marked so that members and stewards can monitor it to make sure the service is being used, and not abused. Presumably, there will be specific bar codes or labels that allow for daily or weekly reports. Hopefully the ABF change will actually create new work, as called for under the contract (Article 20, Section 4). That was how premium service was pitched at ratification meetings in 2003: to help grow the company and Teamster work.

Graveyard Shift for Road Drivers?

Men who alternate between daytime and nighttime shift work, rather than working a fixed schedule, have triple the normal rate of prostate cancer, according to a Japanese nationwide study, as reported in the Sept. 23 Science News. A variable shift schedule, such as some nurses work, had previously been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer and colon cancer in women. The new finding supports a longstanding expectation that disrupting the 24-hour biological rhythm can cause tumors in men, too.