Bill Hendershot and his wife live on his union pension and Social Security. Hendershot, a retired Consolidated Freightways long-distance truck driver, gets around now in a 12-year-old Toyota Corolla. The couple still pay a mortgage on their home in Canal Fulton.

And he’s among a huge group of union retirees nationwide who could see their monthly private pension payments cut as much as 60 percent under a national reform measure signed into law in December by President Barack Obama.

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Judge reserves decision on deal to end fed consent order.

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Terminal operators at ports along the U.S. West Coast will, for the second time in less than a week, suspend vessel loadings amid a labor dispute with dockworkers.

Vessel loadings and unloadings will be stopped Feb. 12 and again Feb. 14-16, the Pacific Maritime Association, a San Francisco-based group representing employers in the negotiations with longshoremen, said by e-mail Feb. 11. Association members cited “ongoing and costly” worker slowdowns in their decision to halt vessel traffic. Some yard, gate and rail operations will continue.

Click here to read more at Transport Topics.

Farmer Brothers, the iconic coffee company based on the border of Torrance and Los Angeles, likes to market a sweet story about how it came to be.

In 1912, Roy E. Farmer thought restaurants should be serving a better cup of coffee, so he started a bean delivery business in the back of his brother's bicycle shop. And from those humble beginnings, the business became a national success, with Farmer later handing the reins to his son.

Click here to read more at the Los Angeles Times.

Teamsters Canada Rail Conference has given Canadian Pacific Railway 72-hour strike notice, meaning 3,300 locomotive engineers, conductors and other train workers could walk off the job midnight on Saturday.

Union president Doug Finnson is in Montreal this week negotiating with CP, with the help of federal mediation, but says the union has not made headway on issues such as working conditions.

Click here to read more at CBC News.

This is the first in a series of six articles about the volatile financial misfortunes and turnaround of trucking company YRC Worldwide. See parts two, three, four, five and six.

If there were a Comeback Player of the Year award for corporate performance, YRC Worldwide might have taken home the trophy for 2014. Not that the $5 billion trucking company is now a superstar — far from it. Rather, such recognition would be testimony to how low YRC had sunk.

After years of finance jockeying that barely kept the company from tripping into bankruptcy, its footing is relatively secure now. A smorgasbord of entwined elements converged in the rescue: a new labor deal, a deft debt restructuring, an equity offering that allowed for debt paydown, an operational downsizing, the improving economy, and plain luck.

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Some multiemployer pension fund executives are trying to figure out whether to take advantage of a controversial new reform law that allows potential benefit cuts for participants and retirees. Others are hoping for further reforms to allow for alternative plan designs.

The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 — passed swiftly in December — allows deeply underfunded plans to take unprecedented steps to avoid insolvency but comes with strings attached. It also gives federal regulators some new tactics that could help save troubled multiemployer plans (Pensions & Investments, Dec. 22).

Click here to read more at Pensions & Investments.

This gives our union leverage; it's time to use it: "Driving a truck has been immune to two of the biggest trends affecting U.S. jobs: globalization and automation. A worker in China can't drive a truck in Ohio, and machines can't drive cars."

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The top negotiator for West Coast terminal operators and ocean carriers said the region’s docks are nearing “complete gridlock” and raised the prospect of a lockout in as few as five days unless a contract deal is reached.

Pacific Maritime Association President Jim McKenna told reporters productivity has declined 50% because of International Longshore & Warehouse Union slowdowns. As congestion builds, and several dozen ships can’t reach the docks to unload, the union is forcing management’s hand, he said.

The union’s response struck a different tone, saying a deal was “extremely close” after nearly nine months of talks.

PMA presented a new, “best offer” proposal Feb. 4, McKenna said, describing it as “a true goodwill gesture to get the West Coast ports going again.”

The five-year proposal includes 3% higher wages, 11% higher pension benefits and no givebacks. Wages now approach $150,000 annually, and pensions average $80,000 a year, he said.

“We’ve dropped almost all of our remaining issues to help get this settled — and the few issues that remain can be easily resolved,” ILWU President Robert McEllrath said in the statement. “Closing the ports at this point would be reckless and irresponsible.”

The union represents nearly 20,000 workers at 29 West Coast ports.

McKenna stressed that management preferred a settlement and didn’t want to lock out workers. His news conference was the first since talks began nearly nine months ago.

“We are at a critical time right now,” McKenna said during a conference call that lasted nearly an hour. “It can’t keep going on forever. We are trying to give enough notice and lead time for businesses to make the best decisions they can.”

The parties’ six-year contract expired July 1. The recently expired deal was reached without a lockout or strike. In 2002, President George W. Bush had to intervene to stop a 10-day lockout.

“A shutdown is a nuclear option that no one wants to take,” McKenna said. “We will keep talking. The last thing we want is to close this thing down. We are not doing anything rash.”

McEllrath noted that management previously has threatened to shut the ports during the final stage of talks in a reference to 2002. ILWU’s last strike affecting all West Coast ports was in 1971, the union said.

The union’s statement again blamed management for dock problems, which were made worse by the absence of chassis for truckers to move cargo off the docks.

McKenna blamed the union for the slowdowns, saying they weren’t allowing enough workers to report for jobs.

“A lot is at stake here,” McKenna said, noting that trade through West Coast ports accounts for 12% of the U.S. gross domestic product. “It is important for both parties involved and for the nation.”

Customers and industry trade groups ranging from U.S. beef farmers to toy importers have bombarded the parties for months with pleas to resolve their differences so that cargo flows normally again.

A federal mediator has participated in the talks for about one month.

Since May, the parties have acknowledged agreement on two issues – health-care costs and chassis-handling practices. Health-care costs matter because union members could face higher taxes in 2018 under the Affordable Care act.

Chassis are an issue because leasing companies and others have acquired chassis that ocean carriers used to provide. That move injected a new element into chassis supply, since the owners of the equipment now aren’t directly involved in contract talks.

Trucking giant YRC Worldwide Inc. on Thursday reported a $6.2 million profit in the final months of 2014 as its national freight business turned in stronger operating results.

The fourth-quarter profit compared with a $400,000 profit in the same quarter a year earlier.

Click here to read more at The Kansas City Star.