The Teamsters have been pushed out from their representation of employees at Dependable Highway Express, an LTL and truckload carrier based in Southern California that’s been in business since 1950.
Rank-and-file workers at Dependable never had an opportunity to vote on rejecting the representation. Instead, employee John Cwiek filed a union decertification petition last month with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a vote that would end the Teamsters’ representation. The number of workers in the union, Teamsters Local 63, was not immediately available.
But before the NLRB could rule on the decertification request, the Teamsters filed a Disclaimer of Interest with the agency, effectively giving up any opportunity to fight the effort and ending the representation.
Like many who have led decertification efforts aimed at the Teamsters and other unions, Cwiek had the backing of the National Right to Work Foundation, which has supported other decertification efforts that have sometimes resulted in Teamsters decertification.
The decertification vote at Dependable Express is just one of several union representation votes in the past six weeks that in some cases resulted in workers choosing to be represented by a union and in others rejecting representation. The Teamsters won one of those elections and lost another, according to NLRB reports of unionization elections:
- A small group of drivers at LTL carrier Hot Line Freight Systems’ facility in Milwaukee voted 5-0 on March 21 to be represented by the Teamsters.
- The Teamsters lost an election at agricultural processor Cargill in Reserve, Louisiana, 56-38 on March 15. The voting unit was not described by the NLRB as drivers, but a wide range of workers who ranged from bin deck operators to electricians.
Other logistics-focused union representation elections have been mostly losses for organized labor. Per the NLRB, here are some recent election results:
- An Ohio company, Exel Inc., which does business as DHL Supply Chain, saw a group of workers overwhelmingly reject representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 75. There were 183 eligible workers for the March 28 vote; 113 voted against the union.
- A group of drivers working out of the BNSF terminal in Thayer, Missouri, unanimously voted against representation on March 27. The employer is RailCrew Express LLC. The union seeking to represent them was the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
What’s notable about the votes is how many representation elections deal with such a small number of workers. While the Exel vote had 183 eligible voters, the Teamsters win at Hot Line Freight Systems in Milwaukee had five.
A spokeswoman for the Teamsters declined comment on the Dependable Highway vote.
Although the size of the workforce represented by the Teamsters at Dependable was not immediately available, a statement released by the National Right to Work Foundation said the petition to the NLRB organized by Cwiek had signatures from about two-thirds of the employees. Signatures totaling 30% of the workforce are needed for the NLRB to declare a decertification vote.
The statement by the foundation recapped conflict between the union and Cwiek. “Teamsters union officials stirred tension in the workplace by threatening Cwiek, who in January sent letters to his coworkers containing publicly-available Department of Labor data on Teamsters bosses’ salaries,” the foundation said. “In retaliation for Cwiek sending the letters, a union official appeared at Cwiek’s workplace the next day, made accusations against him, and threatened that Cwiek wouldn’t be working at Dependable Highway Express by the next contract period.”
That letter that had the pay levels of some Teamsters officials said the current three-year contract at Dependable was set to expire May 31.
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