Watch Now


YRC unionized workers approve contract; implementation held up

Unionized workers at three of less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier YRC Worldwide, Inc., (NASDAQ:YRCW) units voted to approve a five-year collective-bargaining agreement, it was disclosed late on Friday, May 3.

However, one of 27 supplemental agreements, the Joint Council 40 supplement, failed to pass. Because no new Teamster contracts can be implemented until all supplements and local riders to a master agreement are ratified, the Teamster-YRC contract will be held up until the matter with Joint Council 40 is resolved.

The contract was approved by 60 percent of eligible Teamsters, the union said on a conference call. Of 21,724 members who were eligible to vote, 17,005 members cast ballots for a 77.8 percent turnout, the Teamsters said. The contract covers workers at YRC Freight, YRC’s long-haul LTL unit, and at Holland and New Penn Motor Express, two of its three regional units. Workers at the third YRC regional unit, Reddaway, are governed by a separate contract.

Approval had been expected, even though many rank-and-file didn’t care much for the language in the contract. According to a source close to YRC workers, many were worried that the company’s future, along with their livelihoods, would be at risk if the contract were rejected. Ernie Soehl, head of the Teamsters’ freight division, had warned that the three units could go out of business by the end of May should the proposal be defeated. According to Soehl, YRC’s customers, who have been closely watching the process, would respond to a “no” vote by pulling freight from the three carriers quickly and en masse.

A tentative contract had been negotiated at the end of March, just days before the prior pact was set to expire. Both sides agreed to extend the contract’s expiration date to May 31 to give the rank-and-file time to review the language.

The contract, which will be retroactive to April 1, 2019, calls for a $4 per hour wage increase spread over five years, equal to an 18 percent hike increase over the contract’s life. YRC will increase its contribution to the workers’ health and welfare plan, and will return of one week’s paid vacation that had been conceded in 2010.

The agreement establishes a class of non-Commercial Driver License driver who would handle local cartage rather than having YRC contract out the work to a non-union vendor. It also protects the higher wage of a CDL driver performing non-CDL driver functions. The pact prohibits the use of autonomous vehicles or drones for transporting freight.

The agreement allows Holland to use purchased transportation, a first for the unit. However, it caps purchased transport use at 8 percent of Holland’s total annual miles driven. It also empowers union negotiators to unilaterally curb or eliminate the purchased transportation programs at Holland and YRC Freight, where it has been in effect on a limited scale for the past five years.

7 Comments

  1. Darrell Foster

    We have been thrown up under the bus the company is not fair to the teamster union and teamster Union not fair to worker that built this company.men’s have 20 to30+ have been over looked.

  2. Darrell Foster

    We have been thrown up on the bus the company is not fair to the union and Union not put there to the label

  3. Pissed Off Employee ?

    Bonuses Given on February 14, 2019 in company stocks right before the new contract vote. ??

    Darren Hawkins $ 1,536,510.96
    Stephanie Fisher $ 252,142.92
    James Fry $ 252,142.92
    Mark Boehmer $ 173.351.60
    Brianne Simoneau $ 179,654.60
    Justin Hall $ 258,445.92
    Jason Ringgenberg $ 255,298.24
    Mitch Lilly $ 189,105.28
    Scott Ware $ 315,180.56
    T. J. O’Connor $315,180.56
    Loren Stone $189,105.28
    Howard Moshier $ 208,021.92

    Only the Teamsters would allow this to happen right before the vote.

  4. Mark

    I knew it was fixed once my union steward told me it was a good contract. I didn’t even get anything in the mail to cast my vote. YRC had this in the bag from the get go. The health insurance is not even that good it’s either choose a crappy HMO plan or an expensive PPO plan with a huge deductible. They treat their line haul drivers like crap by having them slip seat and driving six days a week with one day off. You drive a falling apart tandem axle with 2,000,000 miles on it while the yard crews / city drivers are out with brand new Volvo single axles. Oh All the while city drivers get weekends / holidays off paid. Plus they get bid trucks. Nothing in the contract to stop this sweat shop labor for linehaul. Don’t even get me started on the extra board call times…which the company never follows.

  5. Don’t believe nothing they say

    Well we will be screwed for 5 more years. It’s a shame it takes 15 years to get to the money we had 15 yrs ago. The first part of the lie was there is no more money by the 4 paragraph they said they would use a different language when it comes to bonus. If there is no more money Ernie just were are u or them going to get the money to pay bonuses. Lies lies lies , I believe if we had paper ballots we would have a different out come.

  6. Pissed Off Employee ?

    15 % Pay Cut
    2 years with NO pay increase
    No pension after 2025. ( Out Of Money )
    I been supporting a Multi Billion Dollar company for the pass 10 years with more than $100,000 dollars of my money.
    While YRC is out of control giving out multi million dollar bonuses and on a crazy shopping spree, buying everything new. I Thought the reason for the 15 % Pay Cut was to pay off the debt ?

Comments are closed.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.