Another drayage company makes drivers employees

Driver cards on Teamster representation being counted today for STE.    Update: The Teamsters said Friday afternoon that 88 of 111 employee drivers at Shippers Transport Express signed union authorization cards.
   Another major drayage company in the Los Angeles/Long Beach area has reclassified its drivers as employees rather than independent contractors and they are expected to vote for Teamster representation.
   Shippers Transport Express (STE), an affiliate of SSA Marine, along with the Teamster Port Division and the group Justice for Port Truck Drivers sent out a media advisory on Thursday saying that union authorization cards will be reviewed and validated Friday morning at the Banning’s Landing Community Center in Wilmington.
   According to the advisory, “Effective January 1, 2015, Shippers converted from an independent contractor business model to an employee-based drayage business.” All drivers were notified of the change on November 24, 2014, and were invited to apply for employee jobs by December 8, 2014.
   STE’s decision to use employees instead of independent drivers follows a similar move by the Hub Group last year.
   Toll Global Forwarding also has employee drayage drivers represented by the Teamsters.
   It also follows a decision on September 30 last year by U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell that the “degree of control exercised by STE over the drivers demonstrates that it has retained all necessary control over the drivers’ work” and that the plaintiffs satisfied their burden of establishing an employment relationship with STE.
   Kevin Baddeley, general manager at STE, said the company has about 120 employees in Southern California. The company also has drivers in Oakland, Seattle, and Vancouver. STE only plans to make the switch to employee drivers in California.
   Barbara Maynard, a spokesman for Justice for Port Drivers said the election today only involves drivers in the Los Angeles/Long Beach area.
   According to the advisory, Shippers Transport and the Teamsters agreed on a neutral process for unionization, under which the employer agreed not to interfere in the employees’ decisions regarding unionization, and the Teamsters agreed not to disparage the company or disrupt the workplace through strikes, picketing, or other job actions.
   The advisory said Shippers Transport agreed to recognize Teamsters Local 848 as the drivers’ official bargaining agent upon verification by a neutral third party that a majority of the drivers have signed valid union authorization cards.
   Hub noted in its third quarter financial report filed with the SEC at then end of October that it had entered into settlements with drivers in California who claimed they had been misclassified.
   Hub said it believed its “California independent contractor truck drivers were properly classified as independent contractors at all times. Nevertheless, because lawsuits are expensive, time-consuming and could interrupt our business operations, we decided to make settlement offers to individual drivers” in two lawsuits and said 92 percent of drivers at that time had accepted settlement offers.
   Hub said in the third quarter of 2014, it recorded a charge of $10.3 million. “This charge includes $9.3 million for payments made to drivers who have accepted the settlement offer and $1.0 million of related legal, communication and implementation costs.”
   Hub also said a misclassification lawsuit was filed against it in September in the Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division).
   In November, drivers seeking to be recognized as employees struck a half dozen other drayage companies in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach: QTS, LACA Express, WinWin Logistics, Pac 9, TTSI and Green Fleet Systems. When those companies agreed to meet with the drivers, they took pickets down and resumed driving.
   Maynard said Thursday that talks with these other drayage companies “are ongoing and productive.”