Some XPO Logistics Workers Vote to Unionize
October 13 2016 - 5:20PM
Dow Jones News
XPO Logistics Inc. warehouse workers and truck drivers in
Connecticut and Illinois have voted to join the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union said Thursday.
A majority of 127 warehouse workers in North Haven, Conn., voted
to become the first warehouse workers at XPO to form a union in the
U.S., the Teamsters said. A majority of 74 drivers in Aurora, Ill.,
voted to join, marking the first Teamsters victory at XPO since the
company acquired Con-way Inc. for $3 billion last year.
XPO, Greenwich, Conn., has 44,000 employees in the U.S.
"Workers are concerned about their future with the relatively
new ownership," said Ted Gotsch, Teamsters spokesman, adding that
the next step will be to negotiate for job security, better wages
and retirement benefits.
"The vast majority" of employees in the U.S. "value a direct
relationship with management, without the interference of a third
party," said Erin Kurtz, spokeswoman for XPO. The company will
investigate "the process leading to the elections in both
facilities to determine if they were lawful," she said.
The logistics industry is fast-expanding as companies are
looking to move goods more quickly through their supply chains, and
rely on warehouse workers and truck drivers to do so. But in part
because warehouse workers are often hired through staffing
agencies, and truck drivers are always on the move, the industry is
difficult to organize, experts say.
The Teamsters have had some success. A group of truck drivers at
the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach voted to join earlier this
year. Before that, they organized several locations in the freight
division of FedEx Corp. in 2014 and 2015. Also in 2014, before XPO
acquired Con-way, the union won victories at Con-way terminals in
Texas, California and Miami.
But the process following such votes can be drawn out over the
course of years. Meanwhile, the Teamsters are continuing organizing
efforts around the country, including in suburban Philadelphia.
The number of workers voting to organize is still too small a
portion of XPO's total workforce to be any indication that
employees may unionize on a national level, said Jack Atkins,
analyst at Stephens Inc. "It wasn't enough scale to drive full-on
unionization."
Still, "you could see wage pressure, that's a more likely
outcome than a broad-based unionization of the company," he
said.
XPO shares were down almost 4% late Thursday afternoon.
Write to Loretta Chao at loretta.chao@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 13, 2016 17:05 ET (21:05 GMT)
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