FDX FedEx Corp

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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