How much momentum do the Teamsters have right now?

foreign [Music] and welcome into the round table bill Priestly here with you and the teamsters have scored some major wins over the course of the past few weeks or so obviously getting a massive new contract there with ups and also Towing the strong line against yellow and eventually getting uh probably what they wanted in the long term out of it but at the same time maybe losing a little bit in terms of overall morale obviously when losing so many jobs in that particular sector so how much momentum does the teamsters have right now joining us to talk about is our Washington Duo Lauren Smith the president of skyline risk policy group at Manassas Virginia also Randy mullet senior advisor at image innovate in Washington D.C gentlemen again thanks so much for joining us Lauren let me start with you how much momentum right now do the teamsters have after again scoring a deal which reportedly has long-haul truck drivers getting 170 thousand dollars a year for their work and for sure and I think you you know you you contextualized what happened with yellow and the the bankruptcy there you know the teamsters are definitely trying to establish themselves as a strong Power Player fit for the current environment uh in in line with what you know the the workers want uh from management uh and so I think that you know right now I mean UPS dodged the long-term damage that a strike would have caused uh but I think you know the teamsters may have avoided a little bit of a bullet as well in the sense that you know you you want to be seen as a as a tough player whose you know drives a hard bargain and can't be trifled with but at the same time you also don't want to be seen as a as a mad dog out there that people don't want to do business with and not just management but also workers and I think potentially shutting down UPS would have had you know real downside for the teamsters uh but they did get that deal out of out of UPS some very important concessions you mentioned the wages also you know air conditioning and all trucks and um you know I so I I think overall that's uh it shakes out pretty positively Randy your impression of what the teamsters have right now going for them after again this huge deal from UPS yeah well I I agree with Laura and I think that they played it very very well uh I don't think they wanted yellow to go out of business and may have overplayed their hand there a bit but but they're in a position of strength I think they learned from the longshoremen that you don't want to let you don't want to let the wave pass you by and be on the bottom end of things when you're trying to negotiate your wage contract so they played it about right from a timing point of view it's going to put pressure on UPS uh for the next five years but it's going to put a lot of pressure on um everybody else is in the shipping business to now kind of keep up with that because that's who they're going to compete with for their employees that's exactly where I was going to go here next in terms of the effect of the contract and things moving forward obviously there's two aspects of this one as you mentioned the effect of larger salaries and some other companies looking or at least their employees looking at hey uh why can't we get some kind of a similar deal and then the other of course side effect is perhaps larger companies like Amazon employees like maybe even FedEx employees possibly looking at you unionizing there as well looking forward now again the big deal presents a very large kind of you know Target on its back from employees at various other institutions Lauren how attractive does that make the teamsters to other areas that are not unionized right now is that even an option or is that something that's worth that's worth thinking about uh it is an option and with you know private sector unionization you know dropped precipitously uh from the 50s 60s and 70s when it was a very substantial share of the private sector Workforce uh as much as uh 30 percent uh down to about six percent today and so that's the context of which the teamsters are looking to rebound and really reclaim a share of of the workforce uh in in their Industries and especially with the uh the Biden Administration being very favorable to the unions they think that this was a real historical moment for them to try to make some gains here uh I mean you saw the the uh the teamsters protesting in San Francisco against the decision just in the last couple days uh to allow Robo taxis to operate in San Francisco and the teamsters are out there you know the the the um Sean O'Neill the president of the teamsters campaigned on stopping uh driverless cars and so Teamsters really are trying to put themselves in the in the Forefront of sort of the modern the economy where there will be jobs for workers Randy same question to you uh the how how good of an option right now do the teamsters look to or unionization I should say in general to uh employees of larger corporations and uh you know like Lauren mentioned obviously uh you know in in terms of areas that could go autonomous or could go and I'm not much of an enemy of that will the teamsters be now the teachers will be a big enemy of autonomy because they think it threatens a lot of jobs um but I think that's that's out in the future a little bit they're they're gonna be continuing to to be vocal against it but I don't think the threat becomes real for for a few years they're just trying to put their markers down right now I think that um as far as what does this mean for overall unionization and those sorts of things I I think that it it's a TBD you know the teamsters just lost five percent of their membership with yellow going out right um so they've got a big hole to recoup from uh just to get back up to their current membership and remember what drives them isn't the workers wages it's what goes into the dues managing the Health and Welfare funds all those sorts of things so it's really a numbers game for them I I think that there's going to be a lot of employees for a lot of companies that are potentially be able to unionize saying gee I'd love to have those wages uh this puts an awful lot of pressure onto management teams but it does put the ball back in their court because while I think a lot of people want the wages there aren't a lot of people that want the drama to go along with it particularly younger people are not big joiners of organizations particularly those that they look at as institutional they just have a general distrust of that sort of thing yeah and you can definitely see that there as well Lauren looking forward here in terms of from a corporate perspective if you're one of these larger companies that have a large amount of employees that again see this maybe in the transportation industry what are you feeling about it are you nervous about it because it seems like after this big deal that the teamsters got UPS seems more like a formidable tiger in the jungle than something that maybe not be as formidable yeah I think that's that's the question is did they did have the team sort of struck the right tone in terms of a a tough defender of you know worker benefits um again with the the yellow bankruptcy I mean yellow going out of business and that that I think you know puts a little bit of a of a chill on that potentially that's that's the risk right that some people will see it as is uh wow these guys uh maybe they went too far here on this one well there was that there was also the also also the argument there in the course of that proceeding of course that yellow made the argument that okay on that Friday before we found out the event the eventual news that we all did was coming uh that they filed for that the teamsters went in and tried to get 30 more days uh from Central States and they got it and under the Press position that you could get a deal done so that in that way that looks that makes them look compassionate in some degree but again probably just avoiding the inevitable for a certain amount of time bye I mean pick your analogy but um the um the uh the uh the the uh the the company's gone now and um the you know the the teamsters I think uh have a share of blame I think obviously the the company itself um you know has to be you know it Bears some share of the blame oh sure uh you had you had jobs for Union truckers and now you don't uh and so but with UPS they were able to preserve that and so I think that you have that you know sort of a mixed result there uh again the teamster is clearly taking a very aggressive tone toward uh company negotiations and I think you know Randy makes a good point about young young drivers like are they going to see that and say yeah that's the sort of you know tough you know tough Advocate we want um and I think it just I think it just remains to be seen I don't think it's clear I mean again Teamsters have definitely set their brand as uh being aggressive uh in in this decade um uh but um you know it's not clear whether or not that's going to be enough to release spark uh you know Union drives and places like Amazon which is which is the Strategic goal for the teamsters yeah looking at go ahead uh Randy looking at that you know if you're if you're an Amazon or a FedEx or again a large Transportation provider uh are you worried about what what the teamsters could possibly bring to the to the table um if unionization comes up I think there's always a worry among management people you know I spent a lot of years at Conway and we were non-union and we spent an awful lot of time trying to make sure that we did not set ourselves up to be a good Target for the the teamsters and and by that I mean treating people right paying them fairly having good benefits and and so just not making it seem like the teamsters or any organization effort could could make a big difference for them so that's the onus that's on management right now you know there's different structures too the way these folks have set up Amazon um all their warehouse people are employees they're certainly organized it could be organized but um with with them and with FedEx Ground in particular an awful lot of those are independent contractors who are running their own businesses and there's a difference between people that are actually running their own businesses and what the union and Advocates like to refer to as kind of sham independent contractors so I think the folks that are running these independent contractors to to avoid unionization they're gonna they're gonna find that they've got trouble because nlrb is going to come after them and they'll be right for those sorts of things the people that really want to run their own businesses and feel like they are independent contractors in control of their own destiny they're not going to worry about going Union but they are going to be able to Parlay this into higher wages or bigger percentages for themselves learn real quick uh obviously Big Win here again for for the teamsters against GPS do you expect them to act quickly off of this or kind of lay back and pick out their next targets I think they're probably going to charge right back into it I mean as soon as they understand you know that there may be you know they may take the next month to sort of pick through the the wreckage of yellow and the aftermath of ups but I think absolutely this is this is a Full Speed Ahead situation uh to to look for those opportunities in places like Amazon and yeah and the FedEx of course to see what they can do Brady are there cattle in the prowl yes for sure and I their their unionization efforts or organization efforts are very different than the negotiating efforts so I don't think that the organization efforts ever stopped it'll allow management of the teamsters to divert their time back to organization away from these negotiations all right well it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the course the next weeks months and years as well gentlemen thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you next time all right we'll take a short break and come back with the wrap-up of this edition of Fairways now after this

Channel: FreightWaves

Views: 249

Keywords:

Id: xbGlyw1NSq0

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023