Carhaulers: Stop the Spread of Concessions

September 28, 2007: Teamster carhaulers are being hit with every trick in the corporate playbook. What's worse, the Hoffa administration is stuck like a deer in the headlights.

It's been five months since Allied Automotive Group imposed concessions. Now Allied Teamsters make 17.5 percent under the master contract scale. Hoffa and his carhaul director, Fred Zuckerman, went all out to push that deal on the members.

New Wage Cut

Now Zuckerman has agreed with Allied to further lower the wages of Allied's Teamster owner-operators who work for Allied in Flint, Birmingham, and elsewhere. This deal, which Zuckerman cut behind closed doors, changes the way the wage cut is calculated, taking money from Teamster pockets.

Prior to the concession vote Zuckerman promised what the terms of the wage cut would be—3 percent off the gross check. He can lie now about what he promised before the concession vote, but no one will believe him: it's on tape.

It amounts to an illegal mid-contract change: the members voted on one cut, but now get a worse one. Grievances have been filed. Maybe more than that is needed.

Allied Finds "New Work"

Allied management wants to get yet another sweetheart deal, on top of their concessions. Their own nonunion subsidiary, Axis, wants to move rental cars and auction (used) cars through Allied, but claim it is "new work" and get a half-rate back haul deal, under Article 22 of the contract. Half rate on top of the 17.5 percent cut really means 41.7 percent of full union scale.

Allied drivers have hauled this traffic for years—it is not new work. They have also posted bids for a separate owner-operator board based out of Detroit for this traffic. The concession agreement stated that Axis traffic would all be hauled under contract terms. Now it turns out they really meant to tear up the contract terms.

St. Louis Local 604 issued an excellent response to Allied. Other locals should join them and demand that the contract be enforced.

New Equipment?

The concession agreement with Allied states that the $35 million a year in concessions will be used to purchase "new automobile transport equipment." However, Allied has instead been buying used equipment, from Swift and others. It's definitely a good improvement over junk, but here again the concession agreement seems to have no enforcement.

Defend the Contract

Other carhaul employers want similar concessions to what Allied got.

Performance Transportation Services (PTS), which operates Leaseway, E&L Transport and Hadley, is already demanding concessions and threatening to close if they don't get them. Other than a letter from Zuckerman which was almost a carbon copy of his first letter to Allied about concessions, the union has been quiet.

Since Ron Burkle also owns PTS, will its business start to move over to Allied?

Where is the Plan?

Teamster carhaulers are under attack by corporations that are themselves hurt by the downturn in auto industry. And our International Union has no plan whatsoever. No organizing program, no program to unite the members for the upcoming contract, no plan to avoid the downward wage slide that the Allied deal set in motion.

Many carhaulers are licking their wounds. That's understandable, but won't do the job of taking back our union and protecting our jobs and contract.