With the November election placing Barack Obama in the Oval Office and increasing the Democratic majority in Congress, we are virtually guaranteed that the Employee Free Choice Act will soon become law.
The Employee Free Choice Act will require that if a majority of a company’s employees sign authorization cards, the company must accept the union. Current law provides that secret ballots first be held to determine if a majority of employees want to join the union.
Secret ballots frequently result in ‘wins’ for the companies as individual employees are free to vote their true conscience, without fear of peer scrutiny or public scorn. General consensus is that loss of the secret ballot will allow unions to spread rapidly throughout trucking and other key industries.
There are two strategies truckers need to develop in response to the threat of Teamster Unionization: Prevention and Preparation.
Prevention deals with the actions you take today to improve the odds that your drivers will not want to sign authorization cards. Preparation deals with identifying and protecting critical aspects of your operations from unproductive work rules that may come as a result of unionization. A brief overview of each strategy follows.
Prevention
The good news for many trucking companies is that prevention strategies overlap ‘driver friendly’ retention strategies so some of the required actions may already be in place. A sound Prevention Strategy focuses on countering the promises Teamsters typically make during the recruiting campaign. A few examples include:
Teamsters promise higher wages:
o Maintain competitive wages, medical benefits, 401K contributions and bonuses.
o Communicate often to your employees on just how competitive your compensation is.
Teamsters promise to protect their members:
o Have published policies and enforce them fairly amongst all employees.
o Provide a forum for employee complaints to be discussed and acted upon where necessary.
o Make sure disciplinary action and discharges are investigated and administered fairly.
o Establish performance goals for employees that are achievable but consistent and hold everyone to the same standards.
Teamsters promise to favor and protect seniority:
o Develop a system where senior drivers receive additional benefits while not jeopardizing work or earning opportunities for junior drivers. One of the disadvantages of unions is that junior drivers are often forced into frequent layoffs and consistently receive the worst loads and equipment.
o Offer promotional opportunities by seniority where possible such as Driver Trainers, Driver Mentors or Dispatchers.
Preparation
Regardless of how comprehensive your Prevention Strategy is, you need to prepare for the possibility that your drivers may someday vote in a union. A Preparation Strategy is designed to identify all the areas of your operations that need protecting in the event of unionization. Examples include:
Work Rules – Teamsters will want to define how loads are dispatched, how equipment is assigned, etc…
o Look at current procedures for assigning work and equipment to identify those that must be protected. For example, new trucks every year should go on two-shift operations to minimize after hour breakdowns and allow for managing lease constraints on odometer miles. Therefore new trucks can only be assigned by seniority if senior drivers bid those runs.
o Identify work rule changes that could improve productivity and make them now; before they have to be negotiated.
My Work – Teamsters will attempt to claim all work assigned to the company as theirs.
o Establish a separate (new corporate identify) brokerage company without assigned driver employees and build a history of freight being tendered directly to them and then brokered out to your company and others.
o Keep records of load exchanges with other companies (both union and non) to benchmark and protect how much work is exchanged.
Eligible Members – Teamsters will want to include all your employees into their bargaining units; including dispatchers.
o Emphasize and increase the ‘supervisory content’ of your office staff, especially in the areas of discipline and directing their work to increase the likelihood that they will not be eligible for unionization.
o Explore outsourcing dock jobs and clerical work currently being performed by low wage employees or part timers.
o Reexamine your owner-operator strategy. Owner-Operators are non-employees and in theory, not subject to unionization.
Protected Employees – Teamsters will fight all disciplinary and discharge actions grieved by their members.
o Once unionized, it will be hard to get rid of unproductive or unsafe drivers. Do it now. Replace lazy and unsafe drivers.
o Work on a progressive discipline schedule for your company and implement it before unionization.
-- Joe White -- TruckExec Pubisher/CEO CostDown Consulting
When developing your Prevention and Preparation Strategies, there is one simple fact you need to keep in mind. Unions exist because companies treated their employees unfairly and paid them poorly. When developing your strategies, make sure you keep your drivers interests in mind.
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