|
Teamsters strike UP unit
|
 |
October 25, 1999: 5:12 p.m. ET
Overnite Transportation labor action part of 5-year effort to organize company
By Staff Writer Chris Isidore
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Officials at Overnite Transportation Co. claimed Monday they are seeing little or no effect from picketing by members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has been trying to organize the Union Pacific Corp. subsidiary for five years.
"The impact has been minimal at this time," said Ira Rosenfeld, spokesman for the Richmond, Va., company. "The vast majority of the people on the picket lines do not work for Overnite Transportation. Most employees, even at terminals where they've won elections, are reporting to work."
But the union claimed that the pickets and their threat to follow Overnite trucks to the customers' loading docks will have the desired impact of hurting the company enough to drive it to an agreement with the union.
"They've already lost the strike, they just don't know it yet," said union spokesman David Cameron. "Customers are going to say, 'We don't want pickets in front of our buildings.' By the end of the week, it won't matter how many people they have reporting to work, they won't have the freight to handle."
Overnite consolidates pallet-sized shipments of freight from numerous customers through a series of 166 terminals nationwide, a labor-intensive sector of trucking known as less-than-truckload, or LTL. It is the second-largest non-union carrier in the sector after Con-Way Transportation Services, and the ninth-largest carrier in the nation overall.
In the third quarter, Overnite made $8 million on revenue of $277 million, a drop from the $12 million it made on revenue of $257 million a year earlier. The company said results were hurt by $6 million it spent preparing for a possible Teamsters strike, which has been threatened since August.
The results represent only a small fraction of the $837 million on revenue of $8.4 billion that Union Pacific (UNP) made in the quarter, exceeding analysts expectations for the period.
Besides trying to negotiate the first contract on behalf of employees the union represents, the Teamsters want the company to drop challenges to other elections it has won, and give iron-clad assurance to stop what the union charges are unfair labor practices at other terminals where votes are being held. The union is saying this is a strike over unfair labor practice, rather than over contract negotiations, which gives workers greater legal protection against permanent replacement workers.
Cameron claimed that UP has scrapped its plans to spin off Overnite through an initial public sale of stock and instead is negotiating to sell it directly to a "union-friendly" buyer.
He said the Teamsters have been involved in informal talks with a potential buyer, which is why it delayed the action that has been threatened since August. But he says the workers in Memphis went out on strike on their own Sunday morning, prompting the international to lend its support to the effort.
Rosenfeld said there is no truth whatsoever to Cameron's sale scenario. He said the company is still planning to have an IPO when market conditions improve, and that while there have been interested buyers talking to the company, there have been no such negotiations.
The only unionized carrier in a strong enough financial position to easily buy Overnite is United Parcel Service, the parcel delivery giant.
There have been numerous rumors in recent years of UPS interest in Overnite. UPS has been involved in plans for its own IPO for several months -- it is now set to take place in early November - and has said that a key reason for an offering is to be able to use its stock rather than just cash to buy other companies.
But the company's acquisition focus is expected to be overseas purchases rather than domestic companies. And UPS has been able to capture hundreds of millions of dollars in the LTL sector without actually purchasing a carrier in it.
UP's stock was down 7/16 to 51-7/16 in Monday morning trading. Other trucking stocks are also showing minimal changes Monday, with a few unionized carriers flat or off slightly while some of the non-union competitors, such as American Freightways Corp. (AFWY) or Old Dominion Freight Lines Inc. (ODFL), showing modest gains.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
