(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Despite learning months ago that the Teamsters’ refusal to negotiate with management would plunge Yellow trucking into terminally dire straits, leftist labor union bosses on Monday tried to blame the company for its collapse and potential loss of 30,000 jobs, despite the union remaining entrenched in its contract demands until the bitter end.
“Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.
Rich with nearly a century-old history, but struggling financially for years under an outdated logistics network, Yellow informed Teamsters last June that the company would be financially tapped unless operational changes that the union reportedly had previously approved could be negotiated, according to industry outlet Freight Waves. The response from Teamsters SOB O’Brien, his self-proclaimed title, was summed up in a tweet that featured a tombstone bearing Yellow’s name.
If “Do Nothing Darren” continues he will single handily destroy a once honorable company … RESIGN NOW… Our members are done making bad investments….. pic.twitter.com/8db5HACLAy
— Sean M. O'Brien (@TeamsterSOB) June 24, 2023
“The bankruptcy boneyard is littered with freight companies that used to be household names but were then organized by the Teamsters,” tweeted one attorney commentator. “Here, the union knew a strike would kill Yellow, but it put its own interest ahead of the workers and sacrificed Yellow to leverage big $ UPS.”
Yellow management said that despite a labor contract negotiated in 2019, the union earlier this year demanded it be renegotiated if the company wanted to move forward with its operational changes. In response, the company said it was forced to file a $137-million lawsuit because the Teamsters had “breached their binding union contract with Yellow causing more than $137 million in damages by unjustifiably blocking, for over eight months, Yellow’s restructuring plan to modernize its business, which is necessary to compete against non-union carriers.”
The Teamsters called the lawsuit “frivolous” and, tombstone in hand, lobbed insults at Yellow management, while continuing to stonewall the company from moving forward.
The response to the company’s entreaties to negotiate left Yellow CEO Darren Hawkins dismayed, writing in the lawsuit, “In fact, for his own inexplicable reasons, political or otherwise — reasons that could not possibly be in the interests of Union members, let alone the country — Mr. O’Brien has made clear that he wants to bring about Yellow’s demise.”
Yellow management even begged the Biden administration for help in nudging the Teamsters to the negotiating table and “to apprise” the administration “of the imminent loss of tens of thousands of jobs, the significant anti-competitive effects on the American economy, and the devastating impact on the country’s supply chains Yellow’s demise will cause,” according to the lawsuit.
Even with taxpayers on the hook for a $700-million loan that Yellow was awarded in pandemic funds from a Trump-era misstep, and the potential for a collapse in the nation’s supply chain, the Biden regime opted to stay loyal to its labor union base and steer clear of intervening, with Yellow writing in its lawsuit that efforts to gain assistance from Biden were “all to no avail.”
As part of the lawsuit, a federal judge last week declined to grant an injunction sought by Yellow preventing Teamsters from striking over the dispute.
But in a warning shot to union leaders “The court, recognizing a strike would likely kill the company, resulting in the loss of 30,000 jobs, cautioned the Union –that while it won today’s battle, it could very well lose the war.”
