Overnite to Appeal Order On Bargaining From NLRB

The Teamsters union won a round in its ongoing battle with Overnite Transportation when the National Labor Relations Board told the company it had to bargain with the union at four of its terminals.

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No sooner had the ink dried on the Nov. 10 decision than Overnite announced it would file an appeal in federal court.

The NLRB opinion affirms the April 1998 ruling of Administrative Law Judge Benjamin Schlesinger, who found the less-than-truckload carrier had committed numerous unfair labor practices as described in the National Labor Relations Act. Among them:

• Raising wages and increasing benefits for some employees to discourage them from choosing the Teamsters as their bargaining agent, while withholding those increases from workers who had selected the union to represent them.
• Telling employees the business would close and employees would lose their jobs if they voted in the Teamsters.
• Threatening employees with the loss of their pensions.
• Telling workers that working conditions would be more onerous and discipline more strict if the union came in.

A three-judge panel of the NLRB — comprised of Chairman John C. Truesdale and members Wilma B. Liebman and Peter J. Hurtgen — ordered Overnite to bargain with the Teamsters at terminals in Norfolk, Va.; Bridgeton, Mo.; Louisville, Ky.; and North Atlanta, Ga., even though the union had lost elections at those facilities. The ruling also ordered Overnite to give employees back pay at 14 Teamsters-represented service centers where pay increases were withheld from drivers and dock workers from 1996 to 1998.

For the full story, see the Nov. 22 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.