Small unionization effort at Werner-owned facilities in New Jersey falls short

A small but significant unionization effort by some Werner Enterprises workers has come to an end.

The United Food & Commercial Workers union is not challenging a decertification effort by a group of employees at three facilities in New Jersey – Cinnaminson, Hamilton and Piscataway – that are part of ECM, a Werner (NASDAQ: WERN) subsidiary, according to Mike Thompson, who led the unionization drive for UFCW’s Local 152.

In a decertification vote, workers are asked if they wish to decertify a union, regardless of whether it had been first approved a year earlier or 25 years earlier. In the case of ECM, approval had come only a year ago.

The number of workers spread among the three locations was tiny compared to the size of the employment rolls at Werner: about 16 workers spread out among those three New Jersey facilities, compared to a payroll of just under 14,000.

In its 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year, Werner said the unionization efforts involved fewer than 30 employees.

The number of ECM drivers who were part of the three New Jersey facilities are from a fleet of 500 drivers at ECM, according to Werner.

Werner acquired regional carrier ECM in 2021. Truckload carriers are notably difficult to organize for a variety of reasons, with their diffuse footprint – fewer terminals, employees out on the road on trips that go hundreds of miles – a key reason.

But ECM had terminals, and their workers last year in the three New Jersey facilities voted to organize with the UFCW, a highly unusual step within a truckload carrier. (It was also notable in that the UFCW typically has only a minor role in organizing transportation workers.)

CEO pays a visit

The battle was considered important enough at Werner that CEO Derek Leathers visited with the ECM workers before the vote. There are no other unionized workers within Werner.

Workers approved representation by the UFCW by a vote of 17-8. The union was certified on Sept. 1, 2023.

But a little more than a year later, a group of workers at ECM – not Werner itself – petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to decertify the union.

Things moved quickly after that. The petition was submitted to the NLRB on Sept. 11. The NLRB order handed down Wednesday – one week later – reported that the union had filed a “disclaimer of interest” in the attempt by the group of workers to decertify the UFCW.

“No evidence has been presented that the Union is acting inconsistently with its disclaimer,” the NLRB decision from Wednesday said. “Accordingly, inasmuch as it appears that no question concerning representation exists among employees in such unit,” the union is decertified, the NLRB said.

Talks had been moving along

It comes just a little more than two months after Thompson had told FreightWaves that the negotiations with Werner over establishing an initial contract “could always go a little faster, but there has been fairly decent movement on both sides and we’re close to completing the non-economic part of the [collective bargaining agreement]. I’ve been in worse negotiations. Time will tell.”

But with the year mark having passed, an effort to decertify could begin, Thompson said.

“I would say the company did a very good job to the best of their ability of dragging the process out long enough to get to that year mark, which allows the workers the right to have a file petition to change [employee] minds,” Thompson told FreightWaves. He conceded that “we didn’t get the workers what they wanted in the time frame they wanted.”

Company says it acted in good faith

In response to a query from FreightWaves, a Werner spokeswoman defended Werner’s actions during the negotiations.

“In the year since the election, we have cooperated and negotiated with the Union in good faith. We provided all information requested from us in a timely manner, accommodated the dates proposed by the Union for negotiations and were willing to make concessions when and where appropriate to serve the best interests of our professional drivers,” the company said.

As far as the union’s decision not to contest the decertification petition and thereby forgo a vote, Thompson said some of the workers at ECM “were worried about being identified by their vote status,” though the ballot is secret. “So at the end of the day, we were like, why put guys through this if this is how they feel?”

Thompson said the workers had not yet begun paying dues into the UFCW, because no contract had been agreed upon.

He also said he had worked on organizing other ECM terminals, “but it never went anywhere.”

In its statement to FreightWaves, Werner said the number of drivers who would have been under a union had declined to fewer than 26 due to attrition and “subsequent market conditions.” The drivers who led the decertification drive were part of the same group of drivers who voted in the union last year.

And while how they voted last year is not known, and the “no” side initially lost, the union presumably knew it was not going to win another election, which may have been a factor in its not challenging the decertification effort.

Going forward, Werner, in its statement, said it had “taken steps to evolve the driver experience at ECM.”

That includes an unspecified “adjustment” of “leadership among the transportation/operations team to ensure we are not only servicing our customers safely but also making sure our professional drivers have the right support, tools and information to be successful.”