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From Home Furnishing Business
XPO Workers Vote to Oust Teamsters at First Contract Location
June 28,
2023 by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry 
Workers at the first XPO location where the Teamsters successfully negotiated a contract with the LTL carrier have voted to decertify the union.
Workers in Hialeah, Florida, near Miami, reached agreement on a contract with XPO almost two years ago, the first time that a Teamsters local had successfully negotiated a contract with the LTL carrier.
The union had long argued that XPO delayed and dragged out talks in locations where the rank and file had voted to be represented by the Teamsters.
“We have been notified by the National Labor Relations Board that employees at our service center in Miami have voted to remove the Teamsters union as their collective bargaining representative,” an XPO spokeswoman told FreightWaves in an email.
“This decertification election, which was held on June 21, was requested by local employees, who now join the vast majority of XPO team members who’ve chosen to remain independent.”
Signing the contract at Hialeah two years ago was quickly followed by a contract agreement with XPO at a facility in Trenton, New Jersey, where the Teamsters had voted to be represented by the union.
The back-to-back contract signings were celebrated by the labor movement that its long effort to unionize XPO, or at least portions of it, were coming to fruition.
Now one of those two locations has voted to oust the Teamsters.
The named respondent on the petition to decertify Teamsters Local 769 at Hialeah was Martin Garcia. He was aided in his efforts by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which also assisted in successful decertification votes at XPO facilities in Cinnaminson, New Jersey, Los Angeles and Albany, New York, where the Teamsters had won a close election at the end of 2021. However, none of those three facilities had negotiated a contract, unlike Hialeah.
“Teamsters officials didn’t listen to us and didn’t represent our interests in the workplace,” Garcia said in a statement released by the foundation. “My coworkers and I decided that the best way forward was to vote them out, and we’re glad we could get legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation in exercising our rights.”
A spokeswoman for the Teamsters forwarded a request for comment to the local union, which had not responded to FreightWaves by publication time.
The NLRB page on the petition did not list the election results as of publication time. It says there were 70 workers who were eligible to vote in the decertification election.