Posts tagged bankrupt
Op-ed: A GOP-Teamsters Alliance Makes No Sense
August 24, 2025 // Republicans getting on board with these ideas aren’t just awkward—they’re incoherent. There’s little evidence that endorsements from Teamsters executives move the needle in general elections, for parties or for candidates. Can Republicans credibly argue that filling the Teamsters’ coffers (and campaign-donation kitty) will result in the sort of political realignment some hope for, or even a lasting political windfall? The only guaranteed outcome is more power for the Teamsters and other unions over U.S. labor relations. If these overtures to the Teamsters backfire, Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned. As one GOP politician running for Missouri attorney general tweeted in 2015, after labor-aligned Republicans derailed state right-to-work legislation, “time for an end to union-backed candidates in GOP.”
How the Teamsters Cost 30,000 People Their Jobs
July 10, 2025 // "That's true," says Palagashvili. "[Yellow Corp] was having a lot of financial issues. But if you're on the verge of collapse, the last thing you need is a Teamsters Labor Union contract that says you have to increase labor costs. Yellow is basically covered in gasoline, and Sean O'Brien comes and lights the match." Meanwhile, union leadership help themselves. The Teamsters now brag that it has $1 billion in assets. Sean O'Brien pays himself more than $430,000 per year. The same year Yellow went bankrupt, United Auto Workers went on strike against Stellantis, the company that owns Chrysler. Stellantis gave in, giving the UAW a pay raise and promising to open a new plant. But then Stellantis started laying off workers: 1,340 during the strike and 2,450 more the next year.
‘Puts everything we hold dear at risk’: Libbey Glass workers frustrated after 6 months of contract negotiations
March 18, 2025 // "If people vote to strike, there will be no strike pay, there will be no unemployment," the employee said. "What's going to happen? Are they eventually going to close the plant or what?" they added. "Anything could happen. Look what's happened with other places that have closed. Our plant manager has closed plants before, so what's going to happen with us? It's scary." That employee said many people they know are looking to find other jobs, worried about their job security.
Behind the last-ditch effort to save a trucking company that owes $700M to taxpayers
December 1, 2023 // Estes Express earlier this fall offered $1.53 billion "stalking horse" bid for Nashville-based Yellow's shipment centers. That would easily be enough to repay around $500 million in debt held by senior lender Citadel — which purchased the notes from Apollo, post bankruptcy — plus other creditors and the CARES Act loan. Then we got a wrinkle, just ahead of the bankruptcy auction kicking off this past Tuesday. It was a bid led by the owner of auto trucking company Jack Cooper to restart Nashville-based Yellow, not just scoop up logistics properties or other assets. This new proposal, as reported by the NY Times, would repay private creditors immediately, but postpone the Treasury loan repayment to 2026 from 2024. It's this second deal that's being supported, at least in principle, by a chorus of U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Rep. French Hill
Tesla Workers Are Union “Members Of The Future,” UAW President Says
October 19, 2023 // Tesla is likely the most "problematic" carmaker for the UAW as CEO Elon Musk strongly opposes unionization at the company's plants. The United Auto Workers and Workers United trade unions have sought to unionize Tesla's workers in California and New York, respectively, but Elon Musk has thwarted all attempts so far. In addition, as Teslarati points out, numerous Tesla workers have become millionaires in the past despite being non-unionized, thanks to the company's stock-based compensation programs. In an infamous tweet from May 2018, Musk seemed to threaten Tesla workers with the loss of stock options if they formed a union. "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" read the tweet. The National Labor Relations Board ordered Musk to delete the tweet, but the billionaire appealed the court order.
Opinion: TALKING TRANSPORTATION: Union Power and the Potential Strike at Metro-North
August 8, 2023 // The union, which represents car inspectors, coach cleaners and mechanics has been without a contract since 2019 and says MTA management is dragging its heels on a new contract. The union has entered mediation through the Railroad Labor Act but says the first round did not go well. Under New York State law the union does have the right to strike and that would pretty much halt train service. But the effect of that might be far less in these post-COVID times as we’ve all learned how to WFH (work from home). This labor unrest comes as the MTA admits it paid $1.3 billion in overtime last year. About 1100 of its employees doubled their salaries with OT. There are mechanics and MTA cops taking home over $300,000 due to extra duty. Under their contracts, available overtime must first be offered to the most senior (and highest paid) staffers so those veterans, closest to retirement, are raking it in.
Teamsters Sacrifices 30,000 Workers: 3 Ways Union Contributed to Yellow Trucking’s Demise
August 2, 2023 // A key reason Yellow was said to be closing its doors is that the union was refusing Yellow’s restructuring and modernization efforts. Part of that restructuring would have included efficiency savings by enabling an additional 600 utility truck drivers to also sometimes perform dock work, but the union controls what tasks workers are allowed to perform, and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien asserted that this restructuring “would have decimated thousands of Teamsters jobs.” Instead, the union’s refusal to allow company management to do what it felt necessary to save the business contributed to the decimation of 22,000 Teamsters jobs.
Trucking giant Yellow shuts down: The 99-year-old company which has almost 30,000 staff and 12,000 big-rigs ceases operations immediately
July 31, 2023 // Yellow is saddled with some $1.5 billion in debt as of late March, including $729.2 million owed to the federal government for a controversial pandemic-era loan the Treasury Department extended on national security grounds in 2020. A June 2023 congressional report concluded the Treasury Department dodged its own policies to issue the loan and the previous administration had made a mistake in doing so. In May, Yellow reported a loss of $54.6 million, a decline of $1.06 per share, for its first quarter of 2023. Operating revenue was about $1.16 billion in the period.
As Alabama coal miners strike nears end, a look at why it started, and how it failed
March 2, 2023 // After 700 days, hundreds of striking coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama will be returning to work soon — but without the better contract that they’ve been fighting to get. The United Mine Workers of America, the union at the center of the purported longest strike in Alabama’s history, asked Warrior Met Coal to allow the miners to return to work at the company’s four locations starting Thursday. The decision was announced in a Feb. 16 press release. “The status quo is not good for our members and their families,” said UMWA president Cecil Roberts in the statement. “I sincerely hope that Warrior Met leadership will accept this offer, get our members back to work, engage in good faith bargaining and finally sit down face-to-face with us to resolve this dispute for the betterment of all concerned.”
Please Touch Museum workers want to unionize
January 30, 2023 // A vast majority of the 46 proposed members filed paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday, expressing their desire to unionize, though organizers declined to give a specific number of participants. The union would include full-time and part-time employees of the museum who are not contractors or managers. Ghorpadey and Stern said workers want the museum to invest in more robust security infrastructure. Safety concerns, largely due to disgruntled museum visitors who made verbal or physical threats, have led some people to quit, they said.