Yellow Corporation Files Voluntary Chapter 11 Petitions - Seite 2

Yellow employees took great pride in servicing customers from big box stores to small family businesses across America. Its 30,000 freight professionals, both union and non-union employees, were the unsung heroes throughout the pandemic, delivering goods to every state, ensuring that our supply chain kept moving and our economy remained strong.

“All workers and employers should take note of our experience with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (“IBT”) and worry,” said Hawkins. “We faced nine months of union intransigence, bullying and deliberately destructive tactics. A company has the right to manage its own operations, but as we have experienced, IBT leadership was able to halt our business plan, literally driving our company out of business, despite every effort to work with them.” 

Several years ago, Yellow recognized that it needed to modernize operations to compete with non-union carriers that increasingly dominated the industry. Yellow developed the common-sense “One Yellow” business plan to make Yellow more competitive while strengthening jobs and improving customer service. One Yellow called for raising employees’ pay and creating more jobs, while providing stability for all stakeholders. One Yellow aimed to put Yellow on the right path, fixing legacy issues created long ago, making Yellow the industry-dominant company it once was.

The operational changes necessary to implement One Yellow required approval from IBT leadership. In August 2022, IBT leadership approved the first phase of One Yellow in the western U.S. and the plan was a success: redundancies were reduced, freight departed terminals earlier and customer service improved. Unfortunately, despite Phase One’s approval and success, IBT leadership implemented a nine-month blockade, halting the remainder of Yellow’s business plan. This caused Yellow irreparable harm.

In the spring, while their blockade of One Yellow was ongoing, IBT leaders demanded that Yellow open its contract nearly one year early, and Yellow agreed, yet its goodwill was met with hostility. Instead of negotiating a contract, Yellow faced months of public insult from IBT, including a social media post depicting a tombstone with Yellow’s name on it along with the dates 1924-2023. This ruthless campaign included repeated public taunts calling for Yellow’s demise and was intended to put Yellow out of business. At the same time, IBT leadership spread false claims that Yellow was trying to exact “concessions” from its union employees. Nothing was further from the truth. Combined with months of refusals to negotiate, IBT leaders’ campaign against Yellow caused grave concern among investors, drove away customers, and put 30,000 jobs at risk.