“The [mem­bers feel] they got screwed. … They are dis­sat­is­fied and angry,” says Bill Shap­pell, Pres­i­dent of Team­sters Local 429 in Wyomiss­ing, Penn­syl­va­nia, which rep­re­sents about 450 ware­house work­ers, truck dri­vers and mechan­ics who have been affected.

Mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Team­sters in Penn­syl­va­nia, New York and New Jer­sey are angry over the loss and appre­hen­sive about their futures, union lead­ers say. Their new employ­er, C&S Whole­sale Gro­cers, has a rep­u­ta­tion of buy­ing up union­ized com­pa­nies, shift­ing the work of han­dling retail food prod­ucts to non-union dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters and then get­ting rid of the union mem­bers altogether.

In a new ver­sion of the old ploy of manip­u­lat­ing fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy courts to blud­geon unions into eco­nom­ic con­ces­sions or give­backs, the nation’s largest gro­cery whole­saler used sped-up court pro­ce­dures to make a quick buy of one of its region­al com­peti­tors last month — and, in the process, slash the pen­sions and ben­e­fits of 1,100 truck dri­vers and ware­house workers.

Union mem­bers could see trou­ble ahead when their for­mer employ­er, Asso­ci­at­ed Whole­salers Inc. (AWI), filed a Chap­ter 11 peti­tion in fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy court on Sep­tem­ber 9. Includ­ed in the court fil­ing was an announce­ment that AWI and its main sub­sidiary White Rose Inc. didn’t want to reor­ga­nize its busi­ness under court pro­tec­tion, as is nor­mal in most Chap­ter 11 cas­es, but rather want­ed a quick sale to C&S. An auc­tion was ordered, but only one oth­er bid­der came for­ward. The court approved the pur­chase by C&S on Octo­ber 29.

Mean­while, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of C&S began meet­ings with six sep­a­rate Team­ster locals in the region, pre­sent­ing new con­tracts on a ​“take-it-or-leave it basis,” says Iain Gold, Direc­tor of Strate­gic Research at Team­sters head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. ​“It was clear to us that nei­ther C&S nor Super­Valu [the oth­er bid­der] would bid on AWI, or com­mit to hir­ing the exist­ing work­ers, with­out new con­tracts in place” pri­or to the auc­tion date, explains Gold.

“We had the new col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment rammed down our throat,” with the implied threat that all the Local 429 mem­bers would lose their jobs unless they agreed to con­ces­sions, Shap­pell adds.

Steve Vair­ma, Direc­tor of the Team­ster Ware­house Divi­sion, high­light­ed the stark choice between a job now or unem­ploy­ment tomor­row in a for­mal announce­ment to the mem­bers after C&S was declared the win­ning bidder:

We rec­og­nize this was a dif­fi­cult choice for all Team­ster mem­bers at AWI/​White Rose. No one is ever pleased to be offered a choice of con­ces­sions or their jobs, but ulti­mate­ly that’s what this came down to. The fact that AWI/​White Rose was in bank­rupt­cy and pro­posed such a quick time­line for sale was an indi­ca­tion of the pre­car­i­ous nature of its busi­ness. …Our goal was to get the best deal and then put the ulti­mate deci­sion of accep­tance or rejec­tion in the hands of the Team­ster AWI/​White Rose mem­bers to deter­mine their fate.

The hard­est part to swal­low may be the dam­age to their pen­sions, Gold says, with employ­er all con­tri­bu­tions to the union pen­sion plans ter­mi­nat­ed. Instead, the new C&S employ­ees are being offered a 401(k) sav­ings account. Work­ers with 10 to 20 years of cred­it in the pen­sion plan won’t be able to make up the dif­fer­ence of their poten­tial full ben­e­fit by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 401(k) sav­ings plan. It not only affects the for­mer AWI/​White Rose work­ers — the four union pen­sion plans that cov­ered the work­ers are left with an out­stand­ing unfund­ed lia­bil­i­ty of more than $40 mil­lion, he says, with no cer­tain­ty that they will recov­er any of it.

“The bank­rupt­cy process is typ­i­cal­ly used to short­change exist­ing work­ers and cer­tain of the debtors [of the bank­rupt com­pa­ny], espe­cial­ly the pen­sions, and AWI is no excep­tion,” Gold says.

Gold says he and oth­er union nego­tia­tors were able to avoid any wage cuts — Shap­pell says his mem­bers cur­rent­ly make about $20.40 an hour — but C&S sought to reduce labor costs by slash­ing health care cov­er­age, reduc­ing vaca­tions and hol­i­days, and oth­er work rule mod­i­fi­ca­tions. All six Team­ster locals agreed to some com­bi­na­tion of these cuts.

Shap­pell adds that he is espe­cial­ly angered by the health care ele­ment of the new con­tract, in which work­ers lose their cov­er­age under the Cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia Team­sters Health & Wel­fare Fund and will now pay sub­stan­tial­ly high­er pre­mi­ums and increased deductibles under a C&S com­pa­ny-spon­sored plan.

“I have noth­ing good to say about it,” and the mem­bers came close to vot­ing down the new con­tract, Shap­pell adds. About half the AWI employ­ees in Local 429 did not even both­er to vote, he says, and the final tal­ly was 185 mem­bers in favor of the con­ces­sion­ary agree­ment with 105 opposed. ​“We had a lot of guys that want­ed to take a stop­page,” he says, refer­ring to a strike.

“Make no mis­take about it, they are not hap­py about the choic­es they faced and they feel that C&S took advan­tage of a dis­tressed employ­er and used the bank­rupt­cy court to get what they want­ed. The busi­ness was healthy until 2008 reces­sion, and cer­tain parts of the com­pa­ny still are healthy,” Shap­pell says.

“They feel it was forced on them — the AWI side of the busi­ness was healthy, but the White Rose part dragged it down, he adds ​“It’s not right.”

Look­ing ahead, Shap­pell and Gold note that C&S has made no spe­cif­ic com­mit­ment to keep the exist­ing AWI/​White Rose ware­hous­es in oper­a­tion over the long term despite the union agree­ment to accept con­tract cutbacks.

“They are noto­ri­ous for buy­ing up and clos­ing down,” Shap­pell says, cit­ing the exam­ple of C&S sub­sidiary Ocean Logisitics, which bought a ware­hous­ing com­pa­ny in Dun­more, Penn­syl­va­nia, in 2006, only to shut it down in 2011. About 160 mem­bers of Team­sters Local 229 lost their jobs in the shut­down, with oth­er job loss­es occur­ring ear­li­er as C&S grad­u­al­ly shift­ed gro­cery ware­hous­ing work to non-union sites, accord­ing to the Team­sters. And Gold notes that was not an iso­lat­ed instance: The union esti­mates it has lost about 4,000 jobs since 2001 in cas­es where C&S has bought a union­ized com­pa­ny and then moved to shut it down.

C&S Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Bryan Granger did not respond to repeat­ed requests from In These Times for com­ment. AWI/​White Rose spokesper­son Aaron Palash would not com­ment except to con­firm that the sale to C&S was final­ized Novem­ber 12.