The new five-year labor agreement between ArcBest Corp. of Fort Smith and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was “overwhelmingly” approved by union members in a national vote tabulated, the Teamsters said in a news release Friday.
The only hiccup is that two of the 27 regional supplements were voted down. The company and the union said new tentative agreements on those supplements were reached, and the two local union holdouts, Southern Garage and Western States Pickup & Delivery, would vote this week.
The national agreement will cover 8,600 members in 137 local unions who work in the U.S. for ABF Freight, ArcBest’s less-than-truckload subsidiary. The contract’s official start date is July 1 and will run through June 2028 once the final two supplements are approved.
The highlights of the agreement include a $3.50 hourly raise at the beginning of the contract with a total hourly raise of $6.50 to be implemented over the course of the agreement. The company will also increase its contribution by $4.46 an hour to the union health and pension funds, as well as making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a paid holiday and giving union members two more sick days for a total of seven.
The agreement also forbids the use of driver-facing cameras, recorders and body sensors, and the use of automated tractors is also prohibited without the presence of a driver-operator.
“This national agreement will serve as the model for the rest of the freight industry,” said Sean O’Brien, general president and chairman of the Teamsters National Freight Industry Negotiating Committee. “It will set the tone for national freight contracts moving forward. The gains made at the table will be long-lasting and far-reaching.”
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