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A John Catsimatidis-owned heating oil company continues to play hardball with the union representing its delivery drivers, refusing to sign a statewide master labor contract, according to the head of Teamsters Local 553.
Brooklyn-based United Metro Energy Corp. also argued that the way it classifies different types of delivery drivers is irrelevant despite the Teamster local’s insistence that there are separate labor agreements covering two different classifications of drivers at the company.
United Metro delivers heating oil across New York City and Long Island in bulk shipments to schools and other state institutions but the company also employs two drivers that make smaller retail deliveries, whose contract status with Local 553 has been in dispute.
In September, United Metro notified the New York State Energy Coalition, which negotiates with unions on behalf of several energy companies in the state, that the company was not bound by the current master agreement covering the two drivers and said it would not renew the agreement after it expired on Dec. 15. Catsimatidis’ company followed through on its assurances and refused to sign a contract inked by several other NYSEC-represented companies in December.
Local 553 filed an unfair labor practice claim with the NLRB in response to Catsimatidis’ refusal and filed a separate grievance with the labor board arguing that, per a 2017 memorandum of agreement signed by United Metro and the Teamsters, more workers should be rightfully covered by the master contract for retail drivers.
Bulk vs. retail
That agreement covered “initially five [drivers] performing retail delivery,” and Demos Demopoulos, Local 553’s secretary-treasurer, is arguing that the several other workers now making retail deliveries should also be covered by the contract’s terms.
Despite not signing the contract, Catsimatidis has been paying the two workers covered by the 2017 agreement the same rates as was negotiated in the recent contract.
"They’re paying them the wages but doing whatever they can to keep these guys from unionizing and getting a contract with us,” Demopoulos said.
Neither Catsimatidis nor Metro representatives responded to requests for comment.
An arbitrator earlier this year sided with the company, finding, in part, that “there was no guarantee all retail Drivers would be compensated under the Master Contract. All that was agreed was that only five would receive better terms and conditions of employment.”
But the arbitrator, Howard Edelman, chastised the company for arguing that the terms “bulk” and “retail,” which distinguish two separate classes of delivery drivers at United Metro, are completely meaningless. Edelman listed several scenarios in which United Metro’s negotiators referenced the two different classifications in communications with union officials.
"It is disingenuous for company negotiators — experienced and sophisticated representatives of [the employer] — to claim they had no knowledge of what these terms meant," Edelman wrote. "It strains credulity to suggest, as [United Metro] did, that they had no awareness of these duties."
The Teamsters have appealed Edelman’s ruling to U.S. District Court. Demopoulos said he wants to “vacate the arbitrator's incorrect decision” because he said he told United Metro negotiators when they signed the agreement in 2017 that if more drivers took on retail work, they should be added to the contract. A federal judge in New York will now decide if the arbitrator's decision was correct.
A grudge?
A lawyer representing United Metro, Jonathan Farrell, told the website Law 360 that the company expects to prevail in district court.
Demopoulos, though, chides the company for its unwillingness to compromise, and suggested that Catsimatidis did not sign the agreement because he holds a grudge against the Teamsters “to some degree.”
More than a dozen United Metro workers have been on strike since April 2021 after they voted overwhelmingly to join local 553.
Demopoulos said there haven’t been negotiations on a contract for those workers in several weeks and that all of them have gotten jobs at other employers, including some with unionized workforces. “Some of them are making twice as much or more than they made over at UMEC,” he said. “[Catsimatidis] is worth tons of money and he isn’t budging on these workers.”
dfreeman@thechiefleader.com
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