CARTERET — More than 100 port truck drivers who work in Carteret for an Australian-based global logistics firm have voted to join the Teamsters, the union said today.
A vote late last month by 112 long- and short-haul truckers and support workers for Toll Global Forwarding was approved by 70 percent of the drivers who voted, said Hazlet-based Internatoinal Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 469, which will represent the Toll truckers as a collective bargaining unit.
Toll’s Carteret office had no immediate comment on the union vote.
The vote caps a contentious unionization drive at Toll’s Carteret location, characterized by union complaints that Toll Global Forwarding had tried to intimidate organizers, allegations denied by the company, which is a unit of Toll Holdings, based in Melbourne. Last year, the Teamsters successfully organized drivers at Toll’s Los Angeles location, which followed a successful Toll campaign in Australia by the Teamsters’ overseas affiliate, the Transport Workers Union.
“New Jersey Toll drivers refused to buy into the lies and threats that the company told them and voted overwhelmingly to join the Teamsters,” said Fred Potter, president of Local 469, who is also director of the Teamsters’ port division. “Toll drivers in New Jersey now have the same rights as Toll Group drivers in Los Angeles, who are represented by Teamsters Local 848, and as Australian Toll drivers represented by the Transport Workers Union.”
The Teamsters’ Carteret campaign is also set against the union’s ongoing effort to expand its presense among the thousands of independent truckers and non-union fleet drivers who help haul shipping containers in and out of the Port of New York and New Jersey.
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