The union representing 22,000 workers at Yellow Corp. plans to strike as soon as next week after the beleaguered short-haul trucking company failed to make a $50 million payment for employee benefits.
Pension accruals and health-care benefits will be suspended July 23 if Yellow doesn’t make the necessary payment, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said Tuesday in a statement. The union said it’s preparing for a strike as early as July 24.
Yellow, the third-largest less-than-truckload carrier, has been struggling financially as it seeks to refinance more than $1 billion of debt that matures in 2024. Its stock has been in a tailspin, plunging about 60% in 2023 and more than 90% since the beginning of last year.
The company has blamed the union for impeding a plan to combine its trucking divisions, which operate separately since Yellow was formed from a string of acquisitions prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. Yellow filed a $137 million lawsuit in June against the union for “unjustifiably blocking” the move.
The trucking firm didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike plan.
Less-than-truckload competitors — such as Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., XPO Inc. and FedEx Corp.’s freight unit — “stand to gain from the drama unfolding at Yellow,” Lee Klaskow, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note.
