Three separate West Coast Teamsters locals have teamed up to secure a new contract with food distributor Sysco in an unusual arrangement.
The union announced this week, and Sysco confirmed, that more than 1,000 Sysco drivers and warehouse workers in northern California and Nevada ratified what the union called the “first-ever regional collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the Teamsters at Sysco.”
The deal is for four years. The union, in a prepared statement, said the contract provides for a 34% increase in wages, “substantial improvements” in Sysco’s (NYSE: SYY) pension contributions, “top-tier” health benefits and “robust protections against unsafe conditions and harmful automation practices.”
The locals in the contract are 137, based in Redding, California; 853, in Oakland, California; and 533, in Reno, Nevada.
A spokeswoman for the Teamsters said about 60% of the workers covered under the deal are drivers.
Separate deals come together
“All three locals had previously negotiated their collective bargaining agreements and then came together to jointly bargain the first-ever Teamsters regional contract at Sysco,” the spokeswoman said in an email to FreightWaves. “In order to make this happen, the locals voted to authorize and were prepared to strike unless a deal was reached. The regional agreement will serve as a model of how we plan to restructure bargaining with the company moving forward.”
“Our members made it clear the clock was ticking and were fully prepared to strike if Sysco failed to deliver,” Tom Erickson, director of the union’s warehouse division, said in the Teamsters statement. “That readiness paid off and delivered a major victory.”
In a statement supplied to FreightWaves, Sysco said the contracts covering the workers “are just another example of our commitment to providing colleagues with a great place to work with opportunities for professional growth. We will continue to reward our colleagues for their important contributions to Sysco’s success.”
Joe Silva, a Sysco warehouse worker who also is a steward with Local 853, said in the Teamsters statement that the contract is “the strongest we have ever negotiated.”
Sysco, in its most recent 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said about about 14% of its approximately 75,000 employees that are represented by unions, “primarily” the Teamsters.That 14% figure is coincidentally the number of union workers that the company said earlier in the year were subject to renegotiation of a contract in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30.
NLRB action
That was not the only recent interaction between the Teamsters and Sysco in recent weeks.
Matt Bruenig, an independent journalist who covers the NLRB and publishes a Substack called NLRB Edge, reported this week that the Region 04 Director of the NLRB had ordered a “mixed manual-mail ballot” for drivers in a representation vote in the Lehigh Valley.
According to the NLRB Edge, the finding by regional director Kimberly Andrews was that “the company’s scattered workforce and varied shift schedules make a traditional in-person vote impractical.”
In her decision, Andrews said that she “(concluded) that a mixed manual-mail ballot election is more appropriate than a manual election to enfranchise the greatest number of eligible voters and because it is the most efficient use of Board resources.”
She acknowledged in her decision that the preference of the NLRB is for in-person voting. But given the geographic spread of the workers in the representation vote, Andrews wrote, a mixed manual-mail ballot election would “ensure the broadest possible participation of eligible voters that are scattered.”
The Sysco workers who are voting on the representation are spread out in the northeast Pennsylvania area, with Allentown as the key location.
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