Drivers oust Teamsters at Home Depot subsidiary in California

The Teamsters union has lost a decertification vote at an arm of Home Depot Inc. in San Jose, California, even as the workers were operating under an agreed-to contract.

Decertification votes for unions often can be successful after an inability to reach agreement on a contract, as the rank-and-file members ultimately toss in the towel on ever getting a deal from a recalcitrant management. The argument in favor of decertification in those cases is often that the workers are paying dues and getting nothing out of it. That was the case in some of the decertification votes the Teamsters lost last year in California. 

But there was a contract in place between the Teamsters and Local 853, representing drivers at HD Supply Facilities Maintenance in San Jose. HD Supply was acquired by Atlanta-based Home Depot (NYSE: HD) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, a “leading national distributor of (maintenance, repair and operations) products,” according to a spokeswoman.  

According to the National Labor Relations Board website, the Nov. 16 vote was 26-5 in favor of decertifying the union. All of the union members were drivers or what the NLRB described as “driver installers.”

Michael Valderrama was the shop steward of the union, though in an interview with FreightWaves he said he had recently submitted his resignation to the company. 

“Horrible,” said Valderrama, describing the contract between the Teamsters and HD Supply. “It was definitely in favor of the company, so it allowed them to weaponize our contract against the drivers.”

Valderrama also outlined a long list of complaints about HD Supply management. Drivers he described as “pro-union” were regularly found by the company to have violated company policy and “they got let go one by one.”

Beyond the clarification of the relationship between Home Depot and HD Supply, the media relations department of Home Depot did not respond to a FreightWaves request for comment on Valderrama’s contentions.

Valderrama said he had been put under a company notice after he said a group text among workers made its way into the hands of management, given by “someone who was a little offended and turned the screen grabs over to them.” He said he had been “on notice” for a year for some comments he made in the text that he did not choose to disclose. 

He added that the Teamsters have found him a job in a construction-related union. 

The workers seeking to decertify the union were provided free legal representation from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. 

In its prepared statement on the vote results, the foundation said its data shows that a unionized private sector worker is two times more likely to be involved in an effort to decertify a union than a nonunion worker would be in a unionization drive. It also said decertification petitions have risen 42% this year.

“[It’s] challenging,” said Dennis Hart, the secretary-treasurer of Local 853 of the current contract. “A lot of the language that they were able to put in there made it difficult to get anything done. Over the years, the ball was dropped on our side. The workers felt promises were made to the rank and file.”

Hart also said he had been working since earlier this year on repairing the relationship between  the union and HD Supply. Discussions were being conducted on a new contract when the Home Depot parent bought HD Supply. Because of COVID-19, the contract was extended and workers were given raises, according to Hart. 

But he said HD Supply management would regularly conduct meetings with new hires and were “indoctrinating them with all anti-union stuff. They had a captive audience.”

Hart said the union has filed unfair labor practice charges against HD Supply with the NLRB.

More articles by John Kingston

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