Delivery drivers for trucking company MBM Logistics in Orlando voted in favor of unionizing with the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters last Friday, despite the company’s decision to hire professional anti-union labor consultants to water down union support.
According to the Teamsters, drivers voted 60–47 in favor of unionization with Local 385 in Orlando, representing an overall voter turnout of 93 percent. Angel Lopez, a shop steward for the Teamsters further down South, was the first person that drivers first contacted to form a union. He told Orlando Weekly on Friday, “It was team effort.”
Lopez, based in Miami, is a longtime employee for delivery company DHL Express, a client of MBM Logistics. DHL Express has more than 7,300 employees that are currently represented by the Teamsters, including those like Lopez — an employee of 20-plus years — down in South Florida.
“Nine years ago, I was in the same situation,” Lopez shared in a phone call, one week after the vote in Orlando. “And I wish I had someone at the time to help me.”
According to Lopez, drivers told him wages on the job had become stagnant, with their boss tossing them an extra 10 or 20 cents as a raise every once in a while. “They want a 401(k), retirement. They had nothing,” he said — not even a company-issued uniform. “That's why they called me, to try and change everything for the better.”
MBM Logistics, affiliated with Virginia-based company VMW Express, filed a petition for a union election in July after a majority of their local delivery drivers signed cards in support of unionizing with the Teamsters Local 385 in Orlando.
Under federal rules, an employer is required to file a petition for a union election if they are presented with evidence that workers want to unionize, but doubt that the union has majority support among its workforce. Otherwise, an employer can grant voluntary recognition to the union, essentially acknowledging that a majority of workers are in favor, allowing workers to bypass an election process.
Lopez admitted that the election results in Orlando, which have yet to be officially certified by the federal National Labor Relations Board, were closer than he expected. “I was surprised because I was expecting there to be more support,” he shared, candidly. At the same time, he added, “You can tell that Gustavo, Fernando [did] their job. Not enough to win.”
By “Gustavo” and “Fernando,” Lopez is referring to two anti-union labor consultants who were hired by the company to talk down the union. Reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor show the company hired the union-avoidance firm Action Resources at a daily pay rate of $3,750 per consultant to “communicate” with workers about their right to join, or not join the union.
Action Resources, a firm that describes itself as “pro-employee” and one of the most effective firms in the union-avoidance business, contracted consultants Gustavo Flores and Fernando Rivera for the job.
Both men are based out of California, and have a history of facing off against the Teamsters. Rivera was hired by the likes of Amazon in 2022 to unsuccessfully obstruct organizing efforts among Amazon DSP drivers, whom Amazon tried to argue were third-party employees, not employees of Amazon directly. Flores is the brother of two former Teamsters, including a former union official, who later switched sides and joined the lucrative union avoidance industry.
Notably, both Flores and Rivera were also familiar to Lopez, who received photos of the men from the drivers in Orlando. “When they sent me the photos of these two guys … I was like, I know those two guys,” he recalled. “They used to come here to Miami.”
Consultants like Rivera and Flores are often hired by employers to hold mandatory “captive audience” meetings with workers while on the job, sometimes in groups, or they’ll pull people aside one-on-one.
Lopez, who traveled up to Orlando last week for the election and claims he saw Gustavo, said that based on what he heard from the drivers, the consultants’ strategy hasn’t changed. “They’re just talking crap about the union,” he said. Fear-mongering about union dues and claiming, “All the union wants is your money,” took a central role in their messaging, from what he heard. “They only say half of the story, and not the other half of the story which is the good things about the union.”
Jose Faneitty, a staff organizer for the Teamsters Local 385 in Orlando, put it bluntly: “The company hires these people to basically lie to them.” Lopez said most of the drivers' native language is Spanish. Action Resources boasts itself as a firm that houses both bilingual and bi-cultural consultants.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards, research indicates employers hire union avoidance professionals, also known as “persuaders,” in an estimated 75 to 80 percent of union organizing drives. Under federal law, persuaders are required to file reports publicly disclosing their jobs for employers, but the government’s enforcement of that requirement has been criticized a lackluster.
Orlando, the so-called City Beautiful, is home to one of the most active union avoidance firms in the country, the Labor Pros, which was recently hired to bust an organizing campaign with Lopez’s Teamsters local in Miami. They've been known to file their mandatory disclosures late or incorrectly in the past, a tactic that makes it difficult to for union advocates and federal labor watchdogs to track their actions.
According to Faneitty, the local drivers for MBM Logistics were galvanized to join the union over a range of issues, as Lopez said, ranging from pay, to safety concerns, unaffordable healthcare, and a lack of job benefits like maternity leave. As an individual driver, it can be difficult to speak out about issues in the workplace and actually change things. As a union, drivers can collectively advocate for a contract with their employer that can address their concerns.
Research has found that unionized workers earn 10 to 15 percent more on average than their non-union counterparts, and are more likely to have access to job benefits like paid sick days and more predictable scheduling (something Florida lawmakers just banned local governments from requiring of employers). Unions can also promote safer working conditions.
As of last year, just 6.1 percent of Florida’s workforce had union representation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to about 11 percent nationwide. Favorability of unions has reached a near-record high, but the path towards organizing a union can be resource-intensive and more difficult in parts of the South that have had anti-union laws on the books, aimed at weakening union power, for decades.
Faneitty was unavailable for comment Friday due to another election campaign spanning Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers involving drivers employed by Breakthru Beverages — a company that also hired and paid Rivera over $51,000 last year to combat a union drive in California. Breakthru more recently hired other persuaders to target another union drive involving the same Teamsters local in California. Election results there are being contested.
Lopez, down in Miami, said the next step for the local MBM Logistics drivers is for the results of their election to be certified by the NLRB. Then, workers chosen for their bargaining team will team up with union staff to negotiate a union contract with company representatives.
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