WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — In what appears to be a stunning vote of no confidence in his own business plan, Bradley Jacobs, Chairman of XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO) and GXO Logistics (NYSE: GXO), brought his total stock sales of the two companies to nearly a billion dollars since announcing the spin-off of XPO’s warehousing business to GXO last December.
According to an SEC filing, in a stock sale last week, Jacobs sold a quarter of a billion dollars in both companies, despite continuing to tout the separation of the two businesses as a win for investors. The sale, coupled with Jacobs’ total wealth more than doubling to $3.5 billion during the pandemic and ongoing controversy over his pay package, comes as the company pays tens of millions to settle litigation by mission-critical port drayage drivers who accused XPO of stealing wages and denying them critical rights and benefits by willfully misclassifying them as independent contractors rather than employees.
With most of these misclassified drivers drawn from immigrant communities of color, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters filed a shareholder proposal Friday and sent a letter to Anna Maria DeSalva, Vice Chair, XPO Board of Directors, calling on XPO’s board to conduct a third-party, company-wide civil rights audit.
“With all eyes on the supply chain crisis and the difficulty port trucking companies face recruiting drivers due to a shortage of good jobs, it is shocking that XPO’s board continues to prop up a business model that’s bad for business, workers and customers,” said Ken Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters Union. “The only one getting rich here is XPO’s CEO Bradley Jacobs through his mastery of financial engineering.”
In the letter to Ms. DeSalva, Ken Hall said that XPO’s recent, record ‘wage-theft’ settlements – totaling nearly $30 million – in its port trucking operations in Southern California cast serious doubts over the integrity of XPO’s recently trumpeted efforts to protect workers from discrimination and to otherwise promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DE&I”) in its workforce. The plight of misclassified port drivers in Southern California, referred to by the State of California as the “Last American Sharecroppers,” is well documented and has only become more prominent amid the logjams at the ports.
Mr. Hall also calls out XPO’s earlier efforts to address high-profile claims of sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination in its warehouse operations. Noting that the effort lost credibility when the company’s lead independent investigator, Tina Tchen, stepped down as Chief Executive of Time’s Up amid reports she actively undermined alleged victims of sexual harassment in the New York Governor’s office.
Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and “like” us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.
CONTACT: Dean Pearce, [email protected]
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SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters
