Assumptions or speculation based on more than 20 years experience, depending on your point of view. I certainly could be mistaken, I fully admit that. You are also making a lot of assumptions/speculations about why your management are making the discipline decisions they are. Unless you do indeed know all the facts and are privy to the content of all the conversations that happen concerning management and discipline. If you are hearing that information about every employee, then your management has a much bigger problem in the way they behave.
Your last point is just chock full of bitterness, once again confirming that you flat out hate management no matter what they do or say, and you will interpret anything they do in the worst possible light. All that hate is gonna burn you up son...
(PS, as loath as I am to be terribly nit picky, I just can't help but point out that technically, the reason 200,000 teamsters did not cross in 1997 is that they would have had to bring 15,000 or so non-UPS teamsters with them.)