2006 Teamster survey

[wkmac]

We had a Pension Planning meeting after the Local 728 General meeting in Atlanta Saturday.

Scratch,
What did you think of the meeting? Worthwhile? Waste of time? So-So?

If you don't want to discuss in open forum I'm cool with that so PM me if you'd rather.

What you think of this cool weather we been having? I hope it stays just like this all summer. I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[scratch]

Scratch,
What did you think of the meeting? Worthwhile? Waste of time? So-So?

If you don't want to discuss in open forum I'm cool with that so PM me if you'd rather.

This will probably be of no interest to most of you reading this, but we do have a few folks on this board from Local 728 which covers Georgia.

I'll have to admit I haven't been to one in several years. Normally I only go around Contract time. I guess I take the Teamsters pretty much for granted since I started working at UPS thirty years ago as a seventeen year old kid. I get top pay and decent benefits because of the union, but am very disgusted over my Pension situation as most people are. You count on the union to take care of you, but I wonder if I will get anything by the time I retire. I'm politically conservative, so am turned off by the bias I see at these meetings.

This meeting was interesting in that we had the two leading Democrats running for Governor give their stump speeches. Lieutenant Governor Mark Taylor gave me the impression he was full of crap. He took credit for the HOPE Scholarship which gives free college scholarships through lottery funds. I thought former Gov. Zell Miller led that. Kathy Cox impressed me greatly. She pointed out that Taylor was pocketing large amounts of lobbyist money. She had good ideas about education, starting at grade school level, to improve that. I thought she was the better choice of the two. I'll probably vote for Sonny Perdue again.

We got to vote on whether or not to have monthly meetings or not. Everybody voted not too, the Hall has no AC, gets too hot in the summer. President Randy Brown said something about taking meetings out on the road to where the members are.

After the General Meeting, We got to have the Pension meeting. We have a new Central States Rep, Wendy, who explained things. A Social Security manager was there to talk about that. And Debbie Litton spoke about supplemental insurance.

Kind of disappointed at the turnout though. Nobody from the Forest Park Hub where I work was there. The only two people I knew were Local President Randy Brown and Debbie Litton, who used to live on my area.
Too many apathetic people like me I guess.

 

[pasfailure]

Because of employee apathy I fear we will all be wearing blue vests with smiley face pins on some day.

 

[txminer]

Just wanted to say I was disgusted with the survey. The question on using resourses of our hard earned money to get Fed Ex and DHL to join Teamsters is a waste of time and money. Does anyone think that Fed Ex would join the Teamsters is insane. I talked also to an Overnite driver and asked if the guys of Overnite would vote to join the Central states plan. He almost choked to death laughing at joining the Titanic Pension plan. I also started laughing too. I would rather UPS take over the plan or put UPS workers in a separate plan. Central states are in a world of trouble. Maybe put us in a 401k with up to 10 percent match. I have been driving for 24 yrs. and I don't look forward to working 10 more years to reach 57 and still get penalized for getting out at 57. What a crock.

 

[happybob]

The pension issue will be big in our next contract. Im not sure I agree with some fellow UPSers that suggest we have a UPS only pension. There was a time when UPS wasn't the largest contributor to the Teamster Pension Funds. There were many LTL cariers that put in more money in the early years of the Teamsters and those contributions helped to build the funds that are there today. Do we penalize those Teamsters that made the union what it is today? Those that came before us!

The plans today must look to the future. If the funds coming in today don't match the required outgoing payments then the funds will need to lower the money they are sending out. This is a very hard pill to swallow for all of us, but possibly the only solution that will be fair to all. Those that have allready retired will commplain that they were guaranteed a set amount during their retirement years. The only response will be something like this. Would you rather have UPS pull out of the funds and have them go broke? What will happen to your payments then? You will probably see much greater decreases when the funds go broke than if you agree to a decrease to keep the funds solvent. Once these funds make the tuff choices needed to keep the funds solvent we all will be able to look forward to at least getting something when we retire.

The issue of Teamster Members helping to set up a FedEx only organizing fund sounds like something we should all agree needs to be done soon. Getting them organized now will help keep our pension funds stronger in the future. Can we count on the Teamsters getting them organized, even if we throw extra funds towards that goal? We can all hope so.

There are tuff decisions to be made, lets hope they are made soon so we can all look towards a decent retirement.

 

[Cezanne]

The real problem is that Central States and the other trust funds offered increases that they could not afford, most of the decisions over these increases were political in nature. Does anybody else see that it is the possibility that those raises in penison benefits over the last ten years was a grab for the biggest piece of the pie before the plan started to make some decisions. The decrease of participants in the Central States plan by itself has been going on for almost 20 years now, what were these trustees thinking1

Agree with the happy bob that for us to pull out of these teamster plans would not be fair to the others who had contributed to those funds over the years. Guaranteed that there will be more cuts in these plans will they get up to funding ratio required under this pension reform act now going through Washington, "share the pain" seems to the caught phrase that is being thrown around over this bill. Consider that I have been a teamster with UPS for thirty years, paid full union dues during that time, would I not have a problem with a fellow member collecting twice or three times the pension benefits who has done the same? This is currently happening and it is not right

Here is some possible solutions:

a. Pay a universal pension benefit no matter what area or plan you are under. None of this some members get 5,000 and others 2,000 bull****.

b. Pull all the benefit funds into one trust, reduce some of the bureaucracy, political decisions and costs associated with running these trusts.

c. Subtract any social security benefits when the retiree becomes eligible, so when we start collecting SS benefits at 65 or 70 your pension reduces by the amount you collect. The formula can be adjusted to be fair. This could apply only for early retirement benefits, for those who do not want to hang around till 65.

As for medical coverage, from my understanding when you become eligible for medicad or medicare at 65 your coverage under the union or company plans ceases. Not really up to stuff on this issue, so any insight offered by others would help

 

[ja4079]

I'll fill my survey out but will mail it in my own envelope and stamp with out a return address on it. They don't need to know who it it is from.

 

[Jones]

I'll fill my survey out but will mail it in my own envelope and stamp with out a return address on it. They don't need to know who it it is from.

I'm just curious, why would it worry you that they should know what you think? I would have no problem telling hall my opinion in person, I'm paying his salary after all.

 

[scooter223]

I'd like to see the company have some people on the pension fund's administration board to insure some accountability on the teamster's part.

 

[ja4079]

because I don't trust the union for one minute,

 

[xracer]

Lesser of two evils, Union or Company, your choice..

 

[aspenleaf]

At least with a union your job does not depend upon the mood of your supervisor or crazy rules. I worked at a company that let the sups run wild. If you were a kiss a** you could take long lunches and do whatever you wanted but the rest of were timed on bathroom breaks (which we filed a complaint with OSHA (since they said we could only have 15 min per day - now I am not sure about the guys but us ladies had hose and other things to deal with and well one day I had 17.30 minutes and was called into the office to discuss why??? I personally thought it was more of a waste to talk about it. . . and I was always on the phone (when I got home) with the labor board to check on what I thought were violations only to find out that companies can screw you each day and with no protection.) So while the Union will have its faults it could be much worse. With a Union the people (who do the work) have a voice and means a lot now days. At least you don't go to work each day and wonder if you will have a job by 5PM. I am much happier with my job at UPS than I have been in a long time and this job is much more difficult.