As you may or may not know, our (Upstate NY) pension plan is severely underfunded (46%). There area a group of retirees who have formed a committee to look in to any possible ways to restore full funding. One of the ideas was to organize a protest in front of the office of Assemblywoman Elise Stefanik.
Can you imagine the public backlash when they find out that we are bitching that our former $7K/month pension has been reduced to $5K/month?
There would be zero support for a strike and both the Company and Union know this all too well.
Based on the second paragraph, you're assuming that the only reason for a strike is the pension. Trust me, in the South, guys/gals will strike over this work-week issue, and more, its that important.
I don't know what criteria the company uses in deciding how many drivers are needed in centers but it doesn't seem to be taking into consideration vacations, disability/workman comp, etc.. so heavy weeks of vacation, management just pulls from the T-S list for Monday and vice versa for Saturday.
So, many of us down here don't trust the company to give us two days off once this pandora box is opened up. I need to hear more specifics with regards to this particular issue. The language is to general to ultimately settle on it yet for me.
In regards to the public, you're assuming that the public is following the actual specifics of the contract etc... That's a big assumption! Most of the public will only care about fixing the issues! I don't buy the public will not support us argument!
Even if they do, the boxes are still going to pile up and the stock is still going to go down! This is why I think the company is going to loosing up as the expiration date draws near or we are going to be working under a old contract for a long time and receive a nice retroactive paycheck!
