Retiredone, you are wrong in so many ways. Here is the rest of the story and some facts to boot: It is not only the teamster leadership that made this pension mess an issue, the company had a hand in much of our underfunding for future benefits. Consider most of us started out in a company controlled pension fund (UPS Pension Plan), set up mostly for union part timers, it took an average of 8 to 10 years in order to have enought seniority to bid on a full time position. During those part time years the monetary contributions where set up with the prospect of paying as little as possible for it's union workforce, the company made a royal killing with it's profits by eliminating union full time positions that were required with monetary funding according to contract language. It replaced the positions with part timers who where for the most part college kids in the prime of their lives, for the first 3 years of their employment the company didn't have to pay into their pension. They had to be 21 to start their vesting years of five years, and forget about the health and welfare coverage for such a young, mostly single and healthy workforce.
The company did very well during the 70's , 80's and 90's, problem from the worker's point of view is that the ones who made out the best was the management workforce. Believe you are retired under the UPS Retirement Plan, which has been very good to it's participants. Can the company justify underfunding it's union employees and feeding that fund generious with it's profits. Tell me if I am wrong?
Everybody is wrong about the reasons for that "97" strike, Carey and the leadership saw the troubles with the union run pension funds long before the strike. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure these things out, back in the early 90's the trustees begin to see the plan participants dwindling and the retirees mutiplying. The strike was about creating full time positions to feed the union trusts and the company's continuing to a mostly part time workforce.
Currently we see the result of these decisions, the part time workforce has drastically changed, gotten alot older, more diverse and with that the glory days of minium health coverage is over. On somebody's desk there has to be statistics about the increasing premiums, let alone the workers compensation claims. It could be that the real changes that will occur will be on the management levels over the continuing aging of it's workforce with the possibility of no end in sight, could cause a little resentment with the management workforce, considering the wealth that the older ones collected primarily with the stock thrown about during the last three decades
Getting off my soapbox now, the story is not over yet! Everybody keep an eye on congress and the senate with this upcoming Pension Reform Act going down the pipe. That might play alot with the negotiations that will start this year or next.