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<blockquote data-quote="PiedmontSteward" data-source="post: 1127068" data-attributes="member: 42270">If 140,000 UPS Teamsters are being rolled into union managed plans (sounds like the entirety of the PT work force, quite frankly) then those benefit contributions should vastly increase the monetary pool and then increase benefits -- especially if these funds are already well-funded (Central States H&amp;W has 13+ months of cash reserves). Best case scenario: the influx of PT&#039;ers into CS H&amp;W (in this example, or into whichever Taft-Hartley plan they are rolled into) maintains the same benefits current PT&#039;ers enjoy while current FT&#039;ers see a slight improvement in their own. For all the members slamming Central States, it needs to be understood how the CS Pension fund got into the trouble it is in today. While some mismanagement certainly occurred over the plan&#039;s history, the vast majority of the damage happened when the trucking industry was deregulated during the Reagan administration in the 1980&#039;s. The original National Master Freight Agreement signed in 1964 covered 450,000 members working for 14,000 trucking companies. Today -- after the independent owner/operator scam fully took hold -- there are only two companies covered by the NMFA; YRC and ABF. Those NMFA Teamsters whose employers went belly up in the face of a cutthroat freight market were essentially &quot;orphaned&quot; -- they were drawing benefits from the plan (as retirees) but their companies no longer existed to make contributions. Pension plans are funded by active participants. That&#039;s one of the primary reasons UPS got out of the fund -- they felt their employees (and future employees) weren&#039;t going to see the entirety of the contributions UPS was making on their behalf and they were subsidizing the retirements of orphaned beneficiaries. Additionally, they probably forecasted having to make additional contributions to &quot;prop-up&quot; the plan and cut the deal in 2008 to get out.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="PiedmontSteward, post: 1127068, member: 42270"] If 140,000 UPS Teamsters are being rolled into union managed plans (sounds like the entirety of the PT work force, quite frankly) then those benefit contributions [B]should[/B] vastly increase the monetary pool and then increase benefits -- especially if these funds are already well-funded (Central States [B]H&W[/B] has 13+ months of cash reserves). Best case scenario: the influx of PT'ers into CS H&W (in this example, or into whichever Taft-Hartley plan they are rolled into) maintains the same benefits current PT'ers enjoy while current FT'ers see a slight improvement in their own. For all the members slamming Central States, it needs to be understood how the CS Pension fund got into the trouble it is in today. While some mismanagement certainly occurred over the plan's history, the vast majority of the damage happened when the trucking industry was deregulated during the Reagan administration in the 1980's. The original National Master Freight Agreement signed in 1964 covered 450,000 members working for 14,000 trucking companies. Today -- after the independent owner/operator scam fully took hold -- there are only two companies covered by the NMFA; YRC and ABF. Those NMFA Teamsters whose employers went belly up in the face of a cutthroat freight market were essentially "orphaned" -- they were drawing benefits from the plan (as retirees) but their companies no longer existed to make contributions. Pension plans are funded by active participants. That's one of the primary reasons UPS got out of the fund -- they felt their employees (and future employees) weren't going to see the entirety of the contributions UPS was making on their behalf and they were subsidizing the retirements of orphaned beneficiaries. Additionally, they probably forecasted having to make additional contributions to "prop-up" the plan and cut the deal in 2008 to get out. [/QUOTE]

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