I’m a steward, and the supervisor likes to cut deals behind members’ backs; he doesn’t want members present when we meet. Should I bring members into grievance meetings anyway?

— Not Horsing Around

July 1, 2010: Teamster members are paying a high price for the pension concessions negotiated by the Hoffa administration.

UPS was making record profits of more than $6 billion a year when Hoffa let Brown pull out of Central States and gave UPS Freight a free pass on paying Teamster benefits.

A Teamster Voice report on the Teamster Pension Divide reveals how these givebacks are saving the company billions, but Teamster members are paying the cost.

• Nearly 50,000 UPSers are now locked into a substandard pension.

• Central States possibly faces insolvency within ten to 15 years.

• YRC has been allowed to stop pension contributions—and freight Teamsters are being kept in the dark about if and how their pension contributions will resume.

We need a new direction and union action to save strong Teamster pensions.

Months ago, the GEB was supposed to vote to hold a march on Washington of Teamsters, labor allies and other groups concerned about the Wall Street assault on defined benefit pension plans.

Hoffa put that vote on the back burner. Once again, it was all talk and no action.

Congress will be taking up pension legislation soon. It’s now or never to launch a real campaign to put pressure on lawmakers to pass the pension reform we need.

Join Teamster members who are keeping TDU going strong.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It’s not an easy time to be a Teamster. The corporate sharks smell blood in the water. And under Hoffa, our union is a ship without a captain––drifting whichever way the wind blows.

Now more than ever, our union needs a new vision and a new direction. We can protect our standards, defend our contracts, and preserve our benefits––but only if we mobilize rank-and-file power.

That’s what Teamsters for a Democratic Union is all about.

TDU has always been there––informing the members, training new leaders, uniting Teamsters to take on corporate greed and take back our union. That’s why I’ve been a proud supporter of TDU for decades.

We need TDU––and TDU needs us. Hoffa isn’t going to bankroll his opposition. If we want a strong TDU, it’s up to us to make it happen.

I hope you’ll make a generous donation to keep TDU growing. The future of our union is at stake. We need to answer the call.

In solidarity,

Tom Leedham Local 206, Oregon

“When you’re up against a company like UPS, you really know how important it is to have an organization like TDU to stand by you day in and day out.

“I got a letter asking me to donate and I feel like that’s the least I can do to keep TDU up and running. I’m giving $100 and I hope you dig deep to give what you can too.”

Todd Hartsell, UPS Local 90, Des Moines

“I use the education and tools from TDU everyday to protect my job and help other young Teamsters at UPS. When a lot of other things seem to be going wrong, TDU is there to show us the road ahead.

“I can’t give much at one time––that’s why I’m making a pledge of $10 a month to help TDU.”

Hollie Goldsmith, UPS, Local 413, Columbus

“TDU is entirely run and supported by the membership. We rely on the generous donations of committed Teamsters to keep TDU going––to continue getting information out to members and help them make informed decisions, to keep our organizers out in the field, and to build the movement to save our union.

“We need your support, however big or small. Donate today.”

Willie Hardy, Local 667, Memphis Trustee, Teamsters for a Democratic Union

Make a Donation to TDU Today

July 1, 2010: Henry Perry, International trustee and president of Memphis Local 667, has been removed from the Hoffa slate for the International Union election.

Perry, who has now refused to endorse Hoffa for reelection, told the Election Supervisor that on May 10, he was approached by International Vice President Tyson Johnson, who told him Hoffa was removing him from the slate.

Perry says the reason given was that he lost the 2006 delegate race in his local union to TDU members who backed Tom Leedham.

According to Perry, Johnson asked him to resign his International office, and said that if he campaigned for Hoffa, he could keep his International salary for the next two years. That would be an illegal use of union funds to boost Hoffa’s campaign. Johnson denies saying it.

Perry told Johnson that he lost the delegate race because he could not persuade his members to support Hoffa. Indeed, that was true: Leedham carried Local 667 later that year by a two-to-one margin over Hoffa.

The Election Supervisor ruled that the Hoffa campaign illegally used Perry’s name as an endorser, by pasting an old signature onto their campaign material sent to all locals. The decision (2010 ESD 4) is available at www.ibtvote.org.

Hoffa himself failed to win the delegates in his own home base, Pontiac, Mich. Local 614. The United Teamsters Against Hoffa (UTAH) slate swept the delegate race there in 2006.

Law & Disorder: Justice Hoffa Style

William Hamilton

Position: IBT Vice President

Charged with: “Nepotism and favoritism.” Giving lucrative jobs to relatives and friends of union officials in exchange for gifts.

Hoffa Justice: Kept on Hoffa Slate. Paid $278,150 last year.

John Perry

Position: IBT Trade Show Division Director

Charged with: In court for assaulting a Local 82 member for filing a grievance.

Under grand jury investigation for witness intimidation.

Hoffa Justice: Keeps local and IBT position. Paid $198,073 in total compensation last year by our union.

Henry Perry

Position: IBT Trustee

Charged with: Failing to convince Local 667 members to vote for Hoffa.

Hoffa Justice: Asked to resign from General Executive Board. Removed from Hoffa Slate.

July 9, 2010: Teamsters who work the movies, commercials, TV and other productions in the Philly area, that includes Atlantic City work, are getting rolled by the IBT and their own local leadership led by International Vice President Bill Hamilton.

An investigation by the Independent Review Board found that movie jobs in Philadelphia Local 107 were doled out to friends and relatives of Hamilton and other union officials. Now rank-and-file Teamsters, not Hamilton, are paying the price for the nepotism scandal.

Members Pay the Price

More than 100 of 161 Local 107 movie Teamsters will be banned from doing movie work. The few Teamsters who get to continue working in the movies will have to resign their membership in Local 107.

All this is according to a plan put forward by Ron Schwab, the International Representative appointed by Hoffa to supposedly clean up the scandal. But is this a clean-up or a cover up?

Schwab told a meeting of Local 107 members that Hamilton could not run the hiring fairly so the work will be taken out of Local 107’s jurisdiction and handed over to Local 817 to run out of New York.

“They say that Local 817 will run things the right way,” Tony Sgrillo, a Local 107 member told the Philly Inquirer. “My question is: Why can’t we run it right?”

Stuck on the Lowest Tier

Under a Local 817 takeover, not a single Local 107 member would qualify to work a captain (tier one work) in their own city. Eight Philly Teamsters would qualify for “tier two” work and 19 would qualify for “tier three” work.

Forty would qualify for the lowest rung “tier four” work which is an on-call, casual type assignment. In all, only 59 Teamsters get on the Local 817 list of the 160 Local 107 Teamsters who submitted for the process.

“We’re getting penalized . . . because they didn’t run things the right way,” another Local 107 member, Louis Cintron, told the press. Cintron testified before the IRB and helped blow the whistle on the nepotism scheme.

Hamilton himself faces no penalties for the scandal that will shrink the Local 107 membership and put rank-and-file Teamsters out of work. He continues to make $278,150 in total compensation from three Teamster salaries.

If Hamilton is too incompetent or corrupt to run a fair hiring hall, why isn’t he the one being cut loose?

July 1, 2010: Hoffa let UPS pull out of the Central States and gave UPS Freight a free pass on paying Teamster benefits.

Now Teamster members are paying the price.

Hoffa’s decision to let UPS pull out from Central States saved the company billions. It also locked tens of thousands of Teamsters into a substandard pension.

Big Brown saved millions more when Hoffa gave UPS Freight a free pass on paying Teamster benefits—a move that undermined YRC and ABF and further weakened union pension funds.

UPS was making record profits when Hoffa gave the company these historic concessions. Three years later, where do we stand?

• The UPS Pension Plan pays the lowest pension benefits to UPS Teamsters in the country—delivering substandard pensions to nearly half of all full-time UPSers.
• Weakened by UPS’s withdrawal, the Central States Pension Fund could become insolvent in 10 to 15 years.
• Emboldened by the concessions, UPS and other Teamster employers are looking for new ways to reduce their benefit costs—which will lower Teamster pensions and increase the benefit divide.

Teamster pensions are at a crossroads—and the next few years will be critical to the future of our retirement security.

Will our union execute an Action Plan to win good, secure union pensions—and strengthen benefit levels across the board?

Or will UPS and other employers continue to slash their benefit costs while working Teamsters pay the price?

The Pension Comparison Chart shows the range and variation of benefits of the great majority of pension plans covering UPS Teamsters.

While this information pertains to UPS Teamsters, most of these funds cover other Teamsters as well. The cost of an employer takeover of Teamster pensions is clear.

By the end of the contract in 2013, thousands of UPS workers in Teamster plans will be eligible for 30-and-out benefits in the range of $4,000-5,000 per month.

Teamsters in the new UPS plan will get just $3,000 a month.

The UPS plan covers 44,000 Teamsters in the Carolinas and the Central and Southern Regions—nearly half of the company’s full-time workforce.

UPS paid $6 billion to pull out of the Central States Pension Fund. But the company will make up those billions—and save billions more—by paying lower pension benefits and making smaller pension contributions into the company plan.

UPS and the International Union officials keep it secret from the members exactly what the new UPS plan costs the company. But it is less than half of what the company has to contribute to union plans.

If a Teamster in the UPS plan works temporarily for a union, the union only has to pay $25 a day to maintain that member’s pension contributions. That’s $3.12 per hour—compared to hourly contributions of $7 to $8 an hour in Teamster funds.

No wonder Teamster plans pay superior benefits! In all, UPS is saving more than $450 million a year through reduced contributions.

Those savings will increase every year, especially if UPS is able to keep pension benefits for half of its workforce at a substandard level.

When the UPS contract comes up for negotiation in 2013, management’s UPS Plan, with its $3,000 a month benefits, will be their benchmark to try to lower their costs and our benefits.

Teamster members want good pensions and they want pension security. Our union needs an Action Plan to achieve these objectives.

We need to draw the line against employers pulling out of our pension plans—and to organize new employers into Teamster funds. Hoffa’s decisions to let UPS pull out of Central States and to allow UPS Freight to stay out of Teamster funds are monumental mistakes that can’t be repeated.

We need to step up the fight to win federal legislation to protect the earned pensions of all workers. This will bring a good measure of security to Teamsters in the Central States Fund, which is in trouble in part due to the UPS pull-out.

And we need to go on the offensive in bargaining to secure the good pensions, with early retirement, that Teamsters need and deserve.

The future of our pensions and Teamster retirement security is on the line. We need a new direction and a plan to win.

Race to the Bottom
“In our last contract, Hoffa’s concessions saved UPS billions in pension costs. 

“But instead of delivering pension security to UPS Teamsters, it created a pension divide.

“We need to bring everybody up or management is going to pit us against each other in a race to the bottom.”

Matt Taibi, UPS, Local 251, Providence

We Did Our Part
“When it comes to our pensions, we’re fighting to preserve what we already earned.

“With every contract, we took a lot less in wage increases to free up money to cover our pensions.

“We did our part. Now, we need our union to protect the pensions we earned.”

Tim Pagel, YRC, Local 988, Houston

July 1, 2010: The biggest factor at the present time in the pension divide is the threat to the pensions earned by Teamsters at YRC—our union’s largest employer of freight Teamsters, and the largest contributor to the Central States Fund.

YRC Teamsters have not had pension contributions paid for the past year, due to concessions made in 2009 to help save the company. The wage cut continues until the end of the contract, but the pension contributions snap back to full rate at the end of 2010, according to the concession deal.

YRC and the International Union leadership are discussing a possible successor concession agreement, in which YRC would make pension contributions far less than the $8 per hour that will be approximate full rate after August 1.

A deal like that may be possible, but raises lots of questions. What will it mean for YRC Teamsters’ pensions? Will it lead to concession demands by ABF and hundreds of other contributing employers? How will YRC Teamsters ever get to full union scale?

The root of the problem goes back to the failure of our union leadership to organize in freight and trucking, and to bring UPS Freight into Teamster benefit plans.

July 1, 2010: A bill that could provide help to troubled pension plans is now stalled in the U.S. Senate, but it could still move forward this year, with a push from below.

The Create Jobs & Save Benefits Act (S 3157), sponsored by Senator Robert Casey (D-Pa), would allow multiemployer plans to segregate the benefit liabilities attributable to participants of bankrupt former employers who pull out of the program without funding their withdrawal liability.

Central States Could Go Insolvent in Ten Years

The importance of the bill was underscored in May 27 testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee indicating that the Central States Pension Fund could become insolvent within 10 or 15 years. The testimony was given by Central States Pension Director Thomas Nyhan.

Although Nyhan didn’t say this in his Senate testimony, the Central States situation was greatly worsened by the pull-out of UPS from the fund, a move agreed to by the Hoffa administration in the 2007 UPS contract as part of a deal to get UPS Freight into the union.

The Casey bill is backed by the IBT and is the companion bill to a bill in the House sponsored by Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio), that would allow seriously troubled funds to be partitioned, with so-called “orphan” credits then taken over by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

Assets equal to a maximum of five years of projected benefit payments would also be moved to the separate account where the PBGC, the nation’s private-sector pension insurer, would back the benefit payments.

The bill deserves our full support, provided that it continues to protect 100% of pension benefits for all Teamsters and all workers, regardless of what company they worked for. In June the House, by a vote of 417-1, passed a bill providing some funding relief for pension funds.

It had already passed the Senate, and was signed into law by President Obama on June 29. The law allows some relief by allowing longer amortization to pay off unfunded benefits and longer smoothing of market ups and downs.

July 1, 2010: The New York State Teamsters Pension Plan will end 25-and-out and 30-and-out benefits at the end of the year, due to the fact that the plan is underfunded and in the “red zone.”

The fund, which covers Teamsters in most of New York State (but not New York City), has good benefits. For example, UPS workers can retire with 30-and-out at $5,500 per month. This is nearly double the amount paid by the UPS company plan, which covers 25 states in the south and central regions.

Effective January 1, 25- and 30-and-out benefits at any age will end, as part of the fund’s “rehabilitation plan” to start to get it back to full funding.

The rehabilitation plan’s summary has five options, which each require increased employer contributions bargained in contracts.

The five options increase the age for unreduced 30-and-out to 55, 57, 60, 62 or 65.

In addition to increasing the age for unreduced 30-year benefits, the rehabilitation plan cuts the annual pension accrual, the amount that pensions improve each year.

The fund and the local unions are holding educational meetings across the state to inform members of the situation and the options faced by each bargaining unit.

There could be votes by members in some bargaining units later this year on various options.

July 1, 2010: The biggest factor at the present time in the pension divide is the threat to the pensions earned by Teamsters at YRC—our union’s largest employer of freight Teamsters, and the largest contributor to the Central States Fund.

YRC Teamsters have not had pension contributions paid for the past year, due to concessions made in 2009 to help save the company. That deal expires at the end of 2010, when the contract snaps back to full rate, including pensions.

YRC and the International Union leadership are discussing a possible successor concession agreement, in which YRC would make pension contributions far less than the $8 per hour that will be approximate full rate after August 1.

A deal like that may be possible, but raises lots of questions. What will it mean for YRC Teamsters’ pensions? Will it lead to concession demands by ABF and hundreds of other contributing employers? How will YRC Teamsters ever get to full union scale?

The root of the problem goes back to the failure of our union leadership to organize in freight and trucking, and to bring UPS Freight into Teamster benefit plans.