April 10, 2009: On January 1, 2008, UPS transferred some 44,000 full-time Teamsters out of the Central States Pension Fund, and into a new UPS-only pension plan.
Many members have questions about their benefits in the new fund. TDU consulted pension attorneys and experts to answer some of the most frequently asked questions.
Do you have a question or concern about your benefits in the new UPS plan? Call TDU at (313) 842-2600, or email us at info@tdu.org.
Q: If I retire and Central States fails to pay me their portion of my pension, will UPS guarantee me the difference?
Yes and No. If you retire by July 31, 2013, yes. If Central States fails to be able to pay its full portion, UPS will make up the difference to guarantee your pension.
But if you retire after that, all bets are off. It all depends on what is bargained in the 2013 contract. This illustrates a major problem: the UPS pull-out weakened the Central States Plan, but UPS Teamsters are still dependent on it for a large portion of their pension benefits.
You can be sure UPS management will make good use of this hammer in bargaining, to try to extract more concessions from the Teamster leadership.
Fortunately there is an IBT election in November 2011. Teamsters have a chance to vote out Hoffa and elect leaders who will protect the pensions of all Teamsters.
Q: When I retire, will I get two checks?
UPS pays your full pension until age 65. Once you are 65, you will get two checks. Central States and the UPS Plan will each pay a share, based on how many years you have in each plan. Your years prior to 2008 will be paid by Central States; your years beginning with 2008 will be paid by UPS.
Q: Can you count your part-time years toward early retirement?
Your part-time years can be counted in order to qualify for a 25 or 30 year early retirement, but will not count toward your benefit amount. For example, a Teamster with 25 full-time years and five part-time years qualifies for 30-and-out, but will get $2625 instead of $3,000 per month because the part-time pension pays very low benefits. (This is the same rule as previously, under Central States.) If you qualify for a part-time pension and a full-time pension, you will receive two checks, and three checks after you reach age 65.
Q: How do the benefits under the new UPS plan compare to other Teamster plans?
They compare unfavorably, and that situation is going to get worse by 2013. Benefits in the UPS plan are frozen for the life of the contract, whereas those in most other plans are increasing. For more information, see The Teamster Pension Divide at www.tdu.org/pensiondivide.
The UPS Plan also has no reciprocity with other pension plans. This means if you transfer into the plan from the West or East, you cannot add your pension credits together from the UPS Plan and another plan. It also means if you leave UPS and take a job at another Teamster company, you cannot add your years together in the two plans.
Q: Can UPS take over other Teamster plans?
UPS gave the International Union a letter agreeing not to try to take over more pension plans until the contract after next. However, that is no solid guarantee. If they see a weak leadership at the International Union, they may seek to take over more pensions.
We Do the Same Work But We Get Less
“Our pension is the lowest for any UPSers in the country. We do the same job, but in the end we get less.
“You can bet that if we can ask to improve our pensions in our next contract, UPS is going to put a steep price tag on it.
“I’m helping to put together a TDU meeting in Florence so that we can educate other members. UPS is already planning for the next contract. We should too.”
James McLeod,
UPS Local 71, Florence, S.C.
Category Archives: Union
Can’t Get No Satisfaction?
When the company is on your back and the Union is not helping, where do you turn?
Well, according to one reader, you can go the National Labor Relations Board. As a steward, I filed some NLRB charges in my day and let me tell you, it brings everybody to ATTENTION. Suddenly the company wants to know how they can resolve the problem and if you file on the Union also, they are equally interested in satisfying your needs.
You can call the NLRB office in your state to file a complaint.
Here is one readers advice:
George, My name is a Bob, I’m a retired teamster from UPS, I retired in 1999 of my 31 years, 15 of those were as a shop steward for my center. I still keep in touch with my brothers. As a steward I can tell you I was threatened more by my local than I was by the company. For protection, because I question the local about what was going on with our pension, I went to the NRLB for protection. Both the Company and the Union had to back off. Still today, the company does things that I personally just can’t believe they are allowed to do, the Local is useless and the International in the beginning gave me excuses of what is going on, then just told me to mind my own business. I’m a lifetime member I just can’t do that. The best way to combat a Union that refuses to help and a company hell bent on firing you is use the NRLB. Everyone must do the job the way it’s supposed to be done, when that’s not enough and the Union doesn’t help your best bet is the NRLB. It takes some of your personal time to file a complaint but believe me in the end it’s time well spent. Once the papers are filed, the company and the Local are sent letters and have to leave you alone. The harassment of the people I used to work with is beyond belief, in this day and age, I told them what to do, but no one takes the time and that’s all you need. Good Luck
fraternally,
Robert C. Bressman
Retired, local 177
The Banksters Strike Again
The foreclosure mess isn’t going away
We’ve told you before about how big banks cut corners on paperwork over the last few years in order to speed struggling homeowners into foreclosure. And a “60 Minutes” report that aired last night offers fresh anecdotal reporting on just how irresponsible–and potentially fraudulent–the banks’ practices were. Meanwhile, compelling video of a grandmother being evicted from her home by a SWAT team last week suggests the banks aren’t slowing down their rush to foreclosure and eviction.
Banks profit by processing a vast number of homes into foreclosure as quickly as possible. But as “60 Minutes” details, many of the mortgages at issue were bundled and sold from one Wall Street investor to another during the housing boom, with scant attention paid among financial players to the actual underlying ownership documents. And as the foreclosures unwind in a slew of court proceedings nationwide, many banks have produced dubiously rendered legal documents that seek to shore up the ownership paperwork long after the original mortgage transactions were on the books. In some cases, financial institutions paid contract companies who employed an army of “robo-signers”—office workers who forged signatures on mortgage documents that were then used to initiate foreclosures.
Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” spoke with one former robo-signer, Chris Pendley, a man who had been paid to sign the name “Linda Green” thousands of times over the course of an average workday on mortgage documents.
“When you came in to Docx on your first day, what did they tell you your job was gonna be?” Pelley asked.
“They told me that I was gonna be signing documents for using someone else’s name,” Pendley remembered.
“Did you think there was something strange about that in the beginning?” Pelley asked.
Yeah, it seemed a little strange. But they told us and they repeatedly told us that everything was above board and it was legal,” Pendley said.
Pendley told Pelley he had no previous experience in banking, in legal documents, and that there were no requirements for the job.
“You had to be able to hold a pen?” Pelley remarked.
“Hold a pen,” he agreed.
Asked if he understood what these documents were, Pendley said, “Not really” . . . .
Pendley showed us how he signed mortgage documents as “Linda Green.” He told us Docx employees had to sign at least 350 an hour. Pendley estimates that he alone did 4,000 a day.
There was an actual Linda Green, Pendley discovered, but she was no bank president either; she is a former shipping clerk for an auto parts store who was also hired on as a robo-signer at Docx. One plaintiff in a pending lawsuit discovered that Green is named as a vice president for 20 different banks in different mortgage documents, all bearing strikingly different renditions of her signature. She didn’t agree to an on-camera interview, but she told Pelley that the company selected her name because it was short and easy to sign rapidly on the doctored ownership documents.
All 50 state attorneys general are currently conducting an investigation into the foreclosure mess–including cases that involve forged documents like these. And Shelia Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told CBS she thinks the banks should have to pay billions to set up a compensation fund for those who are being forced to accept foreclosure without proper documentation.
But if you thought all this might have chilled the banks’ zeal to push struggling borrowers from their homes, think again.
The footage below from a local news station shows Catherine Lennon, a grandmother from Rochester, New York being forcibly evicted from her home by a SWAT team.
Lennon has said that though she missed some mortgage payments after her husband died in 2008, she subsequently began making payments again. But because it was her husband’s name, not hers, on the official mortgage documents, Fannie Mae wouldn’t accept her money, and moved her house into foreclosure.
Federal lawmakers intervened, and Lennon may soon get her house back–she’s been staying in a homeless shelter lately. But countless other Americans who are in similar positions may not be as lucky.
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
The BMU (Barn Movers Union)
The video shows the power of a Unified Workforce. It’s the power of the Union.
The Slippery Slope
Why We Still Need Collective Bargaining Today
How safe do you think it would be working at UPS today without Union oversight? If we don’t fight to save Unions today from attacks by big money, will our children be safe tomorrow? Do we care???
Read on…….
There’s a misguided move to end collective bargaining rights for unions for all the wrong reasons. Those supporters who want to end collective bargaining see it as a cost saving measure. Those clamoring to end collective bargaining rights are looking to return to the past glory days without collective bargaining. Well, the past was not so glorified for many workers in the US.
This month marks the 100th anniversary of the New York City Triangle Fire where on March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers died after a fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Company. The mostly girls and young women, who were killed, were locked in the factory to prevent them from taking breaks. Many perished through the fire or jumped to their deaths from the 8th and 9th floors. At that time, there was no union or collective bargaining to protect their rights or require basic work place safety for the workers.
After the fire, the New York legislature passed laws requiring automatic sprinklers, unlocked doors during working hours, doors that swing outward, to name a few. Just like today’s dissenters of collective bargaining, the same rhetoric was heard 100 years ago. Sprinklers were called “cumbersome and costly”. Others warned the new laws would drive business out of the city and state of New York. Does this sound familiar?
Everything always boils down to cost cutting over safety and saving lives. If today’s House Republicans and Wisconsin Republicans were alive in 1911, they would call these basic fire safety measures “job killers”. Big business and special interest groups have always fought against rights for the working people, as too costly. Corporate interests argued against basic minimum wages, child labor laws, minimum work day hours and overtime pay, all at the cost to working people. Over the years, unions through collective bargaining have fought for the rights and safety for working Americans.
If we allow collective bargaining rights to be stripped, we will return to the days of yester year when workers were not safe. By way of recent example today, the National Traffic Air Traffic Controllers Association has long requested that air traffic controllers not work alone on night shifts. Ever since 2006, the union has argued for 2 person late night shifts. And just this week, one lone air traffic controller at Regan National Airport in Washington, DC admits falling asleep, resulting in 2 planes attempting to land without his assistance. Paul Rinaldi, the head of the union representing air traffic controllers, has long argued against single person late night shifts. The cost to hire 2 air traffic controllers to work on night shifts far outweighs the costs to lives perished in an airplane crash, as the one occurred in 2006 in Kentucky due to a lone traffic controller, at the helm.
There’s an old saying that says sometimes you need to learn the hard way. When it comes to lives and basic safety, I’d rather not learn the hard way. I’d rather continue with unions and their collective bargaining efforts fighting for safety. Unions are not perfect. But, the risk of loss of lives without them is too much to bear. Safety has a price. But, lives are priceless.
Debbie Hines
More Free Trade Agreements
From NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell
Republican senators have just announced that they will block the confirmation of a new Commerce Secretary – or any commerce related positions – until Democrats move on free trade agreements for Columbia and Panama.
Forty-four GOP senators signed on to a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid Monday, vowing to hold up the nominations until “the President submits both agreements to Congress for approval and commits to signing implementing legislation into law.”
“The time for delay is over,” they write. “Colombia and Panama are strong democratic allies in Latin America and both have undertaken serious and meaningful reforms, many of which directly address the concerns of those who want to further delay these agreements. Yet the administration continues to move the goalpost by withholding clear direction and not providing a specific timetable for implementation.”
Do We Need a General Strike?
It seems to me that just the very fact that the idea of a general strike is being discussed shows how far our political discourse has come and how deeply Scott Walker and prolonged economic anxiety have radicalized otherwise moderate masses.
Walker’s bill reaches far beyond just public sector unions and his stripping of public workers’ right to bargain affects the rights of everyone who works for a living. This attack on workers’ rights, if allowed to stand, won’t stop with the public sector or with Wisconsin. These anti-union bills are already spreading around the country from Indiana to Ohio to Nebraska to Michigan.
The IWW website is making a strong case for a general strike as the most effective tool to combat Walker’s bill and copycat legislation cropping up in numerous other states.
“A general strike against Walker would begin the process of rebuilding a strong labor movement in the United States. Since the US plays such an important role in the global economy and world political system, this could also invigorate workers’ struggles around the planet. To make it happen will require participation from many people across industries, across unions, and across the country.”
The South Central Federation of Labor, a federation of ninety-seven labor organizations representing 45,000 workers, has already endorsed the need to prepare for a general strike, and David Dayen reports at FDL that the mood of the protesters who stormed the Capitol on word of the bill’s passage, echoes that resolution. “You could see some kind of near-term labor walkout, at least in Madison and possibly throughout the state.”
Joe Conway, the charismatic president of the Madison firefighters’ union, said recently that the political situation has grown so dire in Wisconsin, he’d support a general strike. “We should start walking out tomorrow, the next day. See how long they can last,” he told reporters with The Uptake. “This is a nation-wide movement to attack all working men and women in Wisconsin and the United States.”
And Michael Moore has called on high school students and working people of all stripes to restart the American democracy movement and fight back in this latest round of “class war” against the middle class.
Find out more about what exactly a general strike is, when the tool has been victorious in numerous international struggles for change and rights, how it may apply to the current situation and how you can get involved.
Peter Rothberg, The Nation
Hey, They Split Out My Route
I came to work the one day and my route had been split out. I was told that I could run the trash truck that was being loaded but I wouldn’t like it, or I could go home without pay. I thought this all sounded kind of heavy handed, so I went straight to the authority on such matters: my contract book. I sat down with my steward and we read through Article 3, sec. 9, parts a and b of the Central States Supplement. This article addresses Temporary Route Changes. 
I discovered that I had rights. I had the right to follow my work. If 50% or more went to a lower seniority driver, I could bump that driver and he would work as directed that day. If the work went every which way but loose, I had the right to follow any part of it that went to a lower seniority driver and that driver would have to work as directed that day instead of me. Maybe they wanted to go home that day and I didn’t. A lot of drivers jump at the chance to go home, I needed to work and my seniority guaranteed me that right.
If I had not gotten my steward involved and had we not had a Teamster contract in place, I would have been at the mercy of the whims of management.
I have power, I have a contract.
Magic Paper Takes Wing
Stewards Alert! Every one of those forms the Local gives you comes with wings attached. All you need to add is a little ink from a pen to make them take off. You will be amazed at how far those little pieces of paper can fly.
You have magic paper, (Grievance Forms), in your union folder!
Grievances are the cause and effect of all the issues you live by on a day-to-day basis. They are the reason you have an attendance policy. They are the reason you can fight excessive overtime. They are the reason for how you pick floating holidays and vacations. They are the reason you still have a right to strike in Colorado. Somebody somewhere filed a grievance. They took the time to write it down, and send it to the business agent. They took the time to look in the contract book and find an article to file under. (Let us not forget, “and all others that apply.”)
As a steward you will make many decisions and deals on behalf of your members, but none will have an afterlife unless they are decided through the grievance procedure. That is where the wings are attached. Once things are decided in a grievance hearing, it is a written record. This record that can always be referred to. This record can be researched and rediscovered. People’s memories are short and subject to interpretation. But when it’s written down, it becomes a fact. It becomes a fact that other people can call upon. You will be amazed in your career as a steward which grievance will grow wings and fly.
They can only fly if you use that magic paper with the wings attached.
Write it down!
File it!