Go Teamsters
Mon Apr 22, 2013 at 07:09 AM PDT O’Brien said the Teamsters mobilized their members and other unions through Twitter and Facebook yesterday. He added that about 350 Teamsters are expected this morning, “and we can get 1,000 if we need them.”
Teamsters form human wall against planned Westboro Baptist picket at bombing victim’s funeral
The attention-seeking scum of Westboro Baptist Church, true to form, threatened that they’d be picketing at the funeral of Boston Marathon bombing victim Krystle Campbell this morning. In response, Teamsters from Boston’s Local 25 laid plans to form a human shield. By 8 AM, the Boston Globe reports, 200 Teamsters had gathered at the funeral site.
attribution: Teamster Nation
Good luck being seen through this wall of Teamsters, Westboro Baptist assholes.
“It’s the right thing to do,” [local president Sean] O’Brien said of the decision to protect the funeral. “The family deserves a peaceful grieving process that’s free from any coward-led group.”
The Teamsters lined the road leading to the church. According to O’Brien, residents of Medford, where the funeral is being held, reached out to the Teamsters; Local 25 is a long-time, major force in the Boston area. Krystle Campbell’s mother and brother are members of UNITE HERE Local 26, intensifying the local union community’s sense of solidarity and support for all the victims of the bombing. Not that they’d welcome Westboro Baptist to any of the funerals.
Potential Healthcare Changes
April 22, 2013: More than 100,000 Teamsters will be moved out of their current health plan if UPS management gets its way in contract negotiations. Now some locals are demanding a separate vote on the issue.
UPSers Press for Vote On Change to Their Health Plan
UPS wants to move more UPS Teamsters out of company health plans. The company and Ken Hall were all but set on moving these Teamsters into the Central States Health & Welfare Fund. But members and some local unions are saying, “Not so fast.”
A debate has broken out on the National Negotiating Committee with some officers calling for alternatives to the Central States option and a separate vote by affected members only.
Officers from every local in the West held a conference call last week and spoke out against any transfer to Central States Health & Welfare Fund. Teamsters Local 177 which represents some 6,000 UPSers in New Jersey also joined the call.
“My local’s members deserve a separate vote on this issue,” an officer from a large affected local told TDU. “Members whose health benefits are going to stay the same should not be deciding whether our members get moved into a different plan with different coverage.”
The International Union organizes the ratification vote and has the power to give affected members a separate vote.
UPSers’ co-pays, drug costs, deductibles, and retiree healthcare costs would all go up under the top coverage that is currently offered by the Central States Health Fund, the C-6 plan.
The proposal to move UPS Teamsters out of company health plans would affect members in some of the largest UPS locals in the country, including locals in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, St. Louis, Ohio, Iowa, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.
Part-timers nationwide are covered by company plans that provide coverage that’s superior to the C-6 plan.
Negotiations continue in Washington, D.C. this week. It’s too soon to know if the proposed contract will move Teamsters in company health plans in C-6 in the Central States, an improved Central States plan or alternative plans.
Stand Up Against Healthcare Cuts
Before contract negotiations began, Ken Hall vowed, “We’re not going to be talking about concessions, we’re going to be talking about improvements.”
Will this apply to Teamsters who will be moved out of their current health plan?
These members deserve a separate vote by affected members only and complete information on changes to their benefits and retiree coverage under any proposed new health plan.
That’s where we stand. How about you? Click here to send us a message and team up with other UPS Teamsters who are working together to oppose health benefit cuts and a separate vote by Teamsters who would be moved into a different health plan.
UPS driver fed up with trucks that don’t have A/C
SARASOTA – Summer is around the corner, but already temperatures are beginning to rise. One group not happy about that is UPS drivers, since most of their trucks don’t have A/C. “Its very hot,” said Jennifer Sams about the temperature inside the ups truck she drives daily. “The trucks are brown of course, and white topped, which makes like a greenhouse and there is absolutely no air in there maybe a fan. But some of them don’t even have that.” And she says driving around in the hot truck is beginning to affect her health. “I’ve been in the ER 3 times, and its been heat exhaustion. They have to have heat up in these trucks in New York so I think it should be mandatory to have A/C here since we’re at the other end of the spectrum,” said Sams. So we took Sams’ concerns to UPS. “No one in the delivery industry uses A/C in those trucks because the doors are open all day long and the air moving in and out so it will make AC very ineffective,” said Dan McMackin a UPS representative. And he says there are things the driver can do to stay cool. “Training is really key to avoiding a situation like that. The first step is hydration, the second step is focus on wellness in your every day life, so diet does add additional factors to the heat.” But Sams says she’s taking those steps and they haven’t been working. “I have a cooler full of drinks that Im drinking constantly, Im trying to do everything I can and the last time this happened to me I felt like this could kill me,” said Sams. According to general practitioner Dr. Ed Carlastorm, those concerns are legitimate. “Worst case scenario is someone is unable to get out of the sun they could have organ failure and die,” said Carlastorm. Dr. Carlastorm says even while staying hydrated there is a danger. “Your body can’t maintain a normal temperature once it gets up to about 105, 106, it doesn’t have the ability to bring your temperature back down.” But despite the danger, Sams says her and other drivers complaints have gone unanswered. “There won’t be air in them in your lifetime Jen, thats exactly what they said to me.”
Which door do I go in??
Keep moving forward
Not the easiest thing to deliver out of
CEOs Earn 354 Times More Than Average Worker
Chief executives of the nation’s largest companies earned an average of $12.3 million in total pay last year — 354 times more than a typical American worker, according to the AFL-CIO.
The average worker made $34,645 last year, according to the group that represents over 50 trade unions.
Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison’s $96.1 million pay package topped the list, followed by $54.3 million earned by Credit Acceptance Corp.’s (CACC) Brett Roberts and Discovery Communications (DISCA) CEO David Zaslav’s $50 million, according to the union’s pay project.
The one stand out was Apple (AAPL) CEO Timothy Cook, whose pay dropped to $4.2 million from $376 million in 2011, when his compensation package got a boost from long-term stock awards.
The dip in Cook’s pay was enough to lower the overall average for CEOs of top companies by 5% from 2011.
The discrepancy in pay between CEOs and the average worker has skyrocketed over the years, peaking in 2000, when the gap was 525 times. In 1980, CEO pay was 42 times that of the average worker.
The AFL-CIO each year highlights the pay disparity between workers and chief executives from companies that are part of Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index.
Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, said he hopes the project will remind Washington leaders that most workers “continue to struggle.”
“They struggle every day to make ends meet, their wages are stagnant, their companies are trying to take away their health care and pensions, and they’re angry,” Trumka said. “And very few them know what’s happening with CEO (pay).”
The union wants regulators to enforce an outstanding rule from Wall Street reforms for publicly traded companies to reveal CEO pay compared to their average employees. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed efforts to craft that rule, in part because of heavy lobbying by companies.
The labor group unveiled an updated website database on Monday compiled from 327 companies based on SEC filings. The site will post CEO pay for all 500 companies as the data is made public.
Trumka himself makes $302,000 in total compensation, according to federal records, or 8.7 times the average worker.
Tita Freeman, spokeswoman for CEO lobbying group The Business Roundtable, would not comment on the pay gap. She said CEOs represented by her group support efforts to tie executive pay to performance.
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