United Parcel Service is straining to handle a surge in online sales that has resulted in more holiday volume than it had expected, causing a wave of disruptions that could spell trouble for the holiday season. On-time delivery rates for UPS ground packages based on their normal shipping transit times last week fell to 91%, according to an analysis of millions of packages by software developer ShipMatrix Inc. During the same week last year, the on-time rate was 97%, which is UPS’s usual average during nonpeak months.
Tag Archives: Central States
Idiot of the week
Ideas that hurt workers
Yesterday, the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, summed up his House Republican agenda — vowing to pursue legislation that would frame a stark choice for voters in 2016.
“Our No. 1 goal for the next year is to put together a complete alternative to the left’s agenda,” he said.
Despite the speech’s sweeping oratory and careful stagecraft, Ryan clings to seven dumb ideas that are also cropping up among Republican presidential candidates.
Here they are, and here’s why they’re dumb:
1. Reduce the top income-tax rate to 25% from the current 39%. A terrible idea. It’s a huge windfall to the rich at a time when the rich already take home a larger share of total income that at any time since the 1920s.
2. Cut corporate taxes to 25% from the current 35%. Another bad idea. A giant sop to corporations, the largest of which are already socking away $2.1 trillion in foreign tax shelters.
3. Slash spending on domestic programs like food stamps and education for poor districts. What?! Already 22% of the nation’s children are in poverty; these cuts would only make things worse.
4. Turn Medicaid and other federal programs for the poor into block grants for the states, and let the states decide how to allocate them. In other words, give Republican state legislatures and governors slush funds to do with as they wish.
5. Turn Medicare into vouchers that don’t keep up with increases in healthcare costs. In effect cutting Medicare for the elderly. Another awful idea.
6. Deal with rising Social Security costs by raising the retirement age for Social Security. Bad! This would make Social Security even more regressive, since the poor don’t live nearly as long as the rich.
7. Finally, let the minimum wage continue to decline as inflation eats it away. Wrong again. Low wage workers need a higher minimum wage.
These 7 ideas will harm most Americans. Ryan is wrong.
Made in America
Why 8,737 UPS retirees are bracing for pension cuts
UPS earned more than $3 billion last year. But 8,737 of its former workers could see their pension checks cut next summer.
The problem is that some UPS retirees receive their pensions from the cash-strapped Central States Pension Fund, which covers hundreds of thousands of workers from different companies. That fund says it needs to make cuts in order to keep from running out of money.
Jim Dopp, 63, is one of the former UPS truck drivers. He retired in May of 2007 after more than 30 years on the job with a monthly pension check of $2,903. But last month, he received a letter saying his check could be slashed in half — to $1,452 — as soon as July, if the Treasury Department approves the plan.
The real kicker is that UPS would’ve covered the cuts made to his pension if Dopp had retired just eight months later.
Here’s why UPS won’t pay
The Central States Pension Fund used to administer pension benefits to a group of unionized UPS drivers, but the company left the fund in 2008 as a way to save money and provide retirees with better benefits. It set up its own pension fund, but only took current workers with it. Any UPS drivers who had already retired would still be covered solely by the Central States fund.
“We do not have a contractual obligation to cover supplemental benefits for those UPS employees that had retired and were in the Central States fund prior to 2008,” a UPS spokesman told CNN Money.
UPS paid $6.1 billion in order to exit the fund. That should have covered the pension costs for UPS workers in the Central States fund that retired beforehand, including Dopp.
Related: Retired truck drivers could see pensions cut in half
But the fund has been hit hard financially by the aging workforce. It now has five retirees for each worker. And the deregulation of the trucking industry forced many of its member companies into bankruptcy. Unlike UPS (UPS), which paid billions of dollars to cover its workers when it left the fund, some of the bankrupt companies couldn’t pay up. So now Central States is making cuts to most of its participants’ benefits, regardless of which employer they worked for.
“UPS regrets that economic challenges and other conditions have resulted in Central States administrators choosing to propose a difficult restructuring that will potentially adversely impact thousands of retired UPS employees,” the spokesman said.
But the company has already made “substantial” payments to fund its former workers’ retirements, he added.
Central States would be the first to make cuts
The fund wouldn’t have been allowed to cut current retirees’ benefits, legally, without a federal law that passed in December. Not everyone in the fund is seeing the same size cut to their pension. Those over 80, on disability, or receiving a spousal death benefit will not see their pension checks cut. But retirees whose employers left the fund and did not pay what was due on their behalf will see the most severe cuts, according to a provision in the law.
The Treasury Department will have the final say on whether the cuts are fair, and necessary in order to avoid insolvency. The agency has tapped attorney Ken Feinberg, who’s known for overseeing the 9/11 victim compensation fund, to review the plan. Feinberg has about six more months before he must either approve or reject the fund’s proposed cuts.
“It’s very sad that anyone has to see their pension cut, but we feel that it’s not right that a profitable company like UPS isn’t doing right by their employees,” said Debbie Dopp, Jim’s wife.
She’s a high school teacher, and will be putting off her retirement to make up the difference if her husband’s pension check is cut. Their son will be entering college in 2017, and they’d like to help with the cost.
Gospel according to Republicans
The Twilight Zone
Right Wing Myths Debunked
Keeping jobs in America
Paranoia strikes deep
