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Norman2024, you are absolutely correct. In the event of catrostophic failure of the CSPF it would have had a rippling effect on the membership, the union and the entire economy.
The 1200 remaining employers in the CSPF include Local Unions throughout the nation. Under law, the withdrawal liabilities would have crippled, if not bankrupted every participating employer.
Many of those employers are also in the other 21 Teamster pension plans, including the Western Conf.
I've been told, had the CSPF gone down, it would have inevitably caused the failure if every other Teamster Pension plan.
On top of that, the size of the CSPF would have bankrupted the Pension Guarantee Corporation. So, there is no guarantee that any pensioner would have even received the reduced (30%) pensions.
Nationwide, this could have caused an economic crash that would rival the 1933 crash.
So, while Biden saved our pensions, he was also trying to save a broken economy that he inherited from the corrupt Trump regime.Comment
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Biden and the pro-Netanyahu Zionists have made defeating Trump much harder. Harder for many of us to vote for Biden. But with regard to our hard earned and promised pension benefits, I cite the following facts:
- O'Brien was ready to compromise the pension benefits we were promised and that we earned through our labor, our sweat.
- Why? Before the 2020 US election, when O'Brien was seeking TDU's endorsement, O'Brien, when asked at that TDU convention, why he was backing the "UPS Plan" that starts with 20% benefit cuts, rather than pushing for the Butch Lewis Act that guarantees 100% of promised benefits through 2051, when the Butch Lewis Act had already been approved by the US House of Representatives and Democrats might retake the Senate and the White House. O'Brien had a simple answer and I quote him because I asked the question from the floor mic: O'Brien: "Because, I believe, everyone has to have skin in the game."
- Another "Buckle your chin straps" approach from the tough guy.
We already put enough skin in the game, while Teamster leadership stood by and watched as the LTL trucking industry was deregulated. Oh, wait a second, IBT GP Roy Williams tried to bribe Nevada Senator Canon, the committee chairman, to kill deregulation, but he got caught. That was about it from IBT leadership on the greatest disaster for unionized trucking in the USA..
Rather than get 500,000 Teamsters in the streets of Washington, DC to demand protection from deregulation's devastation on working conditions by way of cut throat competition, in an industry that prior to deregulation, shared a level playing field, because of ICC control, the Teamster leadership opted for more corruption, like the suitcases of cash Trucking Management Inc. would bring to NMFA negotiations, when Fitzsimmons, Williams, Presser, and the like were elected strictly by Convention delegates - the vast majority never being elected for that position..
Why: Because Teamster leadership feared organizing the rank and file. Although, in the midst of the onset of deregulation in 1981, after Reagan fired striking PATCO members, the AFL-CIO turned out over half a million members in the streets of Washington DC, on Solidarity Day. TDU had a contingent, and my wife and I marched representing the Boston chapter. We passed by the IBT headquarters on Louisiana AVE. NW; we had planned to stop in with our TDU banner, but - it was closed!
Not that the Union should rely on government regulation rather than hard core organizing, deregulation killed the NMFA and YRC and New Penn, from which I retired at the end of 2022.
So, I'm struggling with whether to vote, but no struggle, no question in my mind, it will not be for Trump, just like it was not for O'Brien nor his opponent.
I put my stock in rank and file power with the goal of an honest, militant, democratic, and transparent Teamsters union. None of us has all the answers. But once I'm gone, like so many Teamsters that sacrificed for the same goals, I won't have the chance to make my views known.
O'Brien said to JC10 Delegates, after Zuckerman almost won in 2016: "Maybe I have to change." And he did change, but only for political expediency, not for rank and power and democracy in the Teamsters.
He suckered a lot of members in, including me. I saw him as potentially a more militant and responsive and inclusive alternative to Hoffa's successors. I even maxed out my contributions to his campaign at the urging of my local's (251) principal officer. But, by the time the ballots were mailed, O'Brien's true intentions became all too clear, and I took a photo of my ballot, with blank boxes beside both GP candidates.
Opportunism falls directly into the shtick: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I try not to let what's happened to the TDU movement consume me. It has now shifted 180 degrees, and it's leadership (I guess that's David Levin, with Ken Paff watching from afar) are trampling on the graves of those TDU activists that fought so hard and for so many years at great cost to their personal lives.
I got enough space being taken up in my head based on what's going on, on the rest of the planet, to get consumed by what's happening in the Teamsters, as I describe above. I'm semi-retired, I paid my dues.
It will be for the younger generations now and coming along later to try and get this shit straightened out. Good luck Brothers and Sisters.Comment
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EXCELLENT! Brutally honest and acurate!Comment
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I love grandpa Joe for saving my brothers and sisters pension all over the country. Both of these geezers are old but this is the choice we have. You have to vote for the guy who helps labor. Not the guy who doesn’t pay for labor that had been done for him in the past 50 years of his business record.Comment
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Why would you expect a man who has received four criminal indictments, covering a total of 88 felony charges, "clean up" the Teamsters? That logic completely escapes me.Comment
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He's been a strong President for unions but his debate performance was terrible. I hope this isn't a RBG moment, you have to know when to fold um.Comment
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My pension didn't need saved.Comment
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