What do you do when your union membership isn’t growing as fast as you need it to (partly to prop up near-bankrupt pension funds)? Start going after other unions’ members. That’s the Teamsters’ play. IBT is after a 2,000-member unit of Contra Costa county workers, Public Employees Union Local 1. Public Employees says they are prepared for the Teamsters to go after some of their other bargaining units as well. Richard Boyd, Local 1 Director of Field Operations, had this to say: “They’re behaving in a way that is purely anti-union and anti-labor…We don’t cannibalize each other.” The Central States Pension Fund is in such bad shape right now that fund trustees and union leaders have decided that the only way to save it is to cut benefit payouts for the approximately 273,000 Teamsters members invested. 74-year-old Bill Henderson was told earlier this month that he should brace for a payout cut of 60% as early as July. The average cut is reported to be 28%. For most of the already retired members, their pension was their retirement plan. They trusted that the Teamsters would follow through on its commitment to its members who paid into the plan for decades.
