Well I guess my husband was one of the doormats....why? When you have 11 years invested in a company..and you are approaching 60 years old it gets a tad hard to leave an go somewhere else. We had talked several times of him leaving and finding a different job, but the one thing that was important to us was him being home every night and not sleeping in a sleeper of a semi. In my opinion maybe every employee is a "doormat" in one way or another no matter where you work. You make the little wages while most watch their bosses gather up the cash and buy basically whatever they want to buy. Really doesnt matter what company you work for weather it be mid states or not. For quite some time Mid States appeared to be a good company to work for, then they became self insured. Since that day I have watched this company go further and further down the tubes. My husband could have left this fall, but decided he might as well stay til 62. I always asked why do people keep taking the insurance when they dont pay the bills? We even tried to at least get signed up for AFLAC and they said no they would not allow us to get that. But "doormat" or not..everyone has their own personal reason of why they stay in a job that kicks them in the teeth all the time. I have to say that maybe my hubbies terminal manager wasnt perfect, he at least took care of us when we had to take money out of our pocket to get a semi back to the terminal. He always settled with us on a bill we had to turn in. I think to this day that Mid States may still owe him for those bills....

Just to let everyone know...heard on the news that Pfizer is offering I think either free or low cost meds to those who have lost their jobs and insurance for a year..didnt catch the number but probably if you google it you should be able to come up with a number....just passing this info on to whomever may need it. Also..dont know what is available where...but we have in Michigan a place called Michigan Works..thru the stimulus plan there is money being mad available to counties for teen workers. Since so many of the part time jobs are being taken by people like us, there is nothing left for the teens for the summer. Check with your local office and get your teens signed up for summer work. They are taking people 14-24 for these jobs. They are what used to be volunteer jobs (?) and are now putting the teens of our communities to work...another FYI

I was one of the strikers I sat in the meetings with terry, bruce, tim, and steve. chris was at a few of them also. To say he was unaware of the insurance problems is as believable as clinton saying he didnt have sex with that woman or inhale. that was a key issue from the start with bruce saying the bills would be paid in march a month after the union vote. i guess he meant if we didnt vote union because he reniged and of course not enough people believed him. Mr. Johnson you say your principles dictate your work ethics. I know you didnt like the drivers hearing a conversation you were having with Val and you wade no effort to be discrete, truth is you liked no one and made sure we knew it, the only time you ever acted like you enjoyed our company was a week before the vote and quickly went sour the day after. you are not a principled person, your as bad as the hartmans , but in the end they gave you as you did us.

Coyote, what do you want me to say to that ? That I did like you ? I don't know what conversation with Val you are speaking of especially considering during my entire MSXN career shes the one I liked the least but either way I am not going to pretend I liked more than a few of my drivers. I conducted myself in a professional manner whether I liked you or not but most were not the type I would have a beer with or want to hang around, sorry.

Not from LAS anyway. Most of the driver group in Plainfield, pretty much all of them in MAD, and most in COL and OMA sure but LAS ? NO

I dealt with people in LAS that deficated in their trucks, punched holes in the dashboards of new tractors urinated in the sinks of the freshly remodeled bathroom I fought with the ownership for six months to spend the money on. I got them somewhat better living conditions in that facility so they could feel a little more human and they wrote profanity on the walls and crapped on the floor.

I never met a group of people so devoid of basic human descency as some of those in LAS. Coming in my office telling me of all thier coworkers cozying up to the union then as soon as they got in trouble for poor attendance or refusing a dispatch they were out there on that picket line putting up vulger signs about me.

Some of those drivers were excellent employees worked hard everyday under crappy conditions and tried to hold it together when it was all goin bad. Whether they know it or believe it or not doesn't matter to me but I appreciated them even if I didn't like them. But if you want me to show some appreciation for the ones that mouthed off to customers didn't care about the service they provided or took naps on the way back from 8 hour linehaul runs.

NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

Supposed professional drivers that couldn't read a map, came in to my office begged for an opportunity because no one else would give them a chance due to their record or their lack of experience then look at me like I was the antichrist because I was not happy about them taking out 8 stops and bringing 6 of them back.

The honest truth was we deserved some of those people because of what we paid and the lack of concern shown by the ownership, but that doesn't mean I had to like them.

They made my job harder and those drivers that did pour their heart out had to pick up the slack. At peak driver numbers that was about six out of 28.

And inspite of the burden those drivers and dockmen imposed on the management staff and the drivers and dockmen that did their job, they still got fair and equitable treatment from me.

I was in some of those meetings, was foolish enough to believe them when they said they would pay those bills. Then I watched them renig not only on that but they promised the new trucks would stay to help boost morale. They pulled them. They turned LAS in to a second class citezen for anything it needed after that point. Crapped on everyone there then held me accountable for it's poor service quality. I made it all work and kept the customers happy in spite of it, and F##! No I didn't like a single one of you that made that more difficult.

Some of you may relish in that now...but guess what...it's part of the reason none of us have a job now or had to settle for less than what we had.

You were wrong...I was wrong...but neither of us were as wrong as the leadership that thought they could get more for themselves by crapping on the people that brought it to them.

The consultants that were brought in by the bank said in all their years of consulting they had never met an ownership team that cared so little about its employees.

If you want to lump me in with that...you were obviously not one of the many employees that received acommodations for personal issues despite their piss poor performance or one of the many that lost their temper told me to screw off and were still given another chance..or your one of the many low life degenerates that received all of the above and still #### on me in which case makes you more like a member of the ownership than me.

I was a dock worker in Ft Wayne, IN and i knew that this was going to happend. Thats why i quite about 2 months before they shut the doors. But the bad thing is my dad the outbound supervisor suffered from this. So cjross65 if you could hook me up with that info i would be thankfull. Oh by the way i feel for all of you guys that worked for mid-states you drivers kicked a@#.

I am going to a meeting on Wednesday evening this week about insurance options for unemployed workers. If there is anything that I think may help some people on here I will post it. If there is anyone out there that is having trbl with your mortgage payment try whatever you can to get it redone at a lower rate. In Michigan we have what is called MSHDA (Michigan State Housing Development Authority). These ladies have told us here that almost everyone qualifies for help. She said the only way would be like if you have a 250,000 mortgage and you only get unemployment they may not be able to help. We have counselors here that can help so I would think that other states should have someone to help too. If I can be of any help please go through this site and I can contact you back. This week is the insurance and next week I believe are bankruptcy options. (oh dont we hate that word!) Another suggestion is to do some volunteer work. Just a good place to do some networking. They say the best way to a new job is thru an aquaintence. Again..if there is anything I can help with let me know..

Hello to all my hardcore strikers! I came to the site to get a chuckle at the so-called 'management' response, too funny!! The soup for the hartmanns is getting to a boil, stay tuned.

OH YAH, IF YOU DONT KNOW WHO CJ IS BY NOW, sHE WAS THE LAS TERM LEADER AND HE KNEW ALL ABOUT THE DEAL BEFORE THE CARDS WERE DEALT.

Cant wait to hear the soup has boiled over!

Anything happening with all this that should be shared with the group?

__________________
You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job.
Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it...
Lucinda Basset

MadinMichigan, you are so correct! I was on my wat to the local Mo. Attorney Gen. office when I read this statement, " the soup is getting to a boil". So I with held my visit.

I do not wish the Hartmann's any personal harm other than if they have wronged us, which is how it looks from where I am sitting.

Maybe we should refrain from using their name and just say, Mid-States, which was ran by them...Someone mentioned how one of the brothers took money out to pay their personnel credit card off. I am sure, that was one of the credit cards that paid for my fuel after waiting in the fuel stop for an hour. I wonder if that person ever stopped and wondered, how are all those families medical bills being paid since we are using their money for the daily operations of the company? Bet they never did?

One more thought. When posting on here, remember we can be held liabel for what we say...which I have considered. I would love nothing more than to face them in an open court of law. The bottom line is; They offered us a service, an agreement, a contract to perform certain services. I paid the required premiums. They failed to perform the offered services. End of Story. This is why I keep asking, "Where is my money?".

One more thing: Truckers forum has provided us a place to share what we know, vent and gripe, we should all send them a donation. A few dollars, a few cents what ever you can afford.

Annette, what is your last name? Where do you live? I am Bill living in Mo. want to know more, let me see you jump up on the table. lol.....God bless you all.