International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Local 986 here hauling fuel in Southern California, hands down best driving gob I've ever had. The pay is great steady work with all the OT you can handle or you can work your 4 days and have your 3 days off. Benefits are pricey but they are good.

 

Consolidated Freightways, Hostess Brands, US Postal, and Chevron Southern Cal drivers are just four examples of highly paid union drivers who thought their jobs were secure.
There is no such thing as job security. Not in a capitalist society and not in a socialist society.

 

I will ad my input aswell. I am a union mechanic (rare but it does exist) I have mixed emotions being union. It is true the wages, benefits, are better being union. My pension is through my company (government job) so union has nothing to do with that. I do have mixed feelings about being unionized. It protects the hard working people but on the downside it also protects the lazy and incompetent workers aswell. Union makes it very hard to fire a employee which makes things difficult for the hard workers. Also I have seen to many people move up in to equipment jobs and beat out better qualified operators just because of higher sinority.

 

All along i was never super pro union or anti-union either. But i think now i'm leaning towards union.

2) i have to say my top 3 best jobs were union:
(Not necessarily in order of awesomeness)
a) Auto-truck transport International Association of Machinists
b) NEMF Then steamfitters of NJ (or something?) Now IAM which i think is a good union, although many people in it would disagree..........
c) UPS Freight Teamster (although back when it was Overnite it was non-union and to me it feels about the same)

My health and dental are totally "free" or let's say no cost.

 

No matter what....plan as though you will get screwed.

My Dad was Schneider union for 30 years and then retired. Then the union....with the blessing of the US gov....just cut his pension by almost 40%... because the fund is broke! Guess why....not enough current union truckers paying in and poor fund management=broke=sorry about your luck.

I would never look for a job because it is union. My only union gig ever was in the inner city of Cleveland and the union just kept bad people from getting fired. I mean that literally. They served zero purpose other than that.

 

I feel the same. I've seen guys getting $30+/hr sit around for several hours washing a pickup truck. Unions are a great idea but they go too far in my opinion.

 

The pension is from the teamsters.....

 

My memory just got jogged by another thread. There used to be Hadley Auto Transport and PMT here in Socal and their drivers were very highly paid union guys. They used to walk around like their sh8& don't smell. Guess where they are now? In the annals of trucking history.

 

And now many of those pensions are also in trouble because they were either under funded or not enough new members are paying into it to support the current retirees... Some of those are now restructuring and what was promised is not what is going to be paid out. Someone above mentioned someone that is now only getting 40% of what was expected because there is just not enough money in the fund anymore.

Sometimes it more closely relates to a ponzie scheme than a retirement or investment account. Like Socisl Security... When more are pulling funds out than are putting funds in, the whole thing becomes unstable.

 

Wow...you seem to get your jollies off of union people losing their jobs. I was a Hostess Brands driver and I lost my job, as did 18,000 other people.

Union or not, I wouldn't gloat if you or your coworkers lost your jobs.

We all have bills to pay.