Did you show up for the picket lines those retirees stood on to get you your pay and benefits through the NMFA now? Oh, I forgot. You voted to voluntarily give up pay and benefits that those "uncaring retirees" got by standing up to the threats of company shutdowns. You caved in to those threats (at least a big enough majority of you did). When two companies tried to use that threat on me and my Teamster brothers (back when there actually WAS a Teamster brotherhood that had the balls to stand together), we told them to close if they couldn't run a company - we were looking for a job when we came there and we can do it again. They did not close. They did not make any cuts. Once you show you have no spine, they have you by the "short hairs". They know they can come back again and again and demand more, not ask. Just cook the books and lie.
I stood on my fathers Teamster picket line after my father died when I was 12, because I knew he would have been there if cancer had not taken him a few months earlier. I was honored to be there in his place. That was in 1959. Where were you then? How many picket lines have YOU stood on, in all kinds of weather. Those strikes in those years are the one's that got results because the members stuck together. Noe today you can't even get them to VOTE, let alone stick together on anything. Have you ever done more than just talk, hold a sign and eat free donuts on the line? (If you have ever in fact stood on a picket line?) The Teamster Freight Division is on life-support and thanks to Hoffa's ****-poor leadership it won't survive much longer. But in the meantime Hoffa will squeeze ever bit of full union dues out of every one of you. That is all he and his cronies care about. That is why he keeps encouraging you to take another MOU cut in pay, but he won't cut HIS pay by even one dime.
