ABF | Razorblades Opinions
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Steward of the Rock
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Sorry about not getting back on here to comment sooner. I just got home from work and cleaned up. Anyway, here we go again Razorblade. This was another post you made on the FedEx forum. They were discussing their terrible health insurance and what could be done about it. Some were even discussing union representation. I would have thought that you being employed for 30 years with union freight companies, enjoying premium insurance negotiated by the Teamster's, and now drawing a pension that was also negotiated by the Teamster's, that you would jump right in and tell them the benefits of Union representation. After all, you were a steward, Secretary Treasurer, and a Union recruiter back in the day. Instead, this is what you posted.
"Get over yourself. Capitalism, corporations, free markets and democracy are all about profits. Labor is nothing more than a tool to create revenue and profit. When labor gets too expensive, when people are no longer cost effective, they will be replaced. There are no welders in automobile plants, robots are cheaper and more reliable than people. Labor, union labor in particular, overprices itself and puts companies out of business. Teamster LTL freight companies are a prime example."
That does not sound to me like a person that is thankful for all the great things the Teamster's had provided by negotiating the contract you worked under for premium pay, insurance, pension, and all the other perks you received that was negotiated by the Teamster's. I am just curious as to what made you turn sour about the Teamster's. And, as I stated to you on the FedEx forum, you are biting the very hand that fed you then and is still feeding you now with a pension that you never had to contribute one dime to. If that is the way you represent the Teamster's, I am sure glad you were never my steward.
"Get over yourself. Capitalism, corporations, free markets and democracy are all about profits. Labor is nothing more than a tool to create revenue and profit. When labor gets too expensive, when people are no longer cost effective, they will be replaced. There are no welders in automobile plants, robots are cheaper and more reliable than people. Labor, union labor in particular, overprices itself and puts companies out of business. Teamster LTL freight companies are a prime example."
That does not sound to me like a person that is thankful for all the great things the Teamster's had provided by negotiating the contract you worked under for premium pay, insurance, pension, and all the other perks you received that was negotiated by the Teamster's. I am just curious as to what made you turn sour about the Teamster's. And, as I stated to you on the FedEx forum, you are biting the very hand that fed you then and is still feeding you now with a pension that you never had to contribute one dime to. If that is the way you represent the Teamster's, I am sure glad you were never my steward.
To be honest, I told her I had been saving up for years.How in the world did you end up with such a nice looking lady?
She thought I was talking about money.
Crickets....
Firewood bastard, turned garden bastard?
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Stewart...Are you sure this guy isn't Hoffa jr. Sure sounds like how he's been ruining, opps running things the last twenty years. Just MHO!!!!
Guess Ol Razor is a Ungrateful Bastard. Got his then screwed the pooch.
The democratic party ruined the airline industry in 1978 and the trucking industry in 1980 by deregulating both industries that had operated under a regulated environment for decades with the stroke of a pen. The companies that failed had legacy contractual obligations structured around decades of government regulated collective rate-setting that crushed them in a deregulated cutthroat rate-setting environment virtually overnight. Look at American Airlines regional carriers. They now pay their flight crews 35-$40000 a year and work them like dogs. Do you really think that improved things? BTW seniority isn't a bad thing. Our military uses and rewards seniority and experience as a matter of conduct. It's worked pretty well to keep our asses free for over 250 years. I assume you work for one of the jackals who grew fat picking over the bones, right? That's great. Just remember they are jackals and will do what all jackals eventually do. Eat their own. Pray that a few union companies survive to keep your wages where they are. When the last union LTL company closes, they'll have you working for $ 15.00/hr. Doubt me? Hide and watch. Walmart pays their drivers very well, not because they appreciate them, but because they are trying to keep the union out. If that stalking horse ever disappears, it will be a race to the bottom for the entire industry.
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The union didn't bust them. The slimey self-serving political trash that deregulated an industry overnight that had been closely regulated by collective rate-setting bureaus for decades by that same federal political trash without consideration for the devastation and turmoil it would inevitably cause is what did it. Legacy costs built on decades under regulation that couldn't be discarded left them vulnerable to predatory companies who preyed on their inability to adjust to the new environment of deregulation, which is exactly what the filthy swamp trash wanted to buy votes from the folks with. And yes, they were democrats. Just like now. I despise both parties, but Carter and the dem. congress passed it and signed it, and Reagan implemented it. It was an exemption under the anti-trust laws that allowed this for 31 years. But companies granted this exemption had to guarantee to serve entire regions they were granted authority over, and that meant large interconnected regional trucking networks that were expensive to create and service and smaller terminals that weren't profitable had to be maintained to service everyone within that region equally under federal law. These were the legacy costs they carried forward into deregulation that the upstarts didn't have to perform. They could skim the high-volume profitable freight from the bigger carriers and leave them to serve podunk USA at a loss. And they did. It wasn't just the union damnit! God I get sick of hearing this crap from ill-informed anti-union young guns like this.
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Sorry Seabreeze. I linked to the wrong thread. I was after Razorblade. I was so mad I couldn't see straight! By the time I calmed down and realized it I couldn't edit it any longer. Man! That dude pushed all my buttons! I really resent a lecture from someone about explaining trucking econ 101 to me when I lived through that nightmare.
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Thank you brother for the informative post. You mentioned some things that I had never thought of with legacy costs, I was only a kid when deregulation happened. Although my stepfather lived through it, and he was rightfully bitter about it. He was in his early 40's when it happened, so he was half way to retirement when they decided to change the rules on him. He worked in a union job for a few years after deregulation, then non union after that. What was he going to do? Times were tough, and people didnt just go back to school to learn a new trade....not with a family. He went to a non union job which there were plenty of with all the upstarts, and did that for the last 20 or so years that he worked. One thing I never hear about is how the government changed the rules and it ended up forcing people into lesser jobs. (Continued)
I personally think deregulation would have eventually happened no matter who was in power given its political popularity. It should have been implemented much slower, and laws should have been changed especially regarding overtime which is still a major advantage for the nons even to this day. So he retired and to add insult to injury his pension was cut (due to deregulation, no fault of his own) when he was nearly 80, and he passed away about a year before the Butch Lewis Act. Guys like him really got screwed by the government. He hated both political parties and I don't blame him.
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Deregulation of trucking and airlines was certainly going to put poorly managed companies out of business.
A regulated industry has no incentives to control costs. Any cost increases are passed onto consumers by government mandate. The only variable among freight companies that all charged the same rate was service. Deregulation did what deregulation always does, it provided competitive pricing. Deregulation wasn't about the transportation industry, it was about providing the end line consumer with better quality at lower costs. The "serving rural areas" argument is totally bogus. Can you tell me what areas in the country have no LTL freight service? The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 was 40+ years ago and it was an act of congress not a stroke of the pen. It's time to stop blaming it for the failure of hundreds of unionized carriers. Are you equally upset that the AT&T monopoly was deregulated? The Standard Oil monopoly was ordered broken up by the Supreme Court because competition serves our nation well. Companies that adapt to change grow and prosper, those that refuse to die. Ward Trucking was an interline company. One of the very few companies that had intrastate Pennsylvania authority. Deregulation should gave put them out of business within six months.
BTW: I appreciate the young guns comment. I am a 72 year old Teamster retiree.
Steward of the Rock
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The comparison of the LTL Freight industry to AT&T or Standard Oil is a total unfair comparison when it comes to deregulation. With AT&T, the intent was to break up a monopoly controlled by one company and divide it into multiple companies in the hope of lowering cost to the consumer and allowing new, more modern technology in. With Standard Oil, the intent was the same for the most part. The deregulation of the trucking industry was designed to break up the monopoly controlled by the government of multiple companies. By doing so, they allowed new, upstart companies into the market to compete with the companies that had previously basically had to "buy" their territorial rights from the government to operate in a specific area, or buy another company for their territorial rights to expand with government approval. When deregulation took effect, these new companies had free reign to operate wherever they chose at no cost to operate. This created an unfair cost advantage for these new up start freight companies and several of the pre-deregulation era freight companies could not compete because of the territorial rights cost they had paid that were now basically worthless. In my opinion, Derugulation of the trucking industry was done for one reason and one reason only. To bring down Hoffa (legacy) and the Teamster's because the US Government was afraid of the power that Hoffa (legacy) and the Teamster's had at the time. But, like Seabreeze eloquently stated in another post "opinions are like butt-holes, we all have one!!"
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Steward of the Rock
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And by the way Razorblade, you have still not answered as to why you chose to speak to the good people on the FedEx forum as if you were the owner of the company as opposed to representing the Teamster's when you had the opportunity to about their poor health care coverage. You proudly talked about all your titles you held as a Teamster, but in my opinion, you failed miserably at showing your appreciation of all the great things you have because of the Teamster's.
I apologize for my attack, Razorblade but you tripped my circuit breakers. I hope I didn't leave teeth marks on your throat. I respect your reasoned response, and I will be respectful in reply. AT&T is a good example, but Standard oil isn't. One had been granted antitrust exemption authority to provide service to all communities, the other was predatory price-fixing at it's worst. The large legacy carriers were destroyed by their inability to shed costs quickly enough as the revenue streams they depended on to fund their obligations to maintain service to unprofitable markets dried up. Chalk it up to arrogance, failure to downsize operations quickly enough or some altruistic beliefs that they still owed rural America the same service that larger, more profitable markets afforded, which was the goal and statutory obligations of their operating authority under regulation. I remember how my companies agonized over closing smaller terminals that were draining revenue. It was implemented fairly quickly once it was signed into law, by the way. I remember that household movers were immediately allowed to load high-revenue ltl freight as backhauls very quickly. Yes ltl carriers were also allowed to move furniture as well, but it took the survivors like ABF years to realize the potential profitability of this niche market and develop the technology to market it effectively. Most were gone by then. I agree it probably would have happened eventually anyway, but could have been done less painfully for those who had served all America's needs so effectively all those years. Allowing them time to adjust would have been nice, but politicians don't care about nice. They only care about perceptions and votes. I believe Fred Smith of Fedex fame was a big backer of deregulation with his vision of a nationwide/ transnational integrated common carrier and needed a deregulated environment to make it happen. So he called up his swamp buddies Teddy Kennedy and others to get 'r done! They willingly complied. He succeeded spectacularly and the rest is history, just like Carl Ichan and T Boone Pickens pushed airline deregulation so they could buy up ravaged airlines like Continental at pennies on the dollar and strip their pension funds and sell off the bleached bone that were left behind. Another example? OK. How about good old Sanford Weill...continued
Who owned traveler's insurance and Citybank and a couple of investment firms but dreamed of an empire of integrated banking and investment, but the annoying Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1929 stood in his way. It had been created to place a wall of separation between commercial lending banks and investment banks to stop the carnage of 1929 from ever happening again, but it hurt his ambitions. No problem. He just got ahold of his buddy Treasury Sec James Rubin under Clinton and had him push the Financial Instruments Modernization Act and got it passed and Clinton willingly signed it into law. It was supported by both parties BTW. That one event directly led to the collapse of 2008 and the economic devastation it caused the common folk, but no problem, Rubin went on to become a senior vice president of Weill's newly-formed Citigroup conglomerate, so he was fine, thankfully. It's almost laughable that the billionaire philanthropist Sandy Weill admitted afterward that it probably wasn't such a good idea after all. Another example of how sudden deregulation of a previously regulated and stable industry led to the devastation of not only itself but the economy of the country as well. And no unions were involved. Remember the deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry? That turned out well also, didn't it? So why have I droned on here? To point out that while the concept of free-market capitalism is to be admired, it rarely is seen, like the unicorn and the dodo bird. What we have been conditioned to refer to affectionately as capitalism is in fact predatory crony- capitalism and if you are not one of the anointed cronies, you get to pick up the pieces of your life and try to move on. And while the swamp trash pretends to care, they really don't as long as they and their well-heeled buddies are fine. So I guess we will just have to agree to disagree without being disagreeable. America did survive the devastation of trucking deregulation and small- town America still gets it's widgets and tractor parts from other carriers, some unionized and some not. So that is good. But the carnage of those years devastated a lot of good American's lives. And that should never be diminished or glossed over to place an air of respectability on the vile manipulations of those who care nothing for you or me except how we can be exploited to their advantage. Yeah, i believe I could sit down and enjoy a beer with you- if we could avoid talking politics. Best regards .
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my apologies. That was uncalled for. SOR's comment about the sudden devaluation of millions of dollars of operating authority that had been purchased is a great point I missed. Look. As usual, there is truth to all of our opinions on this subject. We need to remember we are not each other's enemy here. Time will tell if America and it's future generations were ultimately well-served by all of this or not. You're obviously a glass half full type and I am a glass half empty type. And yes, I am bitter, unless we are talking about vodka, in which case I say "fill 'er up please, and put a twist of lime on top" I am stunned somewhat to hear this from a retired Teamster, though....
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