companies in conjunction with the failing union controlled the pensions. Blame both...
The pension (like Social Security) was built on a premise that there would always be more people putting $$$ into the fund than those taking $$ out of the fund.
The teamsters sat and watched the NMFA die a slow painful death, never got any additional members into the funds. No one is buying what they sell. They could only get new members when they were able to beat, coerce and violently force people to join their union. the teamsters never worried about 'morals' as they murdered or beat people into becoming new 'members' Now you worry about institutions having morals?????
Now that they have to compete in world on a level basis, they fail miserably.
Ask the teamster negotiators how many pensions they will be collecting....... How are those morals doing while other get their pension cut???
We all saw this coming except the leaders of the teamsters???
I think you're mistaken in saying the Teamsters...."Beat, coerce, and violently force"..people into joining Unions. There could've been incidents of that in the distant past,.....and corporations would like many people to believe that Unions can only organize in a ...thuggish,...manner,........
But for sheer out-and-out violence,...let's start with the Haymarket riots in Chicago,...started when City policemen beat to death 4 strikers,.....and then we'll go to the Battle of Homestead,...where Pinkerton strikebreakers fought a pitched battle with Ironworkers, when Henry Clay Frick decided to hire an armed force to break the strike,.....
And here in W. Penna,........Everyone knows of the brutality of the Coal and Iron police,....who actually could kill indiscriminately,...and get away with it......
Because there has been violence in the past around organized Labor,.....(....much,...if not all of it started by company instigators...),...
Corporations love to spread the rumor that the only way Unions can attain new members,..is by violence. 10 minutes of research on the internet,...or even better,...an afternoon spent in a library, looking up labor violence,....would dispel that rumor.
If you want something more topical,.....watch the movie "Silkwood",...based on the whistleblower Karen Silkwood, and her violent death at the hands of an immoral corporation trying to hide their misdeeds. That just happened in the '70's........
The amount of ....coercion, threats, discrimination, and intimidation in a Union organizing campaign,.....could be found in looking at the '90's Union campaign to organize Ovenite.........
The company pulled out every dirty trick in the book,.........beat people up,...broke into cars,....fired guys just to intimidate the remaining people.....After several years of thuggish company intimidation,...the Overnite campaign just about failed, with maybe two barns out of several hundred nationwide signing cards to join......
The proof of corporate intimidation? Two years later, UPS bought Overnite.........UPS had a "card-check" agreement in their contract, which said that any new purchase by UPS could join the Union by merely having a majority of the employees sign a card.
Overnite ORGANIZED nationwide in FOUR months with a card-check,.....because the company wasn't allowed to interfere..(Nor was the Union....Heavily watched by the NLRB.....I know because I volunteered to work on that campaign...)......
Ask the UPS Freight guys,.......Anyone from the Overnite days could tell you all about company "dirty tricks"......There's a UPS Freight board on TB......Go over and ask.....
Please don't fall for the company propaganda about brutish Union organizing....Education is the key, Brother......