JH 26 This and That

Joe Hill LTD Project
This and That and The Dangerous Weeks Ahead....

As we enter the doldrums of summer, August will fly by and we will be getting the Fall Schedule going sooner than we think. No contract,, and us still working - good! It is good that we are still working, and that we are legitimately trying to negotiate a settlement. But it drags on. Why - because it is to the advantage of the employer - "the employer of choice" - LTD.

While at the same time, administrative employees will have their pay increases given out. They will continue to get more than 17% of payroll cost paid to retirement plans for the bosses, and we will be stuck at our wages and our 10.3% of payroll cost retirement plan. Everyday we work the current contract without a COLA we lose money, compared to the bosses. It also means that we need to think about retroactive pay to catch up to settle this contract, or accept that we are being exploited and will be without a retroactive settlement. The Company will fight this tooth and nail.

Speaking of retirement, did you know that the last time that LTD retirees saw any adjustment to their monthly benefit checks was 1998? It has been 6 years since the District ATU Pension Trust made any kind of adjustment to pension benefits, two years before Hamm climbed aboard the LTD bus. This is your future in your pension too. Hardly seems fair to our retirees, our former co-workers, many of them struggling to make ends meet. So we don't face this fate, we need to continue our struggle for pension reform and improvement. At the very least, we need equitable consideration between management and labor.

Word has come to the ears of Joe Hill that Management has not always seen eye to eye with themselves on issues at the bargaining table, and that disagreements have come up between Neidig, Johnson and Damm. Sounds like a little bit of "who's on first" but it could also be a big play of "good cop - bad cop." Anyway, it really is unprofessional. If they don't know what they want, how about accepting our proposals?

The more fellow workers that the Joe Hill LTD Project talks to, the more it is heard said that we really need to figure out how to convince Ken Hamm to leave LTD. By the way, if Hamm were to leave, could we please be sure to convince him to take Pangborn with him? But if we were truly lucky, they would take the BRT (Boondoggle Ripping off Taxpayers) with them. We would have remarkable savings, taxes could be reduced, regular service could be expanded, morale would be improved, productivity and safety would be improved, partnership with employee stakeholders would be expanded, and there might be only one LTD workforce instead of two - the union employees and the administrative employees. And we won't have Hamm reminding former bus drivers, who are now administrative employees, to remember what side of the glass they work on now. Now that is Team!

Enough for now, it is too depressing!

In Solidarity,
Joe Hill

P.S. Welcome to Anon. to the Joe Hill LTD Project

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