DELACROIX
In the Spirit of Honore' Daumier
I hate to be critical about this issue, but one would think that those loopholes on ALL our pension benefits would of been settled with this last contract, especially with this new and improved IBT/UPS Pension plan going into effect. If anybody who ever tried to get any information about their pension benefits can testify it is next to impossible to get anything in concrete writing. Test my theory everybody who is eligible for retirement benefits send a letter to both Washington and Atlanta asking for pension estimates, or better yet any legal documents concerning your pension and or health and welfare benefits, active or retiree status. It is stonewalling at it's best, just what are these trustees hiding considering our rights under the ERISA act. Sure it is very complicated, so many pension plans and formulas, but it is your money they are controlling, there should be accountability somewhere. The most frustrating part about these collectively bargaining pension and or health and welfare plans whether they be under company or union control is that they are funded through negotiated monetary increases per master contract language article 34. Why then does one group of members get 6,000 a month pension benefits, some 3,000 and believe it not some 1,500 with the same amount of service time. Something is rotten in demark, if you get my drift.
From my limited understanding the "Reciprocity Agreement" in this new UBT/UPS Pension plan that combines your part time years with your full time years is based on when you left the UPS Pension Plan for part timers and started out under the Central States trust. It is based on a percentage of standard 30 year benefits, for example if you worked 20 years as a part timer it would be 2/3 of a 30 year benefit when you left the plan. For example 2/3 of 1,000 comes out to about 750, the problem is as quoted by Tardus, that 6 percent per year reduction before age 65, which in effects kicks that 750 down to about 400 dollars a month at retirement age of 55. It is not based on 55 dollars per part time service year as most members believe, that is only for active part time pensioners. Those part time totals are then added to your full time years which actually pay as 100 dollars a service year in my area, whether this new IBT/UPS Pension plan has that early retirement penality is not clear. So to make a long story short, our 20 year part time and 10 year full time future pensioner would be looking at around 1,400 dollars a month with 30 service years and retiring at age 55. If they decide to retire earlier before age 55 even with 30 years in that total would be reduced according.
I came here to see if anyone knew the answer to this. I was planning on asking either HR (hahaha) or my management this week to see what they know. It's kind of strange that it has been there for the last few years and is suddenly gone.
Pension stonewalling is nothing new ...
Circa: 5 May 2010
