Then why did we lose benefits...I'll be sour about this till I die.
We lost benefits because Teamcare said, based on the premium UPS is paying in, this is the best we can give you. Teamcare cannot pay out more in claims then it takes in. For those of us that were in the company plan, UPS did not "put money in" they just paid the claims. They assumed that the premiums they did not have to give the Teamsters would cover the cost of claims. If the claims exceeded the premium savings, it just came out of the bottom line. If this happened to Teamcare, they would go out of business.
If you recall, in the negotiations, UPS wanted $30, $60, $90. They may have realized that they were paying more in claims than the premium saved. They eventually dropped it to $20, $40, $60, but still wanted us to "pay more" to keep our existing benefits.
If you also recall, when Hall was pushing Teamcare, he got alot of backlash because the original benefits, the C6 plan, were terrible. He backtracked when he found out we were not going to accept this crap and said that based on the contributions UPS is putting in, Teamcare came up with an Enhanced C6 plan.
Hall wanted us in Teamcare so bad, to bolster their bottom line, that he just told UPS that the Teamsters would take over the healthcare instead of pushing to keep what we had. So thanks to Hoffa/Hall, we took a concession.
If we stuck it out, UPS would have dropped the $20, $40, $60 and we would have kept what we had. Hoffa/Hall wanted no part of that. They wanted the money. They sold us out.