ATU 757 was duped

It's no secret that Trimet drivers are paid about $5/hour less than Seattle and San Francisco drivers.
There is a very simple reason that occurred. The union gave up those raises for the promise of decent health care for employees and retirees. Trimet has saved hundreds of millions in wages because of that agreement. Those millions were  supposed to be paid out later for retiree and employee above average  health care.

Did anybody know that Trimet executives made a decision to leave these commitments completely unfunded? They took all the money saved on wages and spent it on other things!  Nobody realized that the executive class was playing a con game on its employees



I have little doubt that these  souless executives were fully aware of what they were doing and how they were going to do it.

Fred Hansen, the former egotist in charge of Trimet before Mcfarlane wanted no sort of labor problems while he built his empire and manufactured his myth. He left it to Mcfarlane to do the dirty work.

These people intentionally left the OPEB unfunded and continued the unbridled expansion so they could roll out charts like this:

 All those numbers exist solely because the management CHOSE  NOT TO FUND the promises they made.

What should be happening right now is massive salary  cuts for all Trimet executives and   cleaning the house of the Trimet board that allowed this situation to occur.

Instead what's happening is that Trimet executives keep getting richer and the employees are being forced into poverty (retirees)

And congratulations on our union for falling for this trick and giving up the right to strike in the bargain. That needs to be laid at the feet of the people in charge when it happened-JON HUNT