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99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

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Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#81

Post by toomuchtodo »

didgetmaster wrote: post #62
gottorf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pensions seem like an outdated concept, when 401Ks and IRAs are options. Pensions are essentially a tradeoff of lower pay now in exchange for benefits in the future, with a sprinkle of an incentive for increased retention added in, but with the critical downside (to the employer) of it basically being an unbounded, undefined financial downside for them at the tail end. Employers should pay people, contribute to their…

Exactly. Pensions might have been practical back in the day when people worked for "the company" for their whole career. But when so many change jobs every 5 years or less, they make no sense.

Union pensions are typically paid into by companies, but the pension is maintained by the union. Teamsters, IBEWs, etc pensions operate in this manner. You won't work for the same company your entire career, but you're likely to remain in the same field for it.

Pensions work just the same as 401ks, but better when properly funded and governed, because your average worker is unsophisticated as it relates to investing. 401ks were a scam foisted on the public as pension replacements, with corporations instead juicing shareholder returns with what was previously pension contributions. If you're a high earner without any life events that would cause you to liquidate your 401k (extended job loss, medical event), congrats! You have won the lottery.

You can require pension operators to be fiduciaries and act in the best interest of their members, with penalties if they don't (this exists today, current state). If individuals fuck up their retirement (or could not save enough because of their lifetime wage trajectory), oh well, you're going to die in poverty because the socioeconomic system pulled a fast one on you.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/retirement/great-401-k-expe...

https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/images/docs/research/...

https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans

https://web.archive.org/web/20201026175751/https://www.gao.g...

https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-401k-balan... (direct your attention to median balances; assuming 4% withdrawal rate, the high water median 401k balance translates to $185/month in retirement income)

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2023/03/01/fiduciary-duties-...

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#82

Post by [deleted] »

annacappa wrote: post #36

Funny how this is being framed by the article writer in terms in unionization. Are they suggesting that the workers should just give up their pensions and wages so that a clearly broken and mismanaged company should just lurch onwards? Why is it when a company succeeds everyone praises the management and heaps huge bonuses on the C suite but when they fail they try and blame the workers.

[deleted]

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#83

Post by boeingUH60 »

pierat wrote: post #64

And this is a perfect time to talk about worker owned corporations. The employees should be able to buy the company. Not only that, but they should also be given first rights to do that. And if government was serious about keeping businesses in operation through bankruptices, they would also issue a loan to the employees to complete this. That would keep the company running, under employee control, and save a whole p…

The problem with Yellow is that it was a terribly-run company on its way to doom…some companies should just be let to die and should have never received a government loan to postpone the death.

Let’s assume employees take over operations, whom among them will step up to run the company? How are you sure they’ll turn it around successfully?

Running a company is hard enough with the typical model. It’s much harder if you try to run it as a democracy where clueless people get to vote on management decisions..

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#86

Post by digdugdirk »

What would be the legality of using stock shorts to fund a labour strike?

I'd imagine having all workers walk out would be pretty effective in tanking the stock price, and letting those workers know that they'd be fully funded for any time on the picket line would be huge for solidarity.

One could imagine that timing a strike around predetermined stock based compensation executive payouts might provide a bit more incentive to get to the negotiation table.

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#87

Post by seiferteric »

pm215 wrote: post #71
gottorf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pensions seem like an outdated concept, when 401Ks and IRAs are options. Pensions are essentially a tradeoff of lower pay now in exchange for benefits in the future, with a sprinkle of an incentive for increased retention added in, but with the critical downside (to the employer) of it basically being an unbounded, undefined financial downside for them at the tail end. Employers should pay people, contribute to their…

My counterargument to this is: Pension/retirement arrangements where the contributions are defined but the benefits are not are a risk to the individual -- you have to figure out "how much do I want to invest, what do I think the market will do, where should I put the money?", and if you get it wrong you don't have enough money in retirement. For the company, on the other hand, they're very low risk, because the amou…

> if they set the defined final pension too high and investments don't go so well then it costs the company more than they expected

Like the whole company? Only a government that can print money can really offer such a defined benefit, and even then it is just a mirage since the actual value can be inflated away. The real issue is that it is actually impossible to make such guarantees since conditions can always change, but some people don't want to accept that reality.

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#88

Post by nickff »

jl6 wrote: post #69
nickff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market for truckload and LTL shipping is currently very thin, and they'd likely lose more revenue than they'd make.

Maybe, but at least a couple of quarters of demonstrable uncompetitiveness would be solid evidence to take to the negotiating table with the unions to get the labor cost down (if that really was the primary cost problem).

Labor unions which have members at multiple companies in one sector are often reluctant to make concessions at any one company, lest it erode their bargaining positions at the others.

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#89

Post by karaterobot »

EMM_386 wrote: post #22

"The closing is bad news not only for its employees and its customers, who generally used Yellow because it offered some of the cheapest rates in the trucking sector." Perhaps they shouldn't have offered the cheapest rates in the trucking sector while failing their obligations. Taxpayers ended up holding 30% of this company's stock and they still couldn't figure out how to become profitable after a $700 million infus…

> The answer is to charge what it costs you to deliver plus a profit. If you can't compete directly on price make up for it in service and reputation.

I'm guessing the cause is more complicated than them just not knowing they should make a profit. If I'm wrong, write them a letter with this advice, there may still be time to save the company.

Re: 99-year old trucking company Yellow shuts down, putting 30k out of work

#90

Post by jimt1234 »

My dad worked for Yellow on the loading docks from the day he returned from Vietnam to the late-90s. He earned a good wage for a guy who only graduated high school; provided a solid middle-class life for his family. And it was all because of the union. The Teamsters was like religion to my dad.

I always respected the union for what it provided for my dad and his family. I can't stress that enough. However, I can't forget the stories he would tell about new guys who got beat up because they did too much work (made the veteran guys look bad) or didn't follow the unwritten rules (drivers used to carry cash to bribe the dock workers to unload their trucks. without the bribes your truck would just sit there, untouched. however, sometimes a rookie would unload a truck that hadn't made a payment, and that earned him a beatdown). And the stories about pallets that would go missing and end up in my house. One year, for Christmas, everyone got brand new color TVs (a big deal back then); they were all the exact same make/model. My dad must've given away a dozen of them to friends/family. This happened all the time. So yeah, while I respect the union and what it provided, I have a difficult time overlooking the corruption and inefficiencies.

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