Tia; OK, guest speakers are tonight……Well, I’ll let her introduce herself. Let me briefly skip through a few items so that we can get freshly underway. OK, stock market dropped a hundred and one points on the Dow. What’s been going on with the drops and it has dropped below eight thousand points is profit taking. People are pulling out and taking their profits of the money that they have made recently. It will be important to see what transpires from this point. That’s the stock market out of the way, now the UPS strike, how is it affecting the United States economy? At the moment it is not affecting it too much but if this strike continues it is going destroy the largest organizations for delivering goods. What is happening? Well it seems to be a fight over the union controlling the pension plan and the company controlling the pension plan. In my opinion, the unions controlling it would be a bad move. To keep the 401K plan growing means taking risks which they would be reluctant to do. In the long run it benefits the employees if the company keeps control. For a company to be successful a company has to good at business, for a union to be successful it has nothing to do with business whatsoever. The union wants to have control of the profits for the union, i.e.; the high officials of the union. This way they would have a much bigger income thus salary. There is also the issue of part time and full time workers. They want more people to go full time. That is a good idea in essence. Let us take theoretical number of fifty thousand employees, thats managers, supervisors, full and part time workers. Now twenty five are working part time and you want to increase the number of full time employees. Two ways to do it are to either drum up new business or lay off some part time help. This is what is happening and the workers are upset due to the down sizing but it is the union who wants more full time workers. Its a tricky situation. The union will if it proceeds down its current course take down UPS as people find other companies to deliver their letters and packages. At that point UPS will have to lay off people. Hopefully they see the correct path to take. As it is, the unions while trying to do the employees a service are actually doing them a disservice. Now the other problem on the horizon for UPS is the pilots and their union. Its one worth watching. I also see their calling in the White House to mediate is not right either as they aren't a government controlled entity like the flight controllers. I mean where does it stop. If you call the government in to settle that dispute where else will they be called in to settle other private industry disputes.
R; Yes but doesn't this look good if the government can help stop the strike? It sounds like a good gamble for President Clinton?
Tia; Yes but a dangerous gamble. They are opening the doors for many problems in the future over similar situations even if they are successful. They are involved internationally in disputes all over the world and now they are using the same tactics domestically. Hopefully they will have more success with this. Lets look at Bosnia. Last September they had elections which were basically a farce. They end up with three presidents running the country, very strange setup. Now supposedly there were going to be local elections but those were postponed indefinitely. Now out of the two million people that were left homeless in that war only 250,000 have returned home. Out of that, only 10,000 have returned to their original ethnic areas. Its not working. Their still killing each other and the peace is a very fragile thing. Let us look at Haiti. After the invasion, he said that the troops would be in place for eighteen months. They brought many out but moved just as many military people back as support personnel. At this point they are still there. Anyway, we are short of time so I’ll put the next speaker on and let you think on those things….I’ll be back.