staying connected

So my wife has asked me in the past why I bother to maintain my TracFone account when I have a cell phone so conveniently provided by my employer. Why do I keep paying for a year's service every year, at a shade over $100? I responded that I keep it against the day that my benevolent employer takes away the cell phone and leaves me incommunicado.

A few years ago they gave us Nextel phones. "Use them!" they said. "Use them for all your personal calls, long distance calls, anything and everything. We have virtually unlimited connect time! You'll never use it up!" A year or so later our dept. got a bill from IT (our cell phone supplier) for $3000. Why? "You went over your time allotment." When challenged, they admitted they had changed the college's cell phone contract. The old one was too expensive. They'd apparently neglected to mention it to us, our dept.-- for three months. We now owed IT $1000/month for going over our minutes.

Then we ditched Nextel and changed to Alltel.

So after a couple more years of no complaints, we're now being told our cell phone usage is out of control, we need to cut back. No more personal use. No more calling cell to desk, no more accepting desk to cell. Cell to cell (within our service contract) is OK. Otherwise, hang up and call them back on a desk phone.

Now do we see why I kept my TracFone all these years?

--M

A VEBA big misc.take

You're reading it here first, or if you're not, someone I don't know and haven't read has scooped me. My words are my own.

Big news in Michigan and the auto industry is VEBA, the Voluntary Employee Benefits Association, which promises to transfer about $52 billion (yes, that's BILLION with a very large B) from the "Big 3" Detroit auto manufacturers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler LLC) to the United Auto Workers union, in exchange for relieving themselves of about $88 billion in estimated future health costs. "UAW president Ron Gettelfinger describes VEBA as a solid plan to provide benefits and has said that the VEBA will last for 80 years." (Detroit Free Press, January 6, 2008)

I've been skeptical of this from the start. Although I've been a member of one union for more than 30 years, another for more than 10, and I was a member of the UAW for 2 years.... I fear the worst. Unions can make money disappear faster than politicians, which just about as much effect.

I predict the funds won't last 10 years before the UAW VEBA plan is bankrupt, and UAW members are uninsured and being dunned for more and more and more money to save the fund. Mismanagement will kill it. The $52 billion will basically be dumped into a big sieve, where $millions and $billions will slip through fingers and floorboards and vanish into nothingness-- invisible bank accounts, PAC funds and political favors (all to Democrats, of course), grandiose monuments to union activities and union leaders, none of which the membership will never see or know about.

In a few years it'll all be gone, gone, gone.

Now U.S. District Court Judge Robert H. Cleland has issued a gag order on the VEBA deal, sealing in secrecy "documents containing information that would cause named plaintiffs, prospective class members, the UAW or GM 'annoyance, embarrassment or oppression.'" (Detroit Free Press, January 6, 2008)

Yes, I suppose it would be embarrassing and annoying to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar. And you might suffer oppression from those who would disapprove of your stealing from them, robbing them of the protections you promised them.

But that's not a problem now, thanks to Judge Cleland and the lawyers.

Let the countdown begin.