We all love to see the UPS truck arriving, but they occasionally use something called SurePost. It should be called EventuallyPost. They take delivery of the package and bring it to your local post office. Then it gets delivered by your regular mail carrier. The problem is that this can delay the shipment by a day or more.

I was tracking a UPS delivery, and it said it went to my post office. When it still hadn't been delivered by the next day, I went to my PO. "We don't have it." I emailed UPS. "Your Post Office has it." When I didn't receive it the next day, I went to my PO. "We don't have it." It arrived the following day. I have a package on the way now (not photographic) that is scheduled to be delivered by Monday. I'm not holding my breath.

This is from a tips card I made for myself.

Night Photography
Nighttime formula. Tripod. Use the M setting on the camera, low ISO, f/8, 1" (1 sec). Experiment with shutter speed.

Blue Hour. Within an hour before sunrise and after sunset - nautical twilight. After sunset, the sky will turn gray.
Then it will turn deep blue. The camera will detect the blue before your eye, so click away. Point camera 90 - 180
degrees away from the sun. Low ISO, f/8, 3 or 4 seconds. Experiment. Small aperture is good for landscape. Go to
www.photoephemeris.com
to get sunrise/sunset/twilight times.

Fireworks. Arrive early. Have a small falshlight handy. Low ISO, auto white balance, f/8 and expose for 2 seconds
and up. Focus on infinity, or prefocus manually and leave it that way. Try totally unfocusing. Try tapping a tripod
leg during exposure.

Histogram. left - dark; right - light. Lots of bars to the right - washed out; bars to the left - totally black.
Lightning. ISO 400, f/8, 6 seconds. Or try ISO 200, f/11, 10 seconds.

Lit-up Building. If a building is lit by some kind of light, make a longer exposure, 8 sec, with a small aperture, f/11.
This will expose for the building, rather than the bright lights. If the scene has incandescent lights, set the WB to
tungsten.

Moon. Best to shoot it the night before it is full, when the moon rises before sunset. Low ISO, f/16 or f/22, 1/100 -
1/25. Experiment. Use a longer lens, over 100mm. For a full moon alone in the sky, try f/11 at 1/100. For a smaller
moon, use a slower shutter.

Moon - Eclipse. Low ISO, f/11, 1/100, 1/125. As the moon gets darker, vary shutter speed, then open up lens a stop
or two.

Painting with Flash. This should be done with as little ambient light as possible. Set the camera to a moderate lens opening, say f/5.6. Set the shutter to Bulb and open it. Using a handheld flash, approach the subject and fire the
flash from different positions.

Painting with Light. Turn off noise reduction. Low ISO, f/16, several minutes, as you move the light around. If you
are shining the light directly at the camera, a small light will do. If you are lighting an object with light, you will
need a bright light. Use all sizes and colors of lights. Try a combination of streaks of light and straight illumination.
Shutter Activation. Use the camera's timer, a wireless remote, or a wired remote.

Starburst effect. Use the smallest aperture. Number of star lines depends on shutter construction.

Stars. Low ISO, f/5.6 - f/4, 5 seconds and up. This will result in some blur. 1/15 is about as low as you can go for
star photography without showing star movement. Using an ISO of 6400 will allow for a shutter speed of 1/15.
Exposing for ten minutes or more will result in star trails. A 20 minute exposure including the North star will result
in concentric circles with the North star in the center.

Traffic, etc. In an area with moving lights, expose for maybe 30 sec, with a small aperture.

Experiment. Vary everything. Try very high shutter speeds for lights, drive at night in a car with camera pointed
ahead, unfocus, change perspective, change lenses, change ISO.

Somehow I do not think that the problem is as simple as are your talking points... I am sure that if your union opted for some sort of 401K arrangement instead of a predetermined pension benefit then this could all be sorted out.... As it is there is nothing of value that comes to my house in the mail box... I am not so sure that the pension funds are properly funded, maybe you can provide some links to the financial analysis that would ease my concern.