US citizens braced for austerity impact Financial Times ...The Pentagon has said that 800,000 civilian employees would see their hours cut by 20 per cent for the rest of the year and 46,000 temporary workers would be laid off. Other agencies would also see deep cuts in staff. There are estimates of a 25 per cent drop in border patrol agents, 600 fewer food safety inspectors at slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, and 1,200 fewer air traffic control operators...
Tax Holiday Ends, Consumers Scrimp Wall Street Journal ...Surveys show the majority of Americans who are aware of the tax increase say they plan to cut spending, and consumer confidence has wavered. Companies like Target Corp. and women's clothier Cato Corp. say the tax increase has crimped sales...
Profound Weight of Layoffs Is Seen in Work Trends Survey New York Times ...While about 8 percent of Americans are unemployed, nearly a quarter of Americans say they were laid off at some point during the recession or afterward...Of those laid off in recent years, nearly a quarter said they still had not found a job...
Postal Service dying from 1,000 cuts and a GOP stab in the back (opinion) Los Angeles Times ...Republicans are always insisting that the USPS be run like a good capitalist enterprise, but few, if any, private businesses could bear the burden of funding three-quarters of a century of retired employees’ medical costs over just one decade...
American Airlines And US Airways Near Merger Deal Forbes ...AA’s parent company, AMR Corp., is in the final stages of talks with US Airways Group on a merger deal, and an agreement could be reached as soon as February 15th...
Tunisia faces general strike after Belaid assassination sparks crisis The Guardian ...The UGTT, Tunisia's trade union federation, called the strike in protest at the murder of Chokri Belaid on Wednesday. It will be the first such strike since 1978...
Senators look to revamp local pension plans Sun-Sentinel ...A panel of Florida lawmakers on Wednesday debated how best to revamp 492 municipal pension plans across the state...
Washtenaw County takes stance against right-to-work legislation with unanswered legal questions AnnArbor.com ...the commission voted 6-1 to approve the resolution that not only served as a formal expression of the majority of the commission's opposition to the right-to-work measures passed by the lame duck Michigan legislature in December, but also to direct staff to expedite union contract negotiations...
Dayton: Tax cuts caused Minn. economic problems Minnesota Public Radio ..."In the decade after Minnesota's income tax reductions, our economy fared worse than the nation and most other states," Dayton said...
Voter poll pulls losing numbers for Corbett's lotto plan Philly.com ...Sixty-four percent of the voters polled said they oppose his plan to turn over control of the lottery to a British company, Camelot Global Services...
Walmart Workers Are Back on Strike Over a New Wave of Alleged Threats The Nation ...half a dozen workers in Laurel, Maryland, walked off the job in protest of alleged retaliation by Walmart management...
Workers at UNFI vote to ratify 5-year contract agreement Auburn Reporter ...Warehouse workers and drivers, represented by Teamsters Local 117, overwhelmingly voted to ratify a fully-recommended 5-year contract agreement with United Natural Foods, Inc. on Thursday...The agreement provides for the reinstatement of all workers, including the 72 who had been permanently replaced, health and welfare protections for workers, and meaningful wage increases...
Moreno Valley warehouse charged with harassing union Press Enterprise ...The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces workplace laws and supervises union elections, has issued a complaint against a Moreno Valley food distribution center... union officials filed labor board charges alleging that employees were harassed and threatened by company officials...
Arbitrator rules in favor of deputy sheriffs on pay Capital Gazette ...An arbitrator has ruled in favor of the county's deputy sheriffs union in its grievance against the county for failing to pay negotiated wage increases in fiscal 2010...The sheriff's deputies are represented by Teamsters Union Local 355...
Teamsters Release Video Of Sanitation Workers At Martin Luther King, Jr. March IBT ...more than 400 sanitation workers from Atlanta, Ga., Pensacola, Fla., Mobile, Ala. and Memphis, Tenn. joined workers from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to demand that Republic Services/Allied Waste treat its workers with respect...