Friday, October 11, 2013

Today's Teamster News 10.11.13

Hoffa: Secret U.S. - Euro Backroom Trade Talks Are More Of The Same  teamster.org   ...An article in Wednesday’s New York Times details how corporate leaders met last year with European officials on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) months before trade negotiations officially began...
Teamsters' Agreement Prevents Layoffs at Workforce Central  Teamsters Local 117   ...Members of Teamsters Local 117, employed at Workforce Central in Tacoma, have voted to forgo their contractual rights and significantly reduce their hours in order to prevent layoffs, which would have otherwise resulted during the federal government shutdown...
Five UPS Supplement Ballots Counted  teamster.org   ...Ballots have been counted for five UPS local supplements/riders so far, and four have passed. Go to www.teamster.org/UPS and http://www.upscontractrfacts.com/ to view the results...
Whitaker council approves police deal  McKeesport Daily News   ...Whitaker council unanimously approved a three-year agreement Wednesday for its police force with Teamsters Local 205 in White Oak, Pennsylvania. The workers will see their wages increase by $1.40 over the next three years...
Legislators Travel to Hanford Express Support for Marquez Brothers Workers  California Labor Federation   ...In August, 200 workers at a Marquez Brothers cheese production plant in Hanford (Kings County) voted to join Teamsters Local 517 in Visalia, Calif. Last week, three Assembly members drove eight hours to meet with them and demonstrate their commitment for California Latinos to realize the American Dream…
Hurst: Privatized sanitation might not cost jobs  Princeton Daily Clarion   ...The Teamsters Union represents half the workforce within Princeton’s (Indiana) water, sanitation and sewer departments, but according to Mayor Bob Hurst, only seven people would be affected if the city decides to privatize its sanitation system...
Berkeley: Pyramid Brewery workers protest layoffs  Vallejo Times Herald   ...Cat Wiest, a laid-off Pyramid Brewery worker and shop steward, doesn't buy her bosses' contention that the company must furlough the 15 workers at its Gilman Street location for six to nine months while the facility undergoes upgrades. She suspects the real reason for the layoffs is due to the August 7 election when 12 of the 15 workers voted to join the Teamsters...
Grocery strike looms as negotiations resume  KIRO News   ...Unions, including the Teamsters, are lining up to support Seattle-area grocery workers if they go on strike due to failed negotiations...
Florida Woman Threatens Bankster's Life With a Gun and Gets Dad's Million Dollars Returned  Truthout   ...Daphne Davis invited a top bank executive to her office at the Piggly Wiggly grocery in Apalachicola, pulled out a Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol and threatened to shoot him dead. "I told him my face would be the last one he would see if he didn't get Daddy that paperwork," Davis said. The documents came 20 minutes later...
Hell No! to Citizens United 2.0  Common Dreams   ...The Supreme Court of the United States is poised to continue dismantling restrictions on money in politics in a new case that begins today: McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission...
White House to restore military death benefits denied in wake of shutdown  Guardian   ...Solution expected following mounting outrage over denial of benefits to families of service members killed in action...
Government efforts to protect health and safety are slowed or halted as shutdown lingers  Associated Press   ...The government shutdown has slowed or halted federal efforts to protect Americans' health and safety, from probes into the cause of transportation and workplace accidents to tracking foodborne illness...
This cancer patient’s treatment is on hold because of the government shutdown  Washington Post   ...In April 2012, Michelle Langbehn was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that affects 1 percent of cancer patients in the U.S.. After nine months of chemotherapy, she and her doctor began looking into other potential treatment options, including a trial at the National Institutes of Health, which is now on hold because of the government shutdown...
The 5 creepiest things about how the Koch brothers engineered the shutdown  Death and Taxes Magazine   ...This weekend, The New York Times revealed how the Koch Brothers and Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese engineered this here shutdown we’re dealing with right now, and how they’d been planning it ever since Obama was reelected...
Richest 1 Percent Hold 46 Percent Of The World's Wealth  Reuters   ...Global wealth has risen by 68 percent over the past 10 years to reach a new all-time high of $241 trillion and the United States accounts for nearly three quarters of the increase, Credit Suisse said in its World Wealth Report...
Anxiety As Stimulus Hike To Food Stamps Set To End  Associated Press   ...A temporary increase in food stamps expires Oct. 31, meaning for millions of Americans, the benefits that help put food on the table won't stretch as far as they have for the past four years...
TPP - Trading In Our Sovereignty Fast-Track to a Train Wreck  Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition, Inc.   ...Imagine that all we have done to protect our lands, lives and livelihoods from fracking, secretively signed away. Imagine our right to redress grievances bypassed by a tribunal of private sector corporate lawyers, with no chance to appeal their legally binding determinations...
New Report: Preventable Medical Mistakes Account for One-Sixth of All Annual Deaths in the United States  Mercola.com   ...Our conventional health care system is in desperate need of radical change, and the findings published in a new report clearly backs up this assertion...
Dark Money Group Wins IRS Recognition as Tax-Exempt Nonprofit  Pro-Publica   ...The IRS has granted nonprofit status to America Is Not Stupid 2013 a so-called dark money group best known for a 2012 election ad featuring a talking baby who compared the smell of his diaper with a Montana senator...
AFSCME Members Fighting to Maintain Pension and Protect Public Against Tea Party Ballot Measure  AFSCME   ...If a tea party-backed ballot measure to privatize Cincinnati’s municipal employee retirement system passes, retirement security for 7,500 workers, retirees and survivors will be gone...