Friday, January 17, 2014

Today's Teamster News 01.17.14

Trade leak feeds Democratic insurgency  Politico   ...Democrats in Congress are fuming over the leaked environmental provisions of a massive Pacific trade deal that would dwarf the North America Free Trade Agreement, casting further doubt on President Barack Obama’s trade agenda just as his administration kicks it into high gear...
U.S. Trade Representative Dodges Senate Fast Track Hearing  Public Citizen   ...with not a single House Democrat sponsoring the Fast Track bill, the GOP House leadership has insisted that the White House present a list of 50 House Democratic votes for the bill before a vote will be scheduled...
Teamsters Call On Gate Gourmet To Protect Workers  teamster.org   ...Gate Gourmet employees, D.C. Jobs with Justice, local faith leaders, and union representatives from the Teamsters and UNITE-HERE delivered a message to Gate Gourmet at its U.S. headquarters and GateGroup CEO Andrew Gibson on Thursday, calling on the company to provide a real wage increase and affordable health care for thousands of workers across the country...
Advocates for Workers Raise the Ire of Business  New York Times   ...new types of worker advocacy groups have sprouted nationwide, and they have started to get on businesses’ nerves — protesting low wages at Capital Grille restaurants, for instance, and demonstrating outside Austin City Hall in Texas against giving Apple tax breaks...
Wall Street Mega Banks Own Tankers, Pipelines, Utilities, Mines, Metal Warehouses – And That’s Not the Worst of It  Wall Street on Parade   ...U.S. bank holding companies owned 16 utilities; 479 insurance companies; 2,388 real estate firms; 1,682 healthcare and social assistance companies; and 5 mines. We know from more recent revelations that Wall Street’s largest banks own at least 104 metal warehouses with complaints coming from beer and soda manufacturers that these firms control the London Metal Exchange and are rigging the price of aluminum to the detriment of both the manufacturers and consumers...
Workers at an Amazon Warehouse Reject Forming a Union
  New York Times   ...In the first unionization vote ever held at an Amazon facility in the United States, a small group of technical workers at the company’s warehouse in Middletown, Del., voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday against forming a union...
United Continental to furlough 685 flight attendants  Reuters   ...United Continental will furlough about 685 flight attendants, as the U.S. airline company looks to prune its expenses as part of a $2 billion annual cost-cutting plan announced last year...
Income gap poses biggest threat to global community, warns WEF  The Guardian   ...World Economic Forum survey identifies inequality as biggest flashpoint as well as extreme weather and unemployment...
Gov't Charges Wal-Mart With Labor Violations  Associated Press   ...Federal officials filed a formal complaint Wednesday charging that Wal-Mart violated the rights of workers who took part in protests and strikes against the company...
'I Had a Middle Class Job and I Still Ended Up on Food Stamps at 60'
  AlterNet   ...Welcome to the new reality of the working poor...
Another Trade Unionist Murdered in Colombia - Demand Justice!
  iuf.org   ...Ever Luis MarĂ­n Rolong, a regional leader of the SINALTRACEBA brewery workers union, was murdered on January 4 by unknown gunmen. The next day the President of SINALTRACEBA received death threats from paramilitaries. The Teamsters support the IUF campaign demanding justice for Ever Luis and an end to anti-union violence in Colombia. Click here to send a message to the Colombian government...
Mexico enacts soda tax in effort to combat world's highest obesity rate  The Guardian   ...Health officials in the United States look to Mexico's new law as an walexperiment in curbing sugar consumption...
Washington State Bill Proposes Criminalizing Help to NSA, Turning Off Resources to Yakima Facility  Truthout   ...the bill prohibits state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes barring government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity. It makes information gathered without a warrant by the NSA and shared with law enforcement inadmissible in state court. It blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds. And it bans corporations who continue to do business with the NSA from holding any contracts with the state...
My Doctor Can Disclose My Medical Records to the NSA Without My Authorization
  Fire Dog Lake …And your doctors can disclose yours, too…

NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep  The Guardian   ...The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents...
The Malware That Duped Target Has Been Found   Wired   ...The malicious program used to compromise Target and other companies was part of a widespread operation using a Trojan tool known as Trojan.POSRAM...
You'll Be Shocked at What 'Surveillance Valley' Knows About You
  AlterNet...   The most intimate details about a person’s life, packaged and sold over and over again to anyone willing to pay...
It's An Exceptionally Bad Time To Be A Recent College Grad
  Huffington Post   ...Those sad stories of 20-somethings with college degrees toiling away at service jobs in restaurants, coffee shops and department stores are more than just colorful anecdotes. It's truly a terrible time for recent college graduates to find jobs, according to recently released data...
Goldman Sachs pay employees average of $383,000 after profits rise 5%
  The Guardian   ...US bank's 32,900 global employees to hear size of individual bonuses, while fixed-income trading operation had fall in profits...
Judge Disallows Plan by Detroit to Pay Off Banks  New York Times   ...He ruled that Detroit could not proceed with a plan to pay $165 million to two big banks to extricate itself from some long-term financial contracts that have been costing the bankrupt city tens of millions of dollars a year. “It’s just too much money,” Judge Rhodes said...
North Carolina's poorest hit by federal cuts: 'Unless someone helps, we're bust'  The Guardian   ...As Congress wrangles with whether to restore long-term unemployment benefits, North Carolina is already experiencing the hardship likely to unfold unless the program is restored...
NC Republicans Raise Taxes on Working Families While Giving Huge Tax Breaks to Millionaires and Corporations  The Real News   ...residents with average incomes of nearly $1 million will receive a total tax cut of nearly $10,000, while the corporate tax rate will decline from 6.9 percent to 5 percent next year and could fall all the way to 3 percent if revenue goals are met in 2017...
Florida Isn't Apologizing For Lax Oversight At Abusive Youth Prisons
  Huffington Post   ...The head of Florida's juvenile justice department defended her agency's oversight of private prison contractors before a state Senate panel on Wednesday amid allegations of violence and mistreatment inside the nation's third-largest juvenile corrections system...
Senators Raise Concerns About Fast Track at Hearing  teamster.org   ...Several Senate Democrats voiced opposition today to legislation that would allow a quick up-or-down vote with limited debate on proposed trade deals...