Teamster News
Teamster bus drivers at CCTA will continue strike Associated Press ...About 70 bus drivers, represented by Teamsters Local 597, went on strike Monday leaving about 9,500 people who ride the buses every day in Burlington, Vermont scrambling...
Teamster Simulator Technicians at Southwest Approve New Contract Dallas Morning News ...Southwest Airlines and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced Friday that flight simulation technicians have approved a two-year contract...
Teamsters: Ask Congress to Fund High Speed Rail and Amtrak teamster.org ...The Republicans in the House have taken a whack at funding for Amtrak
and eliminated funding for high speed rail. They want to cut federal
spending on Amtrak by 29 percent and eliminate funding for High Speed
Rail...
Pepsi Lays Off 60 Workers WREG-TV ...Meetings are underway between the PepsiCo company and Teamsters Local
984 after 60 employees were laid off unexpectedly Thursday. The company says it was a matter of efficiency, but the union says
PepsiCo violated the law by not giving workers a 60 day notice...
Teamsters: Poverty Is Bad For Your Health teamster.org ...Covering the tab for life’s basic needs has always been tough for lower income people. But increasing reports make it clear that being a member of the working poor is also hazardous to your health and could drive you to an early grave...
Trade
New Study Shows Dangers of Trade Agreements that Help Corporations Sue Governments naked capitalism ...Pacific Rim/OceanaGold is ... one of 31 oil, gas, and mining corporations suing governments in Latin America in the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), based at the World Bank. ICSID is the most frequently used tribunal under existing pro-corporate, anti-democratic trade and investment rules...
Korea Trade Agreement – Exports Actually Decrease Trade Reform ...the USTR is embarrassed that our exports to Korea actually decreased since the Korea trade and global government agreement was passed. Yes. Exports (not net exports) decreased...
State Battles
New York Settles With McDonald's Restaurants In Wage Theft Investigation Huffington Post ...New York state has reached a settlement with the owner of seven McDonald's franchises that will give nearly $500,000 to fast-food workers who claimed they were shorted on pay, according to state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman...
Calif. Gov. Brown takes swipes at GOP, praises labor unions Los Angeles Times ...Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown gave a rousing pro-worker speech to a ballroom filled with union representatives Monday night, thanking organized labor for helping pass his vote-approved tax hike in 2012 and worker's compensation reform and vowing to be “around for the next five years.’’...
How Auto Dealers Are Muscling State Legislatures Into Barring Tesla Motors AlterNet ...New Jersey is the latest state to ban the electric car company from selling directly to consumers, which threatens auto dealers' business model. Is New York next?...
RI pension settlement ballots mailed Associated Press ...Mail ballots have been sent to the retired and active public workers who will soon decide the fate of a proposed settlement in the litigation surrounding Rhode Island’s 2011 pension overhaul...
War on Workers
The rich strike back Politico ...“I hope it’s not working,” Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and major GOP donor, said of populist political appeals. “Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy...”
Southern California Port Truck Drivers Allege Labor Exploitation New America Media ...A new report by a national labor rights group says that the port truck driving industry is rampant with examples of companies employing tactics to exploit drivers, from misclassification as an independent contractor, to depriving drivers of employee benefits, workplace standards and proper wages…
Fifth financial executive with ties to JPMorgan found dead Housing Wire ...Just over 11 weeks into 2014 comes tragic news that an 11th financial executive has apparently committed suicide...
The Plummeting Labor Market Fortunes of Teens and Young Adults Brookings ...Employment prospects for teens and young adults in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas plummeted between 2000 and 2011. On a number of measures—employment rates, labor force underutilization, unemployment, and year-round joblessness—teens and young adults fared poorly, and sometimes disastrously...
Inside Low-wage Workers’ Plan to Sue McDonald’s — and Win Portside ...The wall that fast food workers hope to blast through with these class-action suits is the franchise system. All of the lawsuits name McDonald’s itself as a defendant, even though most of the targeted restaurants are owned not by McDonald’s but by McDonald’s franchisees...
Union chief accuses SEPTA of trying to provoke strike Philadelphia Inquirer ...With no bargaining talks scheduled between SEPTA and transit workers, the president of the agency's largest union accused it of trying to provoke a strike...
Amazon’s near sweatshops and awful conditions: It doesn’t have to be this way Salon ...Labor conditions at Amazon and Wal-Mart are like the pre-New Deal era. These reforms, working elsewhere, would help...
The Shocking Ways Debt Collectors Are Hounding U.S. Military Service Members AlterNet ...Companies use threats of rank reduction and courts-martial...
Miscellaneous
Coalition Files Lawsuit Against Idaho Ag-Gag Law That Targets Journalism, Whistleblowing & Speech Fire Dog Lake ...A coalition of groups and journalists are challenging a law passed in Idaho, which makes it possible for anyone who secretly films or records animal abuse to be jailed for up to a year...
2013 Was a Record Year For Oil-Train Accidents, and Insurers Are Wary Alternet ...All told, railcar accidents spilled more than 1.15 million gallons of crude oil in 2013, federal data shows, compared with an average of just 22,000 gallons a year from 1975 through 2012 — a fifty-fold spike...
24 States Pressure Walmart, Walgreens To Stop Selling Cigarettes Huffington Post ...Attorney Generals from 24 states, Washington D.C., and three U.S. territories sent letters to the country's biggest pharmaceutical retailers Monday, including Walmart and Walgreens, asking them to stop selling tobacco products...
9 Retailers Closing The Most Stores 24/7 Wall St. ...Brick-and-mortar retailers have been suffering from slow economic activity for years, as well as from increased competition from online retailers. The rise in store closings is a prominent sign of their struggles...
