Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Today's Teamster News 04.08.2014

Teamster News
Teamsters seek contract at Corona food warehouse  Press-Enterprise   ...Union leaders in Southern California are asking U.S. Foods, the second-largest food supplier in the country and the subject of a huge proposed merger deal, to begin contract negotiations with workers at a Corona distribution center...
Trade
What The Heck Is The Trans-Pacific Partnership And Why Should I Be Concerned?  Consumerist   ...It's 2014, and we're living in an increasingly globalized economy. International trade has been ramping up for centuries and a carefully plotted web of agreements keeps goods, services and money moving around the world...
Colombia's Anti-Union Violence Remains Rampant after Three Years of the FTA-Enabling Labor Action Plan  Public Citizen   ... 73 Colombian unionists have been murdered, according to a report released today by Colombia’s National Union School, a group recognized by the LAP as an authoritative source of monitoring data. There were more four more unionist murders in 2013 than in 2012...
Congress needs to act on China’s unfair trade practices  Indianapolis Star   ...America ran a $456 billion trade deficit in 2013, $318 billion of which came from trade with China alone. This doesn’t happen naturally. China illegally subsidizes for its state-run businesses to encourage these deficits. And it manipulates its currency to make its goods cheaper and competing American goods more expensive...
U.S. Expresses Support For Taiwan's TPP Bid  Radio Taiwan International   ...Taiwan's foreign ministry says the United States has openly expressed its support for Taiwan's bid to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)...
State Battles
More Lawmakers Pushing Identical Bills Written By National Groups  AZ Central   ...Arizona lawmakers introduced six bills this session seeking a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to impose new fiscal restraints on the federal government...
Exploited Temp Workers May Finally Get Some Relief  Salon   ...California could become one of the first states in the nation to hold companies legally responsible for wage and safety violations by their subcontractors and temp agencies if a bill proposed Friday becomes law...
War on Workers
More Than 20 Striking Students Arrested, Belying University of California’s Era of ‘Labor Peace’  In These Times   ...The work stoppage, staged in protest of past alleged attempts by UC to intimidate graduate workers for labor organizing, was quickly met with what workers say was a further attempt at intimidation: The arrest of 20 students at UC Santa Cruz who were picketing early Wednesday morning...
Paid-For Legislature Takes Teacher Tenure From Thousands In Kansas  firedoglake   ...Weekend, overnight exploits by purchased ideologues and rank amateurs in the Kansas State legislature stripped KS public school teachers of due process rights...
I Looked Up The Fastest-Growing Jobs In America, And Boy Was It Depressing  Business Insider   ...secretaries, food workers, and caretakers. The median salary for the fastest-growing raw-numbers occupations, shown in the table below, is $30,000...
Hot Air Hisses Out Of Housing Bubble 2.0: Even Two Middle-Class Incomes Aren’t Enough Anymore To Buy A Median Home  Testosterone Pit   ...in 40 large cities, only 10% of the homes are affordable on one median salary … and … “just 41% of homes currently for sale across 40 US cities are affordable for a family earning two median incomes…”
The Money Against The Minimum Wage  Open Secrets   ...The minimum wage debate is back on Capitol Hill, and the usual suspects -- trade groups in industries that hire a lot of low-wage workers …have laid out huge amounts of money …  giving more than $5.5 million to Congress over the past two election cycles and spending more than $91 million on lobbying just last year...
If the New York Stock Exchange is a “High-Frequency Brothel” then the SEC is its Pimp  Wall Street on Parade   ...Not only are the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq allowing high frequency traders to co-locate their computers next to the main computers of the exchanges to gain a speed advantage over other customers at a monthly cost that only the very rich can afford to pay but they’re now tacking on infrastructure charges that price everyone out of efficient use of the exchanges except the very top tier of trading firms...
All Work And No Pay  Moyers & Company   ...You've heard about the wave of recent protests calling on fast food chains like McDonald's and Burger King to raise wages for their employees, who are forced to live on next to nothing. But did you know that many workers in sit-down restaurants may be faring even worse?...
Corker Must Come Clean On The Volkswagon Union Election  The Hill   ...Sen. Bob Corker's problems concerning his intrusion in February's union election at Volkswagon in Chattanooga just got more serious. Confidential e-mails obtained this week by a Nashville television station...
Labor Secretary Will "Respect" NLRB Ruling Granting Northwestern Football Players Right To Unionize Des Moines Register   ...U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez will respect the decision by the National Labor Relations Board last week that Northwestern football players have the right to unionize, he said at a news conference in Des Moines Saturday...
Miscelleneous
Young People Understand Unions Can Solve Problems  U.S. News and World Report   ...Last week, the National Labor Relations Board's Chicago Regional Director issued a notable finding: football players at Northwestern University are employees of the university for purposes of federal labor law...