Teamster News
House Sides with Teamsters on HOS GoByTruck ...The transportation funding bill passed this week by the U.S. House of Representatives does not include a provision to suspend the hours of service restart provision. Some legislative insiders expected the House to add an amendment similar to the Senate amendment to defund enforcement for the restart, but the lower chamber instead seemed to side with the Teamsters union, which sent a letter asking Congressmen to oppose such an initiative...
AM Alert: Hernández, Hoffa push workplace protections for temps Sacramento Bee ...Assemblyman Roger Hernández, D-West Covina, and Teamsters President Jim Hoffa ... discuss legislation that would make companies fully responsible for temporary employees brought in by a labor contractor...
It's Time To Terminate Temp Abuse, Pass California Bill AB 1897 Huffington Post ...Cecilia Ceron has worked at the Tracy, California, plant of the world's biggest salad processor Taylor Farms for the past 11 years. But she doesn't work for the company. Instead, she is a long-term temporary employee trying to raise two daughters who has no health insurance...
Abuses At World’s Largest Salad Processing Co. Illustrate Need For Temp Worker Legislation In California IBT ...“This shell game is a significant contributor to the crisis in our economy today,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa...
Trade
How The Trans-Pacific Partnership Affects Jobs, Trade, And Regulation IVN ...tariffs among a majority of the countries are already quite low. Indeed, once “most favored nation” (MFN) status is extended to include Malaysia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Brunei, U.S. exporters will hardly enjoy expanded access to markets: these four countries have a combined purchasing power equivalent to that of Pennsylvania...
Lawmakers, LGBT groups urge U.S. trade action on Brunei criminal laws Reuters ...Brunei, the first East Asian country to introduce Islamic criminal law, has announced laws that will impose fines or jail terms for offenses such as pregnancy outside marriage and failure to perform Friday prayers. The laws will ultimately punish sodomy and adultery with the death penalty, including by stoning...
Bipartisan Call To Crack Down On Currency, Restore 5.8 Million Jobs Trade Reform ...Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) issued an appeal Tuesday to President Obama to crack down on currency manipulation, which has cost 5.8 million U.S. jobs and increased the federal budget deficit by $266 billion...
State Battles
Booming Business, But Falling Wages, in California Grocery Stores In These Times ...the median hourly wage (measured in 2010 dollars) of grocery store workers fell from $12.97 in 1999 to $11.33 in 2010, a decline of 12.6 percent...
War On Workers
CEOs Earn Nearly 300 Times What Their Workers Make Think Progress ...The ratio of CEO pay to workers’ pay was 295.9-to-1 last year according to a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).That ratio is down from a peak of 383.4-to-1 in 2000 but is far higher than the historical norm. The ratio was just 20-to-1 in 1965 and 29.9-to-1 in 1978...
U.S. retail sales miss expectations, jobless claims rise Reuters ...U.S. retail sales rose less than expected in May and first-time applications for jobless benefits increased last week, but the data did little to alter views the economy is regaining steam...
Eric Cantor Loses: Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Citigroup & NYU Board Weep Wall Street on Parade ...With the House Majority leader now soundly defeated in Tuesday’s primary in Virginia by an upstart economics professor supported by the Tea Party, David Brat, who took 56 percent of the vote and sprinkled his speeches with the phrase “crony capitalism,” Wall Street money may not be able to travel from Gotham across state lines as effectively as it once did...
The Places That Most Desperately Need A Higher Minimum Wage Huffington Post ...The Southest and Southwest are home to a disproportionate number of workers who would benefit from raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, according to a new report from the global poverty-fighting group Oxfam America...
Former Managers Allege Pervasive Inventory Fraud At Walmart. How Deep Does The Rot Go? The Nation ...Inventory results that “should have raised red flags” were actually lauded by those significantly higher in Walmart’s regional chain of command. One recently departed senior vice president, for instance, would send her handwritten notes commending such numbers, she said...
How ordinary Americans can influence policy – no super PAC required AlJazeera America ...voters are best represented in Montana, Minnesota and Oregon and poorly represented in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. ... states with stringent lobbying regulations better weigh the interests of citizens across the income spectrum...
Mother Of Seven Dies in Jail While Serving Sentence For The Truancy Of Her Children Jonathan Turley ...Eileen DiNino, 55, of Reading, Pennsylvania has died while serving one of these ridiculous sentences. The mother of seven died in jail after serving half of her 48-hour sentence. The 48-hour sentence was in lieu of a $2,000 — a choice that many impoverished parents have to make...
Six Supreme Court Decisions To Watch For This Month Newsweek ...For millions of public employees, constitutional scholar Garrett Epps wrote after oral arguments in January, “Their collective-bargaining rights are hanging by a thread...
Fusion Centers Approached 2011 Black Friday Consumer Boycott Like a Terrorist Threat The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund ..."It is outrageous that counter-terrorism officials used their anti-terrorism authority and funding to "protect" corporate America from a consumer boycott. It is well past time that the vast flow of tax-payer money to the Fusion Centers be ended..."
Miscellaneous
Tesla Making Patents ‘Open Source’ to Boost Electric Cars Bloomberg ...Elon Musk, Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)’s outspoken co-founder, said patents for the maker of Model S electric cars will be “open source” and available at no charge as it seeks to expand adoption of battery-powered autos...
