Teamster News
RTC Bus Driver Contract Extended To July 31 Reno Gazette-Journal ...A contract extension until July 31 for Washoe County public transit employees was agreed to today by their labor union and MV Transportation, which operates the transit system for the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County...
Labor Board Rules In Favor Of Union Bennington Banner ...Nearly a month after a single challenged ballot left the notion of Green Mountain Express bus driver joining the Teamsters Union hanging, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled in the union’s favor...
'Longmire' Crew Member's Death Is Suspected to Be Caused by Too-Long Working Hours AceShowBiz ...A crew member of A&E's crime drama series "Longmire" named Gary Tuck, 48, died early morning on Saturday, June 28, in a car accident. Gary's truck rolled over on a highway in an area known as Stanley, N. M. when he was on his way home from the drama's set around 4:30 A.M. Gary was a member of Teamsters Local 492...
NYCLASS Furious That Bill de Blasio Hasn’t Banned Horse Carriages Yet New York Observer ...Mr. de Blasio and his advisers have been shying away from banning the Central Park-based carriages, sources say, and are not pressuring the City Council to pass a bill after promising last year the carriages would be history when he took office...
Trade
Plan a Made-in-the-USA July 4th Celebration manufacture this ...Display your stars and stripes with a Made in the USA flag (you’d be surprised – not all flags are!)...
State Battles
Private Contractor For Michigan Prisons Repeatedly Failed To Give Inmates Enough Food Think Progress ...Less than a year after Michigan shifted responsibility for feeding its prisoners to a private contract with international food services conglomerate Aramark, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) is warning the company that it may yank the contract if chronic food shortages and security violations don’t cease...
The Minimum Wage Will Increase Tomorrow In D.C. Washington City Paper ...Beginning tomorrow, the minimum wage will jump to $9.50 per hour from today's $8.25...
California Minimum Wage Rising To $9 Per Hour Tuesday KCRA ...California's minimum wage will rise to $9 an hour when a new law takes effect on Tuesday and provides workers with the first such increase since 2008. That amount will increase again to $10 an hour starting on Jan. 1, 2016, under AB10, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last fall...
Gov. Scott Walker to blame for poor job growth (opinion) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ...The 2011-'12 reductions of 10% in real per student K-12 spending were the fourth-largest in the nation. Cuts in higher education spending, the reduction in the purchasing power of state employees through Act 10 and foregone federal dollars in Walker's rejection of high-speed rail and Medicaid investments all helped dampen aggregate demand in the state (compared to other states) and throw sand in the gears of Wisconsin's job creation machinery...
Dead Last in Jobs in the Midwest Wisconsin State AFL-CIO ...You know what doesn’t create jobs? Rejecting high-speed rail projects, failing to expand Medicaid for the poor, focusing on voter disenfranchisement laws instead of job growth policies, taking money out of local economies with austerity policies such as Act 10, tax cuts for the rich and a lack of accountability and transparency in the WEDC, the jobs agency created by Gov. Walker that has been plagued by scandals...
Whistling Past the Intellectual Graveyard Econbrowser ...After three years of an experiment in ALEC-Laffernomics, Kansas lags the US economy significantly...
War On Workers
America Ranks 36th in Feeling Free to Choose What to Do With Your Life firedoglake ...many of the first world countries where people are more satisfied with their freedom of choice are the Scandinavian countries with very large social safety nets. Despite the Republican claim that a “government takeover” of health care would destroy our freedom, those countries with far more government involvement in health care feel freer...
Why is Washington still protecting the secret political power of corporations? (opinion) Guardian ...Regulators at the SEC could illuminate the future of campaign donations. But they aren't interested in disclosing the truth – even though voters are...
Profiteering on Banker Deaths: Regulator Says Public Has No Right to Details Wall Street on Parade ... JPMorgan held $17.9 billion in Bank-Owned Life Insurance (BOLI) assets, a dark corner of the insurance market that allows banks to take out life insurance policies on their workers, secretly pocket the death benefits, and receive generous tax perks subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer...
Miscellaneous
Court Gave NSA Broad Leeway In Surveillance, Documents Show Washington Post ...Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents...
Here Are 4 Lawsuits That Could Inflict More Damage On Unions After Harris V. Quinn Mother Jones ...It's possible that one of these cases could do further damage to the labor movement—with the potential to wipe out the precedent set in 1977's Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision. (In Abood, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of public-employee unions collecting fair-share fees from non-members to pay the costs of collective bargaining.)...
