Teamster News
Port Truck Drivers Picket Harbor-Area Trucking Companies Los Angeles Times ...More than 120 truck drivers at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports walked off the job Monday morning, organizers said, launching an indefinite protest against what they say are widespread workplace violations...
Teamsters Initiate Labor Action At LA-Long Beach In Midst Of Longshore Talks Journal of Commerce ...The Teamsters union, in the latest salvo in its long-sought plan to organize port truckers, took advantage of a critical juncture in contract negotiations for a new West Coast longshore agreement to set up pickets against three drayage companies operating at Los Angeles-Long Beach...
California Truck Drivers Go On Strike MSNBC ...California truck drivers at three major transportation companies went on strike Monday morning, demanding an end to purported labor law violations such as misclassification and intimidation. ...
California Truck Drivers Go On Indefinite Strike Think Progress ...The core complaint underlying the union drive is that companies like Total Transportation Services, Inc. (TTSI), Green Fleet Systems, and Pacific 9 Transportation deem their drivers “independent contractors” in order to avoid paying overtime and prevent their workers from enjoying various other labor law protections...
Teamsters Joint Council 16 Makes Three State Senate Endorsements New York Observer ...The union backed ex-Councilman Leroy Comrie’s bid against indicted Queens State Senator Malcolm Smith, Dell Smitherman’s campaign against indicted Brooklyn State Senator John Sampson and Bronx State Senator Gustavo Rivera’s re-election campaign against Councilman Fernando Cabrera...
Teamsters union demands action from Ga. Ports Authority WJCL News ...Teamsters Local Union 728 out of Atlanta announced this week that it has called on the Georgia Ports Authority to come out publicly condemning the classification of port truck drivers as contract employees rather than full-time...
Trade
NE Ohio steelmakers keeping close eye on Commerce Department ruling Trade Reform ...July 11 …(is) the date when the U.S. Department of Commerce is set to decide whether to put new import duties on tubular steel — the type generally referred to as “oil country tubular goods” or “OCTG.”...
Steel Institute Joins Autos and Other Industries in Joint Outreach to Administration on Currency Manipulation Steel Guru ...The American Iron and Steel Institute and a dozen other pro manufacturing groups impacted by unfair trade practices have asked the Obama Administration to make sure strong and enforceable provisions prohibiting currency manipulation are included in all future US free trade agreements, including the Trans Pacific Partnership currently under negotiation...
State Battles
No Job Loss In Most States That Raised The Minimum Wage Fiscal Times ...Of the 13 states that raised their minimum wages, all but one saw job growth in the first five months of 2014. To be sure, that’s a small achievement in an environment where the national economy is adding something on the order of 250,000 jobs per month. The really interesting finding is that the states that raised the minimum wage saw job growth that was, on average, higher than states that did not...
War On Workers
Why You Feel Poorer zero hedge ...Wages are not keeping up with inflation, even the understated numbers reported by government. In short, the decline of a once-great economic power is well underway. The country is no longer growing enough to raise everyone’s standard of living...
American Workers Die Needlessly In The Heat Every Year Washington Post ...Over the past 10 years, the average is 36 deaths and 2,810 heat-related illnesses each year. While that’s bad enough, OSHA officials think the true numbers are higher, because autopsies aren’t usually performed on the victims and many heat-related deaths are listed as heart attacks...
Where Does $2 Trillion in Subsidies for the Wealthiest Hide in Plain Sight? Capital Gains Tax Breaks. Next New Deal ...Under current law, the federal government will deliver an estimated $1.34 trillion in subsidies to investors over the next 10 years in the form of reduced tax rates for capital gains and dividends. Sixty-eight percent of that money will go to the top 1 percent. Stiglitz argues that there is “no justification for taxing those who work hard to earn a living at a higher rate than those who derive their income from speculation...”
REVEALED: Court docs show role of Pixar and Dreamworks Animation in Silicon Valley wage-fixing cartel Pando Daily ...Private emails sent by Pixar’s president and co-founder, Ed Catmull, and found by Pando amongst court documents, clearly state that Katzenberg’s Dreamworks Animation was party to the same secret non-solicitation agreements that the Department of Justice deemed were illegal antitrust violations that served to suppress workers’ wages. Catmull’s deposition in 2013 for the class action lawsuit further demonstrates that Dreamworks Animation was party to the illegal wage theft conspiracy...
Positively Un-American Tax Dodges Fortune Magazine ...Yes, leaving the country–a process that tax techies call inversion–is perfectly legal. A company does this by reincorporating in a place like Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is 12.5%, compared with 35% in the U.S. Inversion also makes it easier to divert what would normally be U.S. earnings to foreign, lower-tax locales ... mass inversion is a whole other thing, and that’s where we’re heading...
Miscellaneous
The NSA Said Edward Snowden Had No Access To Surveillance Intercepts. They Lied. Mother Jones ...In fact, he provided the Washington Post with a cache of 22,000 intercept reports containing 160,000 individual intercepts. The Post has spent months reviewing these files and estimates that 11 percent of the intercepted accounts belonged to NSA targets and the remaining 89 percent were "incidental" collections from bystanders...
