Teamster News
Teamsters vow to fight IDOT layoffs State Journal-Register ...Lawyers representing Teamsters Local 916 said Tuesday they want 55 members of the union who were put in Illinois Department of Transportation jobs as staff assistants … to be able to continue working for the agency...
1934 Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, One Key Precursor To Wagner Act People's World ...Wagner wrote the National Labor Relations Act(NLRA), the nation's basic labor law, in early 1935, then convinced a reluctant Roosevelt to support it. The Senate passed the NLRA 63-12, the House approved it by voice vote, and Roosevelt signed it on July 5, 1935...
Trade
Petition to Sen. Wyden — “Smart Track” cannot be “Fast Track” in Disguise Public Citizen ...Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden has been working on what he calls a new form of trade authority. What we need is a replacement for Fast Track — the Nixon-formulated process that allowed presidents to sign “free trade” deals before Congress got to vote on them, and then railroad the deals through Congress in only 90 days with limited debate and no amendments...
Import Competition and the Great U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s National Bureau of Economic Research ...“Our central estimates suggest net job losses of 2.0 to 2.4 million stemming from the rise in import competition from China over the period 1999 to 2011...”
Registered Lobbyists Elbow Their Way Back Into TPP Committees Electronic Frontier Foundation ...Special interests won a federal court ruling earlier this year, where the judge in the case suggested that President Obama's ban on registered lobbyists serving on federal advisory committees violated those lobbyists' rights...the White House has sent a memo specifying new rules, permitting lobbyists to once again officially serve on federal agencies if they are representing a specific client...
State Battles
John Nichols: Scott Walker, mine money and the 'appearance of corruption' The Cap Times ...Gogebic Taconite moved $700,000 to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which in turn steered resources to other groups that cheered on Walker and his Republican allies. "Because Wisconsin Club for Growth's fundraising and expenditures were being coordinated with Scott Walker's agents at the time of Gogebic's donation, there is certainly an appearance of corruption in light of the resulting legislation from which it benefited," argued Dean Nickel, the former head of the state Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Unit...
Nearly Half Of Workers In California Don’t Get Paid Sick Days, Analysis Finds Washington Post ...Forty four percent of workers in California don’t get any paid sick days, according to a new analysis...
Angry About Ferguson? Oppose Voter ID Laws Daily Beast ...Even a study that voter ID proponents frequently cite because it minimizes the problem readily admits that that “the adverse effects fall disproportionately on women, African-Americans, and Democrats.”...
O'Connell: Council Can Raise Minimum Wage Louisville Courier Journal ...Scott requested an opinion from the office on whether the council could establish a minimum wage. Council members have not introduced a proposed ordinance, but members of the Democratic majority have voiced their support for an increase...
War On Workers
Burger King swallows Tim Hortons; new firm is Canada-bound Los Angeles Times ...Burger King Worldwide Inc. said Tuesday it would buy the Tim Hortons coffee-and-doughnut chain for about $11.4 billion and place the new firm's headquarters in Canada, where the corporate tax rate is lower than in the U.S...
Burger King Fans Call For Boycott Over Tax Dodge Huffington Post ...People flooded the fast-food chain’s Facebook page on Monday with threats of a boycott after the company announced talks to merge with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons. The combined company would be headquartered in Canada...
A New Reason to Question the Official Unemployment Rate New York Times ...there seems to have been an increase in the number of people who once would have qualified as officially unemployed and today are considered out of the labor force, neither working nor looking for work...
Contract Worker Killed In Accident At NewPage In Rumford River Valley Sun Journal ...A man was killed in an accident at the NewPage mill Monday afternoon, according to mill spokesman Tony Lyons...
Worker killed, others hurt in July explosion Associated Press ...The U.S. Chemical Safety Board says a fatal July explosion at a fish processing plant on the Mississippi Coast occurred during “hot work” on a tank...The board says no combustible gas testing was done on the contents of the tank before the hot work began...
Poor Door’ in a New York Tower Opens a Fight Over Affordable Housing New York Times ...A 33-story glassy tower rising on Manhattan’s waterfront will … also cater to renters who make no more than about $50,000. They will not share the same perks, and they will also not share the same entrance...
Miscellaneous
Amid job stagnation, a prosperous class grows (opinion) AlJazeera America ...A small group of very well-paid workers is earning a third of the nation’s wages...
