Teamster News
Teamsters Approve One Year Contract With Raises KTTU ...Teamsters approved 292 to 93 the one-year contract that gives one time raises to all employees with Sun Tran longer than six months, except those at the top level. They will get an increase now and another in February so that top mechanics are at $22.66 an hour and top drivers are at $19.22 an hour by February...
Bus Driver Union Rejects New Contract Offer By GET Bakersfield Californian ...During the fourth
week of the Golden Empire Transit bus driver's strike, the union again declined a district contract offer...
Trade
White House Delays Proposal To Reclassify 'Factoryless Goods Producers' International Business Times ...After an outcry by labor unions and consumer groups, the Obama administration announced Friday it would delay a controversial proposal to classify so-called factoryless goods producers as domestic manufacturers, even if the manufacturing jobs associated with those producers are offshore...
More Pushback On Multiple Fronts Against TPP and Fast-Track Trade Reform ...The question is can the giant multinational corporations that are using TPP to divide up the economic world amongst themselves overcome the governments they already regard as irrelevant. A significant part of their hope to do so is to force this trade agreement through Congress using “fast track” trade promotion authority...
CETA trade pact with EU clears major hurdle with final text Canadian Plastics ...It looks like the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) signed between Canada and the European Union (EU) has survived its near-death experience, with the announcement on August 5 that negotiators have agreed on a detailed text of the agreement...
State Battles
ALEC Annual Conference: New Bills, New Spin-Offs, Same Corporate Backers Center For Media And Democracy ...this year's ALEC agenda included model bills that would gut Medicaid, continue the privatization of schools, expand natural gas exports, and undermine EPA rules protecting waterways and limiting carbon pollution...
Report: State in worse shape because of tax cuts TheCap Times ...(Wisconsin) lawmakers have shortchanged public education and health care in exchange for tax cuts that haven’t led to any meaningful increases in job creation...
Despite big spending, Club for Growth-backed challengers fail to Republican incumbents PoliticMO ...All four Republican challenger candidates backed by the Missouri Club For Growth lost Tuesday night, despite thousands of dollars in campaign support from the group funded in large part by St. Louis billionaire Rex Sinquefield...
Florida Redraws an Election Map That Was Ruled to Be Unconstitutional New York Times ...the League of Women Voters of Florida, part of a coalition that sued the Legislature over redistricting, said the new map fell short of the court mandate. The new boundaries still pack African-Americans into the Fifth District, the group said, benefiting Republican incumbents in surrounding districts...
Mitch McConnell's wife sits on the board of a group working to kill the coal industry Yahoo News ...while McConnell presents himself as a defender of Kentucky coal mining, a member of his own family who serves as a key campaign surrogate is taking a role in an organization that funds one of the most aggressive anti-coal campaigns in the country...
Virginia Election Board Makes Voter ID Requirements More Stringent Washington Post ...Inflaming a contentious debate over voter identification laws, the Virginia State Board of Elections decided this week that, to cast a ballot, voters will have to present a current photo ID or one that expired within the past year...
Voter ID Laws A Solution In Search Of A Nonexistent Problem Christian Science Monitor ...This week, Loyola University Law School Professor Justin Levitt reported on the results of a comprehensive study which concluded that in-person voter impersonation is an incredibly rare occurrence...
War On Workers
BREAKING: Judge strikes down Techtopus wage theft settlement Pando ...The judge overseeing the landmark Silicon Valley wage theft antitrust lawsuit has struck down the $324 million settlement reached between most of the class action plaintiffs and the defendants — Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe…Judge Koh argues that the settlement figure should have been at least $380 million...
Credit card debt growth exceeds wage growth in the US Sober Look ...Over the past three months, the year-over-year growth in credit card debt has exceeded wage growth in the United States. This is the first time we've seen this trend since the Great Recession. While it clearly indicates improved US consumer confidence (and all the spending helps boost China's trade surplus), in the long run this is not going to be sustainable...
Corporate 1% in U.S. Gets Wealthier While Cash Piles Up Bloomberg ...Eighteen American businesses held 36 percent of corporate wealth in 2013, up from 27 percent in 2009, according to a report from Standard & Poor’s, a credit rating firm in New York. The bottom 80 percent have lost ground, with just 11 percent...
Student Debt Linked to Worse Health and Less Wealth Gallup ...A new analysis of Americans who graduated college between 1990 and 2014 shows that graduates who took on the highest amounts of student debt, $50,000 or more, are less likely than their fellow graduates who did not borrow for college to be thriving in four of five elements of well-being: purpose, financial, community, and physical...
Worker Killed In Excavator Accident At Construction Site KPRC ...A construction worker has been killed in an accident involving an excavator at a work site...
McDonald’s Summer Camp Seems To Be Thinly Veiled Child Labor Salon.com ...There is an actual McDonald’s summer camp for elementary school children in the Philippines...During each workshop day, Kiddie Crew members will get to experience on-floor training like greeting customers and assisting the crew at the drive-thru and front counters; showcase their skills through creative art workshops; and learn the importance of hard work, discipline and teamwork, through values formations lessons...
Disaster at the Mount Polley Mine (BC): Update firedoglake ...the tailings pond dam at the Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley Mine in British Columbia was breached creating an ecological disaster that threatens up to two million sockeye salmon just coming up the Fraser River to spawn...
