Teamster News
Reinhart Teamsters Overwhelmingly Ratify First Contract teamster.org ...More than 230 workers at Reinhart Food Service represented by Teamsters Local Union 653 ratified a first contract, voting by a 2 to 1 margin to approve the collective bargaining agreement...
First Transit Workers Stand Together For Teamster Representation teamster.org ...WorFirst Transit paratransit drivers, dispatchers and schedulers in Chicago recently voted resoundingly for Teamsters Local 727 representation...
British Union To Confront Bill de Blasio Over Plan To Ban City's Horse-Carriage Industry New York Daily News ...Members of the federation will raise the carriage ban with de Blasio at the conference, the union said. New York’s carriage drivers are represented by the Teamsters union...
Tom Mulcair Targets 'Freeloader' Corporations In Speech To Teamsters CBC News ...In a toughly-worded speech to be delivered today to a Teamsters rail safety conference, the NDP leader's rhetoric is reminiscent of the party's former leaders, particularly that of David Lewis who campaigned against "corporate welfare bums" in 1972...
Pilot Attrition Accelerates At Allegiant Air As Labor Issues Heat Up teamster.org ...“The Teamsters have presented the company with a comprehensive proposal, to which they have refused to reply....An honest effort by the company to reach an agreement during contract negotiations would have a positive effect, stem the unsustainable losses they are experiencing, and allow the company to succeed going forward.”...
Trade
Japan trade minister: No progress with U.S. in TPP trade talks Reuters ...Japan's Trade Minister Akira Amari said he and his U.S. counterpart made no progress in bilateral talks that are key to an ambitious multilateral trade deal...
U.S. Government Takes Historic Action to Enforce Labor Rules in Trade Agreement with Guatemala AFL-CIO Now ...The United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that it will finally move forward to arbitration in the long-running dispute with the government of Guatemala regarding whether or not Guatemala is meeting the labor commitments of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA or CAFTA)...
TTIP Should Help, Not Hinder, Workers (opinion) The Broker ...Labour provisions expected to be included in the deal do not provide enough protections. Additionally, language that would bar preferred status to national companies in government purchasing – known as the Buy American program in the US – would starve job creation...
State Battles
Yahoo, Yelp, Facebook, Google and Microsoft reconsider their relationship with free-market group ALEC Washington Post ...Five tech giants have dropped, or plan to or are expected to drop, their membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a free-market, state-focused group that has become a target of the left in recent years...
Court Returns Inquiry Into Walker’s Finances to Wisconsin New York Times ...A federal appeals court on Wednesday removed an injunction halting an investigation into whether the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker illegally coordinated with conservative groups on fund-raising and spending as he sought to overcome a recall effort two years ago...
Judge defies Supreme Court order as legal wrangling over other voter ID case continues Wisconsin State Journal ...A Dane County judge has defied a state Supreme Court order to dismiss a challenge to Wisconsin’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, while the legal wrangling continued Tuesday over another case seeking to block the law...
Group Hopes To Force Scott Walker's Administration To Raise The Minimum Wage Wisconsin State Journal ...On Wednesday, Wisconsin Jobs Now plans to present petitions from about 75 workers who say they are paid wages that are not self-supporting. The group said that violates a state law dating back to 1913 requiring that the minimum wage in the state “shall not be less than a living wage.”...
Court: 35 days of early voting to start in Ohio Toledo Blade ...Ohio’s 35-day early voting window will remain intact for the Nov. 4 election, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted said he will ask the entire U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, not just a three-judge panel, to hear an appeal of the decision. Time is short, however. Early voting will begin Tuesday...
Fed Judge: No press exemption for Citizens United in Colorado Colorado Independent ...Judge Brooke Jackson issued a curt decision today refusing to issue a federal injunction that would have allowed Citizens United to air and advertise a documentary on Colorado politics ahead of the November elections without disclosing funding behind any advertising related to the movie.
...
Jeffco students walk out of 5 high schools in school board protest Denver Post ...Community members are angry about an evaluation-based system for awarding raises to educators and a proposed curriculum committee that would call for promoting "positive aspects" of the United States and its heritage and avoiding material that would encourage or condone "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law..."
Indiana Toll Road operator files Chapter 11 Bloomberg ...The operator of the Indiana Toll Road, owned by affiliates of Macquarie Group Ltd. and Ferrovial SA, sought bankruptcy protection after dwindling traffic soured a $3.8 billion bet on a 75-year lease...
Alaska's Lessons For The Keystone XL Pipeline (opinion) Wall Street Journal ...The lesson of the Trans-Alaska pipeline is that we can build pipelines in ways that protect the environment while yielding large economic benefits. The naysayers were wrong 40 years ago, and policy makers should give scant credence to their arguments against Keystone today...
War On Workers
Inside the Koch brothers' toxic empire Rolling Stone ...The company's troubled legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations, Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony convictions – augmented by internal company documents, leaked State Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company whistle-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic empire whose profits finance the modern GOP...
Walmart moms demand better pay and protections for women workers Peoples World ...Thelma Moore, who worked at the Chatham, Ill. store and is pregnant with her second child., (said) "...we're fighting for bathroom breaks when we're pregnant and steady schedules that let us get reliable childcare and put food on the table." Moore was fired from the store for an absence when she was at doctors' appointments after television sets fell on her at the store...
Student homelessness hits another record high CNN Money ...Approximately 1.3 million students enrolled in U.S. public preschools, elementary schools, middle schools and high schools schools were homeless during the 2012-13 school year. That's up 8% from the prior year…
Worker Dies From Fire at EOG Resources Site in Wyoming Wall Street Journal ...A worker died after a flash fire at a storage tank near a natural gas well in Wyoming, company and hospital officials said. The contract worker, whose name hasn't been released, was one of three people hospitalized after a fire at a well site owned by EOG Resources Inc…
Second worker dies from U.S. Steel explosion; OSHA investigating Pittsburgh Business Times ...A second United States Steel Corp. employee has died from injuries in an explosion at the company's facility in Fairfield, Ala., a spokesperson for UAB Hospital confirmed Wednesday...
Manchester worker dead after Eagleville school accident The Tennessean ...A construction worker died after a backhoe flipped over on him Tuesday afternoon at Eagleville School...
The Recovery That Left Out Almost Everybody (opinion) Wall Street Journal ...Not only are hourly wages stagnating; America's families want more hours of work than the economy is providing...
