Trade
Australia should fix trade deal investor protection Financial review ...Two weeks ago an international arbitration panel awarded a US company compensation for the way its quarry project in Canada was "unfairly" rejected on environmental and planning grounds...
In Press Call, Progressives Announce Anti-Fast Track Activities Nationwide Public Citizen ...Hundreds of progressive organizations are engaged nationwide in two action-packed weeks of rallies, press events, briefings, bird-dogging events, phone banks,canvasses and more to build opposition against Fast Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership...
Blame Bad Trade For Hurting America's Steel Industry Alternet ...Sucker punched by massive, illegally subsidized imports, American steel producers laid off thousands of workers in bedrock communities from Ohio and Illinois to Texas and Alabama. That’s in just the past three months...
ISDS A Bigger Threat Than ISIS (opinion) Wanganui Chronicle ...The Investor-State Dispute Settlement. ISDS is a means whereby investors (read corporations) may sue a government for lost corporate profits due to regulatory barriers of the defendant country. Regulatory barriers like environmental protections, health and safety rules, generic pharmaceuticals. ISDS is part of the invasive TPPA (TransPacific Partnership Agreement), a trade agreement written to benefit multinational corporations....
Cambodian Child Labor Laws Flouted With Fake IDs The Guardian ...“For many children in Cambodia, the child protection situation is dire,” says Unicef’s chief of communication...
State Battles
Seattle Minimum Wage Up To $11 For Most Wednesday KING ...Seattle's minimum wage is increasing to $11 for most businesses on Wednesday. It's the start of a phased increase to $15 per hour over the next several years...
City Council Pushes To Raise Minimum Wage WDAF ...The Kansas City council will consider an ordinance to raise minimum wage within the city to $15 an hour. Mayor Sly James talked about the ordinance during his state of the city address. The ordinance would begin raising the minimum wage within the city to $10 by September and then up to $15 by 2021...
Perez And Garcetti Take Aim At Wage Theft, Minimum Wage Los Angeles Times ...On Tuesday, Los Angeles County supervisors voted 5 to 0 to study the possible effects of boosting wage floors at the county level. City leaders in Los Angeles are considering an increase in the minimum wage to $13.25 or $15.25 an hour from the state minimum of $9 an hour...
Oil Trains To Pay More In State Fees Albany Times Union ...The state will collect millions of dollars more from companies that ship oil from the Midwest in massive trains that pass through the Capital Region and other parts of the state under language contained in the state budget hammered out by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers...
BNSF Implements New Safety Rules For Oil Trains Flathead Beacon ...In an effort to safely move massive oil trains from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields, BNSF Railway has told shippers that it is implementing its own rules to try and prevent explosive derailments and accidental spills...
War on Workers
Student Debt Strikers Grow in Number and in Power truthout ...Just over a month ago, Waging Nonviolence reported that 15 former students of Corinthian Colleges — the beleaguered, notorious for-profit higher education system — were going on strike; not from their jobs, or from class, but from their debt. Today, there are over 100 debt strikers...
McDonald’s to Raise Pay at Outlets It Operates New York Times ...McDonald's announced on Wednesday that it would raise wages and offer new benefits to 90,000 employees in he 1,500 outlets in the United States that it owns and operates, responding to competitive pressure from a tighter job market and to labor campaigns drawing public attention to its pay policies...
Republicans Take Aim At Union ‘Official Time’ For Federal Employees Washington Post ...House and Senate Republicans have introduced bills to bar federal employees from performing union work on the government’s dime, a practice that has been allowed since 1978 under the Civil Service Reform Act...
Worker Killed In Fall At Site New Braunfels Herald Zeitung ...A San Antonio construction worker died as a result of an accident he had while working Tuesday in New Braunfels, a New Braunfels Police Department spokesman said. Authorities said Victor Echartea-Medina, 41, fell from about four stories up before being rushed in an ambulance to Resolute Health Hospital in town. The man died from his injuries...
Miscellaneous
DOJ Inspector General: ATF, FBI's Drones Worthless, Expensive And Completely Mismanaged Techdirt ...$3 million spent on drones, with only half currently considered "operational." In eight years (2006-2014), the drones have only been deployed to assist in 13 investigations, with nine of those occurring in the last four years. This may be good news for those concerned about extensive domestic surveillance, but it's not good news for those interested in how their tax dollars are being spent...
