LA Mayor Announces Eco-Flow, A New Port Drayage Trucking Company Teamster.org ...Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, port truck drivers, business leaders, labor leaders, and environmental groups today announced the formation of Eco Flow Transportation, a new, innovative company that will transform the drayage trucking industry by hiring all drivers as employees thereby creating a stable workforce...
Teamsters has allies on board for battle over school buses The Times ...National Express has come under renewed pressure from one of America’s most powerful unions to reform working practices at a subsidiary that carries more than a million children a day to and from school. The Teamsters union, which represents more than 1.4 million blue-collar workers in North America, has tabled a proposal for a vote at the transport group’s annual meeting tomorrow...
Teamsters: Workers reinstated after public pressure Capital New York ...Two workers who said they were fired from a New York City private trash hauling firm after testifying to the City Council about poor working conditions were reinstated, according to an announcement from the Teamsters who intervened on the workers' behalf. “New Yorkers have learned two things this week: Five Star Carting does not respect its workers or their free speech rights, but also that when workers, community members, and elected officials stand together, we win"...
Teamsters launch effort to stem growth of nonunion commercial movers Crain's New York ...Teamsters Local 814, along with their employers in the commercial-moving industry and other local labor organizations, began an advertising blitz Monday and released a letter from elected officials to discourage businesses from hiring nonunion or pseudo-union commercial movers...
These Food Distributors Are Trying To Convince A Judge To Let Them Form A Monopoly Think Progress ...After years of acquiring smaller competitors, US Foods and Sysco, Inc. are the last two large companies in the food distribution industry. The government, AAI, Food and Water Watch, and the Teamsters union all argue that the companies already control the market, and would represent a monopoly if merged...
St. Vincent technicians organize as Teamsters Telegram ...Technicians at St. Vincent Hospital voted 130-40 last week to be represented by Teamsters Local 170, the union reported. The local will represent more than 200 technicians who work in radiology, operating rooms and other departments...
Global Labor & Trade
Harry Reid Plans To Block Trade Deal Until The Senate Deals With Surveillance Reform, Highway Funding Huff Post ...Reid said he has spoken with his leadership team and is confident Democratic senators will stick together to demand the two bills be dealt with before moving to approval for trade promotion authority or the Trans-Pacific Partnership. "I'm not willing to lay over and play dead on trade until we have some commitment from them on surface transportation," he said...
Economists Say White House Argument on Outsourcing Falls Flat Wall Street Journal ...Economists on both sides of the trade debate say the White House seems to be barking up the wrong tree, muddling arguments about two distinct things–foreign investment and outsourcing–on a hot-button issue that is dividing the public and Congress. Labor unions and skeptical economists are warning the Pacific pact could lead to the kind of outsourcing many workers blame on the North American Free Trade Agreement...
Chuck Schumer Warns Obama His Trade Agenda Is Dead Without A China Currency-Manipulation Crackdown Huff Post ...With Obama pushing Congress to give him so-called fast-track authority to pass massive new trade agreements with Pacific nations and Europe, Schumer and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are using the opportunity to try and force the White House to get tough on China's monetary policy...
GOP scrambling to limit defections on trade The Hill ...House Republican opposition to sweeping trade legislation isn’t breaking down along traditional Tea Party-GOP establishment fault lines. But the pockets of GOP defections will give President Obama and Republican leaders little wiggle room to muscle a bill through the lower chamber...
Robert Reich: The Trans Pacific Partnership is a corporate hijacking (opinion) Salon ...What we should have learned by now about trickle-down economics is that nothing trickles down. If the Trans Pacific Partnership is enacted, big corporations, Wall Street, and their top executives and shareholders will make out like bandits. Who will the bandits be stealing from? The rest of us...
Humanitarians split on Obama’s trade agenda: Trans Pacific Partnership Humanosphere ...Leading humanitarian organizations like the ONE Campaign and Oxfam appear to strongly disagree on whether to support the Obama Administration’s push to ‘fast-track’ an international trade agreement – and if its impact on the global fight against poverty and inequity will do more harm than good...
State & Living Wage Battles
As McDonald's Announces Corporate Shake-Up, Workers Vow to Rise Up Common Dreams ...On the same day that McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook announced sweeping changes aimed at "returning excitement" to the behemoth—and struggling—fast-food chain, thousands of McDonald's cooks and cashiers vowed to descend on the the company's annual shareholder meeting in Illinois later this month to demand higher wages, fairer treatment, and the right to organize...
Dems bet on $12 minimum wage The Hill ..Democrats are doubling down on their push for a national minimum wage hike ahead of the 2016 presidential election, as they look to make a campaign issue of an effort that met a stinging legislative defeat last year. Party leaders are rallying behind new legislation that would raise the wage to $12 an hour, well beyond the $10.10 effort that failed to pass when Democrats controlled the Senate...
Right to work bills launch hours of debate in Maine Legislature Central Maine ...abor union members faced off against the LePage administration and Republican lawmakers on Monday over the latest push to make Maine a so-called “right to work” state. The hours of debate and rhetoric over several bills largely echoed previous “right to work” attempts in Maine with supporters claiming the measures are needed to improve the state’s business competitiveness and opponents dismissing them as blatant efforts to undermine organized labor...
State Assembly passes bill allowing higher state minimum wage Daily News ...The state Assembly passed a bill Monday allowing a higher state minimum wage in New York City and nearby counties. The legislation, which faces opposition in the Senate, seeks to phase in a minimum wage that would reach $15 an hour by the end of 2018 in the city and Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties...
Kanawha County will continue paying prevailing wage WV Gazette ...Members of the Kanawha County Commission are expected to vote Tuesday to keep paying prevailing wage rates for all county construction projects. In March, the WV Legislature passed a bill eliminating prevailing wage rates for public construction projects of less than $500,000. But Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said that doesn’t mean the county has to go along with the change...
U.S. Labor
Tufts Students Stage ‘Indefinite’ Hunger Strike Against Janitor Layoffs In These Times ...Tufts University students launched a hunger strike and took over a quad next to the Medford/Somerville campus’s main administrative building Sunday to protest planned layoffs of 35 janitors. Five undergraduates joined the “indefinite” hunger strike as a show of solidarity with the janitors, 17 percent of whom are slated to lose their jobs...
Clark County, SEIU heading to binding arbitration Review Journal ...Clark County and its largest union, which represents about 5,000 county employees, agreed Monday to go to binding arbitration to reach a contract agreement. The county and the Service Employees International Local 1107 started negotiations in June 2013. They’ve also spent months trying to get the matter to a third-party arbitrator, or fact-finder, for a final decision on the terms of a contract...
Union plans to fight MUA dissolution, job cuts Press of Atlantic City ...At a union meeting Monday, about two dozen local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees members were urged to fight the potential dissolution of the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, along with cuts to city staffing. “It’s about survival and supporting each other,” said Rafael Valentin, a staff representative for AFSCME District Council 71...
The conservative answer on Baltimore: Blame the teachers Daily Kos ...What's responsible for Baltimore's problems? Republicans need answers other than "massive economic inequality, racism, and police violence," and when Republicans need answers but can't admit what the real problems are, they turn to a familiar set of scapegoats. "...you still have a failing education system dominated by public sector unions, teachers unions"...
Miscellaneous
Relatives of 43 Missing Students: U.S.-Backed Drug War Fights Organized People, Not Organized Crime Democracy Now ...he relatives have criticized U.S. support for the drug war, saying Mexico is using the aid to kill innocent people. "If they were really fighting organized crime, as the United States government says, then the crime rates would have gone down," Bautista Salbador says. "Apparently they are not fighting organized crime; they are fighting organized people"...
America's Growing Inequality Worsens In One's Senior Years Alternet ...As traditional pension coverage has declined, those who still have adequate retirement packages are likely to be professionals, business executives, and the wealthy. To the extent that middle-class and poorer Americans have access to retirement plans at all, they are typically 401(k) or similar plans that depend on optional contributions from workers and employers...
State Assembly passes bill allowing higher state minimum wage Daily News ...The state Assembly passed a bill Monday allowing a higher state minimum wage in New York City and nearby counties. The legislation, which faces opposition in the Senate, seeks to phase in a minimum wage that would reach $15 an hour by the end of 2018 in the city and Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties...
Kanawha County will continue paying prevailing wage WV Gazette ...Members of the Kanawha County Commission are expected to vote Tuesday to keep paying prevailing wage rates for all county construction projects. In March, the WV Legislature passed a bill eliminating prevailing wage rates for public construction projects of less than $500,000. But Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said that doesn’t mean the county has to go along with the change...
U.S. Labor
Tufts Students Stage ‘Indefinite’ Hunger Strike Against Janitor Layoffs In These Times ...Tufts University students launched a hunger strike and took over a quad next to the Medford/Somerville campus’s main administrative building Sunday to protest planned layoffs of 35 janitors. Five undergraduates joined the “indefinite” hunger strike as a show of solidarity with the janitors, 17 percent of whom are slated to lose their jobs...
Clark County, SEIU heading to binding arbitration Review Journal ...Clark County and its largest union, which represents about 5,000 county employees, agreed Monday to go to binding arbitration to reach a contract agreement. The county and the Service Employees International Local 1107 started negotiations in June 2013. They’ve also spent months trying to get the matter to a third-party arbitrator, or fact-finder, for a final decision on the terms of a contract...
Union plans to fight MUA dissolution, job cuts Press of Atlantic City ...At a union meeting Monday, about two dozen local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees members were urged to fight the potential dissolution of the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, along with cuts to city staffing. “It’s about survival and supporting each other,” said Rafael Valentin, a staff representative for AFSCME District Council 71...
The conservative answer on Baltimore: Blame the teachers Daily Kos ...What's responsible for Baltimore's problems? Republicans need answers other than "massive economic inequality, racism, and police violence," and when Republicans need answers but can't admit what the real problems are, they turn to a familiar set of scapegoats. "...you still have a failing education system dominated by public sector unions, teachers unions"...
Miscellaneous
Relatives of 43 Missing Students: U.S.-Backed Drug War Fights Organized People, Not Organized Crime Democracy Now ...he relatives have criticized U.S. support for the drug war, saying Mexico is using the aid to kill innocent people. "If they were really fighting organized crime, as the United States government says, then the crime rates would have gone down," Bautista Salbador says. "Apparently they are not fighting organized crime; they are fighting organized people"...
America's Growing Inequality Worsens In One's Senior Years Alternet ...As traditional pension coverage has declined, those who still have adequate retirement packages are likely to be professionals, business executives, and the wealthy. To the extent that middle-class and poorer Americans have access to retirement plans at all, they are typically 401(k) or similar plans that depend on optional contributions from workers and employers...
