Teamsters
SunTran Strike: Teamsters Say Their Offer Rejected; SunTran Still Says, “Let’s Talk.” KQTH ...The SunTran strike has been dragging on for nine days now. Late Friday afternoon, the Teamsters said SunTran rejected another offer the union proposed late Thursday, though SunTran says it's still interested in talking more about the proposal...
Teamsters Union Approves Contract With County Laconia Daily Sun ...The contract was approved by a 2-1 vote of the County Commissioners last week, the commissioners announced Wednesday. This week the pact was approved by a majority vote of union membership. The contract will now go the Belknap County Convention for approval of the cost items...
Anti-Union Campaign In Full Swing At Google Express San Francisco Chronicle ...While the rest of the on-demand economy struggles to come to terms with the fallout from start-ups' reliance on classifying employees as independent contractors, Google Express — which does not use independent contractors but instead subcontracts its workforce through a staffing agency — is facing labor troubles of its own. And the battle is heating up...
Global Labor & Trade
Germany's Merkel To Face Down Party Rebels In Greek Bailout Vote Huffington Post ...In a major test of her authority, Chancellor Angela Merkel will ask skeptical German lawmakers to back an 86 billion euro ($95.5 billion) bailout for Greece on Wednesday despite uncertainty over whether the IMF will play a role in the rescue...
State & Living Wage Battles
Ulster County Considers Raising Minimum Wage To $15 An Hour For Its Employees Daily Freeman ...Ulster County Legislature Chairman John Parete has proposed establishing a $15-an-hour minimum wage for county employees. “If we’re going to try to save the world, we’ve got to start leading from right here,” said Parete, D-Boiceville. “It might be an awful good signal to the world that we’re progressive and we care about the people that are servicing us and servicing our county...
Researchers: Voter ID Confusion May Have Turned An Election Jacksonville Daily Progress ...Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist, and other researchers talked to 400 registered voters who didn't participate in the election in District 23, which experts said was the only congressional district in the state with competitive candidates from both major parties. The district sprawls the Trans-Pecos region from San Antonio to El Paso County. Confusion over ID rules potentially discouraged up to 9 percent of voters from casting ballots, the researchers found. “When you look at the people who were confused, those voters overwhelmingly favored Pete Gallego,” Jones said. “If they hadn’t been confused, it’s quite possible that Pete Gallego would have won.”...
Paid Sick Leave Vote Put On Hold Spokane Spokesman-Review ...City Council President Ben Stuckart said some council members had hoped to vote later this month on a plan that would require businesses to offer their workers one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. That amounts to three days a year for full-time workers...
Los Angeles Is Facing A Housing Affordability Crisis BuzzFeed ...Los Angeles appears to be facing a growing crisis after two new reports showed that it has the least affordable housing in the U.S., stagnant wages, and a market that favors a “wealthy minority.”...
ATI Locks Out Union Workers Pittsburgh Post Gazette ...On Friday, union officials said non-essential union workers were told to go home and that they would be paid through today. Mr. Troyan, 59, who works at a furnace at the company’s new, $1.2 billion Brackenridge mill, said he was told to report for his shift, which started at 7 p.m. Friday and ends at 7 a.m. today...
U.S. Labor
How America's Global Financial System Blocks Development Huffington Post ...Just a few years ago, Ben Bernanke, then the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, talked about a global savings glut. And yet investment projects with high social returns were being starved of funds. That remains true today. The problem, then as now, is that the world's financial markets, meant to intermediate efficiently between savings and investment opportunities, instead misallocate capital and create risk...
FAA Still Working To Fix Flight Delays After Computer Outage BuzzFeed ...The Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday said it was still working to resume normal air traffic operations after flights along the East Coast were disrupted Saturday because of a computer problem, delaying some flights in the Washington, D.C. area for hours...
Bankruptcy Loses Its Stigma - For Wealthy Corporations Philadelphia Inquirer ...The finance industry urged lawmakers to ignore factors such as overly easy and tricky credit or lagging middle-class incomes. It achieved its key goal - making it harder and costlier for consumers to go to court to escape debt - largely by arguing that bankruptcy was booming because it had "lost its stigma."...
Walmart's Use Of Tax Havens Hurts Small Businesses Cap Times ...ATF says Walmart may have skirted U.S. securities law by not properly reporting its tax-haven subsidiaries. But even if hiding them runs afoul of the law, using tax havens to avoid U.S. taxes is perfectly legal. Yet every time a big corporation uses accounting schemes to avoid paying its full measure of taxes — the typical use of tax havens — small businesses and working families pay the price, either in higher taxes or deteriorating public services...
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas In A Brutal Workplace New York Times ...Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable. The company, founded and still run by Jeff Bezos, rejects many of the popular management bromides that other corporations at least pay lip service to and has instead designed what many workers call an intricate machine propelling them to achieve Mr. Bezos’ ever-expanding ambitions...
Social Justice & Other News
Julian Bond, Former N.A.A.C.P. Chairman And Civil Rights Leader, Dies At 75 New York Times ...Julian Bond, a former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights for minorities, died on Saturday night, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75...
Exclusion Of Blacks From Juries Raises Renewed Scrutiny New York Times ...Here are some reasons prosecutors have offered for excluding blacks from juries: They were young or old, single or divorced, religious or not, failed to make eye contact, lived in a poor part of town, had served in the military, had a hyphenated last name, displayed bad posture, were sullen, disrespectful or talkative, had long hair, wore a beard...
David Denson Becomes First Openly Gay Player On MLB-Affiliated Team Huffington Post ..."Talking with my teammates, they gave me the confidence I needed, coming out to them," Denson told the newspaper. "They said, "You're still our teammate. You're still our brother. We kind of had an idea, but your sexuality has nothing to do with your ability. You're still a ballplayer at the end of the day. We don't treat you any different. We've got your back.'...
Black Lives Matter Joins A Long Line Of Protest Movements That Have Shifted Public Opinion — Most Recently, Occupy Wall Street Salon.com ...By introducing the phrase “black lives matters” into our culture – primarily through the use of social media but also by engaging in protest and civil disobedience – BLM has shifted public opinion. A new Pew Research Center poll discovered that the number of Americans who believe that changes are needed to give African-Americans equal rights has swelled from 46 percent to 59 percent just in the past year. Among white Americans, the number has increased from 39 percent to 53 percent. Among Republicans, it spiked from 27 percent to 42 percent...
NC House Passes Bill That Regulates Drone Usage WNCN ...As drones become more popular across the nation, North Carolina lawmakers are working to create regulations for the technology. The State House passed Senate Bill 446 this week that develops guidelines for operating drones. The bill now moves on to the Senate...
FAA Considering New Drone Registration Rules CBS News ...The Department of Transportation is reviewing whether the FAA has the authority to require drones be registered at their point of sale, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told CBS News on Friday...
When Public Servants Refuse To Serve The Public The Atlantic ...Is it possible to agree on what religious freedom is not? It’s not a right to wear a Marine uniform but refuse to fight. It’s not a right to be a county clerk and decide which citizens you will serve and which you won’t. Religious “accommodation” doesn’t mean what Liberty Counsel thinks it means. If a person can perform the duties of a job with some adjustment for religious belief, that’s an accommodation. If they’re not willing to do the job, they have to leave. That’s not just a requirement of law; honor requires it as well...
Lawyers: Immigrant Family Detention Still Lengthy And Unsafe ABC News ...A group of immigrant rights lawyers say that detention of women and children caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally is lengthy and unsafe, challenging the government's claims that immigrant families are held only briefly and that their detention doesn't violate a longstanding ban...
