Teamsters
Teamsters Announce National Carhaul Contract Transport Topics ...The Teamsters announced a tentative contract agreement with the National Automobile Transporters Labor Division covering about 6,000 workers, including two of the largest auto and light truck carriers. The Teamsters National Automobile Transporters Industry negotiating committee didn’t disclose any details, including the length or terms of the deal that now will be reviewed by affected local union officials before it is put to a membership vote...
Teamsters call out UPS over ALEC politics Freight Week ...The U.S. Teamsters Union has joined a broad-based coalition of 84 investor, public interest and civil rights groups to persuade the United Parcel Service (UPS) to cut its ties with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). According to public interest non-profit SourceWatch, ALEC is a corporate "bill mill" dominated by Republican politicians that enables corporations to provide state legislators wishlists that benefit their bottom line...
'Scab' labor threatens to prolong Sun Tran strike, scramble Tucson election Tucson Sentinel ...It's not just the drivers and mechanics of Teamsters Local 104 who are upset — it's their parent organization, the Arizona AFL-CIO, sounding the alarm. "This is a pivotal point in labor's history in Tucson," said Rebekah Friend, state AFL-CIO executive director "Will it affect local politics? Of course it will"...
Global Labor & Trade
Auto-Parts Dispute Taps the Brakes on Pacific Trade Deal Wall Street Journal ...A fight over how cars are assembled is pitting North America’s auto industry against Japan’s in a dispute now holding up a major trade agreement spanning the Pacific. The spat over which cars should be eligible for duty-free trade surfaced during high-level talks in late July that failed to wrap up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. The auto impasse is the most recent complication to finishing the TPP talks, along with dairy...
Mustapa: Progress being made on TPP negotiations The Star ...Malaysia remains optimistic about resolving issues in the best interest of the nation before coming to any conclusion on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said much progress had been made since Malaysia first entered into negotiations five years ago...
Mexico Throws a Wrench Into Trade Talks Bloomberg ...When exhausted officials from the 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership wrapped up a week of talks in Hawaii at the end of July without reaching a deal, Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, brushed off efforts to pin the delay on him. Guajardo is fighting to ensure that the TPP does not jeopardize gains his country has made under the North American Free Trade Agreement...
Trade agency names chief transparency officer The Hill ...U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman on Thursday tapped Timothy Reif to be the USTR’s chief transparency officer, a job established by the trade promotion authority law signed this summer by President Obama. Many lawmakers have complained that the direction of trade negotiations, especially those on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), have been closed off to all but high-level negotiators and large corporations...
Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership an Environmental Pollution Pass for Corporations? Huffington Post ...Nearly a decade in the making, advocates of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) promote it as a necessary step to free trade and a robust global economy. Critics are skeptical saying the agreement will be harmful to the environment and economically benefits large corporations...
Travellers face delays as train and airport workers strike across Spain The Local ...Train worker unions began a 24-hour strike on Friday while the first in a series of many baggage handler strikes also launched ahead of the weekend. Train workers are disgruntled after the unions and train operator Renfe failed to come to agreement on working conditions, including about outsourcing workloads and hiring new personnel...
'Victory for the People' as Guatemalan President Resigns in Disgrace Common Dreams ...School of the Americas-trained Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, who oversaw acts of torture and genocide during the country's decades-long civil war, stepped down just before midnight Wednesday disgraced by unprecedented corruption charges—and by a popular movement against impunity for the ruling elite...
How the Refugees Crisis Is Wreaking Havoc on the European Union Mother Jones ...Talk of a euro exit dissipated. But the conversation in Europe is now dominated by the astronomical rise in the number of migrants trying to enter the continent, both refugees from wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and other countries, as well as job seekers from elsewhere in Europe. The influx is again pitting EU states against each other...
State & Living Wage Battles
'Our Votes Matter': Rights Marchers in North Carolina Call for End to Voter Suppression Common Dreams ...Over one month into their multi-state trek, civil rights leaders and activists on Thursday are descending on the North Carolina State Capitol in Raleigh to call attention to what they say is a flagrant "crime against democracy," the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act...
Walmart and Walker: Always Low Wages Truthout ...When Walmart announced with great fanfare that it was boosting pay for frontline workers, CMD questioned the spin. Bloomberg reported that Walmart is cutting hours for its workers. Scott Walker raised eyebrows when he signed a contract with a big pay boost for the state troopers who provide his security detail. Now the US Department of Labor has found that Team Walker violated the law by failing to pay overtime for state troopers...
Michigan prevailing wage supporters allege misleading sales pitches in petition drive MLive ...Michigan prevailing wage supporters are accusing paid circulators of misleading the public about petitions seeking to repeal the 1965 law, a claim that a handful of sympathetic observers are vouching for. Bruce Sage, an attorney from Metro Detroit, told MLive he was approached this June by a man in a Meijer parking lot who asked him to sign a petition for a proposal to "ensure transparency in government"...
Sharron Angle seeks voter ID ballot measure Elko Daily ...Conservative activist Sharron Angle wants Nevada voters to decide whether to abolish the state health insurance exchange and require photo identification at the polls. The Republican former assemblywoman and former U.S. Senate candidate filed two petitions this week with the Nevada Secretary of State...
Voters Increasingly Favor Minimum Wage Hike US News & World Report ...With many of the jobs created by the recovering U.S. economy concentrated in low-paying sectors, likely voters in next year's presidential contest are increasingly supporting an increase in the federal minimum wage. In 2014, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota as well as several U.S. cities opted to raise the minimum wage above the current federal mandate of $7.25 per hour, and another seven states and the District of Columbia will vote on increases in 2016...
Fight For 15 Has Helped Pass Minimum Wage Hikes, But Yet To Deliver Broad-Based Pay Gains International Business Times ...The protests aren’t without impact. Major cities and states have lifted their minimum pay floors, the Democratic Party has officially embraced the call for $15 an hour and polls show the demands resonate with the broader public. These trends all bode well for the future pay prospects of low-wage workers. But for now, at least, millions are still waiting on that raise...
U.S. Labor
Unemployment Drops To Lowest Rate Since April Of 2008 Think Progress ...The economy added 173,000 jobs in August while the unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Analysts had expected 220,000 jobs to be added. That’s the lowest unemployment rate since March of 2008. August jobs reports are frequently unreliable, however...
OSHA Is Still Working on Silica Bloomberg ...The struggle to control silica is part of a pattern of weakness that characterizes OSHA. “They aren’t able to address a long list of commonsense problems, because the process of addressing them is just too hard,” says Harris, now a private attorney and a distinguished scholar at Cornell. The agency has a small budget and an ever-lengthening list of bureaucratic boxes it needs to check each time it wants to toughen regulations...
Detroit Three show interest in UAW healthcare overhaul idea Reuters ...The Detroit Three automakers are showing increased interest in the United Auto Workers union's proposal that they pool their healthcare systems, a sign that contract talks between the union and manufacturers are down to the big money issues. The UAW and bargainers for General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles face a Sept. 14 deadline to negotiate new labor agreements for 142,000 U.S. workers...
More Bad News for A&P Supermarket Workers as Judge OKs Assaults on Union Contracts In These Times ...Union members at the A&P supermarket chain took a financial beating in federal court this week, as the company’s senior managers renewed their legal assault on the labor contracts covering some 25,000 employees in six mid-Atlantic states. The worst is yet to come for the low- to moderate-income grocery workers, however, as the judge in charge of the case made only limited rulings while indicating he may move more forcefully against the union as mass firings go forward...
Tech Companies Ordered To Pay Employees $415 Million For Working Together To Lower Wages Think Progress ...Nearly 65,000 employees for Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit in 2011 after the government uncovered emails between Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and other executives that showed companies conspired to not poach one another’s employees in an effort to keep salaries low and reduce turnover...
Social Justice & Other News
18-year-olds driving 18-wheelers?: Our view (editorial) USA Today ...As you hit the road this holiday weekend, with AAA predicting the highest travel volume in seven years, think about what travel might look like on Labor Day 2016. If the powerful trucking industry gets its way on Capitol Hill this month, interstate highways could be clogged with longer trucks, sleepier drivers and 18-year-olds behind the wheel of big rigs...
Chicago Hunger Strikers Enter Day 19 Challenging Rahm Emanuel’s Push to Privatize Public Schools Democracy Now ...In Chicago, a group of public school parents, grandmothers and education activists are entering the 19th day of a hunger strike to save Dyett High School, the only remaining open-enrollment public high school left in the community of Bronzeville. Supporters say the city neglected the school for years before announcing plans to close it. Under Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor and former Obama chief of staff, the city has closed about 50 schools in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods...
No, Protests Against Police Brutality Are Not Increasing Crime The Nation ...Much has been made in recent months of a series of isolated crime increases in a handful of US cities. Breathless accounts of a new crime wavehave appeared in both liberal and conservative media. Right-wing pundits and some police leaders have claimed that there is a “Ferguson effect”—a significant crime increase due to the “Black Lives Matter” protests against police violence. This is both junk science and political opportunism...
