Teamsters-Sun Tran contract details not made public Arizona Daily Star ...The public hasn’t been clued in to the details of an agreement that ended a 42-day transit strike in Tucson. Teamsters Local 104 and Sun Tran management firm Professional Transit Management signed a two-year contract, good until June 30, 2017. Because the city is not a party to the labor agreement, the Tucson City Council does not have to approve the contract, said City Attorney Mike Rankin...
Teamsters at Sysco Vote 150-0 to Authorize a Strike Local 117 ...“Record attendance,” said Local 117 Secretary-Treasurer John Scearcy, to resounding applause. “This is serious. The company is coming after us, but we will be ready.” The Union hall was packed with Teamsters on Saturday who work at the massive food service conglomerate, Sysco. The bargaining team called the group to the hall for Saturday’s meeting and, in an incredible display of solidarity, members voted 150-0 to authorize a strike...
Republic Airways Aims To Duck Teamsters' Pay Subsidy Spat Law360 ...Republic Airways Holdings Inc. asked an Indiana federal judge Monday to stay any additional discovery as the court mulls whether to dismiss a lawsuit lobbed by the local Teamsters alleging the airline subsidized premium and bonus pay to pilots to undercut the union's ability to bargain collectively...
Global Labor & Trade
America's Collapsing Trade Initiatives Huffington Post ...Chinese president Xi Jinping will be in Washington this week on an official state visit. President Obama had hoped to impress Xi with an all but sealed trade deal with major Pacific nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to demonstrate that America is still a force to be reckoned with in China's backyard. But Obama's trade policy is in tatters...
TPP could have 'catastrophic effects' on Canada's economy: Unifor president CTVNews ...The president of Canada's largest private sector union says the Trans-Pacific Partnership could have "catastrophic effects" on the nation's economy. Unifor president Jerry Dias was responding to comments made by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper at the Globe and Mail debate on the economy Thursday. In the final segment of the debate, Harper said that Canada is entering the "final stages" of the 12-country trade negotiations...
26,000 Canadian jobs at risk as TPP auto talks resume, Unifor says Canada Manufacturing ...As Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiators from Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Japan meet to discuss the automotive-related features of the massive trade agreement, Unifor is calling on the Canadian contingent to “stand firm” on regional content rules for auto products and other sector-related provisions...
TPP nations to tackle sticking points at month's end Asian Review ...Trade ministers from the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership countries will meet from Sept. 30 to hammer out disagreements left unresolved after previous talks, aiming for a broad agreement before the political climate shifts. Two to three days of talks will be held in the U.S. city of Atlanta. Free trade rules for most of the 31 areas covered by the TPP were settled at the last round of talks in July...
Two Indigenous Solar Engineers Changed Their Village in Chile Truthout ...Liliana and Luisa Terán, two indigenous women from northern Chile who travelled to India for training in installing solar panels, have not only changed their own future but that of Caspana, their remote village nestled in a stunning valley in the Atacama desert. These soft-spoken indigenous women with skin weathered from the desert sun and a life of sacrifice are in charge of giving Caspana at least part of the energy autonomy that the village needs in order to survive...
Greece braces for more austerity as Tsipras sworn in as prime minister TribLive ...Weary Greece braced for more painful austerity Monday as Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister with a mandate to drive through unpopular reforms agreed with the nation's international creditors.
As a downpour swept Athens, The 41-year-old left-wing leader took his second oath of office in eight months...
Hyundai, Kia Workers Set to Stage Partial Strikes WardsAuto ...The Hyundai branch of the Korean Metal Workers Union will hold partial strikes this week after the automaker made a wage offer equal to roughly half of what the union had sought. Talks broke down ahead of the customary deadline for reaching a contract agreement before the country’s Chuseok Thanksgiving holiday...
Strike delays hit Australian airports following border force worker strike China Post ...Travelers using Australia's international airports faced delays Monday and were warned of more to come as immigration and border force workers went on strike over pay and conditions. "These workers are angry, they're under pressure, they face major cuts to their take-home pay and workplace rights and government simply hasn't listened," said Nadine Flood, secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) representing workers...
State & Living Wage Battles
Capitol Workers to Strike Ahead of Papal Visit Roll Call ...A few hours before Pope Francis arrives in the District of Columbia for the first leg of his U.S. visit, Capitol food service and other government contract workers will walk off their jobs. The workers will strike Tuesday to renew their call for a $15-an-hour wage and the right to unionize. They plan to proceed to the Capitol and convene across from the East Front with religious leaders and presidential hopeful Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to pray for lawmakers to heed the pope’s message about economic inequality...
Bernie Sanders Minimum Wage Strike: Pope Visit Encourages Federal Workers To Protest, Presidential Candidate To Join International Business Times ...Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is expected to throw his weight behind a labor strike of federal minimum wage workers Tuesday ahead of Pope Francis' visit later that day in Washington. The group organizing the strike, Good Jobs Nation, will receive the support of a rising populist power in the Democratic field as they call on U.S. President Barack Obama to issue an executive order increasing the minimum wage of federal workers to $15 an hour...
20 Republicans may face retaliation for Missouri right-to-work vote STL Today ...their votes weren’t enough to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto during the Legislature’s annual veto session Wednesday. The bill died in the House with a vote of 96-63, 13 votes short of the 109 needed to override. Twenty Republicans voted against right to work. Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who is running for governor in 2016, called them out on it after veto session...
Voter ID Law in Limbo as Thousands Register KTRH ...Tuesday is "National Voter Registration Day," but those signing up in Texas could see major changes to the state's voter ID law ahead of next year's presidential primary. “The legislature has added the concealed weapons identification card as a form of valid photo ID, and there are number of valid government issued IDs with a photograph on them,” says Tom Berg at the League of Women Voters of the Houston Area...
NY gov's call for $15 minimum wage faces major challenges The Chronicle ...New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pledge this week to push for a state minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workers already faces substantial opposition and skepticism. Cuomo made the pledge Sept. 10 at a labor rally with Vice President Joe Biden following Cuomo administration approval of a phased-in $15 minimum for workers at chain fast-food restaurants...
U.S. Labor
UAW leaders take Fiat Chrysler contract to membership The Detroit News ...United Auto Workers leadership is attempting to address questions and concerns of 40,000 union members with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV before they vote on a tentative four-year deal in the coming week. Leaders, including UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, started meeting with local chapters over the weekend to discuss the proposed contract, as local chapters schedule informational meetings...
Registered nurses ratify labor pact at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center Kansas City Star ...Registered nurses at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center in Kansas City have ratified a new labor agreement that includes pay raises and changes in working conditions. Voting was scheduled to run through 12:30 a.m. Tuesday at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, which is among 17 hospitals covered by the tentative agreement negotiated by the National Nurses Organizing Committee of National Nurses United...
USW union asking members how to proceed NWI Times ...United Steelworkers meetings have been taking place in Burns Harbor, Gary and all across the country as the union looks at what to do next in negotiations with U.S. Steel. "Members of our USW bargaining committee have been holding meetings with our brothers and sisters at U.S. Steel locations around the country, reviewing the company's and the union's most recent contract proposals, discussing the status of negotiations and getting feedback from members about what our next steps should be," the union said in a recent update to members...
State & Living Wage Battles
Capitol Workers to Strike Ahead of Papal Visit Roll Call ...A few hours before Pope Francis arrives in the District of Columbia for the first leg of his U.S. visit, Capitol food service and other government contract workers will walk off their jobs. The workers will strike Tuesday to renew their call for a $15-an-hour wage and the right to unionize. They plan to proceed to the Capitol and convene across from the East Front with religious leaders and presidential hopeful Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to pray for lawmakers to heed the pope’s message about economic inequality...
Bernie Sanders Minimum Wage Strike: Pope Visit Encourages Federal Workers To Protest, Presidential Candidate To Join International Business Times ...Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is expected to throw his weight behind a labor strike of federal minimum wage workers Tuesday ahead of Pope Francis' visit later that day in Washington. The group organizing the strike, Good Jobs Nation, will receive the support of a rising populist power in the Democratic field as they call on U.S. President Barack Obama to issue an executive order increasing the minimum wage of federal workers to $15 an hour...
20 Republicans may face retaliation for Missouri right-to-work vote STL Today ...their votes weren’t enough to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto during the Legislature’s annual veto session Wednesday. The bill died in the House with a vote of 96-63, 13 votes short of the 109 needed to override. Twenty Republicans voted against right to work. Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who is running for governor in 2016, called them out on it after veto session...
Voter ID Law in Limbo as Thousands Register KTRH ...Tuesday is "National Voter Registration Day," but those signing up in Texas could see major changes to the state's voter ID law ahead of next year's presidential primary. “The legislature has added the concealed weapons identification card as a form of valid photo ID, and there are number of valid government issued IDs with a photograph on them,” says Tom Berg at the League of Women Voters of the Houston Area...
NY gov's call for $15 minimum wage faces major challenges The Chronicle ...New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pledge this week to push for a state minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workers already faces substantial opposition and skepticism. Cuomo made the pledge Sept. 10 at a labor rally with Vice President Joe Biden following Cuomo administration approval of a phased-in $15 minimum for workers at chain fast-food restaurants...
U.S. Labor
UAW leaders take Fiat Chrysler contract to membership The Detroit News ...United Auto Workers leadership is attempting to address questions and concerns of 40,000 union members with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV before they vote on a tentative four-year deal in the coming week. Leaders, including UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, started meeting with local chapters over the weekend to discuss the proposed contract, as local chapters schedule informational meetings...
Registered nurses ratify labor pact at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center Kansas City Star ...Registered nurses at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center in Kansas City have ratified a new labor agreement that includes pay raises and changes in working conditions. Voting was scheduled to run through 12:30 a.m. Tuesday at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, which is among 17 hospitals covered by the tentative agreement negotiated by the National Nurses Organizing Committee of National Nurses United...
USW union asking members how to proceed NWI Times ...United Steelworkers meetings have been taking place in Burns Harbor, Gary and all across the country as the union looks at what to do next in negotiations with U.S. Steel. "Members of our USW bargaining committee have been holding meetings with our brothers and sisters at U.S. Steel locations around the country, reviewing the company's and the union's most recent contract proposals, discussing the status of negotiations and getting feedback from members about what our next steps should be," the union said in a recent update to members...
The Historical Roots of American Domestic Worker Organizing Run Deep In These Times ...Domestic workers and their advocates have been making an increasing number of headlines since 2010, when New York became the first state to pass a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Guaranteeing overtime and time off, such legislation has spread to four other states and is being fought for in many more. But organizing around domestic work has been ongoing since at least the 1930s, an often forgotten corner of the labor movement...
Social Justice & Other News
Scott Walker Drops Out Of 2016 Presidential Race Huffington Post ...Once considered a favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced Monday that he is dropping out of the race, amid sinking poll numbers and fundraising concerns. "I suspend my campaign immediately," he said at a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Walker implored other candidates to consider exiting the race as well, in order to winnow the field...
Pope Francis’s Philadelphia prison visit highlights crisis in US justice system The Guardian ...Behind barbed wire and under guard towers on the edge of north-east Philadelphia, Pope Francis will meet more than 100 men and women from a dangerously overcrowded prison population drawn largely from the poor, civil rights advocates say. The facility presents an extreme microcosm of two of the most pressing national prison problems: pretrial detention and overcrowding...
Americans Are Paying Way Too Much On Rent, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse Think Progress ...More than a quarter of renters in the United States have to put half of their income toward paying rent. But that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that things are almost certainly going to get worse. About half of all renters are paying more than the recommended 30 percent of income toward rent. Those rates are roughly double what they were in 1960...
US immigration back to pre–Great Recession levels, with Asians leading Aljazeera ...Immigration rates to the U.S. have rebounded to their pre-recession levels and the country’s percentage of foreign-born now is at its highest in more than a century, when boatloads of eastern and southern Europeans arrived at Ellis Island. But the face of immigration is dramatically different than it was just a decade ago, when the bulk of the influx came from Mexico and Central America. Asians now far outnumber the number of immigrants from Latin America...
Rights Campaigners Form Human Blockade to Stop Deportations Common Dreams ...Highlighting what they say is a "global human rights issue," dozens of rights campaigners on Monday morning locked themselves together and formed a human chain to block buses at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Takoma, Washington from carrying out deportations of suspected undocumented people...
Martin Shkreli on his “altruistic” motives: “I’m a capitalist — I want to create a big drug company” Salon ...On “CBS This Morning,” embattled Turing Pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli continued to defend his company’s decision to hike the price of Daraprim by 5,455 percent, claiming that “there are a lot of altruistic properties” to raising the cost. He denied that the increased cost was “drastic.” This new “reasonable profit” is being made at the expense of immunocompromised patients, such as pregnant women and babies, as well as those with AIDS or who are undergoing radiation therapy...
Social Justice & Other News
Scott Walker Drops Out Of 2016 Presidential Race Huffington Post ...Once considered a favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced Monday that he is dropping out of the race, amid sinking poll numbers and fundraising concerns. "I suspend my campaign immediately," he said at a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Walker implored other candidates to consider exiting the race as well, in order to winnow the field...
Pope Francis’s Philadelphia prison visit highlights crisis in US justice system The Guardian ...Behind barbed wire and under guard towers on the edge of north-east Philadelphia, Pope Francis will meet more than 100 men and women from a dangerously overcrowded prison population drawn largely from the poor, civil rights advocates say. The facility presents an extreme microcosm of two of the most pressing national prison problems: pretrial detention and overcrowding...
Americans Are Paying Way Too Much On Rent, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse Think Progress ...More than a quarter of renters in the United States have to put half of their income toward paying rent. But that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that things are almost certainly going to get worse. About half of all renters are paying more than the recommended 30 percent of income toward rent. Those rates are roughly double what they were in 1960...
US immigration back to pre–Great Recession levels, with Asians leading Aljazeera ...Immigration rates to the U.S. have rebounded to their pre-recession levels and the country’s percentage of foreign-born now is at its highest in more than a century, when boatloads of eastern and southern Europeans arrived at Ellis Island. But the face of immigration is dramatically different than it was just a decade ago, when the bulk of the influx came from Mexico and Central America. Asians now far outnumber the number of immigrants from Latin America...
Rights Campaigners Form Human Blockade to Stop Deportations Common Dreams ...Highlighting what they say is a "global human rights issue," dozens of rights campaigners on Monday morning locked themselves together and formed a human chain to block buses at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Takoma, Washington from carrying out deportations of suspected undocumented people...
Martin Shkreli on his “altruistic” motives: “I’m a capitalist — I want to create a big drug company” Salon ...On “CBS This Morning,” embattled Turing Pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli continued to defend his company’s decision to hike the price of Daraprim by 5,455 percent, claiming that “there are a lot of altruistic properties” to raising the cost. He denied that the increased cost was “drastic.” This new “reasonable profit” is being made at the expense of immunocompromised patients, such as pregnant women and babies, as well as those with AIDS or who are undergoing radiation therapy...
