TEAMSTERS
Union Resubmits Proposals, Seeks Strong Comprehensive Agreement With Great Lakes Coca-Cola Local 727 ...Bargaining continued for a third day on Monday, November 2, as the Teamsters Local 727 Bargaining Committee resubmitted its non-economic proposals to Great Lake Coca-Cola Distribution management. Although GLCCD representatives have not yet offered any substantive movement on initial proposals, the union is making significant organizational progress throughout negotiations...
Drivers at three Port of Long Beach, Los Angeles carriers end strike Landline ...A strike by port drivers working for three port motor carriers at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has ended. Labor organizers, however, say a dispute over the classification of drivers as independent contractors rolls on. A five-day driver strike and picket at XPO Logistics, Intermodal Bridge Transport and Gold Pint Transportation ended late last week according to Justice for Port Drivers organization, which is backed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Indian capital a mess as sanitation workers strike USA Today ...Delhi is a mess, and a worse one than usual. Since late last month sanitation workers here have been on strike, refusing to pick up garbage and even dumping piles of trash in the streets. Sanitation workers have one key demand: their salaries...
Petrobras Oil Output Cut as Workers Protest Austerity Bloomberg ...Petroleo Brasileiro SA said its oil and natural-gas production has been cut because of a strike by workers protesting job losses, spending reductions and asset sales at Brazil’s state-controlled producer. The biggest output cuts came on Monday, the second day of the strike, when production fell 273,000 barrels a day...
Policy fights await release of trade deal The Hill ...The Obama administration is preparing to release the text of the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, setting the stage for a host of policy fights that could threaten congressional approval of the president’s prized trade deal. Obama has little margin for error as his administration and supporters of the deal press lawmakers to back a 12-nation pact...
TPPA deal will be made public in 2 weeks, says minister Malaysian Insider ...The contents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) will be made public in two weeks' time, Second International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Chuan said. He said as the government had concluded the TPP with the parties involved, the next step is to present the details to the people. It will then be brought before a special parliamentary session in January next year for debate and a vote by the 222 lawmakers...
Text Still Secret One Month After TPP Deal (opinion) Huffington Post ...Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12 nation agreement seven years in the making, were finally concluded a month ago. Yet the Obama administration still has not released the text of the agreement. Not even to Congress, much less the public. But this has not stopped the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the office responsible for the negotiations, from making outlandish claims about how great the TPP is...
Political Expert Calls US-Initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership ‘Nonsense’ Sputnik ...The US invited Russia and China to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). According to political expert Alexei Skopin, the United States pursues its own goals creating such partnerships and does not always declare them openly. The Agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes 12 countries so far, was reached on October 5 and is designed to create a free trade area (FTA) in the Asia-Pacific region...
An Urgent Warning Of What TTIP Has In Store Morning Star ...Canada is the most sued country in the “developed” world, and that should sound alarm bells in Britain. Several weeks ago hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and Britain marched to protest against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive planned new trade deal between Europe and the US...
Canada presses pause on austerity after Justin Trudeau’s election win The Guardian ...While Canada is hitting the pause button on austerity, the UK chancellor, is on fast-forward. George Osborne’s 2015 spending review will see a further £20bn cut from public spending to achieve balance by 2019, a move which follows a halving of the deficit over the course of the last parliament...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Kentucky elects right-to-work governor Politico ...Tea Party Republican Matt Bevin beat Democrat Jack Conway for Kentucky’s governorship Tuesday night, an upset victory in one of the last strongholds for Democrats in the right-to-work South. Activists on both side of the right-to-work debate led aggressive outreach in the run-up to the election, and this loss surely stings for the AFL-CIO and its affiliate Working America...
GOP candidates for governor talk right-to-work, rural issues in first forum Columbia Missourian ...It didn't take Republican gubernatorial candidates long to hit their party's bread and butter Tuesday night. A full choir of supporters and GOP lawmakers at Missouri Farm Bureau headquarters applauded promises to ban mandatory union fees with a right-to-work law and resist Medicaid expansion...
Thanks To Virginia Reforms, These People Are Voting For The First Time In Decades Think Progress ...Before McAuliffe’s reforms, felons in Virginia had a particularly hard time becoming full citizens after their convictions. In most states, voting rights are automatically restored once a felon is released from prison. But in Virginia, felons were required to first get off parole or probation, then file a voting rights restoration application with the governor’s office, a process that was supposed to take 45 to 60 days but often took much longer...
Leading Fight Against Money in Politics, Maine Voters Back Clean Elections Common Dreams ...Maine voters on Tuesday reaffirmed their desire to keep the influence of big money out of politics by passing the Clean Elections Initiative, a move that campaigners say serves as a "flare to a nation" desperate to "reclaim control of our democracy" in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. According to the Bangor Daily News, the Initiative passed 55 to 45 percent...
Scandal, Explicit Emails, Behind The Most Expensive Supreme Court Race In American History Think Progress ...$15,850,297. That’s how much candidates and interested groups have spent to influence the race for three seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, according to Justice At Stake, a watchdog group which tracks state judicial races. And that number is only likely to grow as it is based on records that have already been filed in this election...
SEIU starts competing effort to put minimum wage on California ballot SacBee ...California’s largest labor union on Tuesday unveiled its own bid to increase the statewide minimum wage, setting up dueling pay measures aimed for next year’s ballot amid persistent concerns over income inequality. The proposed initiative, supported by the Service Employees International Union’s state council, would boost the base wage to $15 per hour by 2020...
Portland, Maine, Rejects $15 Minimum Wage Huffington Post ...In a rare setback for living wage activists, voters in Portland, Maine, shot down a $15 minimum wage proposal on Tuesday, voting against a ballot measure that would have doubled the wage floor in just four years. Under the proposal, all employers with 500 or more workers would have had to pay at least $15 per hour by 2017...
The Puerto Rican Debt Crisis: Tax Breaks Offered to Rich While Austerity Measures Imposed on Poor Democracy Now ...The Obama administration recently warned Puerto Rico faces a humanitarian crisis unless Congress takes steps to address its crushing debt. The White House wants lawmakers to approve bankruptcy protection for the U.S. territory, expand Medicaid and impose a control board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances...
U.S. LABOR
NLRB hearing to delay UAW election at Chattanooga's VW plant Times Free Press ...A union election planned for later this week at Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant is expected to be delayed due to a hearing over whether the 164 maintenance workers slated to vote are too small of a unit. Attorneys for VW and the United Auto Workers argued today at a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Chattanooga that will continue into Wednesday...
Slight majority support GM-UAW deal so far The Detroit News ...With about one-third of ballots cast, voting on General Motors Co.’s tentative agreement with the UAW is close, with a slight majority of workers supporting the deal. Voting results at some larger facilities have been tight and roughly two-thirds of the 52,600 hourly workers have not had the opportunity to vote yet. The union is expected to release final results as early as this weekend...
USW files additional unfair labor charges against ATI Business Times ...The United Steelworkers have filed a total of 18 unfair labor practice charges against Allegheny Technologies Inc., the union said in an update to its members Monday. The pending charges cover ATI's decision to lock out more than 2,000 union employees in August as well as the company's conduct at the bargaining table, according to the union...
The Uphill Battle For Strippers’ Rights Think Progress ...Some dancers flock to the industry in part because of perceived scheduling flexibility, but they often end up just as binding as many other jobs. Most clubs require a dancer to come in a minimum number of days a week and assign them to either a day or night shift. Some also tell dancers what time to show up – even charging them a fine if they’re late...
Wages for top earners soared in 2014: Fly top 0.1 percent, fly EPI ...After dipping slightly in 2013, annual earnings of the top 1.0 percent of wages earners grew 4.9 percent in 2014, and the top 0.1 percent’s earnings grew 8.9 percent, according to our analysis of the latest Social Security Administration wage data. This analysis provides the first look at the likely trend of the household incomes of the top 1.0 percent...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
How Bathroom Fears Conquered Transgender Rights in Houston The Atlantic ...After a hard-fought campaign that drew national attention from Hollywood celebrities and presidential. candidates, voters rejected the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or Proposition 1, handing a victory to conservative critics who argued that its expansive protections for transgender people could endanger women and children...
Republicans Demonize Disabled Social Security Recipients in Latest Budget Alternet ...Having failed in numerous frontal assaults on Social Security, the Republican congressional leadership several years ago adopted a new strategy for dismantling the program: attack and demonize Disability Insurance, which they consider to be its soft underbelly. With last week’s passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, they drew blood...
New Study Shows Antarctic Melting Approaching 'Unstoppable' Tipping Point Common Dreams ...A new study published Monday warns that "unstoppable" melting in West Antarctica could make a three-meter increase in sea level "unavoidable." According to researchers at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the vulnerable Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica "has most likely been destabilized." They point to recent studies indicating that this area of the ice continent is "the first element in the climate system about to tip"...
How GOP & HMOs Undercut Obamacare's Nonprofit Option, Leaving 500K Uninsured Democracy Now ...As the Obamacare open enrollment period begins, it’s the end for many healthcare co-ops, leaving hundreds of thousands of people scrambling to find coverage. The co-ops were founded to offer a cheaper alternative on insurance exchanges after Democrats stopped demanding a public option. But since going live three years ago, the co-ops have faced major cutbacks from the Republican-controlled Congress...
