TEAMSTERS
Teamsters file labor charges against New England trucking firm JOC.com ...The International Brotherhood of Teamsters union filed unfair labor practices charges against a Massachusetts-based trucking company that shut down Dec. 21, laying off 75 employees, including 40 truck drivers. Teamsters Local 42 in Lynn, Massachusetts filed charges against Crystal Motor Express with the National Labor Relations Board, a spokesperson for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington said...
Teamsters allege tech shuttle company ‘bullied’ drivers SF Examiner ...The Teamsters have filed a complaint alleging Bauer’s bullied its workers into voting down forming a union, which the National Labor Relations Board will address in an upcoming hearing on Feb. 1. Bauer’s is one major provider of so-called “tech shuttles” that ferry tech industry workers in their San Francisco-to-Silicon Valley commute. Teamsters successfully unionized two other providers of tech shuttles...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Rotterdam port workers strike over job losses Dutch News ...Port workers at Rotterdam’s container terminal were set to begin a 24-hour strike on Thursday afternoon and five other day-long strikes are being planned, news agency ANP reports. The unions want port companies to rule out making compulsory redundancies, despite overcapacity and growing automation in the sector...
TPP Countries to Sign Trade Pact in New Zealand Feb. 4 BNA ...The 12 nations party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will formally sign the agreement on Feb. 4 in New Zealand. Andres Rebolledo, director general of Chile's General International Economic Relations Bureau (DIRECON), confirmed the Feb. 4 date in a meeting yesterday with the country's National Human Rights Institute to discuss how the agreement would affect human rights issues in Chile...
Sen. Sherrod Brown warns against TPP threat to hurt auto industry WFMJ ...With the increase in car sales, Senator Sherrod Brown warns against Trans-Pacific Partnership threat to turn its back on auto industry recovery and hurt auto jobs. U.S. car sales hit a record high in 2015. “To continue that progress and protect jobs, we must ensure a level playing field for America's auto suppliers, but TPP and it's weak auto provisions stand to roll back recovery and cost Ohio jobs,” said Brown...
US Chamber announces support for TPP The Hill ...The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is throwing its weight behind President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement between the United States and 11 other nations. But the Chamber's endorsement comes with conditions.
The business group wants the Obama administration to work with them and Congress to address concerns about the completed deal that range from intellectual property to financial services...
Business groups united on TPP Politico ...The administration leveled up this week by officially scoring the endorsements of all the major trade associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. But while the business groups said they would fight for the deal in Congress, the direct message in each of the statements of support this week is to the administration, not lawmakers...
The TPP Train Could Still Get Derailed Foreign Policy ...Trade agreements only mean something in the United States if Congress passes implementing legislation. And that means grappling with domestic trade politics, which have become increasingly contentious. Trade votes, if they pass at all, frequently move with hardly a vote to spare...
Turkey Seeks Inclusion in US-EU TTIP Free Trade Deal - Turkish Deputy PM Sputnik News ...Turkey hopes to renegotiate its current trade agreements with the European Union, so it can be included in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal between the United States and EU, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said. The TTIP free trade agreement would reduce barriers to trade in goods and services between Europe and its largest export market, the United States...
TPP, Public Comment Period Open! Huffington Post ...Activists from all sectors converged and spoke with a loud voice against this dangerous "trade" deal. This is important to Americans on both sides of the political aisle as well as anyone concerned with job security, the environment, social justice, or public health. Now the public has an opportunity to weigh-in before it is voted on...
Bleak Prospects for Latin America Under Trans-Pacific Partnership Truthout ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership, agreed to on October 5, 2015 by the twelve participating countries, is likely to prove disastrous for the Latin American states - Chile, Mexico, and Perú - that have joined the pact up to now. Multinational economic interests based in the United States have exerted extraordinary influence over the accord, inserting language that will arguably serve to damage Latin American interests...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Wisconsin Loses 10,000 More Jobs After Passing Right To Work NH Labor News ...Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is in deep trouble as his state is losing jobs at record rates. Last year Walker promised that if the they passed Right To Work they would create tens of thousands of new jobs, once again proving that Right to Work is not a job creator. Gov. Walker’s administration quietly acknowledged over the busy holiday season that Wisconsin surpassed 10,000 layoffs last year as a result of plant closings and economic challenges...
Republican Senate Majority’s Priorities: Education Reform, Right-to-Work and More WFPL ...The priority bills of the Kentucky state Senate’s Republican majority include several familiar policies: right-to-work, repealing the prevailing wage and enacting medical review panels. Senate Republican leaders announced on Wednesday the bills they’ll focus on passing during the 2016 legislative session, which began Tuesday...
NC voter ID trial set for Jan. 25 News & Observer ...The federal judge who will preside over the trial about North Carolina’s voter ID law told attorneys in an order this week to be ready to make their arguments on Jan. 25. In a status report filed two days before the end of the year, the NAACP and others challenging the law continue to argue that much confusion remains about what voters will need in order to cast ballots...
Michigan Governor Declares State of Emergency Due to Flint's Lead Poisoned Water Crisis Jezebel ...In Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder has declared a state of emergency regarding the water crisis in Flint, Michigan where, due to deliberately careless resource management, the number of kids with dangerous levels of lead in their blood doubled in 2015. Sender’s announcement follows Flint Mayor Karen Weaver’s state of emergency declaration: she called the lead poisoning crisis a “manmade disaster” in December...
Voter Suppression Battles To Watch In 2016 Think Progress ...As of this month, a total of 36 states have passed laws requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls, and 33 of those states will enforce their laws in 2016. A number of the state’s provisions are being challenged in court, and litigation in Texas and North Carolina could determine the courts’ ability to apply the VRA after its vital provisions were gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013...
This Is What $15 an Hour Looks Like The Nation ... The movement for a $15 minimum wage began three years earlier, on a chilly fall morning in 2012, when 200 fast-food workers walked off the job in New York City. Their demand was audacious: $15 an hour was more than twice what many of them earned. But more strikes and protests followed, with the movement spreading quickly, driven by workers...
Gazette editorial: ‘Right to work’ dangerous for WV Gazette Mail ...“Right to work” sounds so appealing, doesn’t it, with the vague suggestion that if West Virginia could just get some oppressor’s boot out of its back, its people would be free to prosper? It might be good marketing by out-of-state political interests, but it’s not good policy. The AFL-CIO is right to point out that states that enacted “right to work” laws have suffered...
U.S. LABOR
Phoenix bus contract negotiations continue, strike averted for now AZ Central ...Negotiations to avoid a bus strike by hundreds of drivers along dozens of Phoenix routes will continue Wednesday, with service operating normally for now. Officials from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433 and transit company Transdev, which operates 34 routes for the city of Phoenix, did not reach a contract agreement Tuesday...
Union: Dematic’s potential move to Mexico ‘a slap in the face’ WoodTV ...Around 300 people could lose their jobs if Dematic moves forward with plans to relocate its manufacturing plant in Grand Rapids to Mexico. UAW Local 1485 President Scott Wahlfeld said employees were informed Wednesday morning by company leaders about the potential move. Wahlfeld said Dematic will consider finalizing the decision on Feb. 8...
Taxi drivers oppose MSP airport proposal on Uber, Lyft: What's at stake MPR News ...Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is weighing new rules that could better accommodate ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber. But more than 200 cab drivers showed up at a Metropolitan Airports Commission meeting Monday night in Bloomington to voice their opposition to the plan. They said ride-sharing through smartphone apps like Lyft and Uber would have an unfair advantage...
The Rescue of 17 Workers Trapped in a Salt Mine in Upstate New York The Atlantic ...The miners became stuck 900 feet underground while descending in the elevator to the floor of the mine to begin their shift at around 10 p.m. Wednesday. Emergency officials from Tompkins County were able to communicate with the trapped miners, the county said, and send them blankets and other supplies for the night. The mine, which is north of Ithaca, New York, has been in operation since 1922...
Working conditions at T-Mobile under scrutiny Bangor Daily News ...The German company’s biggest subsidiary has enjoyed two years of rapid expansion in a fiercely competitive U.S. market that has seen it overtake its closest rival Sprint in terms of subscribers. But it has been accused by its main labor union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), of flouting employees’ rights and was last year found to have engaged in illegal work practices...
NLRB Cites Ingredion for Federal Law Violations at CR Plant KCRG ...The National labor Relations Board has found “sufficient evidence” to issue a complaint against Ingredion Inc., owner of Penford Products in Cedar Rapids, alleging violations of federal law in its contract negotiations with the union at the plant. The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) Local 100G filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging multiple violations of the National Labor Relations Act...
Chicago Teachers Union Joins Demand for Rahm Emanuel, Anita Alvarez To Resign In These Times ...The Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates, the union's member-led governing body, voted tonight to demand the resignations of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in the wake of the Laquan McDonald scandal, which has roiled the city for nearly two months and led to the resignations of multiple city officials, including Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Democrats lash out at Obama over immigration raids Politico ...Democrats and immigrant-rights groups have turned against the Obama administration in an uproar over recent deportation raids, likening the president to bombastic GOP front-runner Donald Trump and warning him that the controversial strategy will tarnish his legacy on immigration...
Psst: Illegal Immigration Is Actually Declining Time ...With Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz coming out with new ads this week featuring droves of people streaming over the U.S. border, you would be forgiven for thinking that illegal immigration is on the rise. But it isn’t. In fact, the number of immigrants crossing illegally into the U.S. has actually declined over the last nine years...
Executive Action: Bush Opened Guantánamo Without Congress, So Why Can't Obama Close It? Democracy Now ...As President Obama takes executive action on gun control without going through Congress, could closing Guantánamo be next? In January 2009, Obama ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay military prison in one of his first executive actions. Seven years later, 107 prisoners are still there...
Sanders Promises to Break Up Big Banks, Tax Speculation, and Establish Postal Banking The Nation ...Speaking just a few dozen blocks from Wall Street Wednesday, Bernie Sanders announced that, with regard to so-called “too-big-to-fail” banks, he would “break them up.” “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” announced the senator from Vermont, as he brought his presidential campaign to New York City’s Town Hall...
Ben Carson’s Flat Tax Would Only Benefit The Rich Think Progress ...On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson released his tax plan, the center of which is a flat tax of 14.9 percent. On a static basis — that is, without any assumptions baked in about how the plan might change economic growth or other factors — the Tax Foundation found that only the richest 10 percent would see a benefit. Everyone else would actually see their tax burdens increase...
State Trooper Who Arrested Sandra Bland Indicted on Perjury Charge Common Dreams ...Brian T. Encinia, the Texas State Trooper who made the initial and violent arrest of Sandra Bland during a routine traffic stop just days before she was found dead in a jail cell last summer, was indicted on charges of perjury by state prosecutors on Wednesday for making false statements regarding his behavior during the incident...
