Today's Teamster News 02.02.14

Real GDP per capita  Angry Bear   ...Decades of tax cuts have not led to increasing prosperity...
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Poll: Only The Strongest Obama Supporters Want Him To Have Fast Track Authority  International Business Times   ... Overall, the U.S. public is cooling to the idea of free-trade agreements, believing, unlike they have in the past, that multinational agreements to bring down trade barriers is costing U.S. jobs while favoring large multinational corporations over the interests of small businesses...
Who Wins From Trade?  Economic Policy Institute   ...multinational companies were the biggest supporters of trade and investment deals with Mexico, Korea and China, deals that have cost U.S. workers nearly four million jobs in the past two decades...
Bolivia ordered to compensate UK power company  One News Page   ...Government that nationalised power assets in 2010 ordered by international court to payout $41m to Rurelec giving hope to others seeking reparations...
Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the G.D.P.  New York Times   ...A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in 25 people admitted to having fallen asleep while driving during the previous month. To put that in perspective, mathematical models based on this data imply that an estimated 15 to 33 percent of all fatal crashes in the United States might involve a drowsy driver...
Law Doesn’t End Revolving Door on Capitol Hill  New York Times   ...Federal ethics rules are intended to limit lobbying by former senior officials within one year after they leave the government. Yet even after the ethics rules were revised in 2007 following a lobbying scandal, more than 1,650 congressional aides have registered to lobby within a year of leaving Capitol Hill...
Building a Harley Faster  New York Times   ...Keith Wandell, the chief executive, told me that even during the company’s worst days, management never considered busting its union...
Why Alt-Labor Groups Are Making Employers Mighty Nervous  American Prospect   ...the Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association and anti-union coalition groups publicly insist that these new groups are unions, because they want them to be subjected to the same kinds of legal limits that have come to constrain America’s labor unions, such as not being able to strike in sympathy with other workers....
Fury as Mexico's blonde 'cartel princess' posts steamy selfies wearing her drug lord father's Knights Templar gang insignia amid escalating vigilante violence  Daily Mail   ...The war on Mexico's deadly cartels spread from the streets to the web after the daughter of a notorious drug lord sparked an outrage by posing in an outfit featuring the symbol of her father’s gang...
Scott Walker raised $5 million at end of 2013, paid $86,000 to defense lawyers  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...information spilled out in court records about a secret John Doe investigation into campaign fundraising and spending surrounding Wisconsin's recent recall elections...
Pennsylvania Could Become Ground-Zero in Union Fight  Philadelphia Magazine   ...Rick Bloomingdale, head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, declared earlier this month that the bill represents a “war on workers.”...
Fan claims NFL is withholding Super Bowl tickets from public, selling most to companies  New York Daily News   ...A Jersey guy hopes to sack the NFL over its Super Bowl ticket policy, accusing the league of greedily gouging its biggest fans for seats to its biggest game...

It's going to be a long four years in WI

Wisconsin Gov.-elect Scott Walker isn't the only reason the state's workers can look forward to a miserable future.

Behind the cheese curtain, companies are threatening to leave the state in order to force concessions from employees. Mercury Marine, Kohler and Harley-Davidson all extorted drastic cuts in pay and benefits from their workers. By "drastic," we mean things like multi-year pay freezes, big jumps in medical costs and a two-tier system that pays new hires 35 percent to  45 percent less.

Walker isn't even in office yet and he's strengthened the corporations' hand by killing a high-speed rail project that would have created hundreds of jobs.

Now, AP's Scott Bauer reports that Walker wants to fire all 400 workers at the state's Commerce Department and make them reapply for their jobs.

Walker will no doubt support a state representative's bill to weaken unions by letting workers get union pay and union benefits without paying for the cost of negotiating union contracts. Most people understand that the anti-union proposals springing up all over the country are payback to the corporations who poured money into politicians' campaigns. Still, it's likely to get worse before it gets better.

Walker was elected on a promise he'd create 250,000 new jobs in Wisconsin. He probably won't. And even if he did, who'd want the kind of crap job Walker would create?