TEAMSTERS
Revised NY-NJ clean-trucks plan stirs up controversy JOC ...The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week criticized the port authority for lifting a Jan. 1, 2017 deadline that would have forced 70 percent of the port’s trucks to be replaced or refitted with newer, less-polluting engines. Consolidation of the port’s fragmented drayage industry into fewer, stronger companies that use employee drivers has been a longtime goal of the Teamsters union, which is part of the Coalition for Healthy Ports and claims many owner-operators are misclassified as independent contractors...
10,000 needy families, hospitalized kids aided by Teamsters Joint Council 13 volunteers, friends, family Labor Tribune ...More than 10,000 needy families and their children and dozens of children who had to be in the hospital over the holidays had a brighter Christmas this past season as a result of the generosity and hearts of Teamsters throughout the region, all members of Teamsters Joint Council 13. In three separate programs supported by the Teamsters, food and toys were provided to the less fortunate and the working poor...
Teamsters and Freight; building up America Mandan News ...As many as three million heavy-duty trucks run on the highways, bringing freight to destination terminals from where smaller delivery trucks further carry the products to their destinations. The trucking industry reminds us that “Without trucks, America stops.” Another adage proclaims, “If you bought it, a truck brought it.” Truck drivers and other associated occupations can find membership in a large organization named the International Brotherhood of Teamsters...
Union retirees fearing pension cuts The Examiner ...The president of the Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska Conference of Teamsters, Jim Kabell, outlined troubles in the union’s pension fund to a full house at American Legion Post 21. Many wore T-shirts reading, “Stop the rush to pension cuts!” He also took aim at Congress for actions he said made things worse and for not acting on needed solutions, and he urged Teamsters to get active to address that...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Kia Workers OK Wage Deal After 5 Strike-Free Months Wards Auto ...Kia workers represented by the Korean Metal Workers Union sign a new wage agreement with the automaker Jan. 12, ending negotiations that dragged on for five months. Both sides had agreed when talks began Aug. 11 to conduct all sessions with a total news blackout. A tentative agreement was reached Jan. 6 and a ratification vote was held Jan. 10...
Private sector workers to go on strike on Feb 4 Ekathimerini ...Greece’s biggest private sector union, GSEE, decided on Friday to call a 24-hour strike for Thursday, February 4, in protest at government reforms and particularly a contentious overhaul of the social security system. Meeting in Athens, GSEE’s executive committee decided to ramp up the pressure against the government’s proposal and to join forces with other unions...
Luas workers in Ireland to go on strike Irish News ...Commuters face travel chaos after Luas staff announced plans to stage two 48 hour strikes next month. Workers will down tools on February 11 and 12 and again on February 18 and 19. The Siptu trade union confirmed three of four groups of workers, who balloted overwhelmingly to take industrial action, preferred to strike for 48 hours at meetings this week. Luas operator Transdev released figures claiming drivers are seeking a massive pay rise of almost 54pc...
Morocco Government Assaults Spur Sit-in Solidarity Center ...About four thousand workers staged a sit-in outside parliament in Rabat yesterday in a show of popular protest against socioeconomic policies that are economically harmful to working people, among them planned pension reforms, a freeze on talks with civil society groups and ongoing violations of worker rights–including the government’s refusal to negotiate with trade unions on wages and working conditions for public service workers...
Business leaders doubt trade vote happens before elections The Hill ...Business leaders on Thursday expressed doubt that a sweeping Pacific Rim trade agreement will come up for a vote in Congress before the November elections. Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that there are several significant factors in play that will determine whether lawmakers will be ready to vote on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by this summer...
Time for negotiations is finished for Trans-Pacific Partnership: trade minister Global News ...A renegotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is not possible even though serious concerns may be raised during public consultations, Canada’s trade minister said Thursday. “The negotiations are finished and for Canadians it’s important to understand that it’s a decision of yes or no,” Chrystia Freeland told reporters Thursday after receiving varied feedback at a meeting at the University of Montreal...
TTIP: what can we expect from 2016? Open Democracy ...TTIP negotiations continue, as the two sides failed to meet their goal of concluding talks by the end of 2015. EU and US negotiators now hope to reach a final political settlement by the end of Obama’s presidency in January 2017, thus making the next 12 months vitally important in the fight to derail the talks. The next round of negotiations is set to take place in Brussels at the end of February...
Protesters rally against Trans-Pacific Partnership WFMZ ...Protesters gathered outside Congressman Charlie Dent's office in Allentown Wednesday, rallying against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The partnership is a multi-national trade agreement that was reached in October after years of negotiations. The protest was organized by the Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition. Protesters want Congressman Dent to vote against the partnership when it reaches the house this spring...
How to Make the Trans-Pacific Partnership Work for Workers and Communities The Nation ... Allowing victimized workers and communities to use dispute-settlement mechanisms in trade agreements provides some measure of re-balance Nothing prevents the United States from going back to its TPP partners to negotiate a supplemental protocol creating a CIDS system to address all stakeholders’ concerns, not just the special interests of investors...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
WVU right-to-work study disputed as Legislature considers bill Gazette Mail ...Just as the West Virginia Legislature began considering “right-to-work” legislation Thursday, a new economic analysis has alleged that the intellectual backbone behind the Republican proposal, a West Virginia University study of the issue, made basic mistakes and “is fraught with several problems.” In November, the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research unveiled a study of right-to-work laws that was requested and funded by the Republican-led Legislature...
Senate fast tracks ‘Right-to-Work’ legislation Daily Telegraph ...Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent hours Thursday sparring over the provisions of a Right to Work law, slowing if only momentarily its fast-track passage to the floor of the Senate. SB1, which Republicans have renamed “Workplace Freedom,” is the first of the GOP agenda bills...
West Virginia unions protest right-to-work News Center ...Union groups have hit the Capitol for events opposing the right-to-work push introduced by the Republican-led Legislature. At a West Virginia AFL-CIO event Wednesday morning, workers shared negative experiences from Oklahoma and Virginia, both right-to-work states. Americans for Prosperity, a well-heeled conservative group fueled by the industrialist Koch brothers, also announced online and direct mail advertising in favor of right-to-work...
Prevailing Wage Passes Kentucky Senate State Journal ...Unlike the hugely bipartisan support of the bourbon, winery and microbrewing industry in the state, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate stood diametrically opposed to a prevailing wage bill that passed Thursday to the House. Republican Sen. Wil Schroder of Wilder sponsored the bill exempting public school projects of $250,000 or more from the state’s requirement for the prevailing wage cost to workers...
Oregon governor asks for huge minimum wage hikes CNN ...Gov. Kate Brown is pushing a new, two-tiered system that would increases wages in Portland to $15.52 over the next six years, while other areas would have a minimum of $13.50. The state's current minimum wage is $9.25. If approved by state legislators, Oregon would join a growing list of states that are boosting minimum-wage paychecks. Thirteen states, including California, Nebraska and Vermont, are set to bolster their minimum wages in 2016...
Minimum Wage Workers Plan Strike In Charleston Ahead Of Democratic Debate BuzzFeed ...Low-wage workers will strike and protest in Charleston, South Carolina in the lead-up to the Democratic debate there Sunday night, according to the Fight for 15, the union-backed movement to raise the minimum wage. Hundreds of fast-food, home care, child care and other low-wage employees will converge on the city, according to Fight for 15 Organizing Director Kendall Fells...
The Plot Against Paul LePage The Atlantic ...On Thursday, a group of state legislators in Maine will introduce a measure to impeach LePage. “People have really had enough, all across the state,” Representative Ben Chipman of Portland, the lead sponsor, told me Wednesday. “They’re tired of the governor’s behavior and they’re tired of the legislature not doing anything about it." The impeachment order would create an investigative committee to look into allegations against LePage and then bring back articles of impeachment...
U.S. LABOR
Los Angeles Charter Teachers Say Their Administration Is Aggresively Trying To Bust Their Union In These Times ...A formerly low-profile union organizing campaign by teachers at the largest charter school operation in Los Angeles is emerging into the public spotlight as the charter operator is ramping up its effort to defeat the organizing effort, teachers say. The school operator, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, has been so aggressive against the union that a local judge issued an injunction December 3 against the operator’s apparent labor law violations...
Ski Patrols Seek to Unionize U.S. Slopes as Wealth Gap Grows Bloomberg ...The snowiest peaks in the U.S. are the latest site of pitched union battles, a result of the growing corporatization of the $11 billion ski industry and a widening wealth divide between those who own resorts and those who keep them running. Labor’s promise of better compensation and job security has proved particularly enticing to ski patrollers...
Charged with Firing Teachers for Organizing, a Chicago Charter Network Settles American Prospect ...The National Labor Relations Board finalized a settlement agreement this week between Urban Prep Academies, an all-male charter network in Chicago, and more than a dozen Urban Prep teachers who were fired abruptly back in June. The firings came less than a month after a majority of teachers at Urban Prep voted to unionize with the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (ChiACTS)...
NLRB rejects McDonalds’ request to treat joint employer cases separately People's World ... Over the dissent of its remaining Republican member, the National Labor Relations Board has rejected McDonalds' request to split its "joint employer" cases into 31 separate cases involving 161 restaurants nationwide. The board's early-January decision allows the massive case of McDonald's labor law-breaking to go forward as one unified case...
With public sector unions on the rocks, middle class may take another hit Washington Post ...For all his talk about "middle class economics" in recent years, it might have seemed odd that President Obama didn't mention the "middle class" once during his nearly hour-long speech to Congress. Instead, he talked about "working families." Those phrases aren't interchangeable anymore — so many working people have exited the middle class that it's no longer the demographic majority...
What Do Unions Do for the Middle Class? Center for American Progress ...The United States has long called itself a middle-class nation. But that statement is less true today than it was 30 years ago.
The most widely used barometer of the financial health of the middle class—real median household income as published by the U.S. Census Bureau—has barely grown over the last thirty years. At the same time, the middle class has been hollowed out as incomes have polarized...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
U.S. justices consider taking Obama appeal on immigration action Reuters ...The nine U.S. Supreme Court justices were due to meet privately on Friday to discuss whether to hear President Barack Obama's bid to revive his plan to shield more than 4 million immigrants from deportation, a move that bypassed the Republican-led Congress. The court could make an announcement as soon as Friday afternoon on whether it will take up the dispute, which would become one of the centerpiece cases of its current term...
As Federal Government Launches New Deportation Raids, Churches Vow To Take In Immigrants Think Progress ...Churches across the country are gearing up to defy the federal government’s deportation efforts, preparing to offer Central American asylum-seekers sanctuary in their churches and protect them from an aggressive new wave of federal raids. Shortly after New Year’s Day 2016, the Obama administration launched a barrage of highly publicized raids primarily intended to detain and deport Central American immigrants...
More Than Half of Americans Reportedly Have Less Than $1,000 to Their Name Esquire ...In a recent survey, 56 percent of Americans said they have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined, Forbes reports. Nearly a quarter (24.8 percent) have less than $100 to their name. Meanwhile, 38 percent said they would pay less than their full credit card balance this month, and 11 percent said they would make the minimum payment...
Residents Of Flint Are Being Billed For Poisoned Water And Threatened With Shutoffs If They Don’t Pay Think Progress ...Last week Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) declared a state of emergency over the level of lead being found in Flint’s tap water, and this week he activated the state National Guard to help provide residents with bottled water, filters, and lead testing kits.
But even in the midst of this crisis, city residents aren’t just being charged for their poisoned tap water — they’re being threatened with shutoffs if they don’t quickly pay their bills...
Chicago Releases Another Video Of A Police Officer Killing An Unarmed Teenager Think Progress ...The city of Chicago released a video of another police officer killing an unarmed black teenager three years ago, after giving up a lengthy legal battle to keep it from the public eye. This time, the teenager’s name was not Laquan McDonald but Cedrick Chatman. The grainy video shows the 17-year-old Chatman fleeing the police before he is shot by Officer Kevin Fry...
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2016
Monday, December 14, 2015
Today's Teamster News 12.14.15
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters Testify About Republic Services' Radioactive Landfill Teamster.org ...On Tuesday, Teamsters testified at the St. Louis Tribunal that is investigating human rights violations against communities surrounding Republic Services’ West Lake Superfund landfill site in Bridgeton, Mo. The tribunal will report to the United Nations Human Rights and Environment Program.
An underground fire has been raging for five years at the West Lake complex...
Uber: On the Road to Nowhere American Prospect ...Working with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, hundreds of app-based drivers have helped persuade the Seattle City Council to vote initial approval—7 to 0—of a bill that would allow them to unionize. It would be the nation’s first law allowing app-based “independent contractor” drivers to unionize. A final vote is tentatively scheduled for December 14...
Chicago-Area Coca-Cola Refreshments Workers to Unite at Rally Local 727 ...Hundreds of Coca-Cola Refreshments workers will rally in solidarity and in continued support of their unfair labor practice strike on Monday, Dec. 14. More than 300 Teamsters Local 727-represented Coca-Cola Refreshments workers initiated an unfair labor practice strike Dec. 3 after the beverage industry behemoth continually violated federal labor laws by intimidating workers, circumventing the union and engaging in overall bad faith bargaining during negotiations for a new contract...
SEIU, Teamsters Mourn San Bernardino Dead Labor Press ....Most of the 15 people killed in the mass murder at a holiday party for county workers here Dec. 2 were union members. Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents San Bernardino County environmental health specialists, has identified 10 of the dead and 10 of the 21 people wounded as members, and the Teamsters said three of the dead and two of the wounded were members of Local 1932...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Workers Strike At Mexican Border Factory Fronteras ...At least 100 workers at a Mexican border factory in Ciudad Juárez are on strike protesting low wages and a hostile workplace. The factory packages printer ink for the American company Lexmark. The highest paid workers claim they earn 77 cents an hour. Several dozen workers who said they were fired this week after demanding a pay raise have set up a protest camp outside the factory...
Workers at Irish Life to hold one day strike Irish Times ...Workers at insurance giant Irish Life have voted to hold a one-day strike this Thursday. A dispute has been ongoing since the beginning of November, when four two-hour stoppages were held. The dispute centres on the company’s unilateral imposition of a new pay model...
Thousands of Morocco Public Employees Wage Strike Solidarity Center ...Thousands of public-sector employees rallied and marched as part of a national strike yesterday in which workers in local agencies and up to 80 percent in government ministries walked off the job. Workers seek to draw attention to the unwillingness of the government to negotiate with them on such issues as wages and retirement. The strike, held on International Human Rights Day, aimed to “defend the gains of retirement for workers, trade union freedoms, rights and dignity”...
House Passes Trade Component, but Trans-Pacific Partnership Still in Doubt Wall Street Journal ...The House passed a key component of President Barack Obama’s trade policy Friday, but tepid support among Republicans and business groups for his big Pacific trade agreement could keep that deal from coming to a vote until the final weeks of his presidency, if then. A customs bill that cleared the House on Friday gives American steel companies greater ability to challenge subsidized and dumped steel from China and other countries...
TPP faces US roadblock Financial Review ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership suffered a serious setback to being implemented by the pact's lead economy, after the powerful United States Senate leader stunned trade watchers by declaring Congress should not vote on the accord until after next November's presidential election. The blunt message from influential Republican Mitch McConnell means the TPP is likely to face at least 12 months in limbo...
House votes to boost enforcement of trade deals, block climate change provisions US News & World Report ...As negotiators in Paris worked to finalize a global agreement on climate change, the Republican-controlled House approved a bill Friday that would block trade deals from being used to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Supporters said the wide-ranging bill would beef up enforcement of U.S. trade agreements and help prevent counterfeit goods from entering the country...
The Empire Strikes Back: the Return of the WTO Counterpunch ...In the last two years, we have witnessed the rise of mega regional trade deals. TTIP is one such example of a potential trade deal between the US and the EU. These deals have many similarities. They are designed to open up new markets for global corporations and create the conditions for them to be as lucrative as possible...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
U.S. states pass laws backing Uber's view of drivers as contractors Reuters ...State legislators in Ohio and Florida are moving ahead with regulations governing Uber and other ride services that would designate all drivers as independent contractors, bolstering a critical but much-disputed aspect of Uber's business model. The states would join North Carolina, Arkansas, and Indiana in requiring the contractor designation as part of new laws governing so-called transportation network companies...
Federal judges to weigh in on redistricting 13 News Now ...Heading to court today: a potential change in Congressional district boundaries that would re-assign more than one million voters. Federal judges will weigh in on whether to proceed with redrawing Virginia's congressional districts, or wait for the US Supreme Court to hear an appeal. This comes after the court ruled the current boundaries pack too many African-American voters into the Commonwealth's 3rd District...
Speaker Unsure if House Will Vote on Right-to-Work in 2016 Ozarks First ...The state House’s Republicans have met to discuss priorities for the coming session, but their leader won’t predict an answer for one key question - whether right-to-work will come to a vote in his chamber. Many speculate that if backers in the state House can’t find more support for right-to-work than it had this year, when they failed to overturn Governor Jay Nixon’s (D) veto, it won’t be brought up for a vote...
The fight over right-to-work DPost.com ...The battle lines have formed for the Legislature’s 2016 debate on a right-to-work bill. The West Virginia Business and Industry Council (BIC) has made it its top priority and legislative leaders have it near the top of their to-do lists. Union opponents packed the House of Delegates’ largest meeting room during a November WVU presentation on the topic. Proponents say it will boost jobs and wages and lure new business to the state. Opponents say it will kill jobs, lower wages and do nothing to help business...
U.S. LABOR
Kohler Company forced back to bargaining table FightBack News ...As of last week, Kohler Company and United Auto Workers Local 833 went back to the bargaining table for negotiations amidst a strike now entering its fourth week. The negotiations come as company production at its facilities remain largely closed, with the overwhelming majority of members continuing the stand on their picket lines...
What Economic Recovery? A Good Job is Still Hard to Find Alternet ...Encouraging though it may be, the latest nationwide strong jobs report doesn’t change the big picture: the economic recovery, officially underway since June 2009, is still leaving millions of working Americans behind. Earlier this week, a new report from the Alliance for a Just Society highlights the failure of our economic policies to produce the full-time living wage jobs working people need to sustain their families...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
New York City to Aid Immigrants Amid Stalled National Reforms New York Times ...Immigration reform may be in political and legal limbo nationally, but New York City is moving ahead on a plan of its own. The city will spend $7.9 million next year to boost its immigration services throughout the five boroughs, deploying community organizations to help residents seek free legal services to apply for protection from deportation or even for citizenship...
Video Shows LA Police Fatally Shoot Suspect in the Back as He Is Crawling Away Slate ...A shocking video has emerged that shows two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies shoot and kill an armed suspect in Lynwood on Saturday as he is walking away. Perhaps most shocking of all is how the two police officers keep firing their guns even as the suspect was knocked to the ground and appears to be crawling away. The man, who died at the scene, was identified as 28-year-old Nicholas Robertson, a father of three...
Historic Climate Deal Reached, But Campaigners say the Work is Just Beginning Common Dreams ...The global talks known as COP21 ended Saturday with nearly 200 countries agreeing to a carbon emissions-slashing deal. But climate campaigners are saying that the agreement doesn't go far enough, and that the real work is just beginning. While Reuters described the deal's adoption as "setting the course for a 'historic' transformation of the world's fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming"...
Teamsters Testify About Republic Services' Radioactive Landfill Teamster.org ...On Tuesday, Teamsters testified at the St. Louis Tribunal that is investigating human rights violations against communities surrounding Republic Services’ West Lake Superfund landfill site in Bridgeton, Mo. The tribunal will report to the United Nations Human Rights and Environment Program.
An underground fire has been raging for five years at the West Lake complex...
Uber: On the Road to Nowhere American Prospect ...Working with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, hundreds of app-based drivers have helped persuade the Seattle City Council to vote initial approval—7 to 0—of a bill that would allow them to unionize. It would be the nation’s first law allowing app-based “independent contractor” drivers to unionize. A final vote is tentatively scheduled for December 14...
Chicago-Area Coca-Cola Refreshments Workers to Unite at Rally Local 727 ...Hundreds of Coca-Cola Refreshments workers will rally in solidarity and in continued support of their unfair labor practice strike on Monday, Dec. 14. More than 300 Teamsters Local 727-represented Coca-Cola Refreshments workers initiated an unfair labor practice strike Dec. 3 after the beverage industry behemoth continually violated federal labor laws by intimidating workers, circumventing the union and engaging in overall bad faith bargaining during negotiations for a new contract...
SEIU, Teamsters Mourn San Bernardino Dead Labor Press ....Most of the 15 people killed in the mass murder at a holiday party for county workers here Dec. 2 were union members. Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents San Bernardino County environmental health specialists, has identified 10 of the dead and 10 of the 21 people wounded as members, and the Teamsters said three of the dead and two of the wounded were members of Local 1932...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Workers Strike At Mexican Border Factory Fronteras ...At least 100 workers at a Mexican border factory in Ciudad Juárez are on strike protesting low wages and a hostile workplace. The factory packages printer ink for the American company Lexmark. The highest paid workers claim they earn 77 cents an hour. Several dozen workers who said they were fired this week after demanding a pay raise have set up a protest camp outside the factory...
Workers at Irish Life to hold one day strike Irish Times ...Workers at insurance giant Irish Life have voted to hold a one-day strike this Thursday. A dispute has been ongoing since the beginning of November, when four two-hour stoppages were held. The dispute centres on the company’s unilateral imposition of a new pay model...
Thousands of Morocco Public Employees Wage Strike Solidarity Center ...Thousands of public-sector employees rallied and marched as part of a national strike yesterday in which workers in local agencies and up to 80 percent in government ministries walked off the job. Workers seek to draw attention to the unwillingness of the government to negotiate with them on such issues as wages and retirement. The strike, held on International Human Rights Day, aimed to “defend the gains of retirement for workers, trade union freedoms, rights and dignity”...
House Passes Trade Component, but Trans-Pacific Partnership Still in Doubt Wall Street Journal ...The House passed a key component of President Barack Obama’s trade policy Friday, but tepid support among Republicans and business groups for his big Pacific trade agreement could keep that deal from coming to a vote until the final weeks of his presidency, if then. A customs bill that cleared the House on Friday gives American steel companies greater ability to challenge subsidized and dumped steel from China and other countries...
TPP faces US roadblock Financial Review ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership suffered a serious setback to being implemented by the pact's lead economy, after the powerful United States Senate leader stunned trade watchers by declaring Congress should not vote on the accord until after next November's presidential election. The blunt message from influential Republican Mitch McConnell means the TPP is likely to face at least 12 months in limbo...
House votes to boost enforcement of trade deals, block climate change provisions US News & World Report ...As negotiators in Paris worked to finalize a global agreement on climate change, the Republican-controlled House approved a bill Friday that would block trade deals from being used to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Supporters said the wide-ranging bill would beef up enforcement of U.S. trade agreements and help prevent counterfeit goods from entering the country...
The Empire Strikes Back: the Return of the WTO Counterpunch ...In the last two years, we have witnessed the rise of mega regional trade deals. TTIP is one such example of a potential trade deal between the US and the EU. These deals have many similarities. They are designed to open up new markets for global corporations and create the conditions for them to be as lucrative as possible...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
U.S. states pass laws backing Uber's view of drivers as contractors Reuters ...State legislators in Ohio and Florida are moving ahead with regulations governing Uber and other ride services that would designate all drivers as independent contractors, bolstering a critical but much-disputed aspect of Uber's business model. The states would join North Carolina, Arkansas, and Indiana in requiring the contractor designation as part of new laws governing so-called transportation network companies...
Federal judges to weigh in on redistricting 13 News Now ...Heading to court today: a potential change in Congressional district boundaries that would re-assign more than one million voters. Federal judges will weigh in on whether to proceed with redrawing Virginia's congressional districts, or wait for the US Supreme Court to hear an appeal. This comes after the court ruled the current boundaries pack too many African-American voters into the Commonwealth's 3rd District...
Speaker Unsure if House Will Vote on Right-to-Work in 2016 Ozarks First ...The state House’s Republicans have met to discuss priorities for the coming session, but their leader won’t predict an answer for one key question - whether right-to-work will come to a vote in his chamber. Many speculate that if backers in the state House can’t find more support for right-to-work than it had this year, when they failed to overturn Governor Jay Nixon’s (D) veto, it won’t be brought up for a vote...
The fight over right-to-work DPost.com ...The battle lines have formed for the Legislature’s 2016 debate on a right-to-work bill. The West Virginia Business and Industry Council (BIC) has made it its top priority and legislative leaders have it near the top of their to-do lists. Union opponents packed the House of Delegates’ largest meeting room during a November WVU presentation on the topic. Proponents say it will boost jobs and wages and lure new business to the state. Opponents say it will kill jobs, lower wages and do nothing to help business...
U.S. LABOR
Kohler Company forced back to bargaining table FightBack News ...As of last week, Kohler Company and United Auto Workers Local 833 went back to the bargaining table for negotiations amidst a strike now entering its fourth week. The negotiations come as company production at its facilities remain largely closed, with the overwhelming majority of members continuing the stand on their picket lines...
Construction workers rally in Manhattan for safer worksites AM New York ...Thousands of construction workers rallied outside of City Hall on Thursday, displaying a row of eight black coffins and demanding the city enforce stricter safety measures at construction sites. Many marchers claimed non-union workers posed greater risks at construction sites because they do not go through the same stringent safety requirements as their union counterparts...
WMUR booted from next Democratic debate Politico ...New Hampshire’s most influential television station is being pushed out of next week’s Democratic debate. The reason? A labor dispute between a handful of employees at the station, WMUR, and its owner, the Hearst Corporation. At issue is an accusation by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1228 that WMUR is trying to strip pensions from about a dozen of its employees because they decided to join the union...
USW reviewing new U.S. Steel proposal NWI.com ...U.S. Steel has proposed a new contract to the United Steelworkers union, and local union presidents are headed to Pittsburgh to discuss it. Negotiations have been ongoing for six months. U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal, which have declined to comment on specifics during the contract talks, have both asked for concessions they say are necessary...
King Soopers and City Market Ratify Agreements with UFCW Local 7 PR Newswire ...The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) today announced that associates working at King Soopers and City Market stores in Colorado have ratified new labor agreements with UFCW Local 7. The contracts cover more than 10,000 associates working in 103 stores, 36 fuel centers and pharmacy technicians in 78 pharmacies in Colorado, including Denver, Boulder, Broomfield, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Longmont, Parker and Pueblo...
Seattle Considers Measure to Let Uber and Lyft Drivers Unionize New York Times ...The proposed law is the latest labor issue to bedevil Uber, which lets people hail rides through a smartphone app and takes a roughly 20 to 30 percent cut of each fare. Uber has faced questions about whether its workers should be classified as full-time employees instead of freelancers, and the company, based in San Francisco, is embroiled in a class-action lawsuit on the issue...
The Coming Chicago Teachers Union Strike Could Be a Watershed Moment for a City in Crisis In These Times ... The contract the union negotiated during that strike has expired, and CTU members began voting Wednesday on whether to authorize another walkout. Given the strong internal push to vote “yes” and assuming the union meets the legally required yes vote threshold of 75% of its members, we will likely see another Chicago teachers strike sometime next year. Yet a victory this time around will require more than proving that a strike can be a galvanizing tool for workers in the 21st century...What Economic Recovery? A Good Job is Still Hard to Find Alternet ...Encouraging though it may be, the latest nationwide strong jobs report doesn’t change the big picture: the economic recovery, officially underway since June 2009, is still leaving millions of working Americans behind. Earlier this week, a new report from the Alliance for a Just Society highlights the failure of our economic policies to produce the full-time living wage jobs working people need to sustain their families...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
New York City to Aid Immigrants Amid Stalled National Reforms New York Times ...Immigration reform may be in political and legal limbo nationally, but New York City is moving ahead on a plan of its own. The city will spend $7.9 million next year to boost its immigration services throughout the five boroughs, deploying community organizations to help residents seek free legal services to apply for protection from deportation or even for citizenship...
Video Shows LA Police Fatally Shoot Suspect in the Back as He Is Crawling Away Slate ...A shocking video has emerged that shows two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies shoot and kill an armed suspect in Lynwood on Saturday as he is walking away. Perhaps most shocking of all is how the two police officers keep firing their guns even as the suspect was knocked to the ground and appears to be crawling away. The man, who died at the scene, was identified as 28-year-old Nicholas Robertson, a father of three...
Historic Climate Deal Reached, But Campaigners say the Work is Just Beginning Common Dreams ...The global talks known as COP21 ended Saturday with nearly 200 countries agreeing to a carbon emissions-slashing deal. But climate campaigners are saying that the agreement doesn't go far enough, and that the real work is just beginning. While Reuters described the deal's adoption as "setting the course for a 'historic' transformation of the world's fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming"...
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Today's Teamster News 12.09.15
TEAMSTERS
Hoffa: Transportation bill loosens political gridlock Detroit News ...For more than a decade, Congress’s failure to approve a long-term transportation spending bill placed infrastructure improvements on the back burner in Michigan and all across the country. That ended last week, however, when members of the House and Senate united behind a five-year, $305 billion plan to pay for road, rail and mass transit upgrades...
Coca-Cola, union agree to federal mediation as strike continues Chicago Tribune ...The union representing striking Coca-Cola workers accepted the company's offer for federal mediation, even as it shot back at a letter the beverage giant mailed to employees defending the company's behavior during contract negotiations. Members of Teamsters Local 727, the union representing 319 production and warehouse workers at facilities in Niles and Alsip, took to the picket lines Thursday to protest what the union calls unfair labor practices...
Teamsters, Activists To Deliver Nearly 50,000 Signed Petitions Calling On UPS To Withdraw From ALEC PR Newswire ...On Thurs., Dec. 10, Teamsters Union representatives in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Ga. will be joined by environmental and community activists as they deliver nearly 50,000 signed petitions to UPS offices in both cities. The petitions call on the corporation to withdraw its membership in the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)...
U.S. Representatives Call on Treasury to Reject CSPF Application for Cuts Teamster.org ...Members of Congress have submitted letters to Treasury Department appointee Ken Feinberg asking him to deny the massive pension cuts proposed in the Teamsters Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan application. The representatives denounced the plan for the burden it would place on middle class workers and retirees and called for a more equitable solution...
Unions mourn members killed in San Bernardino shooting Workday Minnesota ...Twelve of the 15 people killed – and several of those injured – in the San Bernardino terrorist shooting were members of the Service Employees International Union or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Both organizations are holding vigils and fundraisers for all the victims. Teamsters (link is external) General President Jim Hoffa said, “Today is a sad day, as we join the San Bernardino community with a heavy heart in mourning this tragic loss"...
Teamsters members at Fieldbrook Foods ratify union contract Observer Today ...The drivers, warehouse and production personnel employed by Fieldbrook Foods on One Ice Cream Drive, Dunkirk, have overwhelmingly ratified a successor collective bargaining agreement. The members approved the new four-year contract by a margin of two to one...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Sudan: Central Darfur State Workers On Strike All Africa ...The Central Darfur state employees and workers embarked on a brief strike on Tuesday in protest against the non-payment of their November salaries. They gave the authorities 48 hours to pay them their salaries. Otherwise, they will start an open-ended strike on Thursday, the head of the Central Darfur Workers' Union, Tajir Zakaria Idris, told Radio Dabanga...
India not seeking membership in TPP, TTIP Economic Times ...India has not sought membership in either of the two mega trade deals, Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic, the government informed Parliament today. "The government has not sought for membership of either the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)"...
Customs bill could reach finish line this week The Hill ...House and Senate lawmakers are nearing an agreement on a customs enforcement measure, even amid some Democratic dissent, which would wrap up another key piece of President Obama’s legislative trade agenda. Levin said that he is concerned a conference report will retain what he called “very troubling changes to the negotiating objectives in TPA [trade promotion authority]...
How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights EFF ...By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital services and content...
TiSA: A Framework for Reregulating the Global Trade in Services? (opinion) Huffington Post ...The EU is negotiating on behalf of its 28 member states, and with 23 other countries including the USA, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia alongside the WTO, for a 'plurilateral' Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). TiSA's main purpose is to set out new rules to make the global trade in services fit for the internet era...
Superbug Apocalypse: How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Harms Public Health Truthout ...If you thought the only reason to be concerned was eight years of government secrecy surrounding the trade deal, its relation to the growing likelihood of antibacterial-resistant strains of bacteria from unchecked antibiotics in our food may give you nightmares...
Anti-austerity protesters march in Dublin city centre Irish Times ...There was a strong Garda presence outside Leinster House today as protestors demonstrated against austerity. Kildare Street and Molesworth Street were closed as up to 200 of people gathered outside Leinster House for a National Demonstration against Austerity. The action was in opposition to the water charges, the property taxes and to austerity imposed by the Government...
Pakistan Journalists Assert Human Rights, Worker Rights Solidarity Center ...The recent murders of three Pakistani journalists in separate incidents highlight the dangers media professionals in that country face daily on the job. ollowing the launch of a recent series of Solidarity Center workshops that covered safety as well as gender equality, more than 60 journalists from around 15 local unions in Pakistan came away with the resources and information they need to better protect themselves...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Ohio Democrats rethink strategy against right-to-work, unemployment legislation Cleveland.com ...As Ohio's Republican lawmakers pick up a new battle to reduce unemployment benefits and reduce the power of unions in the state, Democrats say they have a more difficult case against them. The last Republican-lead attempt to limit union power, Senate Bill 5 in 2011, was rebuffed and overturned by outraged voters...
Michigan prevailing wage repeal group preparing to launch second petition drive MLive ...A committee seeking to repeal Michigan's prevailing wage law plans to begin collecting a second round of petition signatures within the month. Protecting Michigan Taxpayers, regrouping after a failed petition drive marred by duplicate signatures, has hired National Petition Management of Brighton...
BIC to push right-to-work during 2016 Legislative Session Metro News ...Supporting right-to-work legislation is one of the top priorities for the West Virginia Business and Industry Council heading into the 2016 Legislative Session, according to chairman Chris Hamilton. The right-to-work bill would allow workers to choose whether to pay labor unions. Meetings will be held throughout the state this month. Hamilton said this is to ensure they are fully prepared for the upcoming session...
The Supreme Court Looks Poised To Blow Up Everything You Think You Know About Redistricting Think Progress ...There is little reason to think that the Roberts Court will take a modest approach to redistricting. To the contrary, Evenwel now seems likely to upset the racial balance of many states’ congressional delegations and throw many states’ redistricting processes into chaos...
Justices appear split in Texas redistricting challenge Washington Post ...The phrase has come to symbolize American democracy: “One person, one vote.” But there was considerable disagreement Tuesday among the justices of the Supreme Court about exactly what it means. When electoral districts are drawn by the states and localities, should they be derived from the total population of a place, as is done in all 50 states? Or, as the challengers to Texas’s redistricting plan propose, should only those eligible to vote be counted?...
Bellingham tells state lawmakers to pass paid sick leave Bellingham Herald ...City Council will ask the state Legislature to require paid sick and safe leave rather than look to pass a rule locally. By a 5-2 vote Monday night, Dec. 7, the council passed a resolution calling on state legislators to require employers to provide their workers paid sick and safe leave...
Christie: Union 'pigs will be charging' to Statehouse if Democrat succeeds him NJ.com ...Warning that "pigs will be charging down State Street" in Trenton if voters elect a Democratic governor after he leaves office, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday urged New Jersey's business community to join his fight against public employee unions. Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, responded Tuesday afternoon, saying "Gov. Christie's tired strategy of finger pointing, blame and scare tactics is a smokescreen, not a solution"...
U.S LABOR
UAW reaches 2nd tentative deal with supplier Nexteer Detroit Free Press ...The UAW said late Tuesday that it has reached a new tentative agreement with Nexteer Automotive, an automotive supplier just outside of Saginaw, that ends a strike that began earlier in the day. More than 3,200 UAW members who work at Nexteer went on strike Tuesday, one day after 97% of workers who voted rejected the first contract...
Striking Capitol Workers Take Their Fight To Ted Cruz Think Progress ...The contractors, who work in the cafeterias and clean the buildings, say they were shut out of talks between Republican Senators and federal contractor organizations handling the renewal process. The new contract went into effect on Monday, according to their group’s press release, and failed to include the living wage of $15 an hour or union rights that they have been demanding for years...
Citrus workers go on strike in San Luis Yuma Sun ...Workers from two agriculture companies in the area, Bravo Harvesting and Pacific Avenue Growers, went on strike for a second day Tuesday, demanding higher pay and better working conditions. The strike began on Monday as workers gathered in the entrance and exits of parking lots for both companies...
Company threatens managers: If workers unionize, we'll cut your pay 60 percent Daily Kos ...Bosses have lots of strategies to block their workers from unionizing. Midwestern hardware chain Menards (owned by a huge Scott Walker supporter) really, really doesn’t want unions, it’s safe to say. So much so that the contract that managers sign threatens them with a big pay cut if workers join a union on their watch...
This is what the social safety net could look like for on-demand workers Washington Post ...Less than seven years after the founding of the largest company in the space, Uber, Washington is buzzing with talk of how to overhaul labor law to fit the new category of workers it claims to have created. That might seem like a long time. But the main corpus of regulations governing the work experience hasn’t changed substantially for more than 60 years...
Working Families Party Endorses Bernie Sanders for President NYTimes ...The Working Families Party, the labor-aligned third party that originated in New York and has sought to become a national force, endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president on Tuesday, handing him a symbolic boost from the state that twice elected Hillary Clinton to the Senate...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Unaccompanied Children Are Crossing The Southern Border Again Think Progress ...Federal officials will open three shelters in response to a resurgent flow of unaccompanied children through the southern U.S. border. Senior Obama administration officials said on Monday that the shelters, set to open in Texas and California, will add at least 1,400 more beds, according to the New York Times. In recent years, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children have fled violence and poverty in the Central America...
Chicago police inquiry triggers long-awaited change but hard choices ahead The Guardian ...Just hours after the US Justice Department announced this week that it would investigate the Chicago police department for civil rights violations, local elected officials went on the offensive. During an often-tense press conference, embattled Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who previously called a federal civil rights investigation “misguided”, pledged his full support...
Trump Isn't the Problem. It's the Bigotry of the GOP Base. Slate ...Fifty-seven percent say Islamic values are at odds with American values. As for Trump’s proposal to bar Muslim refugees, when the question is presented without cues, 5 of every 6 Republicans agree with him. The problem is the base—and by many measures, the majority—of the Republican Party. If you think we can’t elect a government in 2016 that would target a religious minority, you’re underestimating Trump. And you’re overestimating America...
With Anti-Muslim Bombast, Trump Doubles Down on 'Fascist Demagoguery' Common Dreams ...GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is doubling down on his xenophobic remarks about Muslims, even as they provoke widespread outrage and condemnation across the political spectrum. On Tuesday, Trump defended his fascist plan for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" by comparing it with President Franklin Roosevelt's decision to inter Japanese Americans during World War II...
What Do Survivors of War Have to Do to Live in Peace?: Voices from France's Largest Refugee Camp Democracy Now ...Residents of the largest refugee camp in France, situated outside the northern port city of Calais, often call it "The Jungle." It is a maze of wind-swept, ripped tents and muddy walkways where people informally live in sections according to their home countries. Walking through the camp is like walking through a map of the targets of U.S. bombing campaigns...
Hoffa: Transportation bill loosens political gridlock Detroit News ...For more than a decade, Congress’s failure to approve a long-term transportation spending bill placed infrastructure improvements on the back burner in Michigan and all across the country. That ended last week, however, when members of the House and Senate united behind a five-year, $305 billion plan to pay for road, rail and mass transit upgrades...
Coca-Cola, union agree to federal mediation as strike continues Chicago Tribune ...The union representing striking Coca-Cola workers accepted the company's offer for federal mediation, even as it shot back at a letter the beverage giant mailed to employees defending the company's behavior during contract negotiations. Members of Teamsters Local 727, the union representing 319 production and warehouse workers at facilities in Niles and Alsip, took to the picket lines Thursday to protest what the union calls unfair labor practices...
Teamsters, Activists To Deliver Nearly 50,000 Signed Petitions Calling On UPS To Withdraw From ALEC PR Newswire ...On Thurs., Dec. 10, Teamsters Union representatives in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Ga. will be joined by environmental and community activists as they deliver nearly 50,000 signed petitions to UPS offices in both cities. The petitions call on the corporation to withdraw its membership in the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)...
U.S. Representatives Call on Treasury to Reject CSPF Application for Cuts Teamster.org ...Members of Congress have submitted letters to Treasury Department appointee Ken Feinberg asking him to deny the massive pension cuts proposed in the Teamsters Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan application. The representatives denounced the plan for the burden it would place on middle class workers and retirees and called for a more equitable solution...
Unions mourn members killed in San Bernardino shooting Workday Minnesota ...Twelve of the 15 people killed – and several of those injured – in the San Bernardino terrorist shooting were members of the Service Employees International Union or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Both organizations are holding vigils and fundraisers for all the victims. Teamsters (link is external) General President Jim Hoffa said, “Today is a sad day, as we join the San Bernardino community with a heavy heart in mourning this tragic loss"...
Teamsters members at Fieldbrook Foods ratify union contract Observer Today ...The drivers, warehouse and production personnel employed by Fieldbrook Foods on One Ice Cream Drive, Dunkirk, have overwhelmingly ratified a successor collective bargaining agreement. The members approved the new four-year contract by a margin of two to one...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Sudan: Central Darfur State Workers On Strike All Africa ...The Central Darfur state employees and workers embarked on a brief strike on Tuesday in protest against the non-payment of their November salaries. They gave the authorities 48 hours to pay them their salaries. Otherwise, they will start an open-ended strike on Thursday, the head of the Central Darfur Workers' Union, Tajir Zakaria Idris, told Radio Dabanga...
India not seeking membership in TPP, TTIP Economic Times ...India has not sought membership in either of the two mega trade deals, Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic, the government informed Parliament today. "The government has not sought for membership of either the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)"...
Customs bill could reach finish line this week The Hill ...House and Senate lawmakers are nearing an agreement on a customs enforcement measure, even amid some Democratic dissent, which would wrap up another key piece of President Obama’s legislative trade agenda. Levin said that he is concerned a conference report will retain what he called “very troubling changes to the negotiating objectives in TPA [trade promotion authority]...
How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights EFF ...By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital services and content...
TiSA: A Framework for Reregulating the Global Trade in Services? (opinion) Huffington Post ...The EU is negotiating on behalf of its 28 member states, and with 23 other countries including the USA, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia alongside the WTO, for a 'plurilateral' Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). TiSA's main purpose is to set out new rules to make the global trade in services fit for the internet era...
Superbug Apocalypse: How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Harms Public Health Truthout ...If you thought the only reason to be concerned was eight years of government secrecy surrounding the trade deal, its relation to the growing likelihood of antibacterial-resistant strains of bacteria from unchecked antibiotics in our food may give you nightmares...
Anti-austerity protesters march in Dublin city centre Irish Times ...There was a strong Garda presence outside Leinster House today as protestors demonstrated against austerity. Kildare Street and Molesworth Street were closed as up to 200 of people gathered outside Leinster House for a National Demonstration against Austerity. The action was in opposition to the water charges, the property taxes and to austerity imposed by the Government...
Pakistan Journalists Assert Human Rights, Worker Rights Solidarity Center ...The recent murders of three Pakistani journalists in separate incidents highlight the dangers media professionals in that country face daily on the job. ollowing the launch of a recent series of Solidarity Center workshops that covered safety as well as gender equality, more than 60 journalists from around 15 local unions in Pakistan came away with the resources and information they need to better protect themselves...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Ohio Democrats rethink strategy against right-to-work, unemployment legislation Cleveland.com ...As Ohio's Republican lawmakers pick up a new battle to reduce unemployment benefits and reduce the power of unions in the state, Democrats say they have a more difficult case against them. The last Republican-lead attempt to limit union power, Senate Bill 5 in 2011, was rebuffed and overturned by outraged voters...
Michigan prevailing wage repeal group preparing to launch second petition drive MLive ...A committee seeking to repeal Michigan's prevailing wage law plans to begin collecting a second round of petition signatures within the month. Protecting Michigan Taxpayers, regrouping after a failed petition drive marred by duplicate signatures, has hired National Petition Management of Brighton...
BIC to push right-to-work during 2016 Legislative Session Metro News ...Supporting right-to-work legislation is one of the top priorities for the West Virginia Business and Industry Council heading into the 2016 Legislative Session, according to chairman Chris Hamilton. The right-to-work bill would allow workers to choose whether to pay labor unions. Meetings will be held throughout the state this month. Hamilton said this is to ensure they are fully prepared for the upcoming session...
The Supreme Court Looks Poised To Blow Up Everything You Think You Know About Redistricting Think Progress ...There is little reason to think that the Roberts Court will take a modest approach to redistricting. To the contrary, Evenwel now seems likely to upset the racial balance of many states’ congressional delegations and throw many states’ redistricting processes into chaos...
Justices appear split in Texas redistricting challenge Washington Post ...The phrase has come to symbolize American democracy: “One person, one vote.” But there was considerable disagreement Tuesday among the justices of the Supreme Court about exactly what it means. When electoral districts are drawn by the states and localities, should they be derived from the total population of a place, as is done in all 50 states? Or, as the challengers to Texas’s redistricting plan propose, should only those eligible to vote be counted?...
Bellingham tells state lawmakers to pass paid sick leave Bellingham Herald ...City Council will ask the state Legislature to require paid sick and safe leave rather than look to pass a rule locally. By a 5-2 vote Monday night, Dec. 7, the council passed a resolution calling on state legislators to require employers to provide their workers paid sick and safe leave...
Christie: Union 'pigs will be charging' to Statehouse if Democrat succeeds him NJ.com ...Warning that "pigs will be charging down State Street" in Trenton if voters elect a Democratic governor after he leaves office, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday urged New Jersey's business community to join his fight against public employee unions. Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, responded Tuesday afternoon, saying "Gov. Christie's tired strategy of finger pointing, blame and scare tactics is a smokescreen, not a solution"...
U.S LABOR
UAW reaches 2nd tentative deal with supplier Nexteer Detroit Free Press ...The UAW said late Tuesday that it has reached a new tentative agreement with Nexteer Automotive, an automotive supplier just outside of Saginaw, that ends a strike that began earlier in the day. More than 3,200 UAW members who work at Nexteer went on strike Tuesday, one day after 97% of workers who voted rejected the first contract...
Striking Capitol Workers Take Their Fight To Ted Cruz Think Progress ...The contractors, who work in the cafeterias and clean the buildings, say they were shut out of talks between Republican Senators and federal contractor organizations handling the renewal process. The new contract went into effect on Monday, according to their group’s press release, and failed to include the living wage of $15 an hour or union rights that they have been demanding for years...
Citrus workers go on strike in San Luis Yuma Sun ...Workers from two agriculture companies in the area, Bravo Harvesting and Pacific Avenue Growers, went on strike for a second day Tuesday, demanding higher pay and better working conditions. The strike began on Monday as workers gathered in the entrance and exits of parking lots for both companies...
Company threatens managers: If workers unionize, we'll cut your pay 60 percent Daily Kos ...Bosses have lots of strategies to block their workers from unionizing. Midwestern hardware chain Menards (owned by a huge Scott Walker supporter) really, really doesn’t want unions, it’s safe to say. So much so that the contract that managers sign threatens them with a big pay cut if workers join a union on their watch...
This is what the social safety net could look like for on-demand workers Washington Post ...Less than seven years after the founding of the largest company in the space, Uber, Washington is buzzing with talk of how to overhaul labor law to fit the new category of workers it claims to have created. That might seem like a long time. But the main corpus of regulations governing the work experience hasn’t changed substantially for more than 60 years...
Working Families Party Endorses Bernie Sanders for President NYTimes ...The Working Families Party, the labor-aligned third party that originated in New York and has sought to become a national force, endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president on Tuesday, handing him a symbolic boost from the state that twice elected Hillary Clinton to the Senate...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Unaccompanied Children Are Crossing The Southern Border Again Think Progress ...Federal officials will open three shelters in response to a resurgent flow of unaccompanied children through the southern U.S. border. Senior Obama administration officials said on Monday that the shelters, set to open in Texas and California, will add at least 1,400 more beds, according to the New York Times. In recent years, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children have fled violence and poverty in the Central America...
Chicago police inquiry triggers long-awaited change but hard choices ahead The Guardian ...Just hours after the US Justice Department announced this week that it would investigate the Chicago police department for civil rights violations, local elected officials went on the offensive. During an often-tense press conference, embattled Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who previously called a federal civil rights investigation “misguided”, pledged his full support...
Trump Isn't the Problem. It's the Bigotry of the GOP Base. Slate ...Fifty-seven percent say Islamic values are at odds with American values. As for Trump’s proposal to bar Muslim refugees, when the question is presented without cues, 5 of every 6 Republicans agree with him. The problem is the base—and by many measures, the majority—of the Republican Party. If you think we can’t elect a government in 2016 that would target a religious minority, you’re underestimating Trump. And you’re overestimating America...
With Anti-Muslim Bombast, Trump Doubles Down on 'Fascist Demagoguery' Common Dreams ...GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is doubling down on his xenophobic remarks about Muslims, even as they provoke widespread outrage and condemnation across the political spectrum. On Tuesday, Trump defended his fascist plan for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" by comparing it with President Franklin Roosevelt's decision to inter Japanese Americans during World War II...
What Do Survivors of War Have to Do to Live in Peace?: Voices from France's Largest Refugee Camp Democracy Now ...Residents of the largest refugee camp in France, situated outside the northern port city of Calais, often call it "The Jungle." It is a maze of wind-swept, ripped tents and muddy walkways where people informally live in sections according to their home countries. Walking through the camp is like walking through a map of the targets of U.S. bombing campaigns...
Friday, December 4, 2015
Today's Teamster News 12.04.15
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters Statement on San Bernardino County Shootings Teamster.org ...The Teamsters Union is deeply saddened by the tragic event in San Bernardino County, Calif., which has taken the lives of 14 people, injured 21 and shaken the community at large. As the news continues to unfold, we are saddened to learn that some of the victims were members of Teamsters Local 1932. “Today is a sad day, as we join the San Bernardino community with a heavy heart in mourning this tragic loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and everyone impacted by this senseless tragedy,” said Jim Hoffa...
Teamsters end strike at Portland-area beer distributor, vote to return to work Oregon Live ...A 16-day strike at a Portland-area beer and wine distributor ended Wednesday with a union offer to go back to work, but the company's general manager said striking workers need to report to him Friday to keep their jobs. Representatives of labor and management issued news releases about the latest developments in the labor dispute at General Distributors Inc. in Oregon City. Teamsters Local 162, based in Portland, represents about 80 workers at General Distributors...
Coke workers strike in Alsip and Niles Chicago Tribune ...James Shears has worked at Coca-Cola bottling plants in the south suburbs for almost a half-century and said he has never seen contract negotiations break down as badly as they have over the last six months. Shears joined other members of the Teamsters Local 727 on the picket line early Thursday morning, as about 300 workers at the plants in Alsip and Niles began striking to protest what they claim are unfair labor practices...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
1,200 Irish Life workers to take strike action Breaking News ...1,200 workers at Irish Life in Dublin and Dundalk are to hold two, one day, strikes. The action has been announced for December 17 and January 20. A dispute has been ongoing since the beginning of November, over a new pay model. Unite, which represents the staff, also has said the company is refusing to attend the Labour Court...
Protests erupt as Ecuador scraps presidential term limits DW.com ...Protesters armed with sticks and rocks battled riot police in the capital where lawmakers engaged in a marathon nine-hour debate before lifting term limits, stripping collective bargaining rights for public sector workers and placing the military in charge of domestic security. Rights groups have criticized Correa for using his monopoly across all branches of government to stifle dissent, and they fear the latter measure will even further restrict freedom of expression...
Ryan promotes trade, falls short of endorsing TPP The Hill ...Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called for boosting U.S. exports but fell short of endorsing an expansive Pacific Rim trade deal that could go before Congress next year. Ryan, who as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee was one of the leaders who guided trade promotion authority through the House, will play a critical role in whether the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) earns enough support to clear Congress...
Reichert Says About 15 Republicans Will Oppose TPP Over Tobacco MyInforms ....Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), the chairman of the House Ways & Means trade subcommittee, warned Thursday (Dec. 3) that securing congressional passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be more difficult than the winning approval of the fast-track bill in June, in part because at the moment roughly 15 House Republicans who voted for fast track would oppose TPP over its treatment of tobacco...
How the Toxic Trade Deal You've Never Heard Of Could Kill the Climate Common Dreams ...As world leaders attempt to hammer out a global climate deal in Paris this week, trade officials are meeting in Geneva to continue negotiations on the mammoth Trade in Services Agreement (TISA)—and according to secret documents published Thursday, "the objectives of each could not be more diametrically opposed." The latest publication by WikiLeaks exposes new threats from TISA, the least well-known of the so-called Big Three "strategic neoliberal trade deals being advanced by the Obama administration"...
New TTIP 'Transparency' Agenca Still Leaves Public in the Dark (opinion) War on Want ...This week’s concession to create more access to secretive EU-US trade deal documents falls woefully short of any meaningful transparency for the 500 million people of Europe. An agreement between the European Commission and European Parliament to make key Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) texts available to all 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) was announced yesterday...
Greek capital brought to a standstill as workers strike against austerity Euro News ...Protesters marched through the streets of Athens on Thursday as over two-and-a-half-million workers took part in a general strike that has brought public services to a standstill. The 24-hour walkout is in response to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ acceptance of a new package of austerity measures by the country’s lenders, that includes a total overhaul of the social security and pension system...
In Oaxaca, Teachers Won’t Give Up the Fight NACLA ...Instead of facing off with the PRI-led state government, this time the union is up against global financiers, national economic elites, its own national union, and all the major political parties in Mexico. Each of these groups support a constitutional reform that would privatize schools, punitively evaluate teachers, and standardize education. The measure threatens the guarantee of a free public education and basic job security...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
What Scott Walker’s Elimination Of Wisconsin’s Living Wage Law Means For Workers Think Progress ...Last year, 100 low-wage workers in Wisconsin decided to sue their governor, Scott Walker (R), over their pay. The state had a century-old statute on the books saying that the minimum wage “shall be not less than a living wage,” enough “to permit an employee to maintain herself or himself in minimum comfort, decency, physical and moral well-being.” But this week they were handed a final defeat: A judge dismissed their lawsuit...
House Bill 337 Would Make Ohio a 'Right to Work' State Gateway News ...Dozens of union members and supporters packed two Statehouse hearing rooms and hallways Dec. 1 in a show of opposition to right-to-work legislation being considered by state lawmakers. At issue is HB 377, which would bar mandatory union membership or dues payments. Comparable law changes have been proposed in past general assemblies and a stalled constitutional amendment petition effort...
Legislative plan would set regional minimum wage rates Portland Tribune ...Spurred by two ballot initiatives to raise Oregon’s minimum wage, a Portland lawmaker plans to propose legislation in February that would set different regional minimum wage rates based on cost of living and median income. Sen. Michael Dembrow, who chairs the Senate workforce committee, said a legislative agreement could help avert an acrimonious and prolonged battle over minimum wage at the ballot box...
Alabama governor falsely claims state made deal with feds on voter ID MSNBC ...Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley responded Wednesday to a lawsuit challenging his state’s voter ID law by claiming that the state already came to an agreement with the federal government that addresses concerns about the law. But Bentley’s claim is flatly false: Alabama’s deal with the Feds had nothing to do with the ID law...
Bill would require all Harrisburg businesses to provide paid sick leave ABC27 ...Thousands of people who work in the city of Harrisburg do not get paid sick leave, many make minimum wage.
“Life is hard enough as it is you do not need the pressure of an employer saying if you do not come in today, do not bother coming in tomorrow,” said Brad Koplinski, Harrisburg city councilman. Koplinski has introduced legislation that would require businesses in the city to provide five sick days for both full and part-time employees...
U.S. LABOR
UFCW Members at El Super Strike In Protest Against the Company’s Unfair Labor Practices UFCW ...On the day before Thanksgiving, El Super workers at seven unionized locations in Southern California decided to strike the company over unfair labor practices. Picket lines were established at 4 a.m. asking consumers to do their Thanksgiving shopping elsewhere. El Super union members have been working without a new and fair contract since September 2013...
UAW Election at Volkswagen's Tennessee Plant Ends Friday ABC ...Workers will finish casting their ballots Friday in the latest effort by the United Auto Workers union to organize at Volkswagen's lone U.S. plant in Tennessee. The two-day vote is scheduled to conclude at 8:30 p.m. EST, the end of the work day at the plant. The election involves 162 skilled trades workers, who are responsible for repairing and maintaining machines and robots at the Chattanooga factory...
Asarco's unions protest company's tactics Arizona Daily Star ...Union miners rallied Tuesday afternoon at Asarco’s Tucson headquarters to protest what they say are unfair contract negotiating tactics by the copper-mining company. The United Steelworkers, the lead among eight labor unions representing about 2,000 Asarco workers, said Asarco has announced its intent to unilaterally implement the company’s “last, best and final” contract proposal on Tuesday, calling the move “illegal”...
Mixed Verdict for Donald Blankenship, Ex-Chief of Massey Energy, After Coal Mine Blast New York Times ...Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company was widely criticized after 29 workers were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010, was convicted Thursday of conspiring to violate federal safety standards, becoming the most prominent American coal executive ever convicted of a crime related to mining deaths...
The Entire Labor Movement Should Be Paying Attention to Wisconsin’s Kohler Strike In These Times ...Two thousand workers at the Kohler faucet plant in Northern Wisconsin have been walking the picket since November 16. Such a strike would have been commonplace decades ago. Nowadays it is a rarity. Major strikes of over 1,000 workers are few and far between. Even rarer are open-ended strikes at an industrial plant. The Kohler strike is an open-ended, large scale, non-publicity style strike in manufacturing, a traditionally organized industry...
Wage Growth Stagnated Even As November’s Job Growth Was Strong Think Progress ...The economy added 211,000 jobs in November while the unemployment rate stayed the same at 5 percent, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Analysts had expected 200,000 jobs to be added. November’s gains came in construction (46,000), professional and technical services (28,000), health care (24,000), food and drink places (32,000), and retail (31,000)...
The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans The Atlantic ...American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America's younger workers, "stagnant" wages shouldn't sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise. Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
20 People Now Own As Much Wealth as Half of All Americans The Nation ...The 400 richest Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the population, a report released on Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) reveals. According to “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us,” just the twenty individuals at the top of the pile now control more wealth than the bottom half of the population...
6 Noxious Facts About America's Billionaires Alternet ...When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that he will give away 99 percent of his personal fortune—now estimated at $44 billion—during his lifetime, he was lauded in newspapers and TV broadcasts from coast to coast. But few people noted that giving away his billions will still leave Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan and newborn daughter Max, with at least $440 million to live on...
Here’s Why Hundreds of Immigrants in Detention Have Gone on Hunger Strike Mother Jones ...After spending months holed up in detention centers, more than 100 undocumented immigrants in California and Alabama launched a hunger strike on the evening before Thanksgiving. The following Monday, they were joined by dozens of other frustrated immigrants at three more detention centers in California, Colorado, and Texas. Their protest is the latest in a wave of hunger strikes at immigrant detention facilities across the country...
Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Has Gone From Fringe To Mainstream, Report Says Think Progress ...Anti-Muslim rhetoric, recently on display as lawmakers discuss the issue of resettling Syrian refugees, began on the fringes of the far-right and has infiltrated mainstream politics, according to a new report released by the National Security Network. “The current political climate is the culmination of a years-long and well-funded effort to bring Islamophobia and xenophobia from the far-right fringe to the political mainstream,” report authors J. Dana Stuster and Samuel Davidoff-Gore write...
Bombing Hasn’t Worked. Bombing Won’t Work. And Yet, We Will Bomb The Nation ...“If a man beats his head against the wall,” the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once wrote, “it’s his head that breaks and not the wall.” In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris, the British political class has been suffering terrible headaches. Once again, all its leaders can come up with is more bombing—this time, against ISIS in Syria. The logic is always the same: We must do something. Bombing is something. We must bomb...
Teamsters Statement on San Bernardino County Shootings Teamster.org ...The Teamsters Union is deeply saddened by the tragic event in San Bernardino County, Calif., which has taken the lives of 14 people, injured 21 and shaken the community at large. As the news continues to unfold, we are saddened to learn that some of the victims were members of Teamsters Local 1932. “Today is a sad day, as we join the San Bernardino community with a heavy heart in mourning this tragic loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and everyone impacted by this senseless tragedy,” said Jim Hoffa...
Teamsters end strike at Portland-area beer distributor, vote to return to work Oregon Live ...A 16-day strike at a Portland-area beer and wine distributor ended Wednesday with a union offer to go back to work, but the company's general manager said striking workers need to report to him Friday to keep their jobs. Representatives of labor and management issued news releases about the latest developments in the labor dispute at General Distributors Inc. in Oregon City. Teamsters Local 162, based in Portland, represents about 80 workers at General Distributors...
Coke workers strike in Alsip and Niles Chicago Tribune ...James Shears has worked at Coca-Cola bottling plants in the south suburbs for almost a half-century and said he has never seen contract negotiations break down as badly as they have over the last six months. Shears joined other members of the Teamsters Local 727 on the picket line early Thursday morning, as about 300 workers at the plants in Alsip and Niles began striking to protest what they claim are unfair labor practices...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
1,200 Irish Life workers to take strike action Breaking News ...1,200 workers at Irish Life in Dublin and Dundalk are to hold two, one day, strikes. The action has been announced for December 17 and January 20. A dispute has been ongoing since the beginning of November, over a new pay model. Unite, which represents the staff, also has said the company is refusing to attend the Labour Court...
Protests erupt as Ecuador scraps presidential term limits DW.com ...Protesters armed with sticks and rocks battled riot police in the capital where lawmakers engaged in a marathon nine-hour debate before lifting term limits, stripping collective bargaining rights for public sector workers and placing the military in charge of domestic security. Rights groups have criticized Correa for using his monopoly across all branches of government to stifle dissent, and they fear the latter measure will even further restrict freedom of expression...
Ryan promotes trade, falls short of endorsing TPP The Hill ...Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called for boosting U.S. exports but fell short of endorsing an expansive Pacific Rim trade deal that could go before Congress next year. Ryan, who as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee was one of the leaders who guided trade promotion authority through the House, will play a critical role in whether the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) earns enough support to clear Congress...
Reichert Says About 15 Republicans Will Oppose TPP Over Tobacco MyInforms ....Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), the chairman of the House Ways & Means trade subcommittee, warned Thursday (Dec. 3) that securing congressional passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be more difficult than the winning approval of the fast-track bill in June, in part because at the moment roughly 15 House Republicans who voted for fast track would oppose TPP over its treatment of tobacco...
How the Toxic Trade Deal You've Never Heard Of Could Kill the Climate Common Dreams ...As world leaders attempt to hammer out a global climate deal in Paris this week, trade officials are meeting in Geneva to continue negotiations on the mammoth Trade in Services Agreement (TISA)—and according to secret documents published Thursday, "the objectives of each could not be more diametrically opposed." The latest publication by WikiLeaks exposes new threats from TISA, the least well-known of the so-called Big Three "strategic neoliberal trade deals being advanced by the Obama administration"...
New TTIP 'Transparency' Agenca Still Leaves Public in the Dark (opinion) War on Want ...This week’s concession to create more access to secretive EU-US trade deal documents falls woefully short of any meaningful transparency for the 500 million people of Europe. An agreement between the European Commission and European Parliament to make key Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) texts available to all 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) was announced yesterday...
Greek capital brought to a standstill as workers strike against austerity Euro News ...Protesters marched through the streets of Athens on Thursday as over two-and-a-half-million workers took part in a general strike that has brought public services to a standstill. The 24-hour walkout is in response to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ acceptance of a new package of austerity measures by the country’s lenders, that includes a total overhaul of the social security and pension system...
In Oaxaca, Teachers Won’t Give Up the Fight NACLA ...Instead of facing off with the PRI-led state government, this time the union is up against global financiers, national economic elites, its own national union, and all the major political parties in Mexico. Each of these groups support a constitutional reform that would privatize schools, punitively evaluate teachers, and standardize education. The measure threatens the guarantee of a free public education and basic job security...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
What Scott Walker’s Elimination Of Wisconsin’s Living Wage Law Means For Workers Think Progress ...Last year, 100 low-wage workers in Wisconsin decided to sue their governor, Scott Walker (R), over their pay. The state had a century-old statute on the books saying that the minimum wage “shall be not less than a living wage,” enough “to permit an employee to maintain herself or himself in minimum comfort, decency, physical and moral well-being.” But this week they were handed a final defeat: A judge dismissed their lawsuit...
House Bill 337 Would Make Ohio a 'Right to Work' State Gateway News ...Dozens of union members and supporters packed two Statehouse hearing rooms and hallways Dec. 1 in a show of opposition to right-to-work legislation being considered by state lawmakers. At issue is HB 377, which would bar mandatory union membership or dues payments. Comparable law changes have been proposed in past general assemblies and a stalled constitutional amendment petition effort...
Legislative plan would set regional minimum wage rates Portland Tribune ...Spurred by two ballot initiatives to raise Oregon’s minimum wage, a Portland lawmaker plans to propose legislation in February that would set different regional minimum wage rates based on cost of living and median income. Sen. Michael Dembrow, who chairs the Senate workforce committee, said a legislative agreement could help avert an acrimonious and prolonged battle over minimum wage at the ballot box...
Alabama governor falsely claims state made deal with feds on voter ID MSNBC ...Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley responded Wednesday to a lawsuit challenging his state’s voter ID law by claiming that the state already came to an agreement with the federal government that addresses concerns about the law. But Bentley’s claim is flatly false: Alabama’s deal with the Feds had nothing to do with the ID law...
Bill would require all Harrisburg businesses to provide paid sick leave ABC27 ...Thousands of people who work in the city of Harrisburg do not get paid sick leave, many make minimum wage.
“Life is hard enough as it is you do not need the pressure of an employer saying if you do not come in today, do not bother coming in tomorrow,” said Brad Koplinski, Harrisburg city councilman. Koplinski has introduced legislation that would require businesses in the city to provide five sick days for both full and part-time employees...
U.S. LABOR
UFCW Members at El Super Strike In Protest Against the Company’s Unfair Labor Practices UFCW ...On the day before Thanksgiving, El Super workers at seven unionized locations in Southern California decided to strike the company over unfair labor practices. Picket lines were established at 4 a.m. asking consumers to do their Thanksgiving shopping elsewhere. El Super union members have been working without a new and fair contract since September 2013...
UAW Election at Volkswagen's Tennessee Plant Ends Friday ABC ...Workers will finish casting their ballots Friday in the latest effort by the United Auto Workers union to organize at Volkswagen's lone U.S. plant in Tennessee. The two-day vote is scheduled to conclude at 8:30 p.m. EST, the end of the work day at the plant. The election involves 162 skilled trades workers, who are responsible for repairing and maintaining machines and robots at the Chattanooga factory...
Asarco's unions protest company's tactics Arizona Daily Star ...Union miners rallied Tuesday afternoon at Asarco’s Tucson headquarters to protest what they say are unfair contract negotiating tactics by the copper-mining company. The United Steelworkers, the lead among eight labor unions representing about 2,000 Asarco workers, said Asarco has announced its intent to unilaterally implement the company’s “last, best and final” contract proposal on Tuesday, calling the move “illegal”...
Mixed Verdict for Donald Blankenship, Ex-Chief of Massey Energy, After Coal Mine Blast New York Times ...Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company was widely criticized after 29 workers were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010, was convicted Thursday of conspiring to violate federal safety standards, becoming the most prominent American coal executive ever convicted of a crime related to mining deaths...
The Entire Labor Movement Should Be Paying Attention to Wisconsin’s Kohler Strike In These Times ...Two thousand workers at the Kohler faucet plant in Northern Wisconsin have been walking the picket since November 16. Such a strike would have been commonplace decades ago. Nowadays it is a rarity. Major strikes of over 1,000 workers are few and far between. Even rarer are open-ended strikes at an industrial plant. The Kohler strike is an open-ended, large scale, non-publicity style strike in manufacturing, a traditionally organized industry...
Wage Growth Stagnated Even As November’s Job Growth Was Strong Think Progress ...The economy added 211,000 jobs in November while the unemployment rate stayed the same at 5 percent, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Analysts had expected 200,000 jobs to be added. November’s gains came in construction (46,000), professional and technical services (28,000), health care (24,000), food and drink places (32,000), and retail (31,000)...
The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans The Atlantic ...American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America's younger workers, "stagnant" wages shouldn't sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise. Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
20 People Now Own As Much Wealth as Half of All Americans The Nation ...The 400 richest Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the population, a report released on Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) reveals. According to “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us,” just the twenty individuals at the top of the pile now control more wealth than the bottom half of the population...
6 Noxious Facts About America's Billionaires Alternet ...When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that he will give away 99 percent of his personal fortune—now estimated at $44 billion—during his lifetime, he was lauded in newspapers and TV broadcasts from coast to coast. But few people noted that giving away his billions will still leave Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan and newborn daughter Max, with at least $440 million to live on...
Here’s Why Hundreds of Immigrants in Detention Have Gone on Hunger Strike Mother Jones ...After spending months holed up in detention centers, more than 100 undocumented immigrants in California and Alabama launched a hunger strike on the evening before Thanksgiving. The following Monday, they were joined by dozens of other frustrated immigrants at three more detention centers in California, Colorado, and Texas. Their protest is the latest in a wave of hunger strikes at immigrant detention facilities across the country...
Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Has Gone From Fringe To Mainstream, Report Says Think Progress ...Anti-Muslim rhetoric, recently on display as lawmakers discuss the issue of resettling Syrian refugees, began on the fringes of the far-right and has infiltrated mainstream politics, according to a new report released by the National Security Network. “The current political climate is the culmination of a years-long and well-funded effort to bring Islamophobia and xenophobia from the far-right fringe to the political mainstream,” report authors J. Dana Stuster and Samuel Davidoff-Gore write...
Bombing Hasn’t Worked. Bombing Won’t Work. And Yet, We Will Bomb The Nation ...“If a man beats his head against the wall,” the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once wrote, “it’s his head that breaks and not the wall.” In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris, the British political class has been suffering terrible headaches. Once again, all its leaders can come up with is more bombing—this time, against ISIS in Syria. The logic is always the same: We must do something. Bombing is something. We must bomb...
Monday, August 31, 2015
Today's Teamster News 08.31.15
Teamsters
Teamsters Women’s Conference Inspires Teamster.org ...The 2015 Teamsters Women’s Conference took place in Boston Friday, the second day of the annual event. Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall addressed more than one thousand Teamster women who have gathered for three days of education, inspiration and sisterhood. View photos from Day 2 of the event here. “Teamster women are dedicated members and leaders. You’re motivated and you know how to get things done. You play such an incredibly important role,” Hall said...
Vistar Drivers and Warehouse Workers Join Teamsters Local 630 Teamster.org ...California warehouse workers and drivers at Vistar, a Performance Food Group (PFG) company, have voted 70 percent in favor of joining Teamsters Local 630 in Los Angeles, Calif. There are 71 workers in the bargaining unit and all but one participated in the Aug. 27 election. The workers at Vistar decided to organize to address the lack of respect, low wages and inadequate health benefits at the company...
Waste Workers in California Join Teamsters Local 137 Teamster.org ...Today, drivers at Waste Management, Inc. in Redding, California voted by a 2-1 margin to join Teamsters Local 137. The workers approached the local union in mid-July about joining the union, and Local 137 filed for an election on August 3, 2015. The vote today was 16-8. There are 36 drivers in the bargaining unit...
Local 727 Wins Fight for Osco Pharmacist’s Reinstatement Local 727 ...An arbitrator ruled that the company wrongfully terminated Teamsters Local 727 Osco pharmacist member Wanda Froehlich last year and that the company must reinstate her with over a year’s worth of full back pay and benefits. Froehlich, a 20-year Osco employee, was unjustly terminated June 6, 2014. Management fired her without notice of the charges...
Labor sees organizing boon from U.S. ruling St. Louis Post-Dispatch ...Rome Aloise, president of the Teamsters in Northern California, said the Browning-Ferris ruling means Google will now have to be part of the discussions about working conditions with the union and the contractor. It was a local branch of the Teamsters that originally brought the complaint about a union election at the Browning-Ferris recycling plant...
Global Labor & Trade
Big Sugar’s Fight to Keep U.S. Import Limits Delaying Trade Deal Washington Post ...A sweet deal for American sugar farmers is compounding delays in a proposed trade agreement affecting 40 percent of the world’s economy. The commodity has become a sticky subject in talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP, as it’s known, would link a dozen countries and, its proponents say, make it easier for U.S. companies to sell goods around the world. But the trade deal may also weaken protections for the sugar industry...
Amari says TPP may be halted if no deal is reached before Canada election in October Japan Times ...Negotiations for a multilateral Pacific Rim free trade agreement may be halted if the 12 participating countries cannot strike a broad deal before a general election in Canada in October, Japanese Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari said Friday. “After election campaigning starts in Canada, it will be difficult” to continue negotiations, Amari said in an interview...
Mixed Views on Finalizing the Trans Pacific Partnership WNAX ...U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman expressed optimism recently that negotiators are close to wrapping up a final Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. Iowa Farm Bureau President Craig Hill says he’s glad the trade leader is positive about progress, but thinks it may be tough to achieve yet this year. Hill says if the Trans Pacific Partnership runs into 2016, it could get muddled up in Presidential politics...
Disposable People: Obama, the TPP, and the Betrayal of Human Rights (opinion) San Diego Free Press ...By ignoring modern day slavery to advance the TPP, Obama has given the lie to the rhetoric of TPP advocates with all their bluster about how this trade deal was somehow about a more progressive world order with regard to labor and human rights. "The administration’s alleged willingness to turn a blind eye to trafficking abuses in Malaysia in order to get the TPP done also does not bode well for the hope of any enforcement of labor and environmental provisions were the TPP actually enacted"...
80,000 in Ireland Protest 'Austerity' Water Bills TeleSUR ...More than 80,000 Irish protested in Dublin Saturday against the planned introduction of municipal water charges. The massive crowd flooded the Irish capital, with some protesters carrying placards reading, “Scrap fraud water charges or collapse next election.” The march was the fifth major protest against water charges in the past 12 months, organized by the umbrella group of social movements and unions...
Unraveling Why So Many Firefighters Perished in the Tianjin Blast Slate ...That so many firefighters would die in the line of duty struck a painful chord in Tianjin and spurred a heart-wrenching search for answers. Government officials and the public are now pushing to find out exactly what happened that night and why. Within days of the blaze, the search for answers started shedding light on a murky business world tied to the trading, transporting, and storing of hazardous chemicals in China...
State & Living Wage Battles
Veto session may feature right to work News-Press Now ...Local lawmakers are preparing for a September veto session at the Missouri Capitol, where the contentious right-to-work issue may resurface on their desks. The Missouri General Assembly’s annual session, to consider bills vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon, is set to commence Sept. 16 in Jefferson City...
N.J. Senate prez pushing for paid sick leave law, taxing hospitals NJ.com ...State Senate President Stephen Sweeney says he remains committed to passing legislation that would require businesses to provide paid sick days and for nonprofit hospitals to pay property taxes. But he doesn't see either issue gaining momentum until after the Assembly elections in November...
Texas Asks Full Appeals Court to Hear Voter ID Case Texas Tribune ...Continuing to protect a voter identification law that courts say discriminates against Hispanics and African Americans, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked a full federal appeals court to hear his arguments about why the state’s requirements at the polls do not violate the Voting Rights Act. In a series of filings Friday, the Republican asked the full U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case...
Is It Game Over for One of America's Most Fanatic Tea Party Governors? Alternet ...Maine’s angriest white guy, Tea Party Republican Gov. Paul LePage, may have finally crossed a legal line when he told a charter school to withdraw a job offer to a top Democratic political opponent or else lose a $530,000 state subsidy. That led the legislature’s Government Oversight Committee this summer to unanimously call for an investigation into whether LePage illegally abused his office’s authority...
Emergency rule filed related to prevailing wage changes Metro News ...WorkForce West Virginia filed an emergency rule Friday related to changes made in the prevailing wage statute. The rule filed defines the regions of the state to be used in the calculation of prevailing wage, as well as a procedure for those wishing to object to the calculation formula...
Walmart Cuts Workers’ Hours After Raising Its Minimum Wage Earlier This Year Think Progress ...After raising the minimum wage for its lowest compensated workers, Walmart is now cutting some workers’ hours to try to trim costs. Store managers were recently told to cut back on hours to reduce costs, which has led to them eliminating hours from the schedule, telling workers to leave their shifts before they end, or having employees take longer lunches, Bloomberg News reports...
U.S. Labor
NLRB Decision Could Mean Excellent News for Fast Food and Other Low-Wage Workers In These Times ...In a decision that could greatly improve prospects for workers to form unions in a fast-growing and largely low-wage swath of the U.S. workforce, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) redefined yesterday the standards for determining when more than one firm will be considered “joint employers” of a group of workers. The new standard is largely a return to a broader, more inclusive definition used before the Reagan-era NLRB tightened the rules...
The Pacific Coast Farm-Worker Rebellion The Nation ....While the most dramatic protest this year has taken place in Baja California, the same anger is building among indigenous farm workers all along the Pacific Coast, from San Quintín in Mexico to Burlington, an hour south of the US border with Canada. Two years ago Triqui and Mixtec workers struck strawberry fields in Skagit County in Washington State. Two years before that, Triqui workers picking peas in the Salinas Valley rebelled against an inhuman work quota, and immigration raids...
Autoworkers Union Passes Strike Authorization Measure 24/7 Wall St ...In a procedural vote completed last week, workers at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. voted heavily in favor of going on strike against the company if the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) determines that Chrysler has not bargained in good faith. Chrysler and the UAW kicked off new contract negotiations in July, and the union has also started negotiations with Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co...
Pittsburgh Company Looks for Scabs to Work 84 Hours a Week During Steelworker Lockout Alternet ...In Pittsburgh, the firm Allegheny Technologies has been involved in a labor dispute with United Steelworkers that has let to 2,000 members being locked out over the course of this month. As Sean Kitchen discovered, the company Storm Engineering, which finds scab workers to break strikes, has placed an ad on Craigslist looking for workers to work 84-hour-week during the lockout...
Social Justice & Other News
Outrage Follows Death of Young Black Man, Jailed for Stealing $5 of Snacks Common Dreams ...Heartbreak swelled on Friday afternoon after the news broke that a mentally ill black man from Virginia died in a jail cell on August 19 after spending four months behind bars for allegedly stealing a bottle of Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar, and a Zebra Cake worth a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven. Response on social media reflected growing public awareness—and outrage—about the overlapping scourges of institutionalized racism, a dysfunctional criminal justice system, and a troubling gap in mental health care...
Chris Christie Proposes Tracking Immigrants the Way FedEx Tracks Packages New York Times ...Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Saturday that if he were elected president he would combat illegal immigration by creating a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages. Mr. Christie, who is far back in the pack of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system...
Teamsters Women’s Conference Inspires Teamster.org ...The 2015 Teamsters Women’s Conference took place in Boston Friday, the second day of the annual event. Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall addressed more than one thousand Teamster women who have gathered for three days of education, inspiration and sisterhood. View photos from Day 2 of the event here. “Teamster women are dedicated members and leaders. You’re motivated and you know how to get things done. You play such an incredibly important role,” Hall said...
Vistar Drivers and Warehouse Workers Join Teamsters Local 630 Teamster.org ...California warehouse workers and drivers at Vistar, a Performance Food Group (PFG) company, have voted 70 percent in favor of joining Teamsters Local 630 in Los Angeles, Calif. There are 71 workers in the bargaining unit and all but one participated in the Aug. 27 election. The workers at Vistar decided to organize to address the lack of respect, low wages and inadequate health benefits at the company...
Waste Workers in California Join Teamsters Local 137 Teamster.org ...Today, drivers at Waste Management, Inc. in Redding, California voted by a 2-1 margin to join Teamsters Local 137. The workers approached the local union in mid-July about joining the union, and Local 137 filed for an election on August 3, 2015. The vote today was 16-8. There are 36 drivers in the bargaining unit...
Local 727 Wins Fight for Osco Pharmacist’s Reinstatement Local 727 ...An arbitrator ruled that the company wrongfully terminated Teamsters Local 727 Osco pharmacist member Wanda Froehlich last year and that the company must reinstate her with over a year’s worth of full back pay and benefits. Froehlich, a 20-year Osco employee, was unjustly terminated June 6, 2014. Management fired her without notice of the charges...
Labor sees organizing boon from U.S. ruling St. Louis Post-Dispatch ...Rome Aloise, president of the Teamsters in Northern California, said the Browning-Ferris ruling means Google will now have to be part of the discussions about working conditions with the union and the contractor. It was a local branch of the Teamsters that originally brought the complaint about a union election at the Browning-Ferris recycling plant...
Global Labor & Trade
Big Sugar’s Fight to Keep U.S. Import Limits Delaying Trade Deal Washington Post ...A sweet deal for American sugar farmers is compounding delays in a proposed trade agreement affecting 40 percent of the world’s economy. The commodity has become a sticky subject in talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP, as it’s known, would link a dozen countries and, its proponents say, make it easier for U.S. companies to sell goods around the world. But the trade deal may also weaken protections for the sugar industry...
Amari says TPP may be halted if no deal is reached before Canada election in October Japan Times ...Negotiations for a multilateral Pacific Rim free trade agreement may be halted if the 12 participating countries cannot strike a broad deal before a general election in Canada in October, Japanese Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari said Friday. “After election campaigning starts in Canada, it will be difficult” to continue negotiations, Amari said in an interview...
Mixed Views on Finalizing the Trans Pacific Partnership WNAX ...U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman expressed optimism recently that negotiators are close to wrapping up a final Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. Iowa Farm Bureau President Craig Hill says he’s glad the trade leader is positive about progress, but thinks it may be tough to achieve yet this year. Hill says if the Trans Pacific Partnership runs into 2016, it could get muddled up in Presidential politics...
Disposable People: Obama, the TPP, and the Betrayal of Human Rights (opinion) San Diego Free Press ...By ignoring modern day slavery to advance the TPP, Obama has given the lie to the rhetoric of TPP advocates with all their bluster about how this trade deal was somehow about a more progressive world order with regard to labor and human rights. "The administration’s alleged willingness to turn a blind eye to trafficking abuses in Malaysia in order to get the TPP done also does not bode well for the hope of any enforcement of labor and environmental provisions were the TPP actually enacted"...
80,000 in Ireland Protest 'Austerity' Water Bills TeleSUR ...More than 80,000 Irish protested in Dublin Saturday against the planned introduction of municipal water charges. The massive crowd flooded the Irish capital, with some protesters carrying placards reading, “Scrap fraud water charges or collapse next election.” The march was the fifth major protest against water charges in the past 12 months, organized by the umbrella group of social movements and unions...
Unraveling Why So Many Firefighters Perished in the Tianjin Blast Slate ...That so many firefighters would die in the line of duty struck a painful chord in Tianjin and spurred a heart-wrenching search for answers. Government officials and the public are now pushing to find out exactly what happened that night and why. Within days of the blaze, the search for answers started shedding light on a murky business world tied to the trading, transporting, and storing of hazardous chemicals in China...
State & Living Wage Battles
Veto session may feature right to work News-Press Now ...Local lawmakers are preparing for a September veto session at the Missouri Capitol, where the contentious right-to-work issue may resurface on their desks. The Missouri General Assembly’s annual session, to consider bills vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon, is set to commence Sept. 16 in Jefferson City...
N.J. Senate prez pushing for paid sick leave law, taxing hospitals NJ.com ...State Senate President Stephen Sweeney says he remains committed to passing legislation that would require businesses to provide paid sick days and for nonprofit hospitals to pay property taxes. But he doesn't see either issue gaining momentum until after the Assembly elections in November...
Texas Asks Full Appeals Court to Hear Voter ID Case Texas Tribune ...Continuing to protect a voter identification law that courts say discriminates against Hispanics and African Americans, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked a full federal appeals court to hear his arguments about why the state’s requirements at the polls do not violate the Voting Rights Act. In a series of filings Friday, the Republican asked the full U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case...
Is It Game Over for One of America's Most Fanatic Tea Party Governors? Alternet ...Maine’s angriest white guy, Tea Party Republican Gov. Paul LePage, may have finally crossed a legal line when he told a charter school to withdraw a job offer to a top Democratic political opponent or else lose a $530,000 state subsidy. That led the legislature’s Government Oversight Committee this summer to unanimously call for an investigation into whether LePage illegally abused his office’s authority...
Emergency rule filed related to prevailing wage changes Metro News ...WorkForce West Virginia filed an emergency rule Friday related to changes made in the prevailing wage statute. The rule filed defines the regions of the state to be used in the calculation of prevailing wage, as well as a procedure for those wishing to object to the calculation formula...
Walmart Cuts Workers’ Hours After Raising Its Minimum Wage Earlier This Year Think Progress ...After raising the minimum wage for its lowest compensated workers, Walmart is now cutting some workers’ hours to try to trim costs. Store managers were recently told to cut back on hours to reduce costs, which has led to them eliminating hours from the schedule, telling workers to leave their shifts before they end, or having employees take longer lunches, Bloomberg News reports...
U.S. Labor
NLRB Decision Could Mean Excellent News for Fast Food and Other Low-Wage Workers In These Times ...In a decision that could greatly improve prospects for workers to form unions in a fast-growing and largely low-wage swath of the U.S. workforce, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) redefined yesterday the standards for determining when more than one firm will be considered “joint employers” of a group of workers. The new standard is largely a return to a broader, more inclusive definition used before the Reagan-era NLRB tightened the rules...
The Pacific Coast Farm-Worker Rebellion The Nation ....While the most dramatic protest this year has taken place in Baja California, the same anger is building among indigenous farm workers all along the Pacific Coast, from San Quintín in Mexico to Burlington, an hour south of the US border with Canada. Two years ago Triqui and Mixtec workers struck strawberry fields in Skagit County in Washington State. Two years before that, Triqui workers picking peas in the Salinas Valley rebelled against an inhuman work quota, and immigration raids...
Autoworkers Union Passes Strike Authorization Measure 24/7 Wall St ...In a procedural vote completed last week, workers at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. voted heavily in favor of going on strike against the company if the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) determines that Chrysler has not bargained in good faith. Chrysler and the UAW kicked off new contract negotiations in July, and the union has also started negotiations with Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co...
Pittsburgh Company Looks for Scabs to Work 84 Hours a Week During Steelworker Lockout Alternet ...In Pittsburgh, the firm Allegheny Technologies has been involved in a labor dispute with United Steelworkers that has let to 2,000 members being locked out over the course of this month. As Sean Kitchen discovered, the company Storm Engineering, which finds scab workers to break strikes, has placed an ad on Craigslist looking for workers to work 84-hour-week during the lockout...
Social Justice & Other News
Outrage Follows Death of Young Black Man, Jailed for Stealing $5 of Snacks Common Dreams ...Heartbreak swelled on Friday afternoon after the news broke that a mentally ill black man from Virginia died in a jail cell on August 19 after spending four months behind bars for allegedly stealing a bottle of Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar, and a Zebra Cake worth a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven. Response on social media reflected growing public awareness—and outrage—about the overlapping scourges of institutionalized racism, a dysfunctional criminal justice system, and a troubling gap in mental health care...
Chris Christie Proposes Tracking Immigrants the Way FedEx Tracks Packages New York Times ...Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Saturday that if he were elected president he would combat illegal immigration by creating a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages. Mr. Christie, who is far back in the pack of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system...
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Today's Teamster News 07.22.15
Teamsters
Port Truck Drivers At Pac 9 Begin Strike Teamster.org ...Port truck drivers at Pac 9 in Los Angeles/Long Beach began a strike today to protest against their continued misclassification as independent contractors. While on strike they will continue their legal fight to recoup stolen wages and many will support their families by working at one of four Teamster companies - Eco Flow Transportation, Shippers Transport Express, Toll Group or Horizon Lines...
Local 727 Protects Wages, Working Conditions for Arlington OTB Members Local 272 ...Teamsters Local 727-represented Arlington Racecourse OTB workers ratified a new one-year agreement that protects their wages, benefits and working conditions. The agreement also includes an economic re-opener in the event that gaming legislation is passed. “The state’s horseracing industry is facing obstacles, but we were able to preserve our members’ jobs and secure fair wages and working conditions,” said John Coli Jr., President of Local 727...
Employee Misclassification Hearings Begin in Georgia Teamster.org ...Today in Savannah, Georgia, the site of one of the nation's largest ports, a public hearing will be conducted to hear cases of employee misclassification - 2,000 of which have been brought by port truck drivers misclassified as independent contractors. “We’re the lowest paid in the industry. Everybody else got a future in it but the driver. It’s time for a change and that’s why we’re raising our voices tomorrow.” John Jackson, Savannah, port driver...
Contract Truck Drivers Strike Indefinitely Against Pacific 9 Transportation In LA CBS ...Port truck drivers went on strike Tuesday to improve conditions for themselves, their families and all drivers. Workers declared their intent to not return to Pac 9 until they are properly classified as employees and provided safe trucks to drive, officials said. In fact, several workers have already joined a new Teamster company. “Pac 9 drivers have courageously withstood retaliation and mistreatment by their employer for over two years,” said Fred Potter, Teamsters Port Division Director...
Port truck drivers plan sixth strike against company LA Times ...Drivers at a trucking company serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports plan to walk away from their jobs Tuesday in an ongoing struggle to be deemed employees, a union representative said. The picket lines, scheduled to go up around the company’s truck yard and port terminals at 6 a.m. Tuesday, will mark the sixth strike against the company in nearly two years, Teamsters Union spokeswoman Barbara Maynard said...
Global Labor & Trade
Thousands of Garment Factory Workers Across Cambodia Are Fainting on the Job In These Times ...At the end of June, nearly 350 workers fainted in garment factories across Cambodia, with more than 100 collapsing on one day alone. These developments are part of a much wider pattern in the country: In 2011, there were 2,071 incidents of workers fainting, in 2012 there were 2,100. Last spring, nearly 120 workers fainted at two textile factories that make products for Puma and Adidas. From July of last year on, there were 733 fainting incidents across 14 different factories...
Work moves ahead on TPP trade pact, but nations still divided over deal Pew Research Center ...Trade ministers from the U.S. and 11 other nations from both sides of the Pacific will meet in Hawaii next Tuesday to attempt to finalize what would be the world’s largest regional trade and investment agreement: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But while the pact has general public support in most of the countries involved, there are also deep partisan divisions in some of them over the issue. This partisanship suggests that TPP, one of President Barack Obama’s principal foreign economic policy legacies, is not yet a done deal...
US, Malaysia show least support for Trans-Pacific partnership - poll Turkish Weekly ...Americans and Malaysians show least support for the US-promoted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal among all participants, with 38 percent of citizens backing the potential agreement, Pew Research Center poll, issued on Tuesday, found. “The weakest support is in the US and in Malaysia (38%),” the poll read. The TPP is set to become the largest free trade deal, involving 12 countries from the Asia-Pacific region...
Ottawa says it won’t be 'bullied' by U.S. over TPP dairy negotiations Globe & Mail ...The Canadian government says it will not be bullied as the United States ratchets up pressure on Canada’s heavily protected dairy sector ahead of what could be the final round of talks for a Pacific Rim trade deal spanning 12 countries. More than 20 members of U.S. Congress have written a letter to the Canadian government accusing it of being “unwilling to seriously engage in market access discussions regarding dairy”...
Company v Country: Investigating the booming and lucrative business of multinational companies suing governments (radio) BBC ...The strangely-named investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) system is built into thousands of treaties between countries around the world. It is a key part of negotiations for a new trade and investment treaty between the US and the EU. Yet on both sides of the Atlantic, resistance is mounting. Michael Robinson digs into the ISDS mechanism to find out if the fears are justified. Are these little-known lawsuits threatening the democratic process?...
Trade debate masks America’s competitive disadvantage (opinion) PBS ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership may be out of the headlines momentarily, but it continues to be as contentious as ever. the debate fails to include the real issue: the ability of the United States as a country to compete in the world economy. A winning strategy for the U.S. today requires much more than cooperation between government and business. We need a highly skilled work force, which in turn means a world-class education system and access for all. We need to repair and improve our infrastructure...
Austerity-hit Ireland debates how to spend extra €1.5bn Financial Times ...For two days last week, politicians, civil society activists and business leaders gathered at Dublin Castle to discuss something rare in austerity-ravaged Ireland — how to spend an extra €1.5bn. The sum represents the “fiscal space” the government says it has to cut taxes and increase spending in the 2016 budget...
Greece's debt crisis explained, in mythological terms LA Times ...Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras successfully persuaded his fellow Greeks to reject austerity measures in a recent referendum, but it was a "Pyrrhic victory" since he now faces an even more devastated economy and deeper austerity cuts. Against his own party's ideals, Tsipras has now committed himself to more "draconian" budget cuts, with Greece forced to carry out the "Sisyphean task" of ever-increasing austerity...
State & Living Wage Battles
National push for $15 minimum wage hits home for U.S. Senate workers Washington Post ...Baker is among a group of federal contract workers who are joining with union-backed advocates to call on lawmakers to do more to protect an increasingly privatized federal workforce, where low wages and minimal benefits often clash with the rhetoric espoused by elected leaders. “We work for them every day,” Baker said. “They have a clean environment; they’ve got good food to eat. They say, ‘Thank you very much’ and ‘Good work.’ But that’s not enough. I need more so I can pay my bills -- $15 and a union”...
North Carolina Just Relaxed Its Voter ID Law, But Will Voters Get The Memo? Huffington Post ...Voting rights advocates were at least somewhat pleased when the North Carolina General Assembly unexpectedly voted in June to modify the state's strict requirement that voters present government-issued photo ID at the polls. But now, they're concerned that the state won't adequately educate people about the softened ID law before it goes into effect next year...
L.A. County supervisors agree to boost minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 LA Times ...Organized labor won an important victory Tuesday when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the minimum wage to $15, but it now faces a more daunting political challenge: convincing other local governments to join the movement. The widely anticipated move by the nation’s largest local government applies to unincorporated areas and hundreds of thousands of employees, mirroring a similar action by the city of Los Angeles...
New York fast food workers’ $15 wage vote on Wednesday KFOR ...New York’s fast food workers could soon get paid a lot more. On Wednesday, the wage board is set to vote on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage for fast food workers to $15 an hour. The meeting will be held in New York City at 2.30 pm. New York’s minimum wage for all workers has risen from $7.25 to $8.75 an hour in the last two years. By the end of this year, it will be $9...
If you want a living wage, be prepared to go on strike for it (opinion) The Guardian ...Is the best way to achieve higher wages really legislation? Many think so. Across the country, working people are eagerly waiting to feel the effects of new laws that raise the minimum wage. Seattle will see an increase to $15 by 2021, and Los Angeles will see the same increase by 2020. But this strategy detracts from the only power dynamic that can actually overturn economic inequality: class struggle...
How the American South Drives the Low-Wage Economy American Prospect ...Today, as the auto and aerospace manufacturers of Europe and East Asia open low-wage assembly plants in Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi, the South has assumed a comparable role once more. Indeed, the South today shares more features with its antebellum ancestor than it has in a very long time. White Southern elites and their powerful allies among non-Southern business interests seek to expand to the rest of the nation the South’s subjugation of workers and its suppression of the voting rights of those who might oppose their policies...
U.S. Labor
1,000 NYC airport workers set to strike starting Wednesday Associated Press ...More than 1,000 subcontracted airport security officers, baggage handlers and wheelchair attendants at the city's two major airports plan to strike starting Wednesday night, according to a union that seeks to represent them. Officials with Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union said picketing would begin at Kennedy Airport at 10 p.m. Wednesday and at LaGuardia at 6 a.m. Thursday...
UAW Donates $50,000 in Memory of the Charleston 9 AFL-CIO ...Members of the UAW on Thursday announced a $50,000 donation to the Rev. Clementa Pinckney fund in honor of the Charleston 9 who were tragically murdered on June 17. “UAW members often speak of bridging the gap to lift up our communities. Through our long history of civil rights advocacy, economic justice advocacy and economic fairness advocacy, the very ideals that we have come to learn were so near and dear to those who lost their lives June 17 at the Emanuel AME Church,” said UAW President Dennis Williams...
Legislators told trucking companies deliberately misclassify workers Savannah Now ...Two independent truckers choked up separately as they testified before a legislative committee Tuesday about the toll they say comes from companies misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of employees. The emotional moments came in the middle and end of a daylong hearing by a subcommittee of the Senate Insurance and Labor Committee assigned to study worker classification...
Unemployment Rates a Mixed Bag Associated Press ...Unemployment rates fell last month in 21 U.S. states and were unchanged in 17, as widespread job growth and a shrinking workforce reduce the ranks of those out of work. The Labor Department said Tuesday that unemployment rates rose in 12 states. Employers added jobs in 31 states and cut them in 17, with little change in the remaining two states. The figures reflect steady hiring nationwide. Employers added 223,000 jobs in June, and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent from 5.5 percent...
Time Is Political Jacobin ...A recent survey of New York City retail workers found that only 17 percent of workers had a regular work schedule. Retail workers reported that in order to get more hours or more desirable shifts they sometimes had to compete with coworkers to sell a certain amount, or sign up the most people for store credit cards. In this way, they were battling with each other just for the ability to work and earn more...
Miscellaneous
Obama Administration Announces New Rules Protecting Military Families From Predatory Lenders Think Progress ...America’s armed forces personnel will no longer be exposed to exploitative payday loans after the Department of Defense (DOD) put new, long-delayed rules into place on Tuesday. The news marks a victory for an idea that had seemed at risk of being killed just months ago by lawmakers friendly to the lending industry...
Five Years Later, the Unfulfilled Promise of Dodd-Frank Common Dreams ...With several key promises of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act still unfulfilled, "Americans cannot be comforted that Wall Street will not wreak havoc again," according to a new report from the watchdog group Public Citizen. "Five years after President Barack Obama signed this legislation, Dodd-Frank remains largely incomplete," said Bartlett Naylor, Public Citizen’s financial policy advocate and author of the report...
6 insidious ways the one percent is ripping you off Salon ...In the wake of the financial crisis, there was a momentof hope that predatory businesses would no longer be able to pick at our bones like vultures. Instead, we’ve seen Dodd-Frank weakened and stalled, and the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stymied at every turn. In the latest round, Republicans are thwarting the confirmation of Richard Cordray to lead the Bureau. Meanwhile, we continue to get fleeced...
“I Will Light You Up!” Disturbing Dashcam Footage Shows the Traffic Stop That Led to Sandra Bland’s Arrest. Slate ...Tuesday afternoon saw the release of extraordinary dashcam footage of the traffic stop that led to Bland’s arrest. In the video, you can see Bland’s car making a lane change right before the officer who was driving behind her, who has been identified as Texas Department of Public Safety trooper Brian Encinia, pulls her over. “You seem very irritated,” he says to her, while standing next to the driver’s side window...
Why the Black Lives Matter Protest at Netroots Nation Was Long Overdue (opinion) The Nation ...The action kicked off a necessary conversation about the Democratic candidates’ reluctance to address racism directly, the problem with saying “all lives matter,” and why economic populism devoid of a race and gender analysis will neither satisfy nor mobilize a sizeable chunk of progressive voters. These activists have changed the tone for the 2016 election season, putting Democrats on notice that they cannot expect the support of black voters—particularly young black voters—without speaking directly and meaningfully to issues of race and state power currently gripping the country...
Port Truck Drivers At Pac 9 Begin Strike Teamster.org ...Port truck drivers at Pac 9 in Los Angeles/Long Beach began a strike today to protest against their continued misclassification as independent contractors. While on strike they will continue their legal fight to recoup stolen wages and many will support their families by working at one of four Teamster companies - Eco Flow Transportation, Shippers Transport Express, Toll Group or Horizon Lines...
Local 727 Protects Wages, Working Conditions for Arlington OTB Members Local 272 ...Teamsters Local 727-represented Arlington Racecourse OTB workers ratified a new one-year agreement that protects their wages, benefits and working conditions. The agreement also includes an economic re-opener in the event that gaming legislation is passed. “The state’s horseracing industry is facing obstacles, but we were able to preserve our members’ jobs and secure fair wages and working conditions,” said John Coli Jr., President of Local 727...
Employee Misclassification Hearings Begin in Georgia Teamster.org ...Today in Savannah, Georgia, the site of one of the nation's largest ports, a public hearing will be conducted to hear cases of employee misclassification - 2,000 of which have been brought by port truck drivers misclassified as independent contractors. “We’re the lowest paid in the industry. Everybody else got a future in it but the driver. It’s time for a change and that’s why we’re raising our voices tomorrow.” John Jackson, Savannah, port driver...
Contract Truck Drivers Strike Indefinitely Against Pacific 9 Transportation In LA CBS ...Port truck drivers went on strike Tuesday to improve conditions for themselves, their families and all drivers. Workers declared their intent to not return to Pac 9 until they are properly classified as employees and provided safe trucks to drive, officials said. In fact, several workers have already joined a new Teamster company. “Pac 9 drivers have courageously withstood retaliation and mistreatment by their employer for over two years,” said Fred Potter, Teamsters Port Division Director...
Port truck drivers plan sixth strike against company LA Times ...Drivers at a trucking company serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports plan to walk away from their jobs Tuesday in an ongoing struggle to be deemed employees, a union representative said. The picket lines, scheduled to go up around the company’s truck yard and port terminals at 6 a.m. Tuesday, will mark the sixth strike against the company in nearly two years, Teamsters Union spokeswoman Barbara Maynard said...
Global Labor & Trade
Thousands of Garment Factory Workers Across Cambodia Are Fainting on the Job In These Times ...At the end of June, nearly 350 workers fainted in garment factories across Cambodia, with more than 100 collapsing on one day alone. These developments are part of a much wider pattern in the country: In 2011, there were 2,071 incidents of workers fainting, in 2012 there were 2,100. Last spring, nearly 120 workers fainted at two textile factories that make products for Puma and Adidas. From July of last year on, there were 733 fainting incidents across 14 different factories...
Work moves ahead on TPP trade pact, but nations still divided over deal Pew Research Center ...Trade ministers from the U.S. and 11 other nations from both sides of the Pacific will meet in Hawaii next Tuesday to attempt to finalize what would be the world’s largest regional trade and investment agreement: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But while the pact has general public support in most of the countries involved, there are also deep partisan divisions in some of them over the issue. This partisanship suggests that TPP, one of President Barack Obama’s principal foreign economic policy legacies, is not yet a done deal...
US, Malaysia show least support for Trans-Pacific partnership - poll Turkish Weekly ...Americans and Malaysians show least support for the US-promoted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal among all participants, with 38 percent of citizens backing the potential agreement, Pew Research Center poll, issued on Tuesday, found. “The weakest support is in the US and in Malaysia (38%),” the poll read. The TPP is set to become the largest free trade deal, involving 12 countries from the Asia-Pacific region...
Ottawa says it won’t be 'bullied' by U.S. over TPP dairy negotiations Globe & Mail ...The Canadian government says it will not be bullied as the United States ratchets up pressure on Canada’s heavily protected dairy sector ahead of what could be the final round of talks for a Pacific Rim trade deal spanning 12 countries. More than 20 members of U.S. Congress have written a letter to the Canadian government accusing it of being “unwilling to seriously engage in market access discussions regarding dairy”...
Company v Country: Investigating the booming and lucrative business of multinational companies suing governments (radio) BBC ...The strangely-named investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) system is built into thousands of treaties between countries around the world. It is a key part of negotiations for a new trade and investment treaty between the US and the EU. Yet on both sides of the Atlantic, resistance is mounting. Michael Robinson digs into the ISDS mechanism to find out if the fears are justified. Are these little-known lawsuits threatening the democratic process?...
Trade debate masks America’s competitive disadvantage (opinion) PBS ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership may be out of the headlines momentarily, but it continues to be as contentious as ever. the debate fails to include the real issue: the ability of the United States as a country to compete in the world economy. A winning strategy for the U.S. today requires much more than cooperation between government and business. We need a highly skilled work force, which in turn means a world-class education system and access for all. We need to repair and improve our infrastructure...
Austerity-hit Ireland debates how to spend extra €1.5bn Financial Times ...For two days last week, politicians, civil society activists and business leaders gathered at Dublin Castle to discuss something rare in austerity-ravaged Ireland — how to spend an extra €1.5bn. The sum represents the “fiscal space” the government says it has to cut taxes and increase spending in the 2016 budget...
Greece's debt crisis explained, in mythological terms LA Times ...Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras successfully persuaded his fellow Greeks to reject austerity measures in a recent referendum, but it was a "Pyrrhic victory" since he now faces an even more devastated economy and deeper austerity cuts. Against his own party's ideals, Tsipras has now committed himself to more "draconian" budget cuts, with Greece forced to carry out the "Sisyphean task" of ever-increasing austerity...
State & Living Wage Battles
National push for $15 minimum wage hits home for U.S. Senate workers Washington Post ...Baker is among a group of federal contract workers who are joining with union-backed advocates to call on lawmakers to do more to protect an increasingly privatized federal workforce, where low wages and minimal benefits often clash with the rhetoric espoused by elected leaders. “We work for them every day,” Baker said. “They have a clean environment; they’ve got good food to eat. They say, ‘Thank you very much’ and ‘Good work.’ But that’s not enough. I need more so I can pay my bills -- $15 and a union”...
North Carolina Just Relaxed Its Voter ID Law, But Will Voters Get The Memo? Huffington Post ...Voting rights advocates were at least somewhat pleased when the North Carolina General Assembly unexpectedly voted in June to modify the state's strict requirement that voters present government-issued photo ID at the polls. But now, they're concerned that the state won't adequately educate people about the softened ID law before it goes into effect next year...
L.A. County supervisors agree to boost minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 LA Times ...Organized labor won an important victory Tuesday when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the minimum wage to $15, but it now faces a more daunting political challenge: convincing other local governments to join the movement. The widely anticipated move by the nation’s largest local government applies to unincorporated areas and hundreds of thousands of employees, mirroring a similar action by the city of Los Angeles...
New York fast food workers’ $15 wage vote on Wednesday KFOR ...New York’s fast food workers could soon get paid a lot more. On Wednesday, the wage board is set to vote on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage for fast food workers to $15 an hour. The meeting will be held in New York City at 2.30 pm. New York’s minimum wage for all workers has risen from $7.25 to $8.75 an hour in the last two years. By the end of this year, it will be $9...
If you want a living wage, be prepared to go on strike for it (opinion) The Guardian ...Is the best way to achieve higher wages really legislation? Many think so. Across the country, working people are eagerly waiting to feel the effects of new laws that raise the minimum wage. Seattle will see an increase to $15 by 2021, and Los Angeles will see the same increase by 2020. But this strategy detracts from the only power dynamic that can actually overturn economic inequality: class struggle...
How the American South Drives the Low-Wage Economy American Prospect ...Today, as the auto and aerospace manufacturers of Europe and East Asia open low-wage assembly plants in Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi, the South has assumed a comparable role once more. Indeed, the South today shares more features with its antebellum ancestor than it has in a very long time. White Southern elites and their powerful allies among non-Southern business interests seek to expand to the rest of the nation the South’s subjugation of workers and its suppression of the voting rights of those who might oppose their policies...
U.S. Labor
1,000 NYC airport workers set to strike starting Wednesday Associated Press ...More than 1,000 subcontracted airport security officers, baggage handlers and wheelchair attendants at the city's two major airports plan to strike starting Wednesday night, according to a union that seeks to represent them. Officials with Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union said picketing would begin at Kennedy Airport at 10 p.m. Wednesday and at LaGuardia at 6 a.m. Thursday...
UAW Donates $50,000 in Memory of the Charleston 9 AFL-CIO ...Members of the UAW on Thursday announced a $50,000 donation to the Rev. Clementa Pinckney fund in honor of the Charleston 9 who were tragically murdered on June 17. “UAW members often speak of bridging the gap to lift up our communities. Through our long history of civil rights advocacy, economic justice advocacy and economic fairness advocacy, the very ideals that we have come to learn were so near and dear to those who lost their lives June 17 at the Emanuel AME Church,” said UAW President Dennis Williams...
Legislators told trucking companies deliberately misclassify workers Savannah Now ...Two independent truckers choked up separately as they testified before a legislative committee Tuesday about the toll they say comes from companies misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of employees. The emotional moments came in the middle and end of a daylong hearing by a subcommittee of the Senate Insurance and Labor Committee assigned to study worker classification...
Unemployment Rates a Mixed Bag Associated Press ...Unemployment rates fell last month in 21 U.S. states and were unchanged in 17, as widespread job growth and a shrinking workforce reduce the ranks of those out of work. The Labor Department said Tuesday that unemployment rates rose in 12 states. Employers added jobs in 31 states and cut them in 17, with little change in the remaining two states. The figures reflect steady hiring nationwide. Employers added 223,000 jobs in June, and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent from 5.5 percent...
Time Is Political Jacobin ...A recent survey of New York City retail workers found that only 17 percent of workers had a regular work schedule. Retail workers reported that in order to get more hours or more desirable shifts they sometimes had to compete with coworkers to sell a certain amount, or sign up the most people for store credit cards. In this way, they were battling with each other just for the ability to work and earn more...
Miscellaneous
Obama Administration Announces New Rules Protecting Military Families From Predatory Lenders Think Progress ...America’s armed forces personnel will no longer be exposed to exploitative payday loans after the Department of Defense (DOD) put new, long-delayed rules into place on Tuesday. The news marks a victory for an idea that had seemed at risk of being killed just months ago by lawmakers friendly to the lending industry...
Five Years Later, the Unfulfilled Promise of Dodd-Frank Common Dreams ...With several key promises of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act still unfulfilled, "Americans cannot be comforted that Wall Street will not wreak havoc again," according to a new report from the watchdog group Public Citizen. "Five years after President Barack Obama signed this legislation, Dodd-Frank remains largely incomplete," said Bartlett Naylor, Public Citizen’s financial policy advocate and author of the report...
6 insidious ways the one percent is ripping you off Salon ...In the wake of the financial crisis, there was a momentof hope that predatory businesses would no longer be able to pick at our bones like vultures. Instead, we’ve seen Dodd-Frank weakened and stalled, and the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stymied at every turn. In the latest round, Republicans are thwarting the confirmation of Richard Cordray to lead the Bureau. Meanwhile, we continue to get fleeced...
“I Will Light You Up!” Disturbing Dashcam Footage Shows the Traffic Stop That Led to Sandra Bland’s Arrest. Slate ...Tuesday afternoon saw the release of extraordinary dashcam footage of the traffic stop that led to Bland’s arrest. In the video, you can see Bland’s car making a lane change right before the officer who was driving behind her, who has been identified as Texas Department of Public Safety trooper Brian Encinia, pulls her over. “You seem very irritated,” he says to her, while standing next to the driver’s side window...
Why the Black Lives Matter Protest at Netroots Nation Was Long Overdue (opinion) The Nation ...The action kicked off a necessary conversation about the Democratic candidates’ reluctance to address racism directly, the problem with saying “all lives matter,” and why economic populism devoid of a race and gender analysis will neither satisfy nor mobilize a sizeable chunk of progressive voters. These activists have changed the tone for the 2016 election season, putting Democrats on notice that they cannot expect the support of black voters—particularly young black voters—without speaking directly and meaningfully to issues of race and state power currently gripping the country...
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