Today's Teamster News 01.30.12

Indiana right-to-work law to get final push this week  Reuters   ...Republicans lawmakers were expected to give a final push this week to legislation that would make Indiana the first right-to-work state in the nation's manufacturing belt, dealing a setback to organized labor in a presidential election year...
Sneaky tactics are used for prisons (opinion)  Florida Times-Union   ...With so much at stake, including the jobs of 3,800 corrections employees and the public safety of 18 million Floridians, the rush to privatize prisons is not only an affront to the process but a danger to our citizens...
Heartbeat of protesters is stifled in the capitol  Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative   ...Republicans in the Assembly Session last night, in the process of passing highly controversial mining legislation, claimed they were seeking “decorum” when they ordered law enforcement to clear the gallery of all visitors...
New Yorkers Face “Downward Mobility”  Bloomberg   ...About one third of New York City residents nearing retirement age won’t be able to quit or will have to rely entirely on Social Security because they have less than $10,000 in savings, according to a study released today...
Meet the judge who is driving Wall Street and the SEC nuts  Washington Post   ...Jed Rakoff is driving regulators nuts by refusing to rubber-stamp the kind of deals that have long defined Securities and Exchange Commission justice — boilerplate settlements in which companies use shareholders' money to pay fines while they neither admit nor deny doing anything wrong...
Port of Longview signs off on ILWU and EGT settlement  The Daily News   ...The pact provides a framework for longshoremen to work inside the $200 million grain terminal and end one of the area's longest, angriest labor disputes in decades...

Today's Teamster News 09.22.11

Letters threaten people who have anti-Walker yard signs  TMJ4   ...Mario Rodriguez doesn't hide the fact he's no fan of Scott Walker. But he's upset his opinions made his family a target. His wife, who works for the state, received a threatening letter in the mail Monday...
Rove-affiliated PACs to spend big in Ohio  Columbus Dispatch   ...A pair of potent political action committees associated with GOP political guru Karl Rove plan to spend heavily to help Republicans win federal races in Ohio next year...
Trade deficit has cost Illinois 118,000 jobs  Chicago Sun-Times   ...In Illinois, 118,200 net jobs were lost or displaced between 2001 and 2010 because of the trade deficit with China, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute...
Farmworkers file suit against 4 fast-food chains  News-Press   ...at least 2,000 workers ... picked tomatoes from September 2007 through October 2010, a period when the four fast food giants individually agreed to pay farmworkers a penny more per pound for the Florida tomatoes they purchased. But the money for the three harvest seasons was never paid...
Cops arrest Longshore protesters in Longview  Associated Press   ... A conflict over Longshore jobs at a new grain terminal in Longview flared Wednesday with the arrest of protesters blocking railroad tracks...
Secretary of State finds no student voter fraud but still pledges to improve system  Bangor Daily News   ...After a two-month investigation into possible voter fraud by college students and noncitizens, Maine Secretary of State Charlie Summers said Wednesday his evidence showed that none of the students committed fraud and only one noncitizen voted in Maine... 
IRS gives employers break on misclassified workers  Associated Press   ...The Internal Revenue Service is offering a break to employers who come clean about wrongly classifying workers as independent contractors to avoid paying federal payroll taxes, the agency announced Wednesday...

Longshoremen back to work in WA (video)

The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports:

Longshoremen returned to work in Seattle and Tacoma on Friday morning, ending a one-day walkout that closed the ports in both cities.

The closure followed on an incident in Longview, where hundreds of International Longshore and Warehouse Union members storm a grain terminal Thursday morning.

Longshoremen in Longview have had a long and bitter dispute about whether they should be doing the work at the grain terminal.

A federal judge on Thursday issued an injunction against the union's tactics in Longview and warned union members not to violate the order.

gatekeeper1950 has an excellent history of the year-long dispute here. He tells us what happened yesterday:

The confrontation between West Coast longshore workers and an anti-union exporter exploded as pickets massed on railroad tracks by the hundreds yesterday to block grain shipments.Police used clubs and pepper spray on protesters in Longview, Washington, as they made 19 arrests.Early this morning a terminal there was invaded and hoppers holding about 10,000 tons of grain were opened onto railroad tracks.Ports in Washington shut down completely Thursday as hundreds of longshore workers rushed to Longview, in the state’s southwestern corner.Bill Proctor, a Longshore Union (ILWU) retiree, was with fellow retirees and active workers on an early morning picket line at a Seattle grain terminal. He said, “If that facility is allowed to go non-ILWU, other facilities will be tempted to follow suit. And the grain terminals on the coast are all going into contract bargaining next month.”A foreman came out to politely assure the picketers that no one would do their work.

EGT Development, a consortium of three companies, wants to operate its new $200 million grain terminal in Longview using non-ILWU labor, despite a contract with the port requiring it to do so. When the ILWU protested, the company signed up with an Operating Engineers local.

Every other major grain terminal on the West Coast is operated by ILWU labor, and the union asserts that EGT’s goal is to go non-union altogether, ending generations of good jobs. 

Here's the caption to the video above:

August 29, 2011: This disturbing video shows an unidentified driver plowing a large vehicle through a nonviolent worker demonstration at the EGT grain facility at the Port of Longview, Washington. The car appears to speed up as it strikes two of the workers. One of the workers is pushed several feet as the car continues moving, and the driver doesn't slow down or render aid. The driver of the vehicle has not been arrested for assaulting the workers, for failing to render aid or for leaving the scene of an accident.

And here's some context for the assault on workers at other parts of Sea-Tac, thanks to Teamsters Local 117.

Instead of generating good, family-wage jobs for our region, the Port has allowed too many companies that do business at the airport and the seaport to pollute our environment and take advantage of workers...

Many airport workers are simply unable to make ends meet. These baggage handlers, skycaps, concession workers, janitors, and wheelchair pushers struggle to support their families by working multiple jobs with poverty wages, no health care, and in a hostile work environment. At the seaport, independent truck drivers work for near minimum wage delivering the goods that drive our economy.

Read the whole thing here.