Today's Teamster News 11.03.15

TEAMSTERS
Pilgrim Parking Employees Stand Up Against Oppressive Pay, Benefits Offered by Company  Teamster.org  ...Workers at Pilgrim Parking facilities in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., are engaging in ongoing job actions at locations across the area to protest the company’s refusal to give employees a voice in the workplace. Pilgrim Parking workers are poorly compensated, as the company does not meet area standards for wages and benefits...
Port Driver and Warehouse Worker Strikes End With $3.5 Million In New Wage Theft Claims Filed  Teamster.org  ...After five days of active picketing that dramatically impacted trucking companies and the marine terminal operators that continued to allow the trucks of struck companies into their yards, misclassified “independent contractor” drivers from XPO Logistics, Intermodal Bridge Transport (IBT), and Gold Point Transportation ended their strike on October 30...
EVSC, Teamsters Reach Tentative Deal  Tristate Homepage  ...EVSC and Teamsters Local 215 have reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement. This information was announced at EVSC meeting on Monday night. EVSC Board President Mike Duckworth tells Eyewitness News the two sides reached an agreement some time Monday morning. Duckworth says the two sides had been meeting over the weekend and were able to come to a series of agreements...

GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
TPP May Not Pass Due to Anti-Free Trade Provisions That Lack GOP Support  Free Beacon  ...More than twenty Republican members of Congress have said that anti-free trade provisions within the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are holding them back from supporting it, and without their support the deal may not pass. Several of those members have sent letters to President Obama’s lead adviser on trade, Michael Froman, regarding these concerns...
Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership: European Opposition To The TTIP Trade Pact Worries US  IBTimes  ...Europeans are having what U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman calls Europe’s “NAFTA moment.” Froman, who wants to finish the TTIP before President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017, has privately and publicly urged European countries to get ahead of the critics. “This is really the first trade agreement that has become a public controversy in Europe"...
Sounding the TTIP alarm across the European Union  (opinion) New Internationalist  ...Several weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and Britain marched to protest against the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive planned new trade deal between Europe and the US. They were rightly sounding the alarm, as TTIP will greatly reduce the ability of local governments to spend public money for local development...
Oil Workers Strike in Brazil for Wages, Investments, Assets   Rio Times  ...Twelve oil work unions which are part of the Oil Workers Federation (FUP) in Brazil began on November 1st, a strike at Petrobras refineries all over the country. According to union officials, strikers are protesting against Petrobras’ asset sales, investment cuts, project suspensions, and reduction of some workers’ rights. “The strike was agreed on more than 45 days ago. We did try negotiating with Petrobras and the majority shareholder, i.e. the federal government, before stopping work"...
Mahallah Workers End Strike, After Written Guarantee of Demands  Egyptian Streets  ...Workers at Mahallah’s Misr Spinning and Weaving Company ended an 11-day strike Sunday following a written guarantee that they will be granted the 10 percent social allowance promised by the president to be given retroactively starting July. Operations have been “restored fully across all departments,” state-run news agency MENA reported. The company says that the strike has led to losses amounting to at least EGP 25 million...
‘The Nobel Prize Is for Labor Movements around the World’   Solidarity Center  ...The Tunisian General Labor Union (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT), a longtime Solidarity Center partner, was at the forefront of the four organizations that recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said today. In a ceremony at the AFL-CIO honoring UGTT Secretary-General Houcine Abassi, Shuler praised Abassi’s courage and tenacity and called the UGTT’s work “inspirational to us in the United States”...

STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
If Ohio Bans Gerrymandering Today, There Could be Hope for American Democracy  The Nation  ... Ohio Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymandering and establish a bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission to draw legislative district lines, is being pitched as a good-government reform. But that undersells its significance. This is a bold response to America’s broken political processes...
The toxic erosion of voter rights in Alabama  Washington Post  ...Alabama is one of many states with unnecessary voter ID laws, voter-suppression policies passed on the pretext of preventing virtually nonexistent forms of voter fraud. Last month, the state government made things even worse. Its new budget will make it harder to get a driver’s license...
Tacoma voters to decide whether to raise minimum wage  KIRO  ... a raise in the city’s minimum wage, and if so, how much it should be raised. Citizens’ Initiative Measure No. 1 and City of Tacoma Initiative Measure No. 1B concern an increase to the minimum wage.  The results will be released at about 8:15 p.m. Tuesday. The first question is whether or not to raise the minimum wage.  The second question, regardless if you voted yes or no on the first question, is, if the wage is raised, how much to raise it?...
Can Seattle Boot Big Money Out of Elections by Giving Voters "Democracy Vouchers?"  Truthout  ...A group of campaign reform advocates in the city of Seattle has a novel solution to curb the influence of money in political elections: more money. Today, Seattle voters will decide the fate of the Honest Elections ballot initiative, otherwise known as I-122...

U.S. LABOR
Detroit casino workers support strike option  The Detroit News  ...More than 1,300 union employees from Detroit’s three casinos voted Monday night to go on strike if their wage, health care and benefit demands aren’t met. Members of Local 24 of the hospitality union voted overwhelmingly to give their leaders the power to call a strike in order to reach a contract settlement...
VW opposing UAW skilled trades worker vote at Tennessee plant  Reuters  ...Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) opposes a union representation vote by a portion of workers at the automaker's sole U.S. vehicle assembly plant, according to a letter to Chattanooga, Tennessee, employees issued Monday night. Volkswagen has been the most open to the United Auto Workers (UAW) union among foreign manufacturers with assembly plants in the southern United States...
Chicago Teachers Union amps up rhetoric in fight with district  Chicago Tribune  ...The Chicago Teachers Union said Monday that it will check members' appetite for a strike with a "practice vote" later this week after the head of Chicago Public Schools again warned of "drastic cuts" absent a state bailout of district finances. Gov. Bruce Rauner also stepped into the fray, saying at a forum in Bloomington that "misguided state policies" were to blame...
For now, Columbia grad students can't form union - NLRB regional director  Reuters  ...Although a U.S. labor board decision on Friday blocked Columbia University graduate students from trying to form a union, the case could eventually become part of a bid to overturn an 11-year-old prohibition on graduate student unionization. National Labor Relations Board Regional Director Karen Fernbach in New York City rejected a petition from a United Auto Workers affiliate seeking to represent teaching and research assistants at Columbia...
Collective Victory Declared as Obama Takes Small Step to 'Ban the Box'  Common Dreams  ...Following years of organizing by formerly-incarcerated people and their families, President Barack Obama announced Monday that, henceforth, he will instruct some federal employers to "ban the box"—or delay inquiries into a job applicant's incarceration history to curb discrimination and stigma. The proclamation was embraced by rights campaigners...

SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Why California Jails Poor People Unless They Pay The Bail Bondsman  Think Progress  ...California jails could soon stop locking up tens of thousands of people who haven’t even appeared before a judge yet simply because they’re too poor to post bail, if a class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday succeeds. The bail scheduling system converts arrests and criminal allegations into a marketplace...
Seattle Declares Official State Of Emergency Over Homelessness Crisis  Think Progress  ...66 homeless people have died on the streets of Seattle and the surrounding area this year. Mayor Ed Murray has had enough. On Monday, Murray and King County Executive Down Constantine declared states of emergency in Seattle and the surrounding county...

Today's Teamster News 05.16.14

Teamster News
Teamsters say Scott Brown lied to their face  Manchester Union Leader   ...The local Teamsters chapter is accusing Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown of lying to their face over his support of the Keystone XL pipeline...
Teamsters 'out & looking militant' support supersized global fast food strike  TeamsterNation   ...Teamsters took to the streets along with striking fast food workers today, escalating the global movement for fair wages for all workers and the right to join a union...
Teamster presence felt at 9/11 Memorial Museum  TeamsterNation   ...Teamster Local 282 member Manny Rodriguez donated his Teamsters jacket to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the hard hat he wore at Ground Zero and a sculpture of the twin towers burned from World Trade Center steel...
Newburgh PBA, Teamsters, Slam Police Administration  Mid Hudson News   ...The City of Newburgh's PBA claims there is a turf war among crime factions in the city, with bullets flying day and night and the city administration, including Police Chief Michael Ferrera, is doing nothing about it...
Teamsters Reveal What's Really Happening at National Express  teamster.org   ...Evelina Moultrie, a Durham driver in Charleston, S.C., and a member of Teamsters Local 509 in West Columbia, S.C., told the Board about issues with overcrowding, as well as insects and mold on the buses...
Airgas Drivers Join Teamsters Local 25  teamster.org   ...Local 25 in Boston recently organized a group of 17 tankhaul workers who deliver air cylinders to commercial entities in the area...
Trade
Elizabeth Warren Reveals Inside Details of Trade Talks  The Nation   ... “I actually have had supporters of the deal say to me ‘They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.’”...
Second Anniversary of Colombia Pact Spotlights Administration's Failed Promise of Labor Rights Improvements, Now Recycled to Defend TPP Negotiations with Vietnam amid Worker Riots  Public Citizen   ...Undeterred by the ongoing repression of Colombian workers, U.S. trade negotiators are in Vietnam at this very moment in attempt to negotiate via the TPP an expansion of the FTA model to Vietnam, despite the country’s widespread labor abuses...
State Battles
Report indicates Wisconsin added 28,000 jobs last year  Wisconsin Radio Network   ...Figures submitted by the state to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show Wisconsin added just over 28,000 private sector jobs in 2013. It’s the lowest rate of growth for the state since Walker took office, bringing the total number of job created during the governor’s first three years in office to just under 92,000. That’s less than half of the 250,000 private sector jobs Walker promised to help create...
North Carolina Voters Want To End Partisan Gerrymandering  Think Progress   ...By a wide margin, North Carolina voters say they want to replace their state's current system of political gerrymandering with a non-partisan redistricting option, according to a new poll...
I Attended An ALEC Convention And Found An Alternate Universe  Bill Moyers   ...Last week I traveled to Missouri to attend my second American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference. As a state legislator from Wisconsin, I joined ALEC last year...
America's Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts  Washington Post   ...This election year, we can expect to hear a lot about Congressional district gerrymandering, which is when political parties redraw district boundaries to give themselves an electoral advantage...
War On Workers
Biggest fast food strike ever attracts global support  MSNBC   ...A year and a half ago, it was 200 striking workers in a single city. As of this week, it’s a global movement. On Thursday, thousands of fast food workers across the United States initiated the latest in a series of day-long strikes against their employers...
Boeing conducted unfair practices against U.S. engineers: labor board  Reuters   ...The U.S. National Labor Relations Board said on Thursday that Boeing Co (BA.N) committed unfair labor practices against its unionized engineers near Seattle and in Portland, Oregon, when it photographed and videotaped workplace marches in 2012...
Median Net Worth Of Grads Under 40 With Student Debt Is Only $8,700  Los Angeles Times   ...The financial travails of people under 40 with student loan debt extend far beyond the college loans themselves, according to a new study...
Miscellaneous
FCC Votes For Plan To Kill Net Neutrality  Huffington Post   ...On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted in favor of a proposal that would rewrite the rules that govern how traffic flows on the internet, issuing a blow to the principle of net neutrality...

How many Americans does it take to shut down the government?

Extremist Republicans claim shutting down the government over their opposition to a law passed three years ago is what the American people want.

That's an interesting theory considering less than 5 percent of the population actually voted for these hostage-takers.

Business Insider reports:

Let's look at the element of the House GOP that supports tying the continuing resolution to fund the government to an un-passable defunding of the Affordable Care Act. Judging by the number of people who signed  freshman Rep. Mark Meadow's (R-N.C.) letter,  81 members of the 233 GOP caucus support this hardcore strategy.

Adding them up, we see that only 13.8 million Americans actually voted for the suicide caucus. That's only 11.7% of the people who voted in a congressional election in 2012, and an absolutely pathetic 4.3% of the U.S. population.

How can such a small percentage of people stack Congress with enough sociopaths to shut down the government? The answer is gerrymandering -- self-serving congressional redistricting that allowed Republicans to get 33 more seats than Democrats in the last election despite getting fewer votes.

And Think Progress reports that Republican gerrymandering makes a quick resolution to the shutdown even more unlikely:

Obama garnered 48.8 percent of the vote or more in just 13 of the 218 other Congressional Districts currently represented by a Republican -- and even if the general public wants the government reopened, there is little political pressure in heavily GOP districts for Republican members to side with President Obama and the Democrats.

With a gerrymandered majority consisting of districts that do not represent the majority of Americans’ viewpoints, House Republicans can keep the government in a shutdown highly insulated from the anger and blame they are receiving.

So when you hear the fanatics in Washington say they're carrying out the will of the American people, remember they're more likely carrying out the will of their heavily gerrymandered districts. They aren't satisfied with the anti-worker sequester cuts they got this year. To them, it's great to tear at the social safety net. But it's better to rip it to pieces and even better to make it look like your opponents are to blame for the crisis.

When that doesn't work the extremists are busy downplaying the crisis altogether. But the shutdown is much more than a few shuttered parks. It's an attack on federal workers, veterans' benefits, vaccine programs, food safety inspections, food assistance for women and children, disability benefits, Head Start programs, financing for small businesses, and tourism.

And it's all thanks to the shrill minority spawned from gerrymandered voting districts -- democracy (and the economy) be damned.

Today's Teamster News 04.12.13

The TPP Could Destroy the American Middle Class  Economy in Crisis   ...Now the United States is moving forward with a disastrous, misguided agreement that would expand this sort of arrangement to even more low-wage countries: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)...
U.S. Warns WTO Global Trade Talks "Hurtling Towards Irrelevance"  Reuters   ...The United States launched a blistering attack on fellow World Trade Organization member states on Thursday for failing to do more to cut global barriers to trade, criticizing India in particular for trying to introduce a "massive new loophole..."
Ex-IMF official warns austerity ‘untenable’  FT   ...Ashoka Mody, the IMF’s former mission chief to Ireland, said on Thursday it was time to ease up on Europe’s policy of austerity, warning further delay in changing course risked dragging out the continent’s economic recovery...
Elizabeth Warren Tears Into Federal Regulators For Shielding Big Banks  Think Progress   ...Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) embarrassed government regulators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday morning as she demanded to know why they won’t reveal how frequently big banks illegally foreclosed on homeowners...
IRS: We Can Read Emails Without Warrant  The Hill   ...The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has claimed that agents do not need warrants to read people's emails, text messages and other private electronic communications, according to internal agency documents...
Wal-Mart Executive Who Called Sales “Total Disaster" Has Left  Reuters   ...Jerry Murray, the mid-level Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) executive who called the chain's early February sales "a total disaster" in an email made public by Bloomberg, left the world's largest retailer last week, Wal-Mart confirmed on Wednesday...
Correct flawed partisan redistricting process  Facebook   ...Freshmen Democratic legislators from the (Wisconsin) State Assembly today announced new legislation that would remove the redistricting authority from politicians and assigns it to a non-partisan body...
State employees say LePage pressured them to deny jobless benefits  Maine Sun Journal   ...Gov. Paul LePage pressured hearing officers at the Department of Labor to decide unemployment-benefit cases in favor of business owners over workers...
Poll: Voters back paid sick days, distrust lawmakers  Orlando Sentinel   ...Florida residents strongly back laws requiring paid sick time and "living wages" for workers, but they don't trust state lawmakers to handle such issues, a statewide poll released today finds....
Comcast Looms Large in Paid Sick Days Fight in Philly  Center for Media and Democracy   ...Almost all of the $108,429.25 Comcast spent on lobbying in 2011 was in opposition to paid sick days. It also is a major contributor to Mayor Nutter, contributing $7,500 to his campaign in 2011 and an additional $8,500 in 2012...
72% of 2012 NYC Construction Deaths Took Place on Non-Union Work Sites  We Party Patriots ...A new report from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) shows that construction deaths more than tripled on NYC work sites last year with 21 workplace fatalities versus six the year before...
Missouri Residents: Take Action to Stop Paycheck Deception Bill  AFL-CIO Now   ...Despite testimony overwhelmingly opposing the bill and universal opposition from the committee's Democrats, the Missouri legislature's House Workforce Development and Workplace Safety Committee passed S.B. 29, a paycheck deception bill, which is now headed to the House floor...
MEDC says right to work may generate big profits  Lansing State Journal   ...The state agency tasked with attracting business investment to Michigan claims the state’s new right-to-work laws will mean “higher potential profits” for companies, but officials at the Michigan Economic Development Corp. declined this week to provide data to back up their statement or answer questions on why the claim was made...
Red Cross Workers in Pomona, CA, Join Local 63  IBT   ...Workers in the Logistics, Kitting and Warehouse departments of the American Red Cross in Pomona, California, have recently voted to become members of Local 63. Local 63 already represents other job titles at the Pomona facility and this new unit brings the total to nearly 200...
Hernando County, FL, Employees Ratify Teamster Contract  IBT   ...Teamster members working in utilities, DPW, road maintenance, office/clerical and facilities management for Hernando County, Florida, have ratified a new agreement...
Teamsters strike at AFC Cable  South Coast Today   ...Local 59 Teamsters went on strike Wednesday at AFC Cable Systems, picketing in front of a company site inside the New Bedford Business Park...

Today's Teamster News 01.10.14

2012 Trade Deficit with China Tops $300 billion; Shatters Record  Trade Reform   ...“If Washington spent as much time worrying about the trade deficit as it did the budget deficit, our unemployment rate would be a lot lower than it is right now...
Despite Inflating Exports, Today's 2012 Trade Data Falls Short of Obama's Export Growth Promise  Public Citizen   ...the Census data is skewed in a way that inflates U.S. export levels, and even the inflated export figures show that President Obama’s goal of doubling exports is seriously lagging...
Imbalance of Power  New York Times   ...The party that gets the most votes usually wins the most seats in Congress, but that did not happen in the November election in states with gerrymandered districts...
Sen. Grassley: 'The irony is thick' in Lew’s Cayman Islands investment fund  The Hill   ...Congressional Republicans are raising new questions about the Treasury nominee's offshore financial holdings...
The United States Hugely Lags in Leisure Time  Center for Economic Policy Research   ...The United States has seen a much smaller reduction in work time over the last three decades than any other wealthy countries...
Expect more public safety layoffs as Kasich again guts Local Government Fund  Plunderbund  ...we’re talking about a massive gutting of local budgets that will continue to have a serious impact on local services like first responders...
Cost of Kasich Security Increasing by $5.4 Million  Plunderbund   ...It would appear this budget more accurately predicts the actual costs associated with protecting the Governor and his family...
Florida Is Swamped with Foreclosures – And Deals on Distressed Homes  TIME   ...Florida was home to 8 of the country’s top 20 metropolitan areas for highest foreclosure rates last year...
Is this the year Wall Street completes its purchase of Florida’s Court System?  Bankruptcy Law Network   ...After 4 years of trying, it appears Wall Street has finally purchased enough of our state legislators to enact a bill that will eliminate due process and fundamental justice in Florida foreclosure cases...

ALEC secretly helps Wisco pols pick their voters

This should not be a surprise to anyone, but still...

Wisconsin is one of five states where in 2012 Democratic congressional candidates got more than half the votes but less than half the seats.  Wisconsin Republicans received 49 percent of the votes but won 62.5 percent of the seats, due in part to ALEC's secret redrawing of voting district lines.

It all started in 2010, when a flood of dark money swept Wisconsin Republicans into the House, the Senate and the governor's office, the Center for Media and Democracy reported. With control of state government, the GOP secretly redrew voting districts in 2011. CMD tells us:

Wisconsin Republicans hired a private law firm to help draw the maps and held a series of secret meetings at their law offices, apparently in an attempt to protect the redistricting effort from public view and disguise it behind attorney-client privilege. 

Legal wrangling ensued. Judges ordered Republicans to turn over documents relating to the redistricting.  They did, but not all of them. The CMD did get hold of relevant emails that weren't turned over. And this is what they found:

...the highly partisan American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was involved in redistricting, based on emails obtained through open records requests to Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. ALEC had pushed redistricting approaches spearheaded by the former lawyer for the national Republican Party, Mark Braden, and hosted a special conference call with that partisan lawyer to advise ALEC legislators on redistricting. 

The emails CMD obtained were not released to the lawyers challenging the maps. But they should have been. This failure to release all redistricting-related documents opened a new round of legal wrangling, with the court questioning what other documents Republican legislators and their lawyers had kept secret. 

And here's the latest on the legal machinations from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Republicans approved hiring Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek just three days after the plaintiffs in the case subpoenaed officials so that they could search state computers and external hard drives. The plaintiffs want to search the computers because attorneys for the Legislature did not turn over some records in the case that they were required to. For months, the plaintiffs have been trying to ascertain why the records were not released and whether there are other records that are yet to be turned over.

The cost of all litigation to the taxpayers so far: $1.9 million and counting.

Today's Teamster News 01.22.13

Obama's second term foe - China: Column  USA Today   ...roughly 30% of American manufacturing job loss since 2001 can be tied to the China PNTR decision...
Hilda Solis, Outgoing Labor Secretary, Reflects On Economic Recovery, Right-Wing Attacks  Huffington Post   ...Although mine safety reform has stalled in Congress, Solis said the department has worked to make improvements, including a new rule issued this week that would make it easier for the government to shut down mines with a history of safety violations...
Investigation ordered after Spanish politicians got ‘salaries’ from private companies  AFP   ...senior members of the party, which Rajoy has led since 2004, had received undeclared salaries, mainly from private companies, over a 20-year period...
Back down on austerity, Osborne urged as Britain slips towards triple-dip  The Guardian   ...A second negative quarter, from January to March, would mark the onset of Britain's third recession in five years...
$240 billion amassed by 100 richest people enough to end extreme poverty four times over: Oxfam  Raw Story   ...The report found that the richest 1% had increased their incomes by 60% in the past 20 years, with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process...
Cayman Islands to Disclose Tax Shelter Companies  The Progressuve   ...After decades of secrecy, the tax-haven country is considering a public database that will make the names of thousands of previously hidden companies and their directors, public...
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Gets 75 Percent Raise: Report  Huffington Post   ...Lloyd Blankfein made $21 million last year, including a $2 million salary and a $19 million bonus...
Goldman bankers get rich betting on food prices as millions starve  The Independent   ...Goldman Sachs made more than a quarter of a billion pounds last year by speculating on food staples, reigniting the controversy over banks profiting from the global food crisis...
Analysis: 201,000 in Florida didn't vote because of long lines  Orlando Sentinel   ...The long Election Day lines around Florida may have turned away more than 200,000 frustrated would-be voters who gave up and went home before they cast ballots — or else saw the lines and elected not to join them...
Sanitation workers march for union rights in DeKalb Co.  My Fox Atlanta   ...DeKalb County sanitation workers marched in downtown Atlanta on Monday in an effort to have their union recognized by the county commission. They had the support of two retired sanitation workers who marched in Memphis nearly 45 years ago just before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr….
Turner and Leach are supporting attempts by DeKalb County sanitation workers to get the county commission to recognize them as members of Teamsters Local 728...
More Bad News From Private Prison  City Beat   ...Since the end of 2012, four have been arrested and charged with smuggling. Another four were arrested Monday and police suspect they were in Conneaut for a smuggling job... the four suspects arrested Monday were only caught due to the increased police presence outside the Lake Erie prison...
Virginia Senate Sneaks Through Gerrymandering Bill While Country Watches Inauguration  ThinkProgress   ...the move could potentially eliminate at least one Democratic seat, the 25th district, which currently belongs to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sen. Creigh Deeds (D)...

Today's Teamster News 01.19.13

Big win for labor in Chicago  Salon   ...By a unanimous vote on Thursday, Chicago’s City Council passed one of the strongest “wage theft” laws in the United States...
Poverty increasingly means the employed  Salon   ...For a growing segment of workers, a middle-class life is slipping out of reach...
Harry Reid seeks middle path on filibuster  Politico   ...Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) doesn’t plan to advance a “talking filibuster” proposal envisioned by liberals who want sweeping changes to the stodgy Senate...
787 grounding puts Boeing’s outsourcing in focus  Trade Reform   ...Some 70 per cent of the plane is outsourced...
New study finds China gaining advantage in setting technology standards  manufacture this   ... while U.S. firms place a high value on intellectual property protection, China has adopted a fundamentally different approach to intellectual property rights that can disadvantage U.S. companies...
GOP takes off the suicide bomb vest  Washington Post   ...The GOP leadership is prepared to agree to a three month debt ceiling hike. This is a major de-escalation of the crazy and effectively means Republicans have all but taken the threat of default off the table completely...
GOP Memo: Gerrymandering Won Us The House Majority  Talking Points Memo   ...even as they took a beating in the races for Senate and the White House, House Republicans ended up with a 33-seat majority, thanks to friendly district maps drawn by their own state colleagues. As the RSLC memo admits, “Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents...”
Right to Work gaining momentum in legislature  News-Leader   ...In just a few weeks, Right to Work has gone from a dream of Republicans in the Missouri statehouse to an issue that appears headed for a debate on the House floor and one that may even receive a vote...
Judge refuses to dismiss Fla. redistricting case  Associated Press   ...Democrats, the League of Women Voters of Florida and other plaintiffs ...  contend the map "as applied" violates anti-gerrymandering restrictions in the Florida Constitution...
Unions look ahead on fight over right-to-work  Associated Press   ...Union leaders looking for an olive branch from Gov. Rick Snyder in his third State of the State address say he left them empty-handed, but they vow to keep fighting to bring down right-to-work legislation enacted last month...
Columbus Democrat wants voting rights cemented in Constitution  Columbus Dispatch   ...Saying he wants to better secure the right to vote in the Ohio Constitution, Rep. Michael Stinziano is proposing a ballot issue that he says would establish that the right should be paramount above other administrative issues...
Ohio Gov. John Kasich Gets First Positive Approval Rating   The Cleveland Leader   ...(The) latest statewide survey of Ohio registered voters by Quinnipiac University shows that Governor John Kasich, a Republican, has a positive job-approval rating for the first time since he took office in 2011, with 45 percent approving and 35 percent disapproving...
Democrats launch $500,000 plan against Walker, other Republicans  Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel   ...party Chairman Mike Tate called the effort a "72-county plan" and said it would focus on one-on-one voter contact and technology investments...
Teamsters, ABF continue labor negotiations  Kansas City Business Journal   ...Negotiations between ABF Freight Systems Inc. and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters continued in Kansas City this week, and the two parties are no closer to an agreement, a release from the union said...

Voters should pick their politicians, not the other way around

Poster child for gerrymandering: North Carolina's Congressional District 12 in 1992

You don't think our government is actually representative, do you?

The American electorate didn't vote for divided government. But that's what they got. A majority of Americans voted for President Obama, Senate Democrats and House Democrats. But the new House has a Republican majority of 33 though a million more people voted for Democratic House members.

And does it strike you as odd that President Obama comfortably won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, Florida and Wisconsin, but those state Legislatures are dominated by big Republican majorities?

For example, The Economic Intersection reports

In Ohio 52% of the total vote cast gained Republicans 80% of the seats. In Pennsylvania 49% of the vote gave Republicans 72% of the seats.

The unhappy result is relentless attacks on working families, like Michigan's No Rights At Work law, and gridlock in Congress. It also gives us unrepresentative extremist Republicans routinely threatening to shut down the government and default on U.S. debt.

The reason: gerrymandering. These days, voting maps are manipulated to stuff as many Republican voters into safe districts as possible. Legislative majorities use their power to cherry-pick the voters who are most likely to vote for Republicans. That electoral advantage is magnified by voter suppression laws.

The New Yorker explains:

Every ten years, following the decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution, state governments redraw legislative and congressional districts. Republicans have done well at capturing statehouses in recent years, even in states that have gone Democratic in Senate and Presidential votes, such as Virginia. In some of these states, Republicans have redrawn district lines with ruthless self-interest to ensure that voters elect the maximum conceivable number of Republicans to the House. 

Organizational theory and common sense would suggest that both major political parties engage in such shenanigans equally, when given the opportunity. That may be so over long periods of time; there is no especially convincing reason to ascribe to the Democratic Party any self-effacing idealism about getting its people elected. And yet, in a series of compelling posts recently, the statistical election-modeller Samuel Wang, of the Princeton Election Consortium, has argued that we are in an “asymmetric” period of Republican manipulation of electoral maps. 

According to Wang’s math, twenty-six seats out of the thirty-three-seat Republican advantage in the House can be attributed to gerrymandering in states with legislatures controlled by Republicans. He estimates that, in 2012, the number of American voters disenfranchised by this mapmaking—that is, the number of voters whose ballots were effectively rendered meaningless by various forms of stuffing Republican majorities into safe districts—was in the neighborhood of four million.

In some states, people are trying to find ways to create fairer districts. Our brothers and sisters in Ohio tried in November to change the way the lines are drawn by putting Issue 2 on the ballot. A 12-person citizen commission would have created voting districts without any input from elected officials or lobbyists. Sadly, the effort failed.

Ohio's Senate President Keith Faber has a new proposal to change the way congressional districts are drawn. Currently, Ohio's congressional map allowed 12 Republicans and four Democrats to be elected to Congress in 2012 -- even though President Obama carried the state by 166,000 votes.

Joe Frolik at The Plain Dealer explains how it would work: The plan would establish a commission to draw new voting maps after each federal census. It would include the governor, secretary of state and auditor.The top two members of the General Assembly from each party would each appoint a commissioner, who could not be a member of the Legislature or Congress. Any map would have to win by a five-vote super-majority with at least one member from each party.

The union-backed We Are Ohio is skeptical, as Sen. Faber was one of the most ardent supporters of the anti-worker Senate Bill 5.

California, on the other hand, has already done what Ohio tried to do: Let ordinary citizens draw the maps. The New Yorker reports:

In 2010, California voters approved a ballot initiative that empanelled a somewhat randomly selected commission of ordinary citizens to redraw legislative and congressional districts as their common sense guided them. The result went forward in the 2012 election cycle and it had disruptive consequences. At the time the commission acted, Democrats controlled the California legislature—without this good-government band of citizens redrawing maps, Sacramento Democrats would surely have protected their own. But the citizens’ commission forced two long-serving Democratic congressmen from Southern California, Howard Berman and Brad Sherman, to run against one another; Berman, the able chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lost. At the same time, however, Democrats stormed to a super-majority in the California legislature. Citizen-drawn maps had a role in that, too. 

The result is that California no longer has divided, gridlocked government, as it has had for the past decade.

Now that sounds like representative government.

Today's Teamster News 01.03.12

U.S. now on pace for European levels of austerity in 2013  Washington Post   ...after this week’s fiscal cliff deal, the United States is now on pace to engage in about as much fiscal consolidation in 2013 as many European nations have been doing in recent years — and more than countries like Britain and Spain...
Euros discarded as impoverished Greeks resort to bartering  The Guardian   ...in the heart of Greece's most fertile plain, locals have come up with a novel way of dealing with austerity – adopting their own alternative currency, known as the Tem. As the country struggles with its worst crisis in modern times, with Greeks losing up to 40% of their disposable income as a result of policies imposed in exchange for international aid, the system has been a huge success...
Portugal warns EU-IMF troika to back off on austerity demands  The Telegraph   ...Portugal's president has ordered a legal inquiry into the country’s austerity policies and threatened a showdown with creditors over the draconian terms of its EU-IMF bail-out...
Payroll Tax Hike Erases Paycheck Gains For Minimum Wage Workers  Huffington Post   ...Many of the nation's poorest workers were looking forward to a modest pay hike on New Year's Day, when 10 states implemented higher minimum wages. In the end, those workers' increased earnings may have lasted all of a few hours...
Congress Vacations While Sandy Victims Freeze  firedoglake   ...People in New York and New Jersey are huddled in the cold and dark and apparently the US Congress cannot manage to vote for Superstorm Sandy relief before they go on their vacations...
Reid will postpone filibuster reform  The Hill   ...Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will postpone filibuster reform until later this month, giving him time to negotiate a deal with Republicans...
As Swing Districts Dwindle, Can a Divided House Stand?  New York Times   ...Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party. Instead, primary challenges, especially for Republicans, may be the more serious risk...
Thanks To Gerrymandering, Democrats Would Need To Win The Popular Vote By Over 7 Percent To Take Back The House  ThinkProgress   ...Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent ... Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress...
Stalemate Over Teamsters Continues in Putnam Valley  The Putnam County News and Recorder   ...On December 27 the Putnam Valley Town Board ... held a hearing regarding the two-year-long contract renegotiation between the Town’s Local 456 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters bargaining unit, which includes 25 workers for the Putnam Valley Highway Department...