Seattle lawmakers side with Uber, taxi drivers

The Seattle City Council took the first swing at the nation's ballooning freelance "gig" economy, approving a measure that would give app-based drivers and others in the jurisdiction the ability to collectively bargain over their wages and working conditions.

Drivers stood up and were counted in Seattle fight.

Under the proposal, drivers would have the ability to come together to choose a nonprofit organization to represent them. Once authorized, the organization could engage in collective bargaining on the drivers’ behalf. The new law would apply to all taxi drivers, for-hire drivers and drivers for app-based dispatch companies, such as Uber and Lyft.

Drivers and community supporters celebrated the bill’s passage, calling it a turning point toward greater protections for workers in a changing economic landscape. Peter Kuel, an Uber driver and member of the leadership council of the App-Based Drivers Association, said:

Since I started driving for Uber, Uber has cut our pay without notice, terminated drivers without giving a reason and blocked our efforts to improve our working conditions. We’re looking for fairness and the ability to earn a living wage. 

Seattle app-based drivers as well as traditional taxi drivers are already aligned with Teamsters Local 117.Taxi drivers formed the Western Washington Taxicab Operators Association in 2012. In 2013, drivers for app-based dispatch companies formed the App-Based Drivers Association.

Because of their disputed status as independent contractors, however, for-hire drivers don't have the ability to unionize through a traditional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process, and they aren't covered under Seattle's wage theft, sick leave or new $15 an hour minimum wage law.

John Scearcy, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 117, is hopeful the legislation -- if signed by the mayor -- will go a long way towards making things more fair:

All workers, no matter where they work or the nature of their work, deserve the opportunity to have a voice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies the right of workers to bargain collectively as a fundamental human right. Now these workers have that right.

Figuring out the future of organizing as the gig economy continues to grow in the U.S. is a major challenge for workers. The Teamsters' victory earlier this year in the "Browning-Ferris" case decided by the NLRB was seen by many as an opportunity to expand union representation among millions of workers nationwide who previously were misclassified as independent contractors.

Legal challenges to the NLRB ruling have already been filed and are expected if the Seattle measure becomes law. But these rulings are just more proof that when workers are Teamster Strong, America is Stronger!

Today's Teamster News 02.24.15

Teamsters
Teamsters Protest Labatt Beer At Buffalo Pond Hockey Tournament  teamster.org   ...At the Labatt Blue Pond Hockey tournament this weekend, Teamster members distributed information to fans about Heidelberg Distributing’s abusive behavior towards its drivers and warehouse workers. Heidelberg distributes Labatt Beer products in Ohio...
Unionized UC Berkeley Workers Rally Against New Pay Calculations  Daily Californian   ...Teamsters Local 2010 said in a press release that the goals of this rally were not only to educate the public on the employees’ grievances with the UC system but also to highlight the pay that UC employees receive. According to a recent Economic Policy Institute study cited in the press release, 80 percent of the union’s members are not paid enough to live in the cities in which their campuses reside...
Sysco Not In Talks To Settle U.S. Lawsuit To Stop Merger  Reuters   ...Sysco Corp is not holding settlement talks with the U.S. government to resolve a lawsuit aimed at stopping a $3.5 billion merger of the food distributor and its largest rival, a lawyer for Sysco said on Friday...
Trade
Medicines forecast to cost taxpayers millions more in secret TPP trade deal  Guardian   ...Medicines will cost Australian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars more each year if measures in a leaked draft of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement are implemented, a new report says...
Japan's Amari: Japan-U.S. TPP talks are behind schedule  Reuters   …Chief negotiators for the TPP deal will meet in Hawaii for talks in the second week of March, the U.S. trade office said on Friday, a move which could delay a final agreement on the pact…
Froman asks county officials to back Obama trade policies  AgriPulse   ...U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman today called on county government officials from across the country to support President Obama's request for trade promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal...
State Battles
Scott Walker Pushes ALEC 'Right to Work' Bill, Divide and Conquer Comes Full Circle  Huffington Post   ...Wisconsin GOP leaders announced they would have an "extraordinary session" to ram through union-busting "right to work" legislation. CMD/PRwatch quickly noted that the bill is taken almost word-for-word from the Koch corporate bill mill known as the American Legislative Exchange Council known as "ALEC."...
Bell Right-To-Work Amendment Passes Senate  Augusta Free Press   ...Current law provides that a citizen cannot be denied the employment or continuation of employment for failing to join a union or other labor organization. This amendment, sponsored by Delegate Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, would make Virginia’s Right to Work law more permanent by adding it to the constitution...
Walker’s Anti-Union Law Has Labor Reeling In Wisconsin  Washington Post   ...Walker had vowed that union power would shrink, workers would be judged on their merits, and local governments would save money. Unions had warned that workers would lose benefits and be forced to take on second jobs or find new careers. Many of those changes came to pass, but the once-thriving ­public-sector unions were not just shrunken — they were crippled...
House set to vote on liquor privatization bill despite concerns that members may not know what's in it  PennLive   ...In its first significant piece of business in the 2015-16 legislative session, the state House of Representatives is poised to vote this week on a bill that would get the state out of the liquor business. But some wonder how many legislators casting votes really know what the bill would do...
Indiana State AFL-CIO President Reacts to House Approval of Common Construction Wage Repeal  Indiana State AFL-CIO   ..."With today’s vote in the House of Representatives, the Republican supermajority has attacked the wages of working Hoosiers, a successful private sector business model and the autonomy of local governments...."
War on Workers
Oil, Ethanol Trains Will Derail 10 Times A Year For 2 Decades, Federal Government Estimates  The Oregonian   ...The federal government predicts trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year during the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S...
In service sector, no rest for the working  New York Times   ...Employees are literally losing sleep as restaurants, retailers and many other businesses shrink the intervals between shifts and rely on smaller, leaner staffs to shave costs. These scheduling practices can take a toll on employees who have to squeeze commuting, family duties and sleep into fewer hours between shifts. The growing practice of the same workers closing the doors at night and returning to open them in the morning even has its own name: "clopening."...
Seattle, Tacoma, other ports busy again after tentative labor deal  Associated Press   ...Nearly all West Coast seaports began the work week with crews hustling to load and unload cargo ships that were held up amid a months-long dispute over a new contract for dockworkers...
Look who's living on the financial edge  CNBC   …24 percent of Americans have more credit card debt than emergency savings, and 13 percent are not much better off—they don't have credit card debt but they don't have emergency savings either. Put another way, more than a third of Americans are living at risk of a financial crisis…
Worker killed in accident at Alcoa plant  Associated Press   … An Alcoa plant employee was killed about 6:30 p.m. Monday in what's being termed an "accident" at the Tennessee Operations North Plant, according to an Alcoa spokeswoman...
Why We're All Becoming Independent Contractors (opinion)  Huffington Post   ...The rise of "independent contractors" is the most significant legal trend in the American workforce -- contributing directly to low pay, irregular hours, and job insecurity...
Knowledge Isn’t Power (opinion)  New York Times   ...We could levy higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and invest the proceeds in programs that help working families. We could raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to organize. It’s not hard to imagine a truly serious effort to make America less unequal...
Drones Are The New Buzz In Ag Business  Yakima Herald Republic   ...Farmers already are using drones in the area and throughout the nation, albeit by stretching the limits of rapidly changing regulations. They purchase the planes online. Some allow users to control them with a smartphone application, turning their screen into a virtual cockpit...
Miscellaneous
Crackdown On Drones Goes Local  USA Today   ...Since 2012, 15 states have enacted laws restricting drones in some way, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which tracks state laws. And if New York City Council Member Dan Garodnick gets his way, drones will be banned in the Big Apple, except for police with a warrant, as soon as this year...

Today's Teamster News 11.18.14

Teamster News
L.A.-Area Port Truckers Expand Strike To Three New Companies  Los Angeles Times   ...Drivers from QTS Inc., LACA Express and WinWin Logistics Inc. joined an ongoing strike Monday morning, said Barb Maynard, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters Union, which is backing the drivers...
Port Truckers Drive Home Difference Between Contractors And Employees  Los Angeles Times   ...Decades ago, such drivers were full-time employees, but many companies began treating them as independent contractors to bump profits and cut labor costs. And when environmental safeguards made expensive clean-energy trucks mandatory, drivers essentially became indentured servants, with truck leasing costs, insurance and other expenses deducted from their paychecks, often knocking them below minimum wage but still requiring them to pay for gas and repairs....
Fired Disney performers seeking jobs, back pay  Bay News 9   ...The Teamsters Union representing the three men has already been through the grievance process and will now go forward to present their case to a federal arbitrator, unless Disney meets their demands...
Trade
French Government Will Not Sign TTIP Agreement In 2015  EurActiv   ...Matthias Fekl, France's Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, has made it clear that France will not support the inclusion of the Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism (ISDS) in a potential TTIP agreement...
State Battles
Government employees produce nothing, says ignorant Kansas House Speaker Ray Merrick of Johnson County (opinion)  Kansas City Star   ...News flash for Ray Merrick: Those employees doing “nothing” are the schoolteachers, firefighters and police officers employed by governments across the state. These are the hardworking employees who make it possible to educate Kansas children and protect Kansas families...
An Embattled ALEC, Buoyed by Election Results, Lays Blueprint for 2015  Center for Media and Democracy   ...ALEC has been bleeding corporate members, but with Republicans now in control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, there are fewer impediments to the enactment of the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles -- and in early December, ALEC and the corporations that still fund it will likely lay out the legislative blueprint for 2015 at the ALEC States & Nation Policy Summit in Washington, DC...
California Tells Court It Can’t Release Inmates Early Because It Would Lose Cheap Prison Labor  ThinkProgress   ...Out of California’s years-long litigation over reducing the population of prisons deemed unconstitutionally overcrowded by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, another obstacle to addressing the U.S. epidemic of mass incarceration has emerged: The utility of cheap prison labor...
War on Workers
Number Of Homeless Children In America Surges To All-Time High: Report  Huffington Post   ...The number of homeless children in the U.S. has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence...
We Are the Most Unequal Society in the Developed World...And We Don't Know It (opinion)  Huffington Post   ...Americans grossly underestimated this gap. Instead of 354 to 1, the Americans in representative survey think it is only 30 to 1. When asked what the ideal pay gap should be, Americans say that a fair gap would be about 7 to 1...
Agencies Look For Cause Of Fatal Gas Leak In Texas  New York Times   ...Randall Clements, the plant manager, said DuPont was working with the authorities and conducting its own “top-to-bottom review” of the accident. Asked how the leak had begun and whether the problem had been a result of equipment failure or human error, a company spokesman, Gregg M. Schmidt, said answering those questions was part of the investigation...
Worker dies in fall at Mosinee paper mill  Associated Press   ...A 55-year-old worker was killed when he fell from a hydraulic bucket while installing insulation at a Mosinee paper mill...
Trump Taj Mahal Casino In Atlantic City Will Shutter  New York Daily News   ...The owner of the struggling Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort filed court papers on Friday saying it will close next month, making it the fifth of the city’s 12 casinos to shut down this year...
Miscellaneous
Keystone at Senate tipping point  The Hill   ...Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and other supporters of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are stuck at 59 votes — one vote shy of the supermajority they need to move their bill forward on Tuesday...

Today's Teamster News 03.23.14

Teamster News
Teamsters score a win against “sharecropping on wheels.” But will the trucking industry really change?  Washington Post   ...Along with auto technicians, fast food workers, and baggage handlers, another profession has been hit by the separation of labor from employer: Port truckers, who haul containers from cargo ships on short trips around the terminal...
Port trucking company agrees to labor settlement with drivers  Orange County Register   ...Carson-based Pacific 9 Transportation Inc. has agreed to a settlement with 50 independent truck drivers that could force the company to treat them as employees, not independent contractors, according to an agreement filed with a federal labor relations agency in Los Angeles...
Anheuser-Busch, Teamsters reach tentative deal  Associated Press   ...Anheuser-Busch and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters say they have reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract for workers at the beverage-maker's 12 U.S. breweries...
Canadian National Railway Company and Teamsters Canada Rail Conference resume negotiations  PR Newswire   ...Today, the Honourable Dr. K. Kellie Leitch, Minister of Labour and Minister of Status of Women, congratulated the Canadian National Railway (CN) and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) for returning to the bargaining table and working to reach a new agreement...
Trade
Debate in US over trade deficit with China heats up  South China Morning Post   ...A chorus of voices in the United States has been calling for tougher trade action against China, alleging imports from the country are slashing jobs in the US...
State Battles
Right to work bill on the Missouri House schedule  Associated Press   ...Missouri House Republican leaders are vowing to consider legislation known to supporters as "right to work" when lawmakers return from their weeklong break...
Republican pitches alternative to liquor privatization  The Sentinel   ...A Bucks County Republican lawmaker opposed to selling off state-run liquor stores on Thursday unveiled an alternative to privatization of Pennsylvania’s market share of the industry...
State DOJ files first appeals in Capitol singalong cases  Wisconsin State Journal   ..The Wisconsin Department of Justice for the first time Friday appealed a Dane County judge’s decision to throw out tickets related to the Capitol singalong...
More than 100 USM students, faculty protest proposed budget cuts, layoffs  Bangor Daily News   ...University of Southern Maine students and faculty chanted, yelled and — in one case — stretched out on the floor of the hallway outside the office of Provost Michael R. Stevenson to protest during meetings Friday at which 15 full-time faculty members in nine departments were expected to be laid off...
The War on Workers
Spain austerity: Huge Madrid protest turns violent  BBC News   ...Violence has broken out at the end of an anti-austerity protest attended by tens of thousands of people in the Spanish capital Madrid...
When Minimum Wage Rises, Many Are Left Looking Up at It  New York Times   ...so many immigrants are willing to do this work that it is not hard for unscrupulous businesses to find people desperate enough to do it for less than what the law requires...
U.S. IRS audited fewer wealthy Americans in 2013  Reuters   ... The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that it audited fewer high-income Americans in 2013 than it did in 2012 or 2011, while it conducted more audits of people with no income...
Pixel & Dimed: On Not Getting By in the Gig Economy  Fast Company   ...For one month, I became the “micro-entrepreneur” touted by companies like TaskRabbit, Postmates, and Airbnb. Instead of the labor revolution I had been promised, all I found was hard work, low pay, and a system that puts workers at a disadvantage...
Industries Across the U.S. Are Stealing Wages From Their Lowest Paid Workers  The Real News   ...about a quarter of workers had not been paid minimum wage in the week of the survey. Three-quarters of them had not been paid overtime pay even though they had worked overtime hours...
Out of Work, Out of Luck  Five Thirty Eight Economics   ...Many if not most of the 3.8 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months will never again hold steady jobs...
The Stone Unturned: Credit Ratings  New York Times   ...It’s the one question about the 2008 financial crisis that people still ask me more than any other: Why have regulators done so little to rein in the credit rating agencies? Other institutions that contributed to the mortgage debacle have submitted to new rules and compliance requirements, but Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s and their peers remained relatively untouched...
S&P Judge Tentatively Rules It Must Face Deception Claims  Bloomberg   ...McGraw Hill Financial Inc. (MHFI)’s Standard & Poor’s unit must face California’s claims it deceived the state’s pension funds in its ratings of mortgage-back securities, a judge said in a provisional ruling...

This company has an app for independent contractors

Put Task Rabbit on your radar screen. It's a new company that matches people (or companies) who want tasks done with people (independent contractors) who want to get paid to do them. 

There's technology involved, of course. The "independent contractors" (red flag, eh?) who do the work are interviewed by video, they bid on jobs using their smartphones and they get paid the same way. They never have to actually go to a physical place -- e.g., a temp agency -- to get hired.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek describes how it works:

...they take advantage of smartphones. Workers can load one of these companies’ apps on their location-aware iPhone or Android device and, if the impulse strikes, take a job near them any time of day. Employers can monitor the whereabouts of their workers, make payments on their phones or over the Web, and evaluate each job after it’s accomplished.

An entrepreneurial buzz surrounds TaskRabbit  and similar startups, Bloomber reports:

Leah Busque, a former IBM (IBM) software engineer who started and runs TaskRabbit, says thousands of people make a living (up to $60,000 a year) on her site, which operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and five other cities. “We are enabling micro-entrepreneurs to build their own business on top of TaskRabbit, to set their own schedules, specify how much they want to get paid, say what they are good at, and then incorporate the work into their lifestyle,” she says. 

Venture capitalists have bet $38 million on TaskRabbit and millions more on similar startups. Other distributed labor companies, with names like IAmExec (be a part-time gopher) and Gigwalk (run errands for companies) are being founded every day.

What's it like working as a TaskRabbit? The author of the Bloomberg story, Brad Stone, described it as "ignonimous" and "grueling." (Isn't that what you'd expect from a company that hires "independent contractors"?) Stone washed cars for a start-up car wash chain called Cherry:

Travis VanderZanden has an ambitious goal: to build the first nationwide car wash service. His year-old startup, Cherry, is tackling the $19.5 billion car wash market by harnessing a small army of unskilled workers with free time, outfitting them with washing kits and iPhone apps and sending them out to clean cars where they’re parked. “There’s a huge unemployed population in this country so we have no shortage of people applying to be a part of this,” he says. The service is live in San Francisco and San Diego, and there are plans for rapid expansion.

And he delivered small packages for another startup called Postmates:

The startup, says founder Bastian Lehmann, aims to be a “Fedex within a city.” Customers submit orders via Postmate’s “Get it Now” smartphone app to have something delivered—groceries, say, or a sandwich. The job is then routed to nearby smartphone-toting couriers who compete to be the first to press “accept” and take the job. Unlike infamous dot-com era flameouts Kozmo.com or Webvan, Postmates holds no inventory. The courier has one hour to buy and deliver the goods in murderous city traffic. A timer on the phone helpfully ticks down the seconds, Jack Bauer-style.

A TaskRabbit contractor did an interview a while back describing its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side,

I've picked up about $3,000 in three months from TaskRabbit, so TaskRabbit is paying my rent.

On the minus side,

...the TaskRabbits themselves are guaranteed no protection.  They have no insurance.  They walk into unknown situations and often get paid less than minimum wage to do unthinkable tasks...It's up to us to take care of ourselves, it's up to us to decide what we will and will not do... 

Because it's very much people wanting peasants, anonymous elves to come in during the night and do the dirty work, and they don't want to pay very much, and the markup on the task is actually much higher than what they claim it to be. They claim the markup is 15%. It's actually more like 70%...No one is obligated to pay minimum wage, and that happens again and again and again.  I have worked 12 and 15 hour days doing really strenuous physical labor and had $80 to show for it.

Are you thinking what we're thinking? So was our interviewee....

...part of the strategy of TaskRabbit (is)  to keep us apart from one another.  We can't message each other on the website.  The only way you get to meet another TaskRabbit is if you post a task, and I think they do this to keep us apart because they don't want us fixing the process. They don't want us unionizing.  They don't want us to get together and say an Ikea run is $50 minimum. 

But the thing is, I think TaskRabbit could really benefit from a union.  They could really benefit from some organization because we really are out there.  We could face any number of uncertainties or dangers, or hazardous conditions, and we have no recourse.

Vampire Squid jams blood funnel into port drivers

More charming behavior from Goldman Sachs, aka the Great Vampire Squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

The online publication Salon exposes the way giant multinational corporations suck the lifeblood from workers by calling them "independent contractors." It's a scam with which the labor movement is familiar. Reports Andrew Leonard,

...on an economy-wide scale, the calculated misclassification of employees as independent contractors is a nightmare for workers. It removes the normal protections employers are legally required to give their employees without offering any real freedom in exchange. The practice is also a disaster for governments struggling to balance their budgets, depriving both federal and state governments of billions of dollars in tax revenue.

On the surface, the growing incidence of independent contractor misclassification and other efforts by employers to shortchange their employees — paying less than the minimum wage, skimping on workers’ comp, refusing to pay overtime — would appear to support the conservative explanation of why the shadow economy is growing: Companies are attempting to escape the burdens of “high” taxes and “excessive” regulation. In other words, the bigger and more intrusive the government, the bigger the shadow economy.

But a closer look at the situation of port truck drivers like Leonardo Mejia reveals that the truth is far more complicated, and far less a consequence of the size of government, than the stock conservative analysis suggests. In the trucking industry, deregulation has played at least as large a role as labor law regulations in prompting the remorseless squeezing of workers. No less important are the cost pressures induced by globalization — truckers like Mejia are tiny, vulnerable links in vast global supply and production chains dominated by huge multinational corporations. In a competitive landscape where everyone is constantly striving to reduce costs, workers like Mejia end up crushed.

Here's where the Great Vampire Squid comes in: Mejia, a veteran truck driver at the Port of Long Beach, is an "independent contractor" for Shippers Transport Express, a subsidiary of Seattle-based global marine terminal operator SSA Marine and its U.S. trucking outfit -- which are jointly owned by Goldman Sachs.

Leonard reports,

It’s a good deal for Shippers — Mejia has to cover the costs of his own health insurance, maintenance on the truck, and diesel fuel — but not so great for Mejia. Although he works exclusively for Shippers Transport Express, according to his employer he’s an independent contractor, with no safety net to protect him from misfortune except for whatever scraps he can carve out from his barely subsistence level wages.

He misses his old truck.

“Every day is getting worse,” says Mejia. “Before when we used to have our own trucks, every time we have a problem with a dispatcher or the owner of a company we just take the name of the company off our truck and we go to somewhere else. Right now we don’t have nothing to take with us. Except maybe my clipboard.”

Any questions about why Wall Street is being occupied?

Today's Teamster News 05.04.11

NH Teamsters Call on Lawmakers to Heed the Public  IBT   ...Teamsters Local 633 Principal Officer Dave Laughton today urged state lawmakers to listen to their constituents and vote against a right-to-work bill aimed at destroying unions....
Recall Dave Hansen Committee seeks restraining order over Dem phone calls  WisPolitics.com   ...the party hired a firm to call those who signed the petitions because of concerns signatures were collected fraudulently, and the calls cease once someone answers to respond...
Unions give LePage counter-offer on benefit cuts  Kennebec Journal   ...Unions representing teachers and state workers proposed a set of scaled-back changes to their retirement benefits Thursday...
Detroit Mayor Seeks Concessions from Unions; Threatens Receivership  National Legal and Policy Center   ..."If we do nothing, by 2015, fringe benefits are on pace to consume half of our entire general-fund revenue,"...
Teamsters Support Safe Highways And Infrastructure Preservation Act  IBT   ... SHIPA would set limitations on size and weight of commercial trucks on the highways, preventing potentially dangerous vehicles from threatening the driving public...
Fitch downgrades YRC Worldwide's debt rating  Kansas City Star   ...Fitch Ratings has cut the junk-debt status of troubled trucking giant YRC Worldwide another notch...
Amoroso's drivers speak out on plans for change  (Local 463) Philadelphia Inquirer   ...To replace his 77 Teamsters Union-member drivers, Amoroso wants to hire independent contractors...