TEAMSTERS
Teamster Aviation Maintenance Technicians to Vote on United Contract Teamster.org ...The International Brotherhood Teamsters today announced an agreement to put a proposed joint contract out for ratification for members working at United Airlines. The deal, if approved, would cover the company’s aviation maintenance technicians and related workers. The proposed contract would combine the subsidiary groups of workers formerly associated with Continental and Continental Micronesia with United...
United agrees to tentative deal with Teamsters Chicago Tribune ...United Airlines said Friday morning that it has agreed to a deal with the Teamsters to put the carrier's 8,600 technicians and related employees under a single contract. The proposed deal — which has yet to be ratified by rank-and-file members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters — is United's first major deal since recently appointed CEO Oscar Munoz went on medical leave...
Port Truck Drivers Strike Over Wage Theft Capital & Main ...Truck drivers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will begin a strike at 6 a.m. today against local subsidiaries of XPO Logistics, a Connecticut-headquartered freight transportation company. Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa will bring a national spotlight to the fight later this week as he joins local union forces in support of the drivers...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
TPP deal is bad for the auto sector, Ford Canada chief says Globe and Mail ...Key automotive provisions of the Trans-Pacific trade agreement are bad for Canada, so the new Liberal government needs to take a careful look at the deal before approving it, says Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. chief executive officer Dianne Craig. “We see [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] as a setback,” Ms. Craig said...
Indonesia to Decide on Joining Transpacific Partnership New York Times ...The Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, said he would decide whether Southeast Asia's largest economy would join the United States-led Pacific trade agreement after his meeting with President Obama at the White House on Monday. In an interview before a four-day visit to the United States this week, Mr. Joko also said that his government was rapidly stripping away cumbersome protectionist trade regulations that foreign businesses had long chafed at...
PM’s inaction on TTIP ‘means NHS at risk’ The National ...Party leaders from throughout the UK have signed to pledge to make sure the NHS is protected from TTIP, but there is one notable name missing: David Cameron. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership could put the future of the health service at risk, union leaders have claimed, with the nature of the trade deal opening the door for US investment in public services...
Monster march in Berlin says no to the bosses’ TTIP treaty Socialist Worker ...Up to 250,000 people marched through Berlin last Saturday against the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It was Germany’s biggest demonstration since protests against the Iraq war in 2003. TTIP is a planned treaty to create the world’s biggest free trade area, involving the European Union (EU) and the US...
Canadian election rejects austerity: Paul Krugman Oregon Live ...On Monday, Canadian voters swept the ruling Conservatives out of power, delivering a stunning victory to the center-left Liberals. And while there are many interesting things about the Liberal platform, what strikes me most is its clear rejection of the deficit-obsessed austerity orthodoxy that has dominated political discourse across the Western world. The Liberals ran on a frankly, openly Keynesian vision, and won big...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Both Sides of Right-To-Work Mobilize For Governor’s Race WFPL ...Kentucky’s next governor will face a bevy of issues, ranging from a declining coal industry to a struggling pension system. Then there’s right-to-work. Right-to-work laws — which prohibit union dues as a condition of employment — have been adopted in 25 states. Proponents want to make Kentucky the 26th...
Labor Dept. To Set New 'Prevailing Wages' For Construction Projects In New Hampshire New Hampshire Public Radio ...The U.S. Department of Labor is looking to gather wage data for New Hampshire’s building and construction industries. The department is surveying firms about wages and benefits on a range of projects in order to set so-called prevailing wage rates for federal projects in the state...
Colorado Pushes for Universal Health Care That's Governed by the People Truthout ...First pot, now health. In November 2012, Colorado voters approved a ballot initiative that made recreational use of marijunana legal, despite a federal ban. In November of next year, the state will have the opportunity to lead the way again - this time, by opting out of Obamacare and replacing it with ColoradoCare, a universal health care system governed by those who rely on it...
Washington-area airport workers join fight for $15-an-hour minimum wage Washington Post ...A push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage for the lowest-paid airport workers across the United States has landed in Washington. Workers at Reagan National and Dulles International airports have joined a growing national campaign for better pay and benefits, bringing attention to hourly wages that are as low as $6.75...
Judge refuses to dismiss NC voter ID challenge Charlotte Observer ...A federal judge on Friday refused a request from state lawmakers to dismiss a challenge to the N.C. voter ID law. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder set the issue for a trial, tentatively in January. Attorneys for state lawmakers argued that a 2015 change to the ID provision of an election law overhaul made the 2013 legal challenge moot...
Elizabeth Warren Rips the Obama Administration on Puerto Rico Mother Jones ...After months of facing indifference from Congress, the people of Puerto Rico might finally be making progress on getting some help with the island's massive debt crisis from both the Obama administration and Congress. Last Wednesday, the Obama administration outlined a proposal that would allow the island's entities to restructure debts. After Obama finally rolled out a plan, Sen. Warren calls on the government to do more for the US colony...
Walmart’s Wage Increase Is Hurting Its Stock Price—and That’s OK The Nation ...The company created some real waves when it announced earlier this year that it planned to raise its starting wages to $9 an hour by April and $10 an hour by February of next year. A few months later, it reported that it had already reduced turnover. But it also just released its financial results forecasting a drop in annual profit in the near term...
U.S. LABOR
Deadline looms for auto workers' strike threat against GM Business Insider ...The United Auto Workers union and General Motors Co. have reached a tentative agreement on a new four-year contract, avoiding a strike for now. The UAW said the agreement was reached at 11:43 p.m. Sunday, 16 minutes before the deadline it had set to either reach an agreement or call a strike at GM's U.S. plants. Details of the proposed contract weren't immediately available...
GM Reaches Tentative Deal With UAW Workers, Avoiding Strike Bloomberg ...General Motors Co. and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative four-year agreement that is expected to provide raises across the board, averting a potential strike. The union announced the deal in an e-mailed statement without giving details. Local union leaders at Detroit-based GM are set to vote on Wednesday whether to send the accord to rank-and-file members for ratification...
U.S. lawmakers call for more oversight of workers’ comp Salon ...Ten prominent Democratic lawmakers, including presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, are urging the U.S. secretary of labor to come up with a plan to ensure that state workers’ compensation programs are properly caring for injured workers. The lawmakers’ letter, sent Tuesday, was prompted by an investigation by ProPublica and NPR...
'Good' Jobs Aren't Coming Back The Atlantic ...Outsourcing decimated American manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, erasing nearly six million jobs between 1989 and 2009. But the number of manufacturing jobs has started to slowly grow again, and about 700,000 jobs have been added since 2010. “Onshoring,” as it’s called, is at this stage delivering just a trickle of new jobs, but states such as Tennessee are offering companies generous incentives to try and speed up the process...
Teaching While Poor: Adjunct Professors and the Fight for Fair Wages The Nation ...If there’s one area that isn’t contributing to our historic levels of student debt, it’s adjunct professor’s pay. More than half of all college professors in the United States are adjuncts, working only “part-time.” One out of three of them live near or below the poverty line, and one out of four is on some form of public assistance...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
The Debt Ceiling Is Coming! Slate ...The debt ceiling deadline has been moved up two days to Nov. 3, according to the most recent estimate from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. That is 11 days from now and considerably fewer legislative days. So far the House hasn’t moved a bill, and neither has the Senate. There’s another problem emerging in the House of Representatives, too, if you can believe it: The votes supposedly aren’t there...
Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Joins Chorus Questioning Legality of Drone Killing Program Common Dreams ...Sparked by an exposé on the Obama administration's drone war, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) has echoed human rights groups and called into question the legality of the killing program. Based on documents leaked to The Intercept by an anonymous intelligence source, The Drone Papers offers an unprecedented look at the global killing program...
Voices of Rise Up October: Victims' Families Decry Police Violence Truthout ...On Saturday, thousands rallied in New York City against police brutality as part of three days of protest called "Rise Up October." Some 40 families across the country impacted by police violence participated in the event alongside scholars such as Dr. Cornel West and Chris Hedges, as well as celebrities including playwright Eve Ensler and filmmaker Quentin Tarantino...
Pro-Immigration Protester Violently Dragged Out Of Trump Rally Huffington Post ...Pro-immigration protesters and Donald Trump supporters clashed at a rally in Miami on Friday, leading to one protester being forcefully dragged out by his collar to chants of "USA! USA!" At least three separate protest groups showed up to the Republican presidential candidate's rally at his Trump National Doral Miami resort, with some bearing signs reading "Dignity" and "Equality"...
Showing posts with label manufacturing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manufacturing. Show all posts
Monday, October 26, 2015
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Today's Teamster News 10.08.15
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters Reach Tentative Agreement With Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons Teamster.org ...The Teamsters Union announced today that it has reached a tentative agreement with grocery companies Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons that if passed, will cover more than 8,000 members across Southern California. The drivers, warehouse, dairy and manufacturing workers at the three companies will vote on the tentative agreement from Oct. 16-18...
Union Challenges Unjust Treatment of Paratransit Workers Local 727 ...In the last nine months alone, Teamsters Local 727 representatives have successfully fought for the reinstatement of a dozen paratransit workers who were wrongfully fired. The union also has filed about 75 grievances relating to issues with discipline, seniority, attendance and other contract violations committed by management at CDT, First Transit, MV Transportation and Ride Right locations...
An Uber Union? American Prospect ...If the National Labor Relations Act doesn’t cover independent contractors, could local governments still pass laws that would? It’s not without precedent: Some states have allowed farmworkers to join unions and O’Brien has been working with Teamsters Local 117 to find a concrete strategy for Seattle. While his bill focuses specifically on drivers, it may also set a precedent for workers' rights for other industries that rely on independent contract labor...
School board members: Teamsters negotiations need to be resolved soon Courier & Press ...At some point, there has to be an end. That's what Evansville Vanderburgh School Board Secretary Andy Guarino said about collective bargaining negotiations with Teamsters Local 215. Duckworth noted issues and concerns have been addressed on the other four employee group contracts but he said binding arbitration is preventing the two groups from an agreement. Teamsters Local 215 President Chuck Whobrey said that shouldn't be a sticking point...
Port Driver Heads to D.C. Go By Truck News ...A port truck driver who was fired over employee classification issues is taking the fight to the White House. Alex Paz served on a panel at a conference on workers’ rights yesterday, Oct. 7, 2015, in Washington, D.C.
Yesterday’s White House Summit on Worker Voice was the first event of its kind. It sought to “explore ways to ensure that middle class Americans are sharing in the benefits of the broad-based economic growth that they are helping to create”...
Joe Biden would be only Democratic candidate backing Asia trade deal if he runs for president Star Tribune ..."This is a game changer," Biden said earlier this year in Mexico, describing TPP as a "comprehensive, high-standard trade agreement" that would raise the bar for 21st century trade. Clinton and other Democrats are aggressively seeking union endorsements in the primary. Galen Munroe, a Teamsters spokesman, said opposition to TPP would be an important consideration...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Hillary Clinton Just Made Passage of the TPP Much More Difficult The Nation ... In a Wednesday afternoon interview with PBS, Hillary Clinton announced that she is opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that was finalized just two days earlier. “As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” she told Judy Woodruff. “I don’t believe it is going to meet the high bar I have set”...
Tobacco ‘carve-out’ sparks bid to sink TPP The Hill ...Lawmakers from tobacco-producing states and business groups are aiming to torpedo a sweeping Asia-Pacific deal over a provision they believe will severely damage the U.S. industry. Delegates from North Carolina, where the majority of the nation’s tobacco is grown, says language unveiled this week in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) unfairly targets the Tar Heel State’s prized crop...
China and Europe may team up to snub TPP CNBC ...The world's largest trade deal in recent decades may wind up creating high school-esque cliques on the international stage. As the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) celebrates after sealing an agreement five years in the making, analysts are wondering whether the key losers from the deal, China and Europe, could join forces in retaliation...
How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens America's Recent Manufacturing Resurgence The Atlantic ...Now that the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations have agreed on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, those who follow manufacturing are looking with new scrutiny at the deal, which will now come before Congress. There’s been a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. after all, a movement called “onshoring.” The nitty-gritty details of the TPP are still not public, but it’s known that the agreement seeks to gradually reduce trade barriers such as tariffs among member countries...
Why the TPP Won’t Work for Workers The Nation ...Those who want evidence of the impact TPP may have on a huge chunk of the world’s workforce can look no further than how an existing free trade accord, based on the same model, is managing labor relations between Peru, a TPP signatory, and the United States. The US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement’s (PTPA) supposedly state-of-the-art labor grievance process is just starting to be tested in a landmark case...
TTIP: The Need For A New Trade Model Dedicated To Shared Prosperity (opinion) Social Europe ...Unions on both sides of the Atlantic are coming together to demand a new set of pro-worker objectives for the TTIP agreement. The AFL-CIO shares information, develops shared proposals and meets regularly with both partners’ negotiators to make clear that the status quo on trade is unacceptable. In 2014, the AFL-CIO and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) published a joint statement urging the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiators to adopt an “open, democratic and participatory” process...
Anti-austerity protests turn violent in Belgium The Independent ...Up to 100,000 people took to the streets on Wednesday in the Belgian capital Brussels, in order to protest against the austerity policies of right-wing Prime Minister Charles Michel. In violent clashes, the police deployed a water cannon against protestors outside Brussels Nord train station. The demonstration was part of a national day of protest against austerity policies and was organised by the Belgium’s three main trade unions...
New VW boss warns staff of ‘massive cutbacks’ after emissions scandal Al Jazeera ...New Volkswagen Chief Executive Matthias Müller warned staffers on Tuesday to brace for "massive cutbacks" in response to the diesel emissions scandal that has hammered the company's stock and reputation. Speaking to employees at VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, Müller, who replaced longtime CEO Martin Winterkorn late last month, said all the company's investment plans would be put under review and an existing cost-cutting program accelerated...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Tennessee’s First Year Of Drug Testing Welfare Applicants Didn’t Go Very Well Think Progress ...Tennessee’s first year of drug testing welfare recipients uncovered drug use by less than 0.2 percent of all applicants for the state’s public assistance system. The state implemented the testing regime in the summer of 2014, adding three questions about narcotics use to the application form for aid. Anyone who answers “yes” to any of the three drug questions must take a urine test or have their application thrown away immediately...
Can California Prevent Wage Discrimination Against Women? The Atlantic ...Despite, or perhaps because of, overwhelming congressional gridlock that has stymied federal legislation, states are taking their own steps toward addressing the gender wage gap. On Tuesday evening, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Fair Pay Act, which is being called the “strongest” state law to tackle the issue...
State wants federal judge to rule on Voter ID before March primaries Winston-Salem Journal ...State attorneys want a federal judge to dismiss the legal challenge to North Carolina’s voter-identification law before the March 2016 presidential primary, according to court documents filed Wednesday. And though the plaintiffs, including the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said they hoped to settle the matter before a trial, state attorneys said there’s no chance of that...
Alabama Puts Up More Hurdles for Voters (editorial) New York Times ...Barely one year after Alabama’s voter-ID law went into effect, officials are planning to close 31 driver’s license offices across the state, including those in every county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters. It's ostensibly a cost-cutting effort, but couples with the voter-ID law, these closings will make it even more difficult for many of the state's most vulnerable voters to get one of the most common forms of identification now required to cast a vote...
It’s Getting Harder To Move Beyond A Minimum-Wage Job FiveThirtyEight ...Minimum-wage jobs are meant to be the first rung on a career ladder, a chance for entry-level workers to prove themselves before earning a promotion or moving on to other, better-paying jobs. But a growing number of Americans are getting stuck on that first rung for years, if they ever move up at all...
U.S. LABOR
Obama praises unions, workers' rights at White House Summit Reuters ...President Barack Obama called for higher blue-collar wages and benefits and promoted collective bargaining on Wednesday, courting workers' unions in a day-long event as his advancing Pacific Rim trade deal has left many labor groups disenchanted with the White House. In a speech to workers, union leaders, lawmakers and employers, Obama supported the defense of workers' rights and urged workers to band together in an increasingly technology-driven economy...
UAW reaches tentative deal with Fiat Chrysler to avoid strike Washington Post ...The United Auto Workers union narrowly avoided a strike against Fiat Chrysler of America early Thursday morning, announcing an agreement less than two days after threatening to pull as many as 40,000 workers off the job while contract negotiations soured. The union posted on Facebook just after midnight that that bargaining committee had "secured significant gains"...
Ford Motor Company Dodges The Impending Workers’ Strike After Reaching An Agreement With The Union Business Finance News ...Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) has avoided a workers’ strike at Ford’s Kansas City assembly plant, which produces its most profitable F-150 pickups along with the transit full size commercial vans. Approximately 7,500 people work at the Missouri Ford plant. According to Bloomberg, both parties reached on a tentative labor contract on Friday...
Companies agree to first union deal for Pittsburgh security guards Post-Gazette ...Capping what supporters have called the biggest labor organizing victory in Pittsburgh in a decade, a group of security companies have agreed to the first-ever contract covering hundreds of security guards who patrol dozens of large commercial buildings in the city. The local chapter of the property services labor union, known as 32BJ SEIU, began organizing security guards last fall by the hundreds...
Wave of Digital Media Organizing Continues as Al Jazeera America Goes Union In These Times ...The unionization of digital media continues—now at Al Jazeera America (AJAM), after the National Labor Relations Board confirmed this morning that the news publication’s digital workers voted 32-5 in favor of union representation under the NewsGuild of New York, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). AJAM digital workers had previously sought voluntary union recognition from employers on September 3...
Trevor Noah dissects the Uber economy: “You get into it for the 19-year-old who vomits in the back seat of your Camry” Salon ...Uber’s app-based taxi service might be available in 311 different cities and be estimated as a $50 billion company, but “The Daily Show’s” Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper say there’s something disturbing about the new “gig economy.” The model of paying people for a brief service means fewer workers are salaried employees...
Senators Want To Clean Up After Supreme Court Decision That Exposed Older Workers To Discrimination Think Progress ...On Thursday, Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) will introduce the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (POWADA), a bill aimed at reversing a 2009 Supreme Court decision that made it much harder for workers to prove they have been victims of age discrimination, a Congressional staffer told ThinkProgress...
How Bernie Sanders’ New Bill Would Help More Workers Unionize Think Porgress ...Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) unveiled a new bill this week that would make it easier for workers to form a union and negotiate a contract free from employer retaliation or foot-dragging. As he actively courts union endorsements of his presidential candidacy, Sanders’ latest move also draws a strong contrast with his Republican opponents in the presidential race, who have almost unanimously backed “right-to-work” laws that would weaken labor unions...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Not Just Consumer Fraud, VW Scandal Called 'Crime Against Climate' Common Dreams ...Joining the chorus of watchdogs who say Volkswagen (VW) must pay for its corporate crime, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Tuesday released an analysis charging that financial penalties for the company's environmental violations should be no less than $25.1 billion in the United States alone. While VW Chief Executive Matthias Müller stressed on Wednesday that "there were no deaths, and our cars were, and are safe," the evidence suggests otherwise...
Clinton to Meet Friday with Black Lives Matter Activists NBC ...A Clinton campaign aide confirmed that the meeting will take place Friday in DC. McKesson and other activists have already met over the last few weeks with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. They have been seeking meetings with all of the candidates of both parties to push their idea of police reforms that they have dubbed "Campaign Zero," the idea being to end police killings of civilians...
Teamsters Reach Tentative Agreement With Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons Teamster.org ...The Teamsters Union announced today that it has reached a tentative agreement with grocery companies Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons that if passed, will cover more than 8,000 members across Southern California. The drivers, warehouse, dairy and manufacturing workers at the three companies will vote on the tentative agreement from Oct. 16-18...
Union Challenges Unjust Treatment of Paratransit Workers Local 727 ...In the last nine months alone, Teamsters Local 727 representatives have successfully fought for the reinstatement of a dozen paratransit workers who were wrongfully fired. The union also has filed about 75 grievances relating to issues with discipline, seniority, attendance and other contract violations committed by management at CDT, First Transit, MV Transportation and Ride Right locations...
An Uber Union? American Prospect ...If the National Labor Relations Act doesn’t cover independent contractors, could local governments still pass laws that would? It’s not without precedent: Some states have allowed farmworkers to join unions and O’Brien has been working with Teamsters Local 117 to find a concrete strategy for Seattle. While his bill focuses specifically on drivers, it may also set a precedent for workers' rights for other industries that rely on independent contract labor...
School board members: Teamsters negotiations need to be resolved soon Courier & Press ...At some point, there has to be an end. That's what Evansville Vanderburgh School Board Secretary Andy Guarino said about collective bargaining negotiations with Teamsters Local 215. Duckworth noted issues and concerns have been addressed on the other four employee group contracts but he said binding arbitration is preventing the two groups from an agreement. Teamsters Local 215 President Chuck Whobrey said that shouldn't be a sticking point...
Port Driver Heads to D.C. Go By Truck News ...A port truck driver who was fired over employee classification issues is taking the fight to the White House. Alex Paz served on a panel at a conference on workers’ rights yesterday, Oct. 7, 2015, in Washington, D.C.
Yesterday’s White House Summit on Worker Voice was the first event of its kind. It sought to “explore ways to ensure that middle class Americans are sharing in the benefits of the broad-based economic growth that they are helping to create”...
Joe Biden would be only Democratic candidate backing Asia trade deal if he runs for president Star Tribune ..."This is a game changer," Biden said earlier this year in Mexico, describing TPP as a "comprehensive, high-standard trade agreement" that would raise the bar for 21st century trade. Clinton and other Democrats are aggressively seeking union endorsements in the primary. Galen Munroe, a Teamsters spokesman, said opposition to TPP would be an important consideration...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Hillary Clinton Just Made Passage of the TPP Much More Difficult The Nation ... In a Wednesday afternoon interview with PBS, Hillary Clinton announced that she is opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that was finalized just two days earlier. “As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” she told Judy Woodruff. “I don’t believe it is going to meet the high bar I have set”...
Tobacco ‘carve-out’ sparks bid to sink TPP The Hill ...Lawmakers from tobacco-producing states and business groups are aiming to torpedo a sweeping Asia-Pacific deal over a provision they believe will severely damage the U.S. industry. Delegates from North Carolina, where the majority of the nation’s tobacco is grown, says language unveiled this week in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) unfairly targets the Tar Heel State’s prized crop...
China and Europe may team up to snub TPP CNBC ...The world's largest trade deal in recent decades may wind up creating high school-esque cliques on the international stage. As the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) celebrates after sealing an agreement five years in the making, analysts are wondering whether the key losers from the deal, China and Europe, could join forces in retaliation...
How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens America's Recent Manufacturing Resurgence The Atlantic ...Now that the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations have agreed on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, those who follow manufacturing are looking with new scrutiny at the deal, which will now come before Congress. There’s been a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. after all, a movement called “onshoring.” The nitty-gritty details of the TPP are still not public, but it’s known that the agreement seeks to gradually reduce trade barriers such as tariffs among member countries...
Why the TPP Won’t Work for Workers The Nation ...Those who want evidence of the impact TPP may have on a huge chunk of the world’s workforce can look no further than how an existing free trade accord, based on the same model, is managing labor relations between Peru, a TPP signatory, and the United States. The US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement’s (PTPA) supposedly state-of-the-art labor grievance process is just starting to be tested in a landmark case...
TTIP: The Need For A New Trade Model Dedicated To Shared Prosperity (opinion) Social Europe ...Unions on both sides of the Atlantic are coming together to demand a new set of pro-worker objectives for the TTIP agreement. The AFL-CIO shares information, develops shared proposals and meets regularly with both partners’ negotiators to make clear that the status quo on trade is unacceptable. In 2014, the AFL-CIO and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) published a joint statement urging the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiators to adopt an “open, democratic and participatory” process...
Anti-austerity protests turn violent in Belgium The Independent ...Up to 100,000 people took to the streets on Wednesday in the Belgian capital Brussels, in order to protest against the austerity policies of right-wing Prime Minister Charles Michel. In violent clashes, the police deployed a water cannon against protestors outside Brussels Nord train station. The demonstration was part of a national day of protest against austerity policies and was organised by the Belgium’s three main trade unions...
New VW boss warns staff of ‘massive cutbacks’ after emissions scandal Al Jazeera ...New Volkswagen Chief Executive Matthias Müller warned staffers on Tuesday to brace for "massive cutbacks" in response to the diesel emissions scandal that has hammered the company's stock and reputation. Speaking to employees at VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, Müller, who replaced longtime CEO Martin Winterkorn late last month, said all the company's investment plans would be put under review and an existing cost-cutting program accelerated...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Tennessee’s First Year Of Drug Testing Welfare Applicants Didn’t Go Very Well Think Progress ...Tennessee’s first year of drug testing welfare recipients uncovered drug use by less than 0.2 percent of all applicants for the state’s public assistance system. The state implemented the testing regime in the summer of 2014, adding three questions about narcotics use to the application form for aid. Anyone who answers “yes” to any of the three drug questions must take a urine test or have their application thrown away immediately...
Can California Prevent Wage Discrimination Against Women? The Atlantic ...Despite, or perhaps because of, overwhelming congressional gridlock that has stymied federal legislation, states are taking their own steps toward addressing the gender wage gap. On Tuesday evening, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Fair Pay Act, which is being called the “strongest” state law to tackle the issue...
State wants federal judge to rule on Voter ID before March primaries Winston-Salem Journal ...State attorneys want a federal judge to dismiss the legal challenge to North Carolina’s voter-identification law before the March 2016 presidential primary, according to court documents filed Wednesday. And though the plaintiffs, including the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said they hoped to settle the matter before a trial, state attorneys said there’s no chance of that...
Alabama Puts Up More Hurdles for Voters (editorial) New York Times ...Barely one year after Alabama’s voter-ID law went into effect, officials are planning to close 31 driver’s license offices across the state, including those in every county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters. It's ostensibly a cost-cutting effort, but couples with the voter-ID law, these closings will make it even more difficult for many of the state's most vulnerable voters to get one of the most common forms of identification now required to cast a vote...
It’s Getting Harder To Move Beyond A Minimum-Wage Job FiveThirtyEight ...Minimum-wage jobs are meant to be the first rung on a career ladder, a chance for entry-level workers to prove themselves before earning a promotion or moving on to other, better-paying jobs. But a growing number of Americans are getting stuck on that first rung for years, if they ever move up at all...
U.S. LABOR
Obama praises unions, workers' rights at White House Summit Reuters ...President Barack Obama called for higher blue-collar wages and benefits and promoted collective bargaining on Wednesday, courting workers' unions in a day-long event as his advancing Pacific Rim trade deal has left many labor groups disenchanted with the White House. In a speech to workers, union leaders, lawmakers and employers, Obama supported the defense of workers' rights and urged workers to band together in an increasingly technology-driven economy...
UAW reaches tentative deal with Fiat Chrysler to avoid strike Washington Post ...The United Auto Workers union narrowly avoided a strike against Fiat Chrysler of America early Thursday morning, announcing an agreement less than two days after threatening to pull as many as 40,000 workers off the job while contract negotiations soured. The union posted on Facebook just after midnight that that bargaining committee had "secured significant gains"...
Ford Motor Company Dodges The Impending Workers’ Strike After Reaching An Agreement With The Union Business Finance News ...Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) has avoided a workers’ strike at Ford’s Kansas City assembly plant, which produces its most profitable F-150 pickups along with the transit full size commercial vans. Approximately 7,500 people work at the Missouri Ford plant. According to Bloomberg, both parties reached on a tentative labor contract on Friday...
Companies agree to first union deal for Pittsburgh security guards Post-Gazette ...Capping what supporters have called the biggest labor organizing victory in Pittsburgh in a decade, a group of security companies have agreed to the first-ever contract covering hundreds of security guards who patrol dozens of large commercial buildings in the city. The local chapter of the property services labor union, known as 32BJ SEIU, began organizing security guards last fall by the hundreds...
Wave of Digital Media Organizing Continues as Al Jazeera America Goes Union In These Times ...The unionization of digital media continues—now at Al Jazeera America (AJAM), after the National Labor Relations Board confirmed this morning that the news publication’s digital workers voted 32-5 in favor of union representation under the NewsGuild of New York, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). AJAM digital workers had previously sought voluntary union recognition from employers on September 3...
Trevor Noah dissects the Uber economy: “You get into it for the 19-year-old who vomits in the back seat of your Camry” Salon ...Uber’s app-based taxi service might be available in 311 different cities and be estimated as a $50 billion company, but “The Daily Show’s” Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper say there’s something disturbing about the new “gig economy.” The model of paying people for a brief service means fewer workers are salaried employees...
Senators Want To Clean Up After Supreme Court Decision That Exposed Older Workers To Discrimination Think Progress ...On Thursday, Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) will introduce the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (POWADA), a bill aimed at reversing a 2009 Supreme Court decision that made it much harder for workers to prove they have been victims of age discrimination, a Congressional staffer told ThinkProgress...
How Bernie Sanders’ New Bill Would Help More Workers Unionize Think Porgress ...Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) unveiled a new bill this week that would make it easier for workers to form a union and negotiate a contract free from employer retaliation or foot-dragging. As he actively courts union endorsements of his presidential candidacy, Sanders’ latest move also draws a strong contrast with his Republican opponents in the presidential race, who have almost unanimously backed “right-to-work” laws that would weaken labor unions...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Not Just Consumer Fraud, VW Scandal Called 'Crime Against Climate' Common Dreams ...Joining the chorus of watchdogs who say Volkswagen (VW) must pay for its corporate crime, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Tuesday released an analysis charging that financial penalties for the company's environmental violations should be no less than $25.1 billion in the United States alone. While VW Chief Executive Matthias Müller stressed on Wednesday that "there were no deaths, and our cars were, and are safe," the evidence suggests otherwise...
Clinton to Meet Friday with Black Lives Matter Activists NBC ...A Clinton campaign aide confirmed that the meeting will take place Friday in DC. McKesson and other activists have already met over the last few weeks with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. They have been seeking meetings with all of the candidates of both parties to push their idea of police reforms that they have dubbed "Campaign Zero," the idea being to end police killings of civilians...
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Trade deficits, job losses are more reasons to fear TPP
Bad trades deals have a real cost to regular Americans. And a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis makes it clear what that is -- jobs.
The huge U.S. trade deficit, especially in manufactured goods, led to the loss of all 5 million U.S. factory jobs that have disappeared since 2000, EPI stated. Analyst Robert Scott’s issue paper adds productivity gains in factories were responsible for virtually none of the losses, counter to many prevailing
economists’ claims.
U.S. factories lost just over 5 million jobs since 2000, when factories employed upwards of 18 million people. They fell to 11.5 million during the Great Recession, and recovered 800,000 jobs since. But productivity rose at least 3.7 percent yearly through 2007, and 1.7 percent since then. The reason for so small a factory recovery is the trade deficit, Scott says.
The leading cause of growing U.S. trade deficits is currency manipulation, which distorts trade flows by artificially lowering the cost of imports and raising the cost of exports. More than 20 countries, led by China, have been spending about $1 trillion per year buying foreign assets to artificially suppress the value of their currencies. Ending currency manipulation can create between 2.3 million and 5.8 million jobs for working Americans, and about 40 percent of those jobs -- between 891,500 and 2.3 million -- would be in manufacturing.
As the analysis explains:
The huge U.S. trade deficit, especially in manufactured goods, led to the loss of all 5 million U.S. factory jobs that have disappeared since 2000, EPI stated. Analyst Robert Scott’s issue paper adds productivity gains in factories were responsible for virtually none of the losses, counter to many prevailing economists’ claims.
U.S. factories lost just over 5 million jobs since 2000, when factories employed upwards of 18 million people. They fell to 11.5 million during the Great Recession, and recovered 800,000 jobs since. But productivity rose at least 3.7 percent yearly through 2007, and 1.7 percent since then. The reason for so small a factory recovery is the trade deficit, Scott says.
The leading cause of growing U.S. trade deficits is currency manipulation, which distorts trade flows by artificially lowering the cost of imports and raising the cost of exports. More than 20 countries, led by China, have been spending about $1 trillion per year buying foreign assets to artificially suppress the value of their currencies. Ending currency manipulation can create between 2.3 million and 5.8 million jobs for working Americans, and about 40 percent of those jobs -- between 891,500 and 2.3 million -- would be in manufacturing.
As the analysis explains:
A rising trade deficit indicates that U.S. manufacturers are losing business to manufacturing industries in other countries like China and Japan, who manipulate their currency to make their goods cheaper and therefore more appealing to consumers in the United States and elsewhere. This leads to reduced demand for goods produced by U.S. manufacturers, both at home and abroad.Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa went further into the potential damages currency manipulation could wrought on American workers in a piece he authored this week. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership still looming, concerns about future job lost maybe even more important than those from the past.
- Press Associates, Inc. contributed to this report.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Today's Teamster News 04.28.15
Teamsters
Hoffa: Latest Trade Push is a War on Workers Huffington Post ...President Obama in an interview last week downplayed the impact of unfair trade on the U.S. workforce, arguing that many manufacturing jobs are low paying. But I disagree with the president. This nation's manufacturing base provides a pathway to prosperity for many Americans, especially those who work union jobs...
Port Truck Drivers on Strike at Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach Teamster.org ...Primary picket lines are now up company yards in the greater Los Angeles area and in San Diego, and truckers and their supporters are picketing company trucks at marine terminals, rail yards, and customer warehouses as far away as the US/Mexico border...
Port truck drivers strike against four companies LA Times ...Picket lines went up outside the trucking yards of Pacific 9 Transportation, Intermodal Bridge Transport, Pacer Cartage and Harbor Rail Transport, said Barb Maynard, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union, which is supporting the truckers. Maynard estimated the number of drivers striking at several hundred...
Port’s Short-Haul Truck Drivers Walking Picket Lines Times of San Diego ...Port truck drivers walked picket lines at an Otay Mesa freight drayage company Monday morning as they and their counterparts in Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike against the short-haul transport companies for which they work. Drivers working at ports in San Diego, Los Angeles and Long Beach voted Saturday to strike following a recent ruling that the drivers are misclassified as “independent contractors”...
Flexjet Pilots Sue Luxury Jet Airline For Union Busting Teamster.org ... group of jet pilots filed a lawsuit Friday against airline Flexjet, LLC and OneSky, its Cleveland-based parent company, claiming they were illegally harassed and terminated for speaking out in favor of unionization and better working conditions. The pilots are seeking representation from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Airline Division, which represents over 80,000 workers in the aviation industry...
Shareholders Rein In Golden Parachutes Forbes ...Louis Malizia, assistant director of the Teamsters Capital Strategies department at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said his initial assumption following the financial crisis was that golden parachutes would be stigmatized by the public before fading away...
Global Labor & Trade
12-country TPP talks end without a breakthrough Japan Times ...Chief negotiators from 12 countries aiming to forge a Pacific free trade initiative finished four days of talks on Sunday, a Japanese official said, apparently without making major progress. The trade officials from the United States, Japan and 10 other countries gathered in a Washington suburb with intellectual property, including data on new drugs, and reform of state-owned entities as their main issues...
Trade Fight Galvanizing the Left Roll Call ...If they can’t stop the TPA bill, the nearly 70 voting House members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus are determined to make such a ruckus that the party’s 2016 candidates — presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in particular — realize Obama’s middle-of-the-road approach to trade, or any major policy area, is not acceptable...
Obama shifts his pitch for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Washington Post ...The sharp shift in the way Obama is now presenting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade deal in the Asia-Pacific region, illustrates his biggest challenge as he tries to wrap up a late-term policy victory over fierce opposition from fellow Democrats...
Elizabeth Warren Tells Obama To Put Up Or Shut Up On Trade Huffington Post ...On Saturday, Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) responded with a letter essentially telling Obama to put up or shut up. If the deal is so great, Warren and Brown wrote, the administration should make the full negotiation texts public before Congress votes on a "fast track" bill that would strip the legislative branch of its authority to amend it...
2,009 Organizations Call on Congress to Oppose Fast Track Authority for the TPP Citizens Trade ...An unprecedentedly united movement of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, Internet freedom and other organizations escalated their campaign to defeat Fast Track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) today with a joint 2,009-group letter urging Congress to oppose it...
Trans Pacific Partnership is bad deal for senior citizens (opinion) The Hill ...Prescription drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world and last year they increased by 13 percent. If Congress enacts the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in its current form, it could increase those expenses for seniors and all Americans dramatically...
Currency provisions essential in Asian trade pact (opinion) Detriot Free Press ...While the economy is growing stronger every day, many people in Michigan still don't feel the success at home or in their pocketbooks, which is why it's imperative we promote policies to help hardworking families get ahead. And a bad trade deal jeopardizes all the shared progress we've made...
State & Living Wage Battles
Mayors to Rauner: 'Follow our lead, don't cripple our progress' Chicago Sun-Times ...A group of suburban mayors is pushing back against Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal to cut in half the amount of state money that goes to municipalities, saying their residents are asked to pay the price for the state’s lack of fiscal discipline...
Bernie Sanders and other senators urge ‘living wage’ for Senate workers MarketWatch ... A group of nine senators is pushing for Senate contract workers to be paid a “living wage” following reports of workers barely getting by. Roll Call writes that the senators, including Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, wrote Monday to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee: "The U.S. Congress should be working to improve the economic security of middle class families across the country"...
State Senate shelves minimum wage measure Oneida Daily Dispatch ...A proposal to let cities in New York state set their own minimum wages was shelved by lawmakers in the state Senate on Monday — dealing a setback to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and others who want the state to relinquish its total control of the wage...
Prevailing wage reform proposed in Pa. House Herald-Mail Media ...Pa. Rep. Jesse Topper is pushing for prevailing-wage reform that would allow school districts to pay market rates for construction, rather than adjusted rates determined by the Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor & Industry...
Florida Passes Law That Bans Discriminating Against Pregnant Women In Public Think Progress ...Last week, the Florida legislature passed a bill banning discrimination against pregnant women at work as well as in public places like restaurants or hotels. The bill amends the state’s Civil Rights Act by adding pregnancy to race, sex, and physical disability as protected classes...
Hoffa: Latest Trade Push is a War on Workers Huffington Post ...President Obama in an interview last week downplayed the impact of unfair trade on the U.S. workforce, arguing that many manufacturing jobs are low paying. But I disagree with the president. This nation's manufacturing base provides a pathway to prosperity for many Americans, especially those who work union jobs...
Port Truck Drivers on Strike at Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach Teamster.org ...Primary picket lines are now up company yards in the greater Los Angeles area and in San Diego, and truckers and their supporters are picketing company trucks at marine terminals, rail yards, and customer warehouses as far away as the US/Mexico border...
Port truck drivers strike against four companies LA Times ...Picket lines went up outside the trucking yards of Pacific 9 Transportation, Intermodal Bridge Transport, Pacer Cartage and Harbor Rail Transport, said Barb Maynard, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union, which is supporting the truckers. Maynard estimated the number of drivers striking at several hundred...
Port’s Short-Haul Truck Drivers Walking Picket Lines Times of San Diego ...Port truck drivers walked picket lines at an Otay Mesa freight drayage company Monday morning as they and their counterparts in Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike against the short-haul transport companies for which they work. Drivers working at ports in San Diego, Los Angeles and Long Beach voted Saturday to strike following a recent ruling that the drivers are misclassified as “independent contractors”...
Flexjet Pilots Sue Luxury Jet Airline For Union Busting Teamster.org ... group of jet pilots filed a lawsuit Friday against airline Flexjet, LLC and OneSky, its Cleveland-based parent company, claiming they were illegally harassed and terminated for speaking out in favor of unionization and better working conditions. The pilots are seeking representation from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Airline Division, which represents over 80,000 workers in the aviation industry...
Shareholders Rein In Golden Parachutes Forbes ...Louis Malizia, assistant director of the Teamsters Capital Strategies department at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said his initial assumption following the financial crisis was that golden parachutes would be stigmatized by the public before fading away...
Global Labor & Trade
12-country TPP talks end without a breakthrough Japan Times ...Chief negotiators from 12 countries aiming to forge a Pacific free trade initiative finished four days of talks on Sunday, a Japanese official said, apparently without making major progress. The trade officials from the United States, Japan and 10 other countries gathered in a Washington suburb with intellectual property, including data on new drugs, and reform of state-owned entities as their main issues...
Trade Fight Galvanizing the Left Roll Call ...If they can’t stop the TPA bill, the nearly 70 voting House members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus are determined to make such a ruckus that the party’s 2016 candidates — presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in particular — realize Obama’s middle-of-the-road approach to trade, or any major policy area, is not acceptable...
Obama shifts his pitch for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Washington Post ...The sharp shift in the way Obama is now presenting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade deal in the Asia-Pacific region, illustrates his biggest challenge as he tries to wrap up a late-term policy victory over fierce opposition from fellow Democrats...
Elizabeth Warren Tells Obama To Put Up Or Shut Up On Trade Huffington Post ...On Saturday, Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) responded with a letter essentially telling Obama to put up or shut up. If the deal is so great, Warren and Brown wrote, the administration should make the full negotiation texts public before Congress votes on a "fast track" bill that would strip the legislative branch of its authority to amend it...
2,009 Organizations Call on Congress to Oppose Fast Track Authority for the TPP Citizens Trade ...An unprecedentedly united movement of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, Internet freedom and other organizations escalated their campaign to defeat Fast Track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) today with a joint 2,009-group letter urging Congress to oppose it...
Trans Pacific Partnership is bad deal for senior citizens (opinion) The Hill ...Prescription drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world and last year they increased by 13 percent. If Congress enacts the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in its current form, it could increase those expenses for seniors and all Americans dramatically...
Currency provisions essential in Asian trade pact (opinion) Detriot Free Press ...While the economy is growing stronger every day, many people in Michigan still don't feel the success at home or in their pocketbooks, which is why it's imperative we promote policies to help hardworking families get ahead. And a bad trade deal jeopardizes all the shared progress we've made...
State & Living Wage Battles
Mayors to Rauner: 'Follow our lead, don't cripple our progress' Chicago Sun-Times ...A group of suburban mayors is pushing back against Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal to cut in half the amount of state money that goes to municipalities, saying their residents are asked to pay the price for the state’s lack of fiscal discipline...
Bernie Sanders and other senators urge ‘living wage’ for Senate workers MarketWatch ... A group of nine senators is pushing for Senate contract workers to be paid a “living wage” following reports of workers barely getting by. Roll Call writes that the senators, including Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, wrote Monday to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee: "The U.S. Congress should be working to improve the economic security of middle class families across the country"...
State Senate shelves minimum wage measure Oneida Daily Dispatch ...A proposal to let cities in New York state set their own minimum wages was shelved by lawmakers in the state Senate on Monday — dealing a setback to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and others who want the state to relinquish its total control of the wage...
Prevailing wage reform proposed in Pa. House Herald-Mail Media ...Pa. Rep. Jesse Topper is pushing for prevailing-wage reform that would allow school districts to pay market rates for construction, rather than adjusted rates determined by the Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor & Industry...
Florida Passes Law That Bans Discriminating Against Pregnant Women In Public Think Progress ...Last week, the Florida legislature passed a bill banning discrimination against pregnant women at work as well as in public places like restaurants or hotels. The bill amends the state’s Civil Rights Act by adding pregnancy to race, sex, and physical disability as protected classes...
City considers minimum wage increase Minnesota Daily ...The Minneapolis City Council approved a resolution earlier this month to create a group to research the possible effects of raising the city’s minimum wage. The group will investigate the economic impact of raising wages and consider concerns from both workers and businesses. It will give recommendations to city officials before the year ends...
U.S. Labor
UAW to protest proposal to close DHHS offices Lansing State Journal ...The United Auto Workers Local 6000 will on Tuesday begin demonstrating against a proposal to close Michigan Department of Health & Human Services offices around the state...
Union files NLRB charge against Lyondell Basell for impasse Reuters ...The United Steelworkers union filed a charge with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board against Lyondell Basell Industries for declaring an impasse in negotiations with striking Houston refinery workers, the union said on Monday. Lyondell declared the impasse on April 14 following the rejection of its "last, best and final" contract offer by striking workers...
Manufacturer cuts hundreds of N.C. jobs as operations move overseas Charlotte Business Journal ...The company will eliminate 143 positions in Lenoir and 82 jobs in Greensboro, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, filed with the N.C. Department of Commerce. Avery Dennison is ending manufacturing operations in both locations and moving production to Juarez, Mexico, and to Honduras...
Miscellaneous
Connecting Baltimore Riots to Lead Poisoning, Wealth Disparity Mediaite ...Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s statement that “a riot is the language of the unheard,” Dyson suggested it would be difficult to condemn this riot without also mentioning the broad context for why a local community would destroy itself. “What we don’t have commentary about is the theft of capital from these urban post-industrial conditions”...
Why Millions of Americans Feel Like They Have No Power Over Their Lives Alternet ...Companies are treating workers as disposable cogs because most working people have no choice. They need work and must take what they can get. Although jobs are coming back from the depths of the Great Recession, the portion of the labor force actually working remains lower than it’s been in over thirty years...
U.S. Labor
UAW to protest proposal to close DHHS offices Lansing State Journal ...The United Auto Workers Local 6000 will on Tuesday begin demonstrating against a proposal to close Michigan Department of Health & Human Services offices around the state...
Union files NLRB charge against Lyondell Basell for impasse Reuters ...The United Steelworkers union filed a charge with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board against Lyondell Basell Industries for declaring an impasse in negotiations with striking Houston refinery workers, the union said on Monday. Lyondell declared the impasse on April 14 following the rejection of its "last, best and final" contract offer by striking workers...
Manufacturer cuts hundreds of N.C. jobs as operations move overseas Charlotte Business Journal ...The company will eliminate 143 positions in Lenoir and 82 jobs in Greensboro, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, filed with the N.C. Department of Commerce. Avery Dennison is ending manufacturing operations in both locations and moving production to Juarez, Mexico, and to Honduras...
Miscellaneous
Connecting Baltimore Riots to Lead Poisoning, Wealth Disparity Mediaite ...Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s statement that “a riot is the language of the unheard,” Dyson suggested it would be difficult to condemn this riot without also mentioning the broad context for why a local community would destroy itself. “What we don’t have commentary about is the theft of capital from these urban post-industrial conditions”...
Why Millions of Americans Feel Like They Have No Power Over Their Lives Alternet ...Companies are treating workers as disposable cogs because most working people have no choice. They need work and must take what they can get. Although jobs are coming back from the depths of the Great Recession, the portion of the labor force actually working remains lower than it’s been in over thirty years...
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Today's Teamster News 03.18.15
Teamsters
NEW: Teamsters Organize Workers at Daniele Foods in RI GoLocalProv ...The Teamsters Local 251 have announced that they have organized the shipping and receiving departments, as well as drivers, at Daniel Foods in Pascoag, RI...
Trade
House Republican Bloc Poses a Threat to Pacific Trade Deal Wall Street Journal ...A diverse bloc of House Republicans is threatening to join Democrats in opposition to the White House’s trade push, imperiling an effort long seen as one of the few prospects this year for bipartisan cooperation...
Lawmakers Say TPP Meetings Classified To Keep Americans in the Dark eNewsParkForest ...Lawmakers in Congress who remain wary of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement are raising further objections this week to the degree of secrecy surrounding briefings on the deal, with some arguing that the main reason at least one meeting has been registered "classified" is to help keep the American public ignorant about giveaways to corporate interests and its long-term implications...
Obama trade agenda becomes problem for Hillary Clinton The Hill ...President Obama's pro-trade agenda is a problem for Hillary Clinton, who is under pressure from liberals to oppose her former boss’s push for fast-track authority as she prepares to run for the White House...
Rep. Tim Ryan hopes President Obama sees trade agreement consequences during Cleveland visit Cleveland.com ... Rep. Tim Ryan hopes President Barack Obama takes a good look around Northeast Ohio on Wednesday as visits Cleveland to deliver a speech to the City Club on middle-class economics. Ryan believes such an examination would show Obama that trade agreements harmed the region's economy...
TPP Is Only Secret From You – But Trust Us, It’s Good For You Campaign for America's Future ...“We have to see TPP. It may not be the final agreement, but we have to see what it is,” Pelosi told reporters after the first of several House Democratic Caucus meetings to dig into details about the proposed pact with Japan and 10 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region...
Intellectual Property Issues Hinder TPP Talks In Hawaii Japan News ...Chief negotiators from Japan, the United States and 10 other countries in Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral free trade talks failed to iron out differences in their one-week meeting that ended Sunday...
State Battles
'Right to work' means right to leave Wisconsin KY3 ...The owner of a Wisconsin construction company is taking his business to Minnesota because of the passage of ‘right-to-work’ legislation in Wisconsin. His company employs 200 union workers...
Oregon is first state to adopt automatic voter registration Associated Press ...Seventeen years after Oregon decided to become the first state to hold all elections with mail-in ballots, it took another pioneering step on Monday to broaden participation by automatically registering people to vote...
Tampa Bay Democrats ramping up wage-theft laws Tampa Bay Times ...Local Tampa Bay Democrats, supported by unions, are pushing ordinances to intervene when employees say an employer has shorted their pay. The proposals are the exact kind of local "wage theft" ordinances that Republicans and retail groups have sought unsuccessfully to outlaw in Tallahassee saying they place an unfair burden on business...
Legislation Would Require Private Student Loans Be Forgiven If Borrower Dies Consumerist ...New York Senator Chuck Schumer announced today that he would push for legislation – called “Andrew’s Law” – that would require private student loan companies to forgive outstanding debt if a borrower dies...
War on Workers
Obama Likely To Veto Resolution To Overturn NLRB Rule Wall Street Journal ...If Mr. Obama were to veto the resolution, there wouldn’t be enough votes in the Senate to override his opposition, said a Democratic aide. Senate Republicans control 54 of the chamber’s seats, short of the 67 needed to override a veto...
Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions Sunlight Foundation ...Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. A year-long analysis by the Sunlight Foundation suggests, however, that what they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support...
Middle-Class Betrayal? Why Working Hard Is No Longer Enough in America NBC News ...even with more education, working 18-to-34 year old adults are earning less than they did 15 years ago...
Worker Killed At Plastics Plant In Cartersville Atlanta Journal Constitution ...A 40-year-old man was cleaning a plastics mixing machine at Syncot Plastics on South Erwin Street around 7 a.m. when he got caught in a roller bar and was dragged through the machine, said Cartersville police spokesman Maj. Mark Camp...
Va. Mine Worker Killed By Falling Rock Richmond Times Dispatch ...Alpha Natural Resources Inc. says a worker at one of its affiliate mines in southwest Virginia has died after being struck by falling rock. According to the Bristol, Virginia-based company, the incident occurred Monday morning at Deep Mine 41 near McClure. The mine is run by Paramont Coal Co...
Miscellaneous
U.S. Oil Prices Fall To Six-Year Low New York Times ...Oil prices fell to six-year lows on Monday in the face of concerns that a glut in the United States was outpacing already-brimming storage facilities. Additionally, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries published a report suggesting that the cartel remained reluctant to intervene to prop up prices...
Drop In Manufacturing Takes Shine Off Small Gain In Industrial Production Wall Street Journal ...Industrial production, which measures the output of manufacturers, utilities and mines, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% from the prior month, the Federal Reserve said Monday. Utility output surged during unusually cold weather, but factory and mining production declined, reflecting weaker demand and cuts in the oil and gas sector...
Texas Bill Would Turn Off Power To Massive NSA Surveillance Facility Tenth Amendment Center ...Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R) introduced House Bill 3916 (HB3916) on March 13. The legislation would prohibit any political subdivision in Texas from providing water or electricity to any federal agency “involved in the routine surveillance or collection and storage of bulk telephone or e-mail records or related metadata concerning any citizen of the United States and that claims the legal authority to collect and store the bulk telephone or e-mail records or metadata concerning any citizen of the United States without the citizen’s consent or a search warrant that describes the person, place, or thing to be searched or seized.”...
NEW: Teamsters Organize Workers at Daniele Foods in RI GoLocalProv ...The Teamsters Local 251 have announced that they have organized the shipping and receiving departments, as well as drivers, at Daniel Foods in Pascoag, RI...
Trade
House Republican Bloc Poses a Threat to Pacific Trade Deal Wall Street Journal ...A diverse bloc of House Republicans is threatening to join Democrats in opposition to the White House’s trade push, imperiling an effort long seen as one of the few prospects this year for bipartisan cooperation...
Lawmakers Say TPP Meetings Classified To Keep Americans in the Dark eNewsParkForest ...Lawmakers in Congress who remain wary of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement are raising further objections this week to the degree of secrecy surrounding briefings on the deal, with some arguing that the main reason at least one meeting has been registered "classified" is to help keep the American public ignorant about giveaways to corporate interests and its long-term implications...
Obama trade agenda becomes problem for Hillary Clinton The Hill ...President Obama's pro-trade agenda is a problem for Hillary Clinton, who is under pressure from liberals to oppose her former boss’s push for fast-track authority as she prepares to run for the White House...
Rep. Tim Ryan hopes President Obama sees trade agreement consequences during Cleveland visit Cleveland.com ... Rep. Tim Ryan hopes President Barack Obama takes a good look around Northeast Ohio on Wednesday as visits Cleveland to deliver a speech to the City Club on middle-class economics. Ryan believes such an examination would show Obama that trade agreements harmed the region's economy...
TPP Is Only Secret From You – But Trust Us, It’s Good For You Campaign for America's Future ...“We have to see TPP. It may not be the final agreement, but we have to see what it is,” Pelosi told reporters after the first of several House Democratic Caucus meetings to dig into details about the proposed pact with Japan and 10 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region...
Intellectual Property Issues Hinder TPP Talks In Hawaii Japan News ...Chief negotiators from Japan, the United States and 10 other countries in Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral free trade talks failed to iron out differences in their one-week meeting that ended Sunday...
State Battles
'Right to work' means right to leave Wisconsin KY3 ...The owner of a Wisconsin construction company is taking his business to Minnesota because of the passage of ‘right-to-work’ legislation in Wisconsin. His company employs 200 union workers...
Oregon is first state to adopt automatic voter registration Associated Press ...Seventeen years after Oregon decided to become the first state to hold all elections with mail-in ballots, it took another pioneering step on Monday to broaden participation by automatically registering people to vote...
Tampa Bay Democrats ramping up wage-theft laws Tampa Bay Times ...Local Tampa Bay Democrats, supported by unions, are pushing ordinances to intervene when employees say an employer has shorted their pay. The proposals are the exact kind of local "wage theft" ordinances that Republicans and retail groups have sought unsuccessfully to outlaw in Tallahassee saying they place an unfair burden on business...
Legislation Would Require Private Student Loans Be Forgiven If Borrower Dies Consumerist ...New York Senator Chuck Schumer announced today that he would push for legislation – called “Andrew’s Law” – that would require private student loan companies to forgive outstanding debt if a borrower dies...
War on Workers
Obama Likely To Veto Resolution To Overturn NLRB Rule Wall Street Journal ...If Mr. Obama were to veto the resolution, there wouldn’t be enough votes in the Senate to override his opposition, said a Democratic aide. Senate Republicans control 54 of the chamber’s seats, short of the 67 needed to override a veto...
Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions Sunlight Foundation ...Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. A year-long analysis by the Sunlight Foundation suggests, however, that what they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support...
Middle-Class Betrayal? Why Working Hard Is No Longer Enough in America NBC News ...even with more education, working 18-to-34 year old adults are earning less than they did 15 years ago...
Worker Killed At Plastics Plant In Cartersville Atlanta Journal Constitution ...A 40-year-old man was cleaning a plastics mixing machine at Syncot Plastics on South Erwin Street around 7 a.m. when he got caught in a roller bar and was dragged through the machine, said Cartersville police spokesman Maj. Mark Camp...
Va. Mine Worker Killed By Falling Rock Richmond Times Dispatch ...Alpha Natural Resources Inc. says a worker at one of its affiliate mines in southwest Virginia has died after being struck by falling rock. According to the Bristol, Virginia-based company, the incident occurred Monday morning at Deep Mine 41 near McClure. The mine is run by Paramont Coal Co...
Miscellaneous
U.S. Oil Prices Fall To Six-Year Low New York Times ...Oil prices fell to six-year lows on Monday in the face of concerns that a glut in the United States was outpacing already-brimming storage facilities. Additionally, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries published a report suggesting that the cartel remained reluctant to intervene to prop up prices...
Drop In Manufacturing Takes Shine Off Small Gain In Industrial Production Wall Street Journal ...Industrial production, which measures the output of manufacturers, utilities and mines, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% from the prior month, the Federal Reserve said Monday. Utility output surged during unusually cold weather, but factory and mining production declined, reflecting weaker demand and cuts in the oil and gas sector...
Texas Bill Would Turn Off Power To Massive NSA Surveillance Facility Tenth Amendment Center ...Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R) introduced House Bill 3916 (HB3916) on March 13. The legislation would prohibit any political subdivision in Texas from providing water or electricity to any federal agency “involved in the routine surveillance or collection and storage of bulk telephone or e-mail records or related metadata concerning any citizen of the United States and that claims the legal authority to collect and store the bulk telephone or e-mail records or metadata concerning any citizen of the United States without the citizen’s consent or a search warrant that describes the person, place, or thing to be searched or seized.”...
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Today's Teamster News 01.25.15
Teamsters
Teamsters approve new commercials contract Los Angeles Times …Members of Teamsters Local 399 have approved a new contract, avoiding a strike that would have shut down commercial production in Los Angeles...
Ernie Banks, the Eternally Hopeful Mr. Cub, Dies at 83 New York Times …Ernie Banks, the greatest power-hitting shortstop of the 20th century and an unconquerable optimist whose sunny disposition never dimmed in 19 seasons with the perennially stumbling Chicago Cubs, died Friday in Chicago. [He was also a Teamster.]...
Trade
The President Vs. TPP: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back daily kos …It's pretty simple: you can't advance a progressive agenda, or even one you call "liberal", that claims to want to combat inequality AND go all out to ram through the Trans Pacific Partnership using the odious "Fast track" authority. Here are the contradictions...
STOP TPP, EMERGENCY RALLY: Confront the Negotiators New York City, MONDAY!!! daily kos …On Monday, the TPP negotiators are gathering in New York City. A coalition of activists is working to pull off a huge rally, in a short amount of time. MONDAY, NOON, Sheraton Times Square at 7th Ave and 53rd St…
Opinion: TTIP: a taxpayer funded safety net for the super-rich Liberal Democrat Voice …Few things are more complicated and opaque than the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a trade deal being hammered out between the EU and the USA...
TTIP – more “foreign” judges criticising “our” laws? UK Human Rights Blob …one part of the concern is that it will confer on investors (think multi-nationals) the right to sue governments for regulatory regimes causing loss of profits to those investors...
State Battles
Wisconsin set to finish fiscal year in $283M hole Channel 3000 …New nonpartisan projections show Wisconsin is on track to finish the current fiscal year with a larger shortfall than Gov. Scott Walker's administration anticipated...
To Make Up For His Massive Tax Cuts, Kansas Governor Proposes Cutting Schools ThinkProgress …Rather than retreat from the massive tax cuts that are crippling his state’s finances, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) wants to cut classroom funding for Kansas schools by $127 million and push pension fund payments off into the future...
War on Workers
The Manufacturing Footprint and the Importance of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Alliance for American Manufacturing …The United States lost 5.7 manufacturing jobs between March 1998 and December 2013...
Serious Ethical Questions Arising From Journalist’s Participation In Koch Event ThinkProgress …ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl will moderate a forum featuring three prominent GOP Senators on Sunday at an event hosted by a conservative political organization that has been called “the Koch Brothers’ secret bank.” While the event will be closed to media and the public — though streamed online — ThinkProgress has learned that ABC News will be paying for Karl’s travel and lodging for the Palm Springs, CA event...
Billions in Lost 401(k) Savings, Abusive Brokers Under White House Scrutiny Blomberg …One of President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers said abusive trading practices are costing workers billions of dollars in retirement savings each year and called for stricter rules on Wall Street brokers...
What You Can Learn from Oakland's Raw ALPR Data Electronic Frontier Foundation …Police cars mounted with automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) wind their way through the streets of Oakland like a “Snake” game on an old cell phone. Instead of eating up pixels of food, these cameras gobble down thousands of license plates each day. And instead of growing a longer tail, ALPRs feed into a giant database of locational data as they conduct surveillance on every driver within the city limits, and sometimes beyond...
The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world they’ve made (opinion) …The big exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has been Latin America. Progressive governments across the region turned their back on a disastrous economic model, took back resources from corporate control and slashed inequality. The numbers living on less than $2 a day have fallen from 108 million to 53 million in little over a decade...
International Paper worker killed Press Republican …A worker at International Paper’s Ticonderoga mill who suffered severe burns Friday morning has died...
Teamsters approve new commercials contract Los Angeles Times …Members of Teamsters Local 399 have approved a new contract, avoiding a strike that would have shut down commercial production in Los Angeles...
Ernie Banks, the Eternally Hopeful Mr. Cub, Dies at 83 New York Times …Ernie Banks, the greatest power-hitting shortstop of the 20th century and an unconquerable optimist whose sunny disposition never dimmed in 19 seasons with the perennially stumbling Chicago Cubs, died Friday in Chicago. [He was also a Teamster.]...
Trade
The President Vs. TPP: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back daily kos …It's pretty simple: you can't advance a progressive agenda, or even one you call "liberal", that claims to want to combat inequality AND go all out to ram through the Trans Pacific Partnership using the odious "Fast track" authority. Here are the contradictions...
STOP TPP, EMERGENCY RALLY: Confront the Negotiators New York City, MONDAY!!! daily kos …On Monday, the TPP negotiators are gathering in New York City. A coalition of activists is working to pull off a huge rally, in a short amount of time. MONDAY, NOON, Sheraton Times Square at 7th Ave and 53rd St…
Opinion: TTIP: a taxpayer funded safety net for the super-rich Liberal Democrat Voice …Few things are more complicated and opaque than the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a trade deal being hammered out between the EU and the USA...
TTIP – more “foreign” judges criticising “our” laws? UK Human Rights Blob …one part of the concern is that it will confer on investors (think multi-nationals) the right to sue governments for regulatory regimes causing loss of profits to those investors...
State Battles
Wisconsin set to finish fiscal year in $283M hole Channel 3000 …New nonpartisan projections show Wisconsin is on track to finish the current fiscal year with a larger shortfall than Gov. Scott Walker's administration anticipated...
To Make Up For His Massive Tax Cuts, Kansas Governor Proposes Cutting Schools ThinkProgress …Rather than retreat from the massive tax cuts that are crippling his state’s finances, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) wants to cut classroom funding for Kansas schools by $127 million and push pension fund payments off into the future...
War on Workers
The Manufacturing Footprint and the Importance of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Alliance for American Manufacturing …The United States lost 5.7 manufacturing jobs between March 1998 and December 2013...
Serious Ethical Questions Arising From Journalist’s Participation In Koch Event ThinkProgress …ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl will moderate a forum featuring three prominent GOP Senators on Sunday at an event hosted by a conservative political organization that has been called “the Koch Brothers’ secret bank.” While the event will be closed to media and the public — though streamed online — ThinkProgress has learned that ABC News will be paying for Karl’s travel and lodging for the Palm Springs, CA event...
Billions in Lost 401(k) Savings, Abusive Brokers Under White House Scrutiny Blomberg …One of President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers said abusive trading practices are costing workers billions of dollars in retirement savings each year and called for stricter rules on Wall Street brokers...
What You Can Learn from Oakland's Raw ALPR Data Electronic Frontier Foundation …Police cars mounted with automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) wind their way through the streets of Oakland like a “Snake” game on an old cell phone. Instead of eating up pixels of food, these cameras gobble down thousands of license plates each day. And instead of growing a longer tail, ALPRs feed into a giant database of locational data as they conduct surveillance on every driver within the city limits, and sometimes beyond...
The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world they’ve made (opinion) …The big exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has been Latin America. Progressive governments across the region turned their back on a disastrous economic model, took back resources from corporate control and slashed inequality. The numbers living on less than $2 a day have fallen from 108 million to 53 million in little over a decade...
International Paper worker killed Press Republican …A worker at International Paper’s Ticonderoga mill who suffered severe burns Friday morning has died...
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Proposed: Outrageous trick to hide the offshoring of U.S. jobs
They are trying to sneak through a proposal that would reclassify U.S. corporations that offshored U.S. jobs as “factoryless goods” manufacturers.
Just by changing the data, the proposal would make it seem that our massive manufacturing trade deficit doesn't exist. The reason for it is to dampen opposition to more-of-the-same job-killing trade pacts like the TPP. It would wipe out the most compelling evidence that we urgently need a new American trade policy.
Here's how it would work. The Apple iPhone is assembled in China by a firm called Foxconn. Under this deceitful proposal, Foxconn would be considered a "manufacturing service provider." The phone wouldn't be an import when it's shipped to the United States. Apple would be considered a "factoryless manufacturer." And when an iPhone is exported from China to Germany, for example, it would be counted as a U.S. manufactured export to Germany.
By hiding the damage done by NAFTA and the China WTO deal, this proposal is designed to make it easier to pass job-killing trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). Negotiations are underway for both.
The San Diego Newsroom is horrified by the proposal:
Since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, the U. S. has generated the highest trade deficit in the world and the largest in the world's recorded history. If you add the annual trade deficit in goods as shown on the Census Bureau website, the total is a staggering figure of -$10.347 trillion.
The United States now has a trade deficit with 88 countries according to data in the book, Buying Back America. Some deficits are small, but some are enormous. Our top six trading partners of Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, Germany, and South Korea represent 64% of our total trade deficit. In 2013, our total trade deficit in goods was $688.4 billion, of which China represented 46% at $318.4 billion. However, our 20-year total trade deficit with China since 1994 is a staggering -$3.287 trillion.
Now, the current Administration wants to cover up the evidence of the damage to our economy by changing the rules of how a manufacturer is defined instead of responding to the American public's demand to know where products are manufactured so they can have the freedom to choose whether or not to buy "Made in USA" products.You can help fight this outrageous proposal by emailing John.Burns.Murphy@census.gov to tell him what you think of it. The deadline for comments is July 21.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Today's Teamster News 07.05.14
Teamsters
Liberal’s Martinez meets Teamsters’ President Leader & Times ...Local union representative and state delegate Tony Martinez, Liberal, Kans., who is with Union Pacific Railroad, recently travelled to Las Vegas for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Convention to elect a president of the railroad division...
City settles 2-year contract with Teamsters union representing Community Maintenance Department workers The Herald News ...Teamsters Local Union 251, which represents Community Maintenance Department employees, has settled a two-year contract with the city that nets workers a 5 percent wage increase...
Trade
4th of July fireworks brought to you by China Politico ...The industry’s shift to Chinese production came about shortly after the United States and China reestablished trade ties in 1979. By the early 1990s, the country was generating more than $60 million in annual sales from pyrotechnic exports to the United States. By 2013, the United States was importing $213 million worth of fireworks — virtually all from China...
Let’s Just Pretend We Didn’t Offshore Manufacturing Public Citizen ...Under the proposal, U.S. firms that have offshored their production abroad – like Apple – would become “factoryless goods” manufacturers. The foreign factories that actually manufacture the goods – like the notorious iPhone-producing Foxconn factories in China – would no longer be manufacturers, but “service” providers for the rebranded “manufacturing” firms like Apple...
Who is Foreign Aid For? Foreigners or U.S. Corporations? Mish's Global Economic Analysis ...The United States will withhold the Millennium Challenge Compact aid deal, approximately $277 million in aid, unless El Salvador purchases genetically-modified seeds from biotech giant, Monsanto...
War on Workers
Paying Employees to Stay, Not to Go New York Times ...In-N-Out Burger, the chain based in California, pays all its employees at least $10.50 an hour, while Shake Shack, the trendy, lines-out-the-door burger emporium, has minimum pay of $9.50. Moo Cluck Moo, a fledgling company with two hamburger joints in Michigan, starts everyone at $15. These companies’ founders were intent on paying their workers more than the going rate partly because they wanted to do the right thing, they said, and partly because they thought this would help their companies thrive long term...
The Recovery Turns Five, Part 2 Economic Policy Institute ...The unemployment rate is between 1.2 and 1.7 times as high now as it was seven years ago for all age, education, occupation, industry, gender, and racial and ethnic groups. ..
58% of Jobs Created in 2014 Pay Over $24 an Hour The Big Picture ...More than half the jobs created in 2014 so far pay more than $24.45 an hour...
EPIC Challenges Facebook's Manipulation of Users, Files FTC Complaint EPIC ...EPIC has filed a formal complaint to the Federal Trade Commission concerning Facebook's manipulation of users' News Feeds for psychological research...
CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’ Washington Post ...He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension...
Liberal’s Martinez meets Teamsters’ President Leader & Times ...Local union representative and state delegate Tony Martinez, Liberal, Kans., who is with Union Pacific Railroad, recently travelled to Las Vegas for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Convention to elect a president of the railroad division...
City settles 2-year contract with Teamsters union representing Community Maintenance Department workers The Herald News ...Teamsters Local Union 251, which represents Community Maintenance Department employees, has settled a two-year contract with the city that nets workers a 5 percent wage increase...
Trade
4th of July fireworks brought to you by China Politico ...The industry’s shift to Chinese production came about shortly after the United States and China reestablished trade ties in 1979. By the early 1990s, the country was generating more than $60 million in annual sales from pyrotechnic exports to the United States. By 2013, the United States was importing $213 million worth of fireworks — virtually all from China...
Let’s Just Pretend We Didn’t Offshore Manufacturing Public Citizen ...Under the proposal, U.S. firms that have offshored their production abroad – like Apple – would become “factoryless goods” manufacturers. The foreign factories that actually manufacture the goods – like the notorious iPhone-producing Foxconn factories in China – would no longer be manufacturers, but “service” providers for the rebranded “manufacturing” firms like Apple...
Who is Foreign Aid For? Foreigners or U.S. Corporations? Mish's Global Economic Analysis ...The United States will withhold the Millennium Challenge Compact aid deal, approximately $277 million in aid, unless El Salvador purchases genetically-modified seeds from biotech giant, Monsanto...
War on Workers
Paying Employees to Stay, Not to Go New York Times ...In-N-Out Burger, the chain based in California, pays all its employees at least $10.50 an hour, while Shake Shack, the trendy, lines-out-the-door burger emporium, has minimum pay of $9.50. Moo Cluck Moo, a fledgling company with two hamburger joints in Michigan, starts everyone at $15. These companies’ founders were intent on paying their workers more than the going rate partly because they wanted to do the right thing, they said, and partly because they thought this would help their companies thrive long term...
The Recovery Turns Five, Part 2 Economic Policy Institute ...The unemployment rate is between 1.2 and 1.7 times as high now as it was seven years ago for all age, education, occupation, industry, gender, and racial and ethnic groups. ..
58% of Jobs Created in 2014 Pay Over $24 an Hour The Big Picture ...More than half the jobs created in 2014 so far pay more than $24.45 an hour...
EPIC Challenges Facebook's Manipulation of Users, Files FTC Complaint EPIC ...EPIC has filed a formal complaint to the Federal Trade Commission concerning Facebook's manipulation of users' News Feeds for psychological research...
CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’ Washington Post ...He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension...
Monday, June 23, 2014
Today's Teamster News 06.23.14
Teamsters
NLRB orders Anderson Lumber to negotiate with Teamsters Business Management ...The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ordered a Sacramento-area lumber company to restart contract negotiations with the union that represents its employees...
Trade
TPP unlikely to be finalised this year - PM New Zealand Herald ...Hopes of hammering out a final deal on the 12-country Trans Pacific Partnership agreement this year appear to be fading, Prime Minister John Key indicated this afternoon...
Wikileaks brings much-needed scrutiny to secret trade talks The Conversation ... TISA is part of an interlocking web of new super-deals that are being negotiated under similar conditions of secrecy...all documents other than the final text would be withheld for five years after the agreement came into force...
No to 'Boehner' Trade, No to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (opinion) Huffington Post ...The House Democratic Caucus is challenging President Obama, saying, "Which side are you on... ours or Republican House Speaker Boehner's?"...
Income gap widens as American factories shut down Associated Press ...The downfall of manufacturing in the U.S. has done more than displace workers and leave communities searching for ways to rebuild devastated economies....
State Battles
For Scott Walker, jobs count may be bigger headache than John Doe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ...In each of Walker’s first three years, Wisconsin has added private-sector jobs more slowly than the nation as whole, and the gap is sizable...
Doe Documents Indicate "David Koch" Call Part of Case Against Walker Uppity Wisconsin ...Walker was "enticed" into a criminal conspiracy with someone he believed to be David Koch because "David Koch" asked "What do you need"? And "publicity efforts"? No, Walker specifically asked for "ads" in "swing areas" for Senators likely to be recalled...
War on Workers
Asiana Crash Debate Goes Beyond Pilots to Automation Bloomberg ...U.S. investigators are debating whether to blame a Boeing Co. (BA) jetliner’s design for helping cause a cascade of pilot mistakes in last year’s Asiana Airlines Inc. (020560) crash that killed three Chinese teenagers...
God Save the United States From This Anti-Democratic Court (opinion) Daily Beast ...it has degraded the other institutions by clearing a broad path for big money to enter politics...
US to Fine BNP $8+ Billion, Suspend Access to Dollar Clearing naked capitalism ...the bank would pay $8 billion to $9 billion and accept other punishment based on what investigators say is evidence the bank intentionally hid $30 billion of financial transactions that violated U.S. sanctions (the deal) would include a guilty plea to a criminal charge of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act...
The Case of the Missing White-Collar Criminal (opinion) Bloomberg ...Prosecutors often argue that while executives may have acted recklessly and made mistakes, that doesn’t mean they committed crimes. If so, then the 2008 crisis would be unique in its immaculate conception. After the savings-and-loan bust of the 1980s, more than 1,000 people were charged, and more than 100 company officers and directors served prison terms...
NLRB orders Anderson Lumber to negotiate with Teamsters Business Management ...The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ordered a Sacramento-area lumber company to restart contract negotiations with the union that represents its employees...
Trade
TPP unlikely to be finalised this year - PM New Zealand Herald ...Hopes of hammering out a final deal on the 12-country Trans Pacific Partnership agreement this year appear to be fading, Prime Minister John Key indicated this afternoon...
Wikileaks brings much-needed scrutiny to secret trade talks The Conversation ... TISA is part of an interlocking web of new super-deals that are being negotiated under similar conditions of secrecy...all documents other than the final text would be withheld for five years after the agreement came into force...
No to 'Boehner' Trade, No to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (opinion) Huffington Post ...The House Democratic Caucus is challenging President Obama, saying, "Which side are you on... ours or Republican House Speaker Boehner's?"...
Income gap widens as American factories shut down Associated Press ...The downfall of manufacturing in the U.S. has done more than displace workers and leave communities searching for ways to rebuild devastated economies....
State Battles
For Scott Walker, jobs count may be bigger headache than John Doe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ...In each of Walker’s first three years, Wisconsin has added private-sector jobs more slowly than the nation as whole, and the gap is sizable...
Doe Documents Indicate "David Koch" Call Part of Case Against Walker Uppity Wisconsin ...Walker was "enticed" into a criminal conspiracy with someone he believed to be David Koch because "David Koch" asked "What do you need"? And "publicity efforts"? No, Walker specifically asked for "ads" in "swing areas" for Senators likely to be recalled...
War on Workers
Asiana Crash Debate Goes Beyond Pilots to Automation Bloomberg ...U.S. investigators are debating whether to blame a Boeing Co. (BA) jetliner’s design for helping cause a cascade of pilot mistakes in last year’s Asiana Airlines Inc. (020560) crash that killed three Chinese teenagers...
God Save the United States From This Anti-Democratic Court (opinion) Daily Beast ...it has degraded the other institutions by clearing a broad path for big money to enter politics...
US to Fine BNP $8+ Billion, Suspend Access to Dollar Clearing naked capitalism ...the bank would pay $8 billion to $9 billion and accept other punishment based on what investigators say is evidence the bank intentionally hid $30 billion of financial transactions that violated U.S. sanctions (the deal) would include a guilty plea to a criminal charge of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act...
The Case of the Missing White-Collar Criminal (opinion) Bloomberg ...Prosecutors often argue that while executives may have acted recklessly and made mistakes, that doesn’t mean they committed crimes. If so, then the 2008 crisis would be unique in its immaculate conception. After the savings-and-loan bust of the 1980s, more than 1,000 people were charged, and more than 100 company officers and directors served prison terms...
Friday, April 4, 2014
What went wrong with the US in one chart
Wall Street gorged on a bigger share of the U.S. economy at the expense of manufacturing over the past 20 years, according to the chart. It's an old story, and one familiar to any Teamster who worked for a company that got bought out by Wall Street.
The Center for Economic Policy and Research explains what happened to manufacturing:
Manufacturing sheds about 20 percent of its job base during the recession of the early 2000s, and then nearly another 20 percent during the 2007-9 downturn. These losses reflect cyclical shocks, but also the relentless pressure of trade and currency manipulation.
Here's what happened to Wall Street:
Financial employment, by contrast, shows fairly steady gains across this era—rising about 20 percent through 2007 before suffering some losses early in the recession. Employment alone understates the rise of finance, which has—over the same span—captured even greater relative shares of value-added and corporate profits.The rise of Wall Street and the decline of manufacturing is no accident because Wall Street profits by preying on manufacturing. When money people buy a company that actually makes something or does something, they immediately plunder all the cash they can get out of it. Then they cut costs, kill it and kick it to the curb. Or as CEPR puts it:
...predatory, high-dollar, boom-and-bust finance guts real productive employment by design.There's another part of the story: Hundreds of thousands of government workers lost their jobs in the past five years. Hundreds of thousands of people had less money to spend, so fewer businesses hired new employees. Again, CEPR explains:
Since the recovery began (June 2009), the public sector has shed 725,000 jobs—the vast majority (628,000) at the state and local level. This austerity, unprecedented in our recent history, is a drag on recovery and a direct contributor to slow job growth (or continued losses) across the economy.
You can see what happened in your state here.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Today's Teamster News 02.04.14
Teamsters join thousands in action against Fast Track TeamsterNation ...Teamsters, techies and tens of thousands of people took action Friday to oppose a Fast Track bill that would grease the Congressional skids for so-called 'trade deals' like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)...
'Strongest' union head: Put Sanitation plows on the streets, not private plowers Staten Island Advance ...(Teamsters Local 631) Union chief Harry Nespoli called the expense of hiring private contractors and paying them to be on stand-by "foolish" and "a waste taxpayer money."...
New York liquor warehousing law in the works, may cost small dealers big New York Daily News ...George Miranda, president of Teamsters Joint Council 16, said the bill could create up to 1,000 warehouse jobs in the state. “It is just the right thing to do,” Miranda said...
De Blasio’s horse-carriage ban stalls Capital New York ...as the Council holds its second meeting of the new year under the leadership of de Blasio's ally and fellow carriage opponent, Melissa Mark-Viverito, a bill to ban them has yet to appear on the Council's agenda. A spokesman for Mark-Viverito would not say when the bill will be introduced...
YRC announces $300 million debt reduction plan after Teamsters labor agreement CCJ ...YRC Worldwide (No. 3 in CCJ’s Top 250) has closed a deal to attempt to reduce its debt by $300 million, per an announcement from the company Jan. 31, in which it will issue $250 million in new stock and convert $50 million in convertible notes to common stock and use the proceeds to reduce its roughly $1 billion of debt...
CN Rail to meet with union over stalled labor deal Reuters Canada ...Union members have "a lot of mistrust" with Canada's largest railway, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference General Chairman Roland Hackl told Reuters, and will need assurances that CN will respect rest provisions for workers in the current agreement...
V & V Supremo Workers Benefit from Teamsters Local 703 Contract teamster.org ...Represented by the Teamsters since 2001, the workers at V&V Supremo continue to receive annual wage increases, fair and equitable benefits and the protection of the Teamsters’ grievance procedure due to their contract with Local 703...
Teamsters Applaud Green Light for Keystone XL Pipeline teamster.org ...Following the U.S. State Department’s analysis that the Keystone XL pipeline project provides a safe and correct process for the transport of Canadian oil to the U.S. Gulf region, the Teamsters Union is pleased that the project, which will directly create 20,000 good jobs for American workers, is one step closer to reality...
Allegheny County workers to strike Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ...Nearly 50 Allegheny County workers, mainly truck drivers in the Public Works Department, will strike after members of Teamsters Local 249 overwhelmingly voted Sunday to reject the county's proposals for a new contract, their union leader said...
States Are Feeling the Pinch from Lost Unemployment Revenues teamster.org ...Americans who want to work but can’t find a job after months of unemployment are being hit hard by the cut off of long-term unemployment benefits by Republicans in Congress. But their epic policy blunder is hurting everyone, even if they don’t realize it...
New National Poll: Voters Blame Lawmakers for Weak Job Growth Trade Reform ...By an overwhelming margin, voters say job creation should be a top priority, beating out deficit reduction by a 2-1 margin (65% vs. 31%)...
2014 stock market selloff intensifies USA Today ...The financial turbulence that began in emerging markets and engulfed Wall Street intensified Monday, leaving U.S. stock investors bracing for the possibility of the first 10% market drop since 2011...
Wall Street Journal Exposes Entirely New Private Equity Tax Scam naked capitalism ...so-called “monitoring fees” that PE firms levy on the companies they’ve bought should actually be recognized as dividends for corporate tax purposes. This is is significant because fees are a tax deductible expense to the companies while the dividends aren’t, so the effect of this ruse is to shortchange Uncle Sam, and hence ordinary taxpayers to the PE funds’ benefit...
A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter – With Ties to Wall Street Investigations Wall Street On Parade ...In a span of four days last week, two current executives and one recently retired top ranking executive of major financial firms were found dead. Both media and police have been quick to label the deaths as likely suicides. Missing from the reports is the salient fact that all three of the financial firms the executives worked for are under investigation for potentially serious financial fraud...
Businesses gather more information than they need from consumers Los Angeles Times ...Strong rules for collection and use of people's personal data should be enacted...
Edward Snowden speaks: US blackout of interview Jonathan Turley ... the interview appears to have been blocked intentionally by US government authorities. In fact, the media in the US appears to have gone to ‘radio silence’ about it. … He says his “breaking point” was “seeing Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”...
Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo release US surveillance requests The Guardian ...Tens of thousands of accounts associated with customers of Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo have their data turned over to US government authorities every six months as the result of secret court orders, the tech giants disclosed for the first time on Monday....
Newly Wary, Shoppers Trust Cash ...New York Times ...Like dieters vowing to trade cupcakes for carrots, a number of American shoppers are making a new pledge: cash only...
Factory, construction spending data hint at slowing economy Reuters ...U.S. manufacturing activity slowed sharply in January on the back of the biggest drop in new orders in 33 years while construction spending barely rose in December, pointing to some loss of steam in the economy...
Calif. Bill Targets Discrimination Against Caregivers Associated Press ...If you don't get a job because you're a woman, or you get fired because you're black, or you get transferred to the night shift because you're gay, there's a law for that. But if you're punished at work because you need time to take your child to the doctor or talk to your confused elderly mother, you might be out of luck...
Olive Garden offers free babysitting to increase sales Philadelphia Inquirer ...The "Italian dining experience" inspired restaurant chain has worked on revamping its menu, but on Friday is offering something not many other dining establishments offer: free babysitting...
VW Workers to Decide Whether to Join UAW uaw.org From Feb. 12-14, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., will decide the issue of union representation by the United Auto Workers in a secret ballot election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board...
'Strongest' union head: Put Sanitation plows on the streets, not private plowers Staten Island Advance ...(Teamsters Local 631) Union chief Harry Nespoli called the expense of hiring private contractors and paying them to be on stand-by "foolish" and "a waste taxpayer money."...
New York liquor warehousing law in the works, may cost small dealers big New York Daily News ...George Miranda, president of Teamsters Joint Council 16, said the bill could create up to 1,000 warehouse jobs in the state. “It is just the right thing to do,” Miranda said...
De Blasio’s horse-carriage ban stalls Capital New York ...as the Council holds its second meeting of the new year under the leadership of de Blasio's ally and fellow carriage opponent, Melissa Mark-Viverito, a bill to ban them has yet to appear on the Council's agenda. A spokesman for Mark-Viverito would not say when the bill will be introduced...
YRC announces $300 million debt reduction plan after Teamsters labor agreement CCJ ...YRC Worldwide (No. 3 in CCJ’s Top 250) has closed a deal to attempt to reduce its debt by $300 million, per an announcement from the company Jan. 31, in which it will issue $250 million in new stock and convert $50 million in convertible notes to common stock and use the proceeds to reduce its roughly $1 billion of debt...
CN Rail to meet with union over stalled labor deal Reuters Canada ...Union members have "a lot of mistrust" with Canada's largest railway, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference General Chairman Roland Hackl told Reuters, and will need assurances that CN will respect rest provisions for workers in the current agreement...
V & V Supremo Workers Benefit from Teamsters Local 703 Contract teamster.org ...Represented by the Teamsters since 2001, the workers at V&V Supremo continue to receive annual wage increases, fair and equitable benefits and the protection of the Teamsters’ grievance procedure due to their contract with Local 703...
Teamsters Applaud Green Light for Keystone XL Pipeline teamster.org ...Following the U.S. State Department’s analysis that the Keystone XL pipeline project provides a safe and correct process for the transport of Canadian oil to the U.S. Gulf region, the Teamsters Union is pleased that the project, which will directly create 20,000 good jobs for American workers, is one step closer to reality...
Allegheny County workers to strike Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ...Nearly 50 Allegheny County workers, mainly truck drivers in the Public Works Department, will strike after members of Teamsters Local 249 overwhelmingly voted Sunday to reject the county's proposals for a new contract, their union leader said...
States Are Feeling the Pinch from Lost Unemployment Revenues teamster.org ...Americans who want to work but can’t find a job after months of unemployment are being hit hard by the cut off of long-term unemployment benefits by Republicans in Congress. But their epic policy blunder is hurting everyone, even if they don’t realize it...
New National Poll: Voters Blame Lawmakers for Weak Job Growth Trade Reform ...By an overwhelming margin, voters say job creation should be a top priority, beating out deficit reduction by a 2-1 margin (65% vs. 31%)...
2014 stock market selloff intensifies USA Today ...The financial turbulence that began in emerging markets and engulfed Wall Street intensified Monday, leaving U.S. stock investors bracing for the possibility of the first 10% market drop since 2011...
Wall Street Journal Exposes Entirely New Private Equity Tax Scam naked capitalism ...so-called “monitoring fees” that PE firms levy on the companies they’ve bought should actually be recognized as dividends for corporate tax purposes. This is is significant because fees are a tax deductible expense to the companies while the dividends aren’t, so the effect of this ruse is to shortchange Uncle Sam, and hence ordinary taxpayers to the PE funds’ benefit...
A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter – With Ties to Wall Street Investigations Wall Street On Parade ...In a span of four days last week, two current executives and one recently retired top ranking executive of major financial firms were found dead. Both media and police have been quick to label the deaths as likely suicides. Missing from the reports is the salient fact that all three of the financial firms the executives worked for are under investigation for potentially serious financial fraud...
Businesses gather more information than they need from consumers Los Angeles Times ...Strong rules for collection and use of people's personal data should be enacted...
Edward Snowden speaks: US blackout of interview Jonathan Turley ... the interview appears to have been blocked intentionally by US government authorities. In fact, the media in the US appears to have gone to ‘radio silence’ about it. … He says his “breaking point” was “seeing Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”...
Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo release US surveillance requests The Guardian ...Tens of thousands of accounts associated with customers of Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo have their data turned over to US government authorities every six months as the result of secret court orders, the tech giants disclosed for the first time on Monday....
Newly Wary, Shoppers Trust Cash ...New York Times ...Like dieters vowing to trade cupcakes for carrots, a number of American shoppers are making a new pledge: cash only...
Factory, construction spending data hint at slowing economy Reuters ...U.S. manufacturing activity slowed sharply in January on the back of the biggest drop in new orders in 33 years while construction spending barely rose in December, pointing to some loss of steam in the economy...
Calif. Bill Targets Discrimination Against Caregivers Associated Press ...If you don't get a job because you're a woman, or you get fired because you're black, or you get transferred to the night shift because you're gay, there's a law for that. But if you're punished at work because you need time to take your child to the doctor or talk to your confused elderly mother, you might be out of luck...
Olive Garden offers free babysitting to increase sales Philadelphia Inquirer ...The "Italian dining experience" inspired restaurant chain has worked on revamping its menu, but on Friday is offering something not many other dining establishments offer: free babysitting...
VW Workers to Decide Whether to Join UAW uaw.org From Feb. 12-14, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., will decide the issue of union representation by the United Auto Workers in a secret ballot election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board...
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Today's Teamster News 01.05.14
Welcome to the New America: Low-Wage Nation Common Dreams ...More and more, Americans are trapped in the uncertainty and injustice that immigrant workers know all too well, whether they’re here on temporary work visas cleaning luxury condos or undocumented and scrambling for daily construction jobs. Increasingly, from an economic standpoint, office parks and store aisles in America are coming to resemble the street corners where day laborers gather and the labor camps where guest workers are trapped...
The Strange Case of American Inequality Project Syndicate ...unless something – and it will need to be something major – returns the US to its pre-2008 growth trajectory, future economic historians will not regard the Great Depression as the worst business-cycle disaster of the industrial age. It is we who are living in their worst case...
The Skills Shortage Myth: A Public Relations Tool for Bad Corporate Citizens Economic Policy Institute ...the existence of skill shortages ... exists mostly in the minds of those wanting access to low-wage, indentured servants or public subsidy for the training that firms should be doing themselves...
NSA statement does not deny 'spying' on members of Congress The Guardian ...The National Security Agency on Saturday released a statement in answer to questions from a senator about whether it “has spied, or is … currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”, in which it did not deny collecting communications from legislators of the US Congress to whom it says it is accountable...
Bankruptcy Filings Fall 13% in 2013 Credit Slips ...The monthly decline continues a long-term trend of falling bankruptcy filing rates. Filings are currently running around 3.3 per 1,000 persons...
Manufacturing Growth to Help Propel U.S. Expansion: Economy Bloomberg ...Factory purchasing managers said orders were the strongest since April 2010, helping explain why companies such as General Motors Co. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F) are taking on more workers in response to rising sales...
Forget Mega-Corporations, Here’s The Mega-Network TechCrunch ...Corporations are arguably more powerful today than ever before. But the economy isn’t dominated by a handful of megalithic conglomerates. it consists of hundreds or thousands of smaller, more specialized firms...
The Secrets of White Collar Prisons DuJour ...Bernie Kerik, Jack Abramoff and Dennis Kozlowski—three of the most high-profile men to be on the inside—smash the perception that prison life is anything like "Club Fed"...
Brother, Can You Spare $91.44 Billion? Economic Populist ...Wall Street got $91.44 billion in bonuses for 2013. The 98% of us want those bonuses paid back to the victims of the financial crisis...
Outsourcing Pays Big to Private Companies While Americans Suffer Economic Populist ...These same contractors obtaining overpriced contracts through privatization pay their workers little. There are now two contract workers per federal employee and that ratio is getting worse. ... Privatization of government is creating a nation of wage slaves...
An Error Message for the Poor New York Times ...students of anti-poverty programs remember a litany of automation and contracting meltdowns — some of them prolonged, even epic. Florida, 1992-93. Michigan, 1998-99. Colorado, 1998-2002. Texas, 2006-7. Indiana, 2007-9. The Colorado Benefits Management System is particularly memorable: When first implemented, it reportedly refused food stamps to anyone who did not have a driver’s license from Guam...
OP-ED: NAFTA’s 20 Years of Unfulfilled Promises Inter Press Service ...Under NAFTA, cheap subsidised corn from the United States flooded Mexico, making it impossible for millions of Mexican farmers to compete. Government support previously given to small farmers was withdrawn and directed to big agricultural exporting corporations instead...
Boeing machinists approve contract securing 777X jet Reuters ...Boeing's machinists on Friday narrowly approved a crucial labor contract that secured thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity for Washington state but will cost workers their pensions...
Housing tear-downs on the rise as real estate rebounds Los Angeles Times ...The rebounding housing market has sparked the demolitions. In November, the median price for a home in Southern California was $385,000, up nearly 20% compared with the same month a year earlier, according to research firm DataQuick...
The Strange Case of American Inequality Project Syndicate ...unless something – and it will need to be something major – returns the US to its pre-2008 growth trajectory, future economic historians will not regard the Great Depression as the worst business-cycle disaster of the industrial age. It is we who are living in their worst case...
The Skills Shortage Myth: A Public Relations Tool for Bad Corporate Citizens Economic Policy Institute ...the existence of skill shortages ... exists mostly in the minds of those wanting access to low-wage, indentured servants or public subsidy for the training that firms should be doing themselves...
NSA statement does not deny 'spying' on members of Congress The Guardian ...The National Security Agency on Saturday released a statement in answer to questions from a senator about whether it “has spied, or is … currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”, in which it did not deny collecting communications from legislators of the US Congress to whom it says it is accountable...
Bankruptcy Filings Fall 13% in 2013 Credit Slips ...The monthly decline continues a long-term trend of falling bankruptcy filing rates. Filings are currently running around 3.3 per 1,000 persons...
Manufacturing Growth to Help Propel U.S. Expansion: Economy Bloomberg ...Factory purchasing managers said orders were the strongest since April 2010, helping explain why companies such as General Motors Co. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F) are taking on more workers in response to rising sales...
Forget Mega-Corporations, Here’s The Mega-Network TechCrunch ...Corporations are arguably more powerful today than ever before. But the economy isn’t dominated by a handful of megalithic conglomerates. it consists of hundreds or thousands of smaller, more specialized firms...
The Secrets of White Collar Prisons DuJour ...Bernie Kerik, Jack Abramoff and Dennis Kozlowski—three of the most high-profile men to be on the inside—smash the perception that prison life is anything like "Club Fed"...
Brother, Can You Spare $91.44 Billion? Economic Populist ...Wall Street got $91.44 billion in bonuses for 2013. The 98% of us want those bonuses paid back to the victims of the financial crisis...
Outsourcing Pays Big to Private Companies While Americans Suffer Economic Populist ...These same contractors obtaining overpriced contracts through privatization pay their workers little. There are now two contract workers per federal employee and that ratio is getting worse. ... Privatization of government is creating a nation of wage slaves...
An Error Message for the Poor New York Times ...students of anti-poverty programs remember a litany of automation and contracting meltdowns — some of them prolonged, even epic. Florida, 1992-93. Michigan, 1998-99. Colorado, 1998-2002. Texas, 2006-7. Indiana, 2007-9. The Colorado Benefits Management System is particularly memorable: When first implemented, it reportedly refused food stamps to anyone who did not have a driver’s license from Guam...
OP-ED: NAFTA’s 20 Years of Unfulfilled Promises Inter Press Service ...Under NAFTA, cheap subsidised corn from the United States flooded Mexico, making it impossible for millions of Mexican farmers to compete. Government support previously given to small farmers was withdrawn and directed to big agricultural exporting corporations instead...
Boeing machinists approve contract securing 777X jet Reuters ...Boeing's machinists on Friday narrowly approved a crucial labor contract that secured thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity for Washington state but will cost workers their pensions...
Housing tear-downs on the rise as real estate rebounds Los Angeles Times ...The rebounding housing market has sparked the demolitions. In November, the median price for a home in Southern California was $385,000, up nearly 20% compared with the same month a year earlier, according to research firm DataQuick...
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