Today's Teamster News 11.03.14

Trade
Republican gains in midterm elections could aid TPP talks  Associated Press   ...Big Republican gains on Election Day would be a blow to much of President Barack Obama’s agenda, but one stymied item on his to-do list might get a fresh chance to move forward: trade. That could breathe life into Asia-Pacific trade talks essential to his efforts to deepen engagement in the region...
U.S. says hard to imagine EU trade deal without investor protection  Reuters   ...European Union lawmakers have said they will reject any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement that contains investor protections and Germany, the bloc's biggest economy, also opposes such provisions...
State Battles
Taxpayer Dollars Used For Voter Suppression In Milwaukee  Crooks & Liars   ...Republican Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander uses taxpayer dollars to falsely inform her constituents that they need photo ID to vote...
War on Workers
Women's Charity Looks into Sweatshop Allegations Over "Feminist" Shirts  Jezebel   ...The Fawcett Society, the women's rights charity responsible for those "This is what a feminist looks like" tees is currently investigating allegations that the shirts were actually made in sweatshop conditions on the island of Mauritius, where workers were paid 62p, about a dollar per hour to make the shirts...
New Wages and Salaries Data from the Employment Cost Index Show Yet Again It’s Not Quite Time To Declare Mission Accomplished  Economic Policy Institute   ... the weak labor market of the last seven years has put enormous downward pressure on wages, and there has been no significant and sustained pickup in nominal wage growth in recent years. Employers still don’t seem to have to offer big wage increases to get and keep the workers they need, when hiring rates and net job creation remain far slower than what’s needed to generate healthy labor market outcomes...
Maine nurse gives ground on Ebola quarantine  USA Today   ...Kaci Hickox also said on NBC's Meet the Press that she would not go into town or into public places during the 21-day incubation period that will end Nov. 10...
Consumers wasted at least $300 million paying for AT&T’s ‘unlimited’ data  Washington Post   ...the Federal Trade Commission is suing AT&T for how it treats its unlimited data customers. Despite paying for an unlimited plan, these subscribers had their mobile Internet slowed to dial-up speeds, or "throttled," once AT&T decided they had surfed the Web too much....Tens of thousands of consumers have complained about the practice...
The New Loan Sharks   Jacobin   ... salary lending has expanded, but under a different name: payday lending, a wildly lucrative industry that occupies more storefronts than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. These new loan sharks operate under the same logic as salary lenders, but specifically target more vulnerable populations like welfare recipients, and are armed with new techniques to squeeze as much surplus as possible from debtors...
Worker killed in truck accident at dairy plant  WNDU.com   ...Authorities in western Michigan say that a worker was killed when a tractor-trailer ran over him at the loading dock of a dairy plant...

Today's Teamster News 01.28.14

First Student School Bus Workers Join Teamsters Local 332  Drive Up Standards   ...School bus workers with First Student in Flint, Mich., have voted overwhelmingly in favor of representation by Teamsters Local 332...
Growing Film Industry Brought Record $358M to Illinois in 2013  Teamsters Joint Council 25   ...Illinois' Gov. Pat Quinn visits set of 'Chicago Fire,' thanks Teamsters for commitment to industry...
Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94  New York Times   ...He toured the world, performing and collecting folk songs, in 1963, and returned to serenade civil rights advocates, who had made a rallying song of his “We Shall Overcome.”...
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Will Be Holding a Press Conference and a Lobby Day on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 to Urge State Legislators to Oppose Bills that Would Silence the Voice of Pennsylvania’s Working Families  Pennsylvania AFL-CIO   ...The legislation threatens all workers’ ability to advocate for improved working conditions and safer jobs.  Workers attending the press conference will be talking to their State Representatives and State Senators urging them to oppose this legislation and any proposals that silence or weaken the voices of working men and women...
Life Is Worse In Right-To-Work States  Economic Policy Institute   ...According to Politico, 4 of the 5 best states to live in are non-right-to-work. In order, they are New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont, Utah, and Massachusetts. Right-to-work states account for 8 of the 10 worst states, and all 5 of the 5 worst states (in order, from 46th-50th: Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississsippi)...
Tax-Free Gifts Quadrupled in US When Congress Raised Limit  Bloomberg News   ...Congress voted in December 2010 to let wealthy Americans make tax-free gifts of as much as $5 million, and the money flowed. U.S. taxpayers reported making $122 billion in nontaxable gifts on the returns they filed in 2012, more than four times the amount they made in each of the two previous years...
In Global Trade, China Plays by Its Own Rules  Epoch Times   ...China continues to impose duties on U.S. grain oriented flat-rolled electrical steel, resulting in a $247 million decrease in exports from the United States to China, falling from $250 million to $3 million a year...
Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps  New York Times   ...When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spies could be lurking in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence documents...

e New Jersey Turnpike Authority has scheduled a public hearing Tuesday on a plan to privatize toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. The Christie administration contends it could save a significant amount of money, but the unions representing toll collectors disagree.

Read More: NJ Moves to Privatize Toll Collectors [POLL/AUDIO] | http://nj1015.com/nj-moves-to-privatize-toll-collectors-audio/?trackback=tsmclip

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has scheduled a public hearing Tuesday on a plan to privatize toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. The Christie administration contends it could save a significant amount of money, but the unions representing toll collectors disagree.

Read More: NJ Moves to Privatize Toll Collectors [POLL/AUDIO] | http://nj1015.com/nj-moves-to-privatize-toll-collectors-audio/?trackback=tsmclip

The new face of food stamps: working-age Americans  Associated Press   ...In a first, working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps — a switch from a few years ago, when children and the elderly were the main recipients...
Killing the Economy  Economic Populist   ...John Williams writes that consumer inflation, if properly measured, is running around 9%, far above the 2% figure that is the Fed’s target and more in line with what consumers are actually experiencing. We have just had a 6.5% annual increase in the cost of a postage stamp...
Justice Department Inquiry Takes Aim at Banks’ Business With Payday Lenders  New York Times   ...Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing whether banks have allowed businesses to siphon billions of dollars from consumers’ accounts...
Rough Patch for Uber Service’s Challenge to Taxis  New York Times   ...Uber is being sued by its drivers, who say it is stealing their tips. Competitors are pressing it from all sides...
Kellogg's Delivers Memphis a Slap in the Face  Truthout   ...this February, workers at the Memphis Kellogg cereal plant face the prospect of spending Black History Month on the picket line after the company locked them out...
High court rules against steelworkers' claim   Associated Press   ...The Supreme Court says steelworkers do not have to be paid for time they spend putting on and taking off protective gear they wear on the job...
NJ Moves to Privatize Toll Collectors  New Jersey 101.5 Radio   ...The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has scheduled a public hearing Tuesday on a plan to privatize toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. The Christie administration contends it could save a significant amount of money, but the unions representing toll collectors disagree...

Payday lender gets tagged with huge fine

The Teamsters strongly support the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect American workers from predatory banks -- and the agency has done exactly what we hoped it would. The CFPB is cracking down on financial companies that cheat and lie to their customers -- like Cash America, a payday loan company that rips off active servicemen and women.

Here's the latest from Credit Slips:

The CFPB just settled an enormous enforcement action against payday lender Cash America. Under the settlement, Cash America will pay $5 million in penalties and $14 million in refunds to overcharged customers. 

The Washington Post reported the disgusting details about Cash America:

For five years, employees at Cash America, one of the country’s largest payday lenders, were told to stamp a lawyer’s signature on court documents used to sue customers for past-due debts. 

This “robo-signing” helped the company improperly squeeze money out of at least 14,397 Americans, who are entitled to millions of dollars in restitution... 

The bureau also discovered instances of Cash America charging active-duty service members and their families more than 36 percent interest on payday loans in violation of the Military Lending Act, according to the enforcement order. 

The CFPB found that Cash America or its affiliates robo-signed documents in debt collection lawsuits, made loans to military servicemen in violation of the federal Military Lending Act, and even destroyed documents during discovery.

The good news is that Cash America probably would have gotten away with it had the CFPB not been created in 2011. Check out its website here.

Today's Teamster News 08.13.13

The No Jobs Economy is the New Economy  Economic Populist   ...Of the 161,000 reported private sector jobs gained in July, 157,000 or 97.5 percent, are in non-tradable domestic services. A non-tradable service is a job that produces services that cannot be exported, such as waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, retail clerks, warehousemen....
Your mortgage documents are fake!  Salon   ... The lawsuit states that banks resorted to fake documents because they could not legally establish true ownership of the loans when trying to foreclose...
J.C. Penney, Best Buy Customer Data Collection Stirs Privacy Concerns  Associated Press   ...It's not just the government that might be keeping tabs on you. Many retailers are tracking you, too – or at least your merchandise returns...
It's Time to Do Something When a Corporation Like WalMart Won't Pay a Living Wage: Or Else We All Pay  AlterNet   ...Walmart employees are the single largest group of Medicaid recipients in the United States...
Supersize Those Wages, McDonald's (opinion)  Huffington Post   ...Last month, McDonald's gave its workers a little gift -- a budget purporting to show how to survive on the starvation wages the burger behemoth pays. The bizarre financial plan made millionaire McDonald's CEO Don Thompson look like a real clown...
Mankind: Death by Corporation, Part III - the TPP as Corporate Deathstar (opinion)  Truthout   ...Instead of protecting US citizens, the Obama administration is enabling the ultimate corporate "Deathstar." The TransPacific Partnership will allow corporations "virtually unchecked control of our food supply, our land, air, water, wallets and our future..."
Six federal agencies investigating online payday lenders  Center for Public Integrity   ...A half-dozen federal agencies, including the Justice and Treasury departments, are probing the practices of online payday lenders that target the poor...
Banks test U.S. IRS anti-tax shelter weapon in STARS wars  Reuters   ...A sharp tool in the U.S. government's fight against corporate tax shelters will be put to the test in the months ahead as the IRS grapples with four major banks over structured transactions done a decade ago with Barclays Plc. The IRS contends the transactions, known as STARS deals, were designed purely to facilitate tax dodging...
Court Reverses Class Action Status in Rail Price-Fixing Lawsuit  Journal of Commerce   ...The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington recently reversed a ruling that turned a price-fixing lawsuit against four U.S.-based Class I railroads into a class action...
Judge grants Bay Area transit strike reprieve  Associated Press   ...San Francisco Bay Area commuters got a reprieve from a potential transit strike when a judge on Sunday granted California Gov. Jerry Brown's request for a 60-day cooling-off period in negotiations between the Bay Area Rapid Transit Agency and two of its largest unions...
North Carolina Voter ID Bill Signed Into Law By Gov. Pat McCrory, Sparking Lawsuits  Huffington Post   ...North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a bill Monday requiring photo identification at the polls and eliminating a slew of voting measures designed to protect against voter disenfranchisement...
North Carolina tax changes: Where you stand  Charlotte Observer   ...Sweeping new changes to the North Carolina tax code will touch the purses and wallets of virtually every taxpayer in the state. The legislation will affect everything from the size of our annual tax bills to the way we shop for back-to-school clothes. But that’s where the agreement ends...
Kinder suggests “Right to Work” will go on the ballot, unions are ready for the fight  Missouri Times   ...The efforts of both sides on the “Right to Work” debate have been vocal the last few months, after the Associated Press’ David Lieb reported that Missouri’s Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder made comments at the ALEC conference that the issue will likely be put on a voter referendum ballot...
Labor lifts Martin Walsh’s mayoral campaign  Boston Globe   ...Dozens of labor groups — Teamsters, painters, pipe fitters, firefighters — have helped Mass. State Rep. Martin J. Walsh forge a formidable campaign in his run for Boston mayor with six weeks left until voters head to the polls...
California minimum wage bill sidetracked for more negotiations  Los Angeles Times   ...A proposal to increase the minimum wage by $2 over five years was sidelined, at least temporarily, on Monday because it would cost the state millions of dollars...