Today's Teamster News 04.06.15

Teamsters
Anti-Union Allegiant CEO Lives His Worst Dream: Teamster Pilots  Forbes   ...In January, pilots voted 465-8 to authorize a strike. Now, the union is moving on two fronts to use the threat of a strike to improve working conditions. Pilots were prepared to strike on April 2, but on April 1 a U.S. district court judge in Las Vegas issued a temporary restraining order. A hearing is scheduled for Friday, April 10...
Horse Carriage Foes Spend $14k on Subway Ads  City & State   ...Demos Demopoulos, executive officer of the Teamsters Local 553 union that represents about 120 horse carriage drivers, said his group is also lobbying the Council. Demopoulos claimed a majority is opposed to the bill and noted that polling has shown that public opinion is on the side of drivers...
Detroit residents unite to honor Viola Liuzzo  USA Today   ...The committee, supported by the Greening of Detroit, has received financial commitments totaling $300,000 from the UAW-Ford and the Teamsters, among others, and two fundraisers are planned for upcoming days. (Anthony Liuzzo Sr., who died in 1978, was a Teamsters official.)...
NYCHA worker may have been killed by faulty trash machine  NY Daily News   ...An investigation by Teamsters Local 237, which represents 8,000 NYCHA workers, has since found evidence that contradicts the NYPD theory and suggests maintenance failures may have contributed to Jackson’s death...

Global Labor & Trade
White House Says Enviros Love This Trade Pact, But Enviros Say Otherwise  Huffington Post  ...The Obama administration has angered a host of environmentalist organizations with an Internet campaign that suggests green groups broadly support the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, which environmentalists have in fact been fighting for years...
The True Myths on the Trans-Pacific Partnership  CEPR   ...The proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are doing everything they can to try to push their case as they prepare for the fast-track vote before Congress this month. They begin by giving us three myths, all of which happen to be accurate depictions of reality...
Strikes proliferate in China as working class awakens  Today Online   ...More than three decades after Beijing began allowing market reforms, China’s 168 million migrant workers are discovering their labour rights through the spread of social media. They are on the forefront of a labour protest movement that is posing a growing and awkward problem for the ruling Communist Party...

State & Living Wage Battles
Right-to-work backers vow continued push  Albuquerque Journal   ...A high-profile push to approve a New Mexico right-to-work law stalled during the recent 60-day legislative session, but the issue appears likely to be back next year — both in the Roundhouse and on the 2016 campaign trail...
State Looking For National Role In Union-Backed Bill   Hartford Courant   ...Connecticut gained widespread attention in recent years as a national leader in Democratic circles by increasing the minimum wage and passing a first-in-the-nation statewide mandate for paid sick days for some service employees...
Nevada Senate approves minimum wage increase bill  Las Vegas Review Journal   ...A Republican-backed bill to overhaul Nevada’s overtime law and increase the minimum wage for some workers was approved Friday by the state Senate on a party-line vote, with Democrats calling the measure a “slap in the face” to the working poor...
U.S. Supreme Court Declines To Review North Carolina Voting Law  Huffington Post   ...The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the legality of new Republican-backed voting restrictions in North Carolina that were part of a law opponents argued was aimed at making it harder for voters who tend to favor Democrats to cast ballots...
Kansas Will Limit Welfare Recipients To $25 A Day   Think Progress  ...During debate over the bill state Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau (D) pointed out that many recipients need to withdraw hundreds of dollars some days in order to be able to pay rent...
Fast Food Workers: Thanks for the Raise, McDonald’s, But We Said $15 an Hour, Not $10  In These Times   ...The company, fighting to improve its battered image, may not have intended the move to be a joke. But in the end, many workers saw the welcome boost in pay and benefits as largely a fraud perpetrated on the public as well as on fast food workers...
This City Could Become The Next Detroit   Think Progress  ...Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings...

U.S. Labor
Be Nervous (But Not Panicked) About The March Jobs Report   FiveThirtyEight   ...Employers added 126,000 jobs last month, breaking a 12-month streak of growth over 200,000 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. The report was far weaker than most economists expected and represented the slowest pace of growth since the end of 2013. The government also revised down its estimate of January and February hiring by a combined 69,000 jobs...
Michigan Factory Owner Gives Out $6 Million In Thank-You Bonuses  Huffington Post  ...When J.C. Huizenga sold his namesake machinery manufacturing company, he wanted to share the spoils. The Huizenga Group chairman gave out nearly $6 million in bonuses to more than 575 workers in his two Michigan factories. It was his way of thanking the employees for helping grow the company, which now earns about $170 million in annual sales, according to CBS News...
Trade workers set to benefit from Gov. Jerry Brown's project list  Los Angeles Times   ...At his recent groundbreaking for the state's high-speed train, Gov. Jerry Brown paused while extolling the project to laud the union workers who will build it. "You've got to put something in the ground," Brown said, riffing on what drives economic growth. "You've got to get these building trades men and women doing stuff. That's what makes America — what makes the world — go 'round."...
Workers — not employers — are the real wage movers and shakers  (opinion) Washington Post   ...“We’re too big and complicated a system to do anything in reaction to a particular group or something happening,” Karen King, who has the wonderful title of “chief people officer” at McDonald’s, said Wednesday, explaining her company’s decision to raise wages for some of its employees. If you believe that, don’t go near anyone purporting to sell you a bridge, even if it comes with fries on the side...

Teamster civil rights martyr inducted into Labor's International Hall of Fame today

Viola Liuzzo, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 for her role in the civil rights movement, is being inducted into Labor's International Hall of Fame today. She was the wife of a Teamster business agent and a heroine to us all.

A recent CNN story describes what happened more than four decades ago:

The murder of Viola Liuzzo was one of the most shocking moments in the civil rights movement. On a winding, isolated road outside Selma, Liuzzo was ambushed and shot to death by a car full of Ku Klux Klansmen. 

She was murdered while giving a ride to a 19-year-old black man, Leroy Moton, one of many civil rights marchers she had driven around Selma. Liuzzo had joined the movement's carpool system soon after arriving in the small Alabama town. Liuzzo's murder became international news. Her photo became a fixture in history books. Her name has been inscribed on civil rights memorials throughout the United States. 

But people had far less sympathy for Liuzzo when she was murdered. Hate mail flooded her family's Detroit home, accusing her of being a deranged communist. Crosses were burned in front of the home. Her husband, Anthony Liuzzo Sr., had to hire armed guards to protect his family. 

A Ladies' Home Journal magazine survey taken right after Liuzzo's death asked its readers what kind of woman would leave her family for a civil rights demonstration. The magazine suggested that she had brought death on herself by leaving home -- and 55% of its readers agreed.

The Hall of Fame is also inducting two other women today:

• "Big Annie” Clemenc was one of the most visible leaders of the 1913 copper miners’ strike on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, many times standing between the miners and police while draped in an American flag.

• And Evelyn Dubrow, a journalist by trade and member of the American Newspaper Guild (now known as The Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America), also became a organizer, writer, educator and, in 1956, the chief Washington, D.C., lobbyist for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, which is now UNITE HERE.

Labor's International Hall of Fame announced the inductees in September in a statement:

These incredible advocates are so deserving of the labor movement’s recognition and remembrance. We look forward to the induction ceremony on May 16, 2013, and making sure the rich histories of sisters Liuzzo, Clemenc and Dubrow are properly remembered.

This Teamster heroine died for the Voting Rights Act

The attack on the Voting Rights Act now before the U.S. Supreme Court should be especially offensive to Teamsters. One of our own died for the cause of equal voting rights. The 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo, wife of a Teamster business agent,  sparked passage of the historic civil rights legislation.

CNN reminded us yesterday of Violet's sacrifice:

The murder of Viola Liuzzo was one of the most shocking moments in the civil rights movement. On a winding, isolated road outside Selma, Liuzzo was ambushed and shot to death by a car full of Ku Klux Klansmen. 

Viola Liuzzo was murdered in this car on an isolated Alabama highway while she participated in a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. 

She was murdered while giving a ride to a 19-year-old black man, Leroy Moton, one of many civil rights marchers she had driven around Selma. Liuzzo had joined the movement's carpool system soon after arriving in the small Alabama town. Liuzzo's murder became international news. Her photo became a fixture in history books. Her name has been inscribed on civil rights memorials throughout the United States. 

But people had far less sympathy for Liuzzo when she was murdered. Hate mail flooded her family's Detroit home, accusing her of being a deranged communist. Crosses were burned in front of the home. Her husband, Anthony Liuzzo Sr., had to hire armed guards to protect his family.

The Teamsters have long honored Viola's memory, from the day James R. Hoffa attended her funeal on March 30, 1965 in Detroit to the present. An online tribute to Viola at teamster.org tells us:

Viola Liuzzo and her husband Anthony “Jim” Liuzzo, who retired after more than 16 years as a business agent of Teamsters Local 247, had always been a family with a purpose. They believed in racial equality, helping fellow union members in their struggle for economic justice or dignity on the job and fighting discrimination in all its form as they had done all their life. 

Viola Liuzzo was an active member of her community and was a member of DRIVE— the Teamsters political and legislative arm. She could often be found attending various political meetings, away at a meeting of Congress on Racial Equality or other meetings that attract those who have a deep concern for their fellow men. 

It came as no surprise to Anthony Liuzzo when his wife and mother of his five children called from the campus of Wayne State University, where she attended classes for sociology, to tell him she had to go to Selma, Alabama to assist the civil rights marchers.

You can read more about her here.