Private prison hellhole outed in Ohio

Question: What's even more disturbing than private prison hellholes in Ohio?

Answer: Private prison hellholes for debtors in Ohio.

ThinkProgress today reported on the swift decline of the nation's first privately owned (not just operated) prison in Northern Ohio:

In an unprecedented experiment fueled by budget concerns, Ohio sold a state prison to Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest private prison corporations in the country, in 2011. Within a year, a state audit of Lake Erie Correctional Institute, the nation’s first privately owned state prison, found rampant abuse and abysmal conditions well below state standards. The CCA prison was given another chance to pass, but flunked another inspection four months later. Independent reports continue to illuminate filthy, broken facilities, as well as much higher rates of crime and violence in and around the prison. On Tuesday, the ACLU of Ohio sent Ohio lawmakers a comprehensive timeline of the prison’s decline since CCA took over. 

The Lake Erie prison is now reportedly overcrowded at 130 percent capacity, with single-person cells holding 3 inmates each, according to internal documents obtained by the ACLU. Assaults on guards and other inmates have skyrocketed by 40 percent. 

In fact, on the same day the ACLU released their timeline, the Lake Erie prison had to tamp down a series of inmate fights that lead to the confinement of 500 inmates.

We've known for a long time that privately operated prisons suck, so it's no surprise that a privately owned prison would suck even worse.

But the recent news that Ohio allows debtor prisons to exist suggests something even more sinister: illegal institutional efforts to imprison poor people for being poor. .... Which creates a whole new population for private prisons!

Here's the expose from US News:

Several courts in Ohio are illegally jailing people because they are too poor to pay their debts and often deny defendants a hearing to determine if they're financially capable of paying what they owe, according to an investigation released Thursday by the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

The ACLU likens the problem to modern-day debtors' prisons. Jailing people for debt pushes poor defendants farther into poverty and costs counties more than the actual debt because of the cost of arresting and incarcerating individuals, the report said.  

"The use of debtors' prison is an outdated and destructive practice that has wreaked havoc upon the lives of those profiled in this report and thousands of others throughout Ohio," the report said.

Read the whole thing here.

ProgressOhio sues to block OH prison privatization

Corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich wants to privatize five Ohio prisons.
He won't if ProgressOhio gets its way.

Yesterday, ProgressOhio went to court and sued to prevent Kasich from selling taxpayer property to private prison companies. These prison companies will not only gouge the government, they will lobby for laws to put more nonviolent offenders in their cages.

Here's what Brian Rothenberg, executive director of ProgressOhio, had to say about the lawsuit:

...we believe strongly that this case preserves a safe environment for these communities that house dangerous felons and preserves good jobs in an Ohio economy wracked by income deflation. In effect this action protects both safety and economic security for Ohio communities whose residents would see profit over safety and layoffs and pay cuts that will devastate consumer spending.

Clearly these provisions both violate the single subject law of the Ohio Constitution, deprive Ohioans of the right to a citizen veto and violates the Constitutional prohibition of the state in using its full faith and credit to invest its assets in a private corporation.

Here are a few things you need to know about prison privatizaton, courtesy of Dissenting Leftist:

Wells Fargo owns 4 million shares in the Geo Group, the second largest private prison corporation in America, and 50,000 shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison corporation in the country. These shares combined are valued at more than $120 million...

Companies such as the Geo Group and CCA do not earn their money by providing goods or services to customers. Rather, they make their money solely from the government, and solely for locking human beings in cages, mostly for non-violent offenses. Further, these companies actively lobby for unjust laws, largely using the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporatist conservative political group.

We've had plenty to say about the Koch-funded legislative roach motel known as ALEC in the past few weeks. It's a big reason why these Governors Gone Wild don't seem to have an original thought in their heads. They just do whatever ALEC tells them to do.

Here's a good summary of the kinds of laws ALEC pushes in order to fill the prisons and the pockets of the prison profiteers, thanks to Bob Sloan and Mike Elk at the Nation:

ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states. (Then State Rep. Scott Walker was an ALEC member when he sponsored Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing laws and, according to PR Watch, used its statistics to make the case for the law.) ...

ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees.

You wonder how these people sleep at night.

Corporations using prison labor to grab even more cash

Big business is always looking for a cheaper way to build a widget. And they have found a disturbing solution right here in the U.S. – prison labor.

Inmates at the private Lockhart Texas prison, for example, took over the production of circuit boards used by companies such as IBM and Compaq. Meanwhile, at San Quentin State Prison in California, prisoners are handling work previously done at an assembly plant in Mexico.

These practices are wrong for many reasons, as a Global Research report details. For one, it puts productive employees earning fair market wages out of work. That was the case for those workers whose factories were shuttered in Texas and Mexico when their jobs were moved to prisons. Additionally, it "employs" inmates much of the time at slave labor wage levels, all in the name of bigger profits for some of the nation's largest corporations.

Such arrangements are not limited to Texas and California, the report explains:

At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. 

All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

It has also been a boon for the private prison industry over the last few decades, the report notes:

Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state’s governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

After a law signed by [former President] Clinton in 1996 – ending court supervision and decisions – caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering “rent-a-cell” services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.

The Teamsters have long advocated against the creation of private prisons. Last year, we successfully helped stop Florida from privatizing nearly a third of the state's prisons. We've frequently detailed the abhorrent conditions at the nation's first privately-run state correctional facility in Ohio.

It's time to take the profit out of prisons and put it back in the hands of hard-working Americans.

Miss. private prison 'like a jungle'

Another private prison is exposed as a barbaric hellhole. This time it's in Mississippi.

We've told you about the private prison hellhole in Ohio owned by Corrections Corporation of America (a big ALEC supporter, of course). Abuse was rampant, conditions were abysmal.

Now Bloomberg tells us about Walnut Grove juvenile detention center in Malone, Miss. It was run by GEO Group, the private prison company in Florida that wanted to take over nearly half of the state's prisons last year. (They failed.)

The state finally took control of Walnut Grove back from GEO Group in 2012, fed up with its dangerous and derelict care. Bloomberg reports,

Staff shortages, mismanagement and lax oversight had long turned it into a cauldron of violence, where female employees had sex with inmates, pitted them against each other, gave them weapons and joined their gangs, according to court records, interviews and a U.S. Justice Department report.

Here's an account of one bloody riot at the prison. The guard captain knew it was coming, but management told him to handle it himself:

Eighteen corrections officers were at the prison the day of the assault, he said -- one for every 60 prisoners. One, a gang member herself, walked through the cellblock freeing Vice Lords, then left. When the beatings and stabbings stopped, six inmates were rushed to the hospital, one with permanent brain damage. 

“You got 60 inmates there and it’s just me,” said McAfee, the former guard and one of those who responded to the melee. “You just had to sit there and wait while people are fighting. It was a horrible experience.” 

The worst hurt was Michael McIntosh, then 20. Six weeks after the incident, his father found him in a hospital three hours away in Greenville. The younger McIntosh’s eyes were red and blinded by blood. He had a baseball-sized lump on his head, multiple stab wounds and brain damage. He made noises like a small child.

Read the whole thing here if you need any more convincing that private prisons are a bad idea.

Prisoners poop in plastic bags at private OH prison

Oh this is lovely. Prisoners have to poop in plastic bags at the Lake Erie Correctional Institute, which is now owned and run by Corrections Corporation of America.

The Huffington Post reports:

A September state audit found that inmates being disciplined in segregation at the prison were using plastic containers and bags as a makeshift restroom, in the absence of working toilets and running water.

But that's not the half of it:

Over the past year, the state of Ohio has assessed almost $500,000 in penalties on CCA related to the Lake Erie prison, deducting $318,000 for staff vacancies and an additional $181,000 in damages for not adhering to its contract. Staffing was a persistent problem at the facility, according to state records.

(In Idaho, Corrections Corporation of America was recently accused of falsifying records to hide chronic understaffing.  We suspect it's not the only state where that's a problem.)

This is what happens with understaffing:

...a major uptick in crime near the private prison has burdened the small town of Conneaut, Ohio, with police there making a series of recent arrests related to attempts to smuggle drugs and alcohol into the facility. Officers responded to 229 calls related to the prison last year, nearly four times as many as the previous five years combined, according to the city's crime data.

Truthout observes that for-profit prison operators view themselves as real estate companies. That may be why they suck so much at running correctional facilities.

In July 2012, the GEO Group - the nation's second-largest private prison operator behind Corrections Corporation of America - sent a letter to the IRS requesting a conversion from a typical "class-c" corporation to a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).

Corrections Corporation is waiting on the IRS for approval of the same change.

Truthout argues that the conversion of for-profit prison companies to real estate investment trusts blurs the distinction between people (the inmates) and property.

Troubling.

Why privatization is usually a dumb-a** thing to do

Florida and Ohio could learn a thing or two from the Olympics about the minefield that is privatization.

The 2012 Olympic Games used G$S, a private firm, to guard the event. Somehow G4S didn't manage to hire enough staff. So the government called in 3,500 military personnel.

It was a scandal described as a "humiliating shambles."

Writes Peter Holbrook, CEO of Social Enterprise UK, in a letter to The Guardian:

The G4S debacle is a stark warning of what lies ahead. When private companies deliver public services, ultimately they answer to thirsty shareholders, not the taxpayer. It's inescapable: profit maximisation is a legal obligation for such companies.

Now Ohio Gov. John Kasich wants to privatize the Turnpike. And Florida Gov. Rick Scott won't give up his quest to privatize the prisons. Both are dumb-a** ideas. And both would hurt Teamsters, who work as toll collectors on the Ohio Turnpike and as corrections officers in Florida.

Kasich isn't earning much public support for his plan. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Tuesday on a hearing about the proposed privatization:

Of the 77 people in attendance Tuesday, 75 raised their hands to say they are against the governor's idea of privatizing the 241-mile toll road that spans Ohio from Indiana to Pennsylvania -- and many made strong statements for keeping the status quo. 

The vast majority in attendance at the Lorain County Transportation and Community Center agreed with the analysis of the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study that concluded the turnpike is an efficiently run, revenue-producing asset and, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Many Ohioans cited the disastrous Indiana Toll Road privatization (though Indiana's failed welfare privatization would have qualified for comment as well).

In Florida, former Department of Corrections Commissioner James McDonough said this week that prison privatization is "a risky business". McDonough was interviewed by the The News Service of Florida:

There are some things government has to do. If you're going to be incarcerating its citizens, that's a state function, not a for-profit function. Right away, you have problems when you take that approach. 

I think Florida became a very lucrative state to market private prison systems and the services that came with it. The medical issue, I think, is tied in with all of that. If the state is going to arrest people and put them behind bars, it picks up the obligation to look after their health – and not market that out to the most attractive bidder, which usually means the lowest bidder.

I'm not surprised Florida became such a target for the private companies. It's a huge market, and became, on the surface, an attractive way to go. 

Now, in my opinion, it's the obligation of the state. I think if it becomes the obligation of the state, it'll be justly met. But if you turn it into an enterprise, with commercial profits involved, it's a risky business.

McDonough also said private companies pay corrections officers the lowest wage possible. That means substandard control of the prisons. And in the end, it isn't cheaper to farm out prison operations to a for-profit company.

Said McDonough:

Clearly there was an effort to send to the privates the easier inmates to handle. That meant that you don’t have the more misbehaving inmates or the more dangerous inmates or the more medically ill inmates going to the privates. So for the privates, that becomes an advantage. If you're not working overtime to take care of all of that, and spending the money, then the overall outcome appears to be less expensive. 

But it's not. When [private prisons] grow and take increasing percentages of the inmates, they get the ill as well as the well. They get the violent as well as the non-violent. They get the dangerous as well as the stable, and so on. So I always thought that the selling point that it could be done at a percent less than it cost the state to care for an inmate was absolutely skewed data.

AZ senate president and Koch-brother-lover recalled!



Nah nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye...

Ohio's thumping defeat of SB5 was a big loss for the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers, who poured money into the lobbying group that wrote the legislation. The Koch-funded group Americans for Iranian Prosperity also paid for misleading pro-SB5 ads that twisted the words of an Ohio great-grandmother.

But the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers also suffered a loss in Arizona, where a lawmaker was recalled for the first time in history. Senate President Russell Pearce lost a special election to fellow Republican Jerry Lewis by a solid 53-45 percent.

The recall election was triggered by a voter petition drive to recall Pearce, who is unpopular for his stance on immigrant detention and was recently mired in a campaign contributions scandal.

Pearce is called the architect of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law and is a long-time whore member of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. The Koch-funded corporate front group arranged secret meetings between Arizona legislators and Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, to craft S.B. 1070. It's all detailed in this NPR article.

The law would have allowed police to request immigration papers at stop if they had a “reasonable suspicions” that the person was undocumented—clearly a potential windfall for private prison companies in the business to make a profit by locking more people up.

Pearce is part of a growing trend of state legislators pushing for prison privatization, which feeds mass incarceration to the detriment of safety standards, communities and workers.

Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) officers are currently fighting back against the Legislature’s efforts to private more than 30 prison facilities in 18 southern Florida counties. Privatization could impact 4,000 officer jobs, lower safety standards and devastate dozens of communities. There are more than 20,000 correctional, probation and parole officers with the FDOC.

The officers are seeking aggressive Teamster representation in the fight against privatization and are voting in the Teamster election now. Ballots will be counted Nov. 16.

So, what does democracy look like? Today, Ohio, Maine, Iowa and Arizona is what democracy looks like!

Another prison privatization nightmare in Ohio

In the latest prison privatization nightmare, Ohio officials banned employees of a private food-service contractor from prisons for violating security, smuggling contraband and relationships with inmates ('unspecified,' but we can guess).

We've brought to you plenty of other prison privatization nightmares here, here and here. On Saturday, The Columbus Dispatch brought us this new one. The State of Ohio gave Aramark a $110 million contract to feed state inmates, replacing state employees who belong to the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association.

Since then, according to the Dispatch:

The vendor that feeds state prison inmates was fined $142,100 yesterday for contract violations that include failing to hire enough workers to prepare and serve meals... 

The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association said prison employees have logged “thousands of incidents,” including poor food quality and small portions since Aramark took over prison kitchens. 

The union is taking the state to arbitration beginning next week over what it contends was the improper privatization of food service. The move cost 17 union employees their jobs; the remainder moved to other prison positions... 

Forty-four (Aramark employees) were removed because of “inmate relationships” and 16 were banished due to security violations or bringing contraband — tobacco, lighters, marijuana and cellphones — into prison. 

Another state document shows that an Aramark employee was fired in December after admitting she had sex with a Lebanon Correctional Institution inmate. 

Aramark has fired at least 192 of its prison kitchen employees since it took over food-service operations on Sept. 8, records indicate. 

Aramark’s contract requires it to provide a minimum of 414 workers. The company had 387 employees working in the 26 state prisons as of April 4, partially prompting yesterday’s $142,100 fine.

Charming.

Security worse at private prisons. Sometimes it's terrible.




Florida citizens at a meeting opposing prison closures and privatization last night in Jefferson County.

  Private correctional facilities are a really, really bad idea. They don't save taxpayers' money because corporations need to make a profit.

And they're dangerous. Murderers, rapists and thieves are more likely to escape a private prison than a government-run institution, according to a nationwide study by researchers at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Office of Research and Evaluation.

Just this month, an inmate pleaded guilty to murdering Gary and Linda Haas, an Oklahoma couple on vacation in August 2010. He and two others had escaped from Arizona State Prison, which is run by Management And Training Corporation. Arizona's Department of Corrections issued a scathing assessment of the poor security and undertrained corrections officers. They actually ignored the alarm that sounded when the inmates cut the fence to escape.

Florida lawmakers want to turn nearly half of Florida's prisons over to a corporation -- though violent inmates have escaped from prisons run by GEO Group Inc. and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the two companies vying to run Florida’s privatized prisons.

Here are just a few of the delightful things that happened in money-making prisons:

In February 2008, a notorious rapist escaped for two days from a civil commitment center in Arcadia, Fla, according to the Tampa Bay Times. GEO Group ran the facility, which treats sex offenders too dangerous to be released. The escapee, Bruce Alan Young, is a former nurse convicted of raping seven female patients while they were sedated, including a 15-year-old girl at Citrus Memorial Hospital.

Two years ago, three dangerous inmates escaped from the Allen Correctional Center, a GEO facility, in Kinder, La. The Town Talk tells us government law enforcement officers brought them in.

CCA mistakenly released nine inmates from the Bay County Jail Annex in Florida in 2007. Six inmates escaped from the CCA-run Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in the summer of 1998. Four were in prison for murder and one was serving time for armed robbery. One of the inmates eluded capture for more than a month.

See why this is a bad idea? You can sign this petition to oppose prison privatization in Florida here.

Rick Scott signs away good jobs

Florida Gov. Rick Scott will sneak off to The Villages, a retirement community in central Florida, today to sign what he calls "Florida's first jobs budget," a budget that will actually eliminate jobs. The bill includes language allowing the state to privatize prisons in 18 southern counties, also known as Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) Region 4. At risk are about 4,300 correctional officer positions.

Florida has the third largest state prison system in the country, a potential windfall for corporations. It should come as no surprise that the prison industry has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Scott and the GOP in Florida since 2003, but not everyone, even members of the Republican party, are happy about this privatization plan. ThinkProgress quotes Republican Sen. Mike Fasano:

"It's unprecedented in the United States,” said Fasano, who heads the Senate budget committee with oversight of prisons. “I’m a conservative Republican that believes in privatizing certain parts of government services but we should never privatize public safety."

Florida correctional, probation and parole officers couldn't agree more. They've been busy contacting their legislators and making their voices heard in public on this issue. Here are some great letters to the editor that have been published in recent weeks.

Glynn Reeder, a sergeant at Florida State Prison, writes in the Chipley Bugle:

"Times are tough for all of us. We’re all tightening our belts. But as a correctional officer and a member of this community, I am furious at the politicians in Tallahassee for passing a dangerous plan to privatize some of the prisons in the state. They claim that this plan saves us taxpayers’ money, but I wonder what our public safety is really worth."

As Reeder points out, it's not cheaper to privatize:

"The State pays $42.26 per inmate per day. You can find this information on the Department of Corrections’ web page. The state pays, as of this day, to the GEO group which has a correctional facility in South Florida and one in Milton, Florida, $45.80 per inmate per day."

Thomas Johnson, a correctional officer at Marion Correctional Institution in Lowell, writes in the Ocala Star-Banner:

"I see first-hand what the state’s most dangerous criminals are capable of. My fellow officers and I do our best to keep you and your families safe. Private, for-profit prisons refuse to deal with inmates who have extreme mental and medical issues. Instead, they simply send needy inmates back to the state-run institutions. Not only are these practices extremely dangerous to the community but they also create a smokescreen as to what is really going on in the private, for-profit prison industry. We’ve seen it happen before and I guarantee you that we will see these same problems in our own backyards."

New Hampshire, Texas, New Mexico and Ohio are all considering outsourcing their prison operations to corporations. Corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich went so far as to hire a prison industry official as his Director of Rehabiliation and Corrections.

Teamster retirees living at The Villages,  make sure you pay Rick Scott a visit today and let him know what you think of his job-killing, public safety-endangering bill.

The new Gilded Age: Brought to you by privatization

There are two reasons corporate stooges anti-worker politicians are able to sell to their cronies vast swaths of taxpayer-owned prisons, highways,  forests, postal delivery services and anything else that generates cash: (1) taxpayers think it saves them money and (2) taxpayers think the bidding process is fair.

Those taxpayers are wrong. Here are a few examples:

• The sale of the Indiana Toll Road to a Spanish-Australian consortium caused tolls to double (and they'll double again), longer waits at toll booths, dirty rest stops and the state is losing toll revenue while a foreign corporation profits by cutting corners.
• Washington State voters in November voted to become the first state since Prohibition to privatize liquor sales. When sales were privatized in June, Washington residents were stunned by a 19 percent increase in the price of liquor and a 9 percent drop in Washington state liquor sales. (Government is always more expensive, right?)
• Prison privatization all over the country is a fiasco for so many reasons, safety being one of the most important. In Texas, nearly a dozen taxpayer-built prisons lie empty after they were privatized. In Liberty County, scandal emptied 60 percent of a private prison and the county has to pay the contractor a 15 percent premium because the headcount fell below 150 inmates.

Or the humiliating shambles ... well, we'll stop here.

The privatization ball keeps on rolling.  The Pennsylvania state Senate will probably vote this week on a bill to change settled law that protects local parks from being sold for development. Florida will no doubt try to privatize more prisons next year. Gov. John Kasich wants to privatize the Ohio Turnpike. And all over the country corporations are trying to get their hands on cash from public schools under the guise of education reform.

Privatization doesn't just cost more. It makes it easier to hide wrongdoing, harder to oversee public spending, gives less recourse for people harmed by a private contractor and increases corporate influence over government.

Those reasons are why privatization is so beloved by ALEC, the dating service for corporations and state lawmakers also known as the American Legislative Exchange Council. This secretive, powerful group is a major force behind the push to privatize.

A law review article by Penn State Law Professor Ellen Dannin analyzes the impact on the War on Workers, of which privatization is a major part. She concludes that corporations will end up running our lives even more than they already do if privatization continues apace:

Services that are provided by the government tend to be natural monopolies. If ALEC succeeded in moving all government services to the private sector, the result would be private monopolies that were regulated neither by competition nor by the oversight provided by freedom of information acts or sunshine laws. In addition, if it was not possible to return to the public sector privatized work that failed to meet its contractual obligations or whose operations harmed the agency’s mission, then an important incentive to provide good performance would be lost. Aggravating this concern, because government services tend to be natural monopolies, alternate private providers may not exist. The result would be a new gilded age propelled by the ambitions of robber barons.

Yup.

Today's Teamster News 08.04.12

Economy Generates 163,000 Jobs in July; Unemployment Edges Up to 8.3 Percent  Dean Baker   ...With construction getting stronger and retail sales likely improving in the fall, it is reasonable to expect job growth in the range of 160,000-180,000 over the rest of the year. This is better than the last few months, but it will take a decade at this pace to make up the jobs deficit...
California Passes Homeowners Bill of Rights  Foreclosure Industry News   ...I’m pleased to see the legislation including a provision that gives homeowners some traction to get an injunction to stop a sale;  (2) borrowers may be entitled to recover attorneys fees; and 3) filing multiple unrecorded documents may subject the banks to $7,500.00 per loan. Filing statutory complaints against these entities is also allowed in addition to any legal action you might take...
Dem Lawmakers Want Answers About Romney’s Enormous IRA  Talking Points Memo   ...his tax-deferred individual retirement account holds upwards of $100 million — an amount that awkwardly showcases his enormous wealth but also raises legal and ethical questions...but there’s a legal limit — now $6,000 — on how much each IRA holder can contribute annually...
Pro-Romney independent group tied to billionaire Koch brothers readies $25M TV ad campaign  Associated Press   ...People familiar with the plans say Americans for Prosperity plans to spend about $25 million on the ads beginning next week and running into early September. The ads will run in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Americans for Prosperity was founded by David and Charles Koch...
Private Prisons Spend $45 Million On Lobbying, Rake In $5.1 Billion For Immigrant Detention Alone ThinkProgress   ...Nearly half of all immigrants detained by federal officials are held in facilities run by private prison companies, at an average cost for each detained immigrant is $166 a night. That’s added up to massive profits for Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group and other private prison companies...
Washington regulator investigates Waste Management  Associated Press   ...The state Utilities and Transportation Commission sent a letter to Waste Management's Kirkland office Thursday seeking a detailed status report on each day of the strike...

Today's Teamster News 12.13.12

Oops: Michigan Republicans Have Passed a Right to Work Law that may be Impossible to Implement  Politicususa   ...Did Michigan Republicans even read the ALEC-Koch “Right-to-Work” legislation they just passed? It doesn’t appear likely...Just as the Wisconsin law violated their state constitution, so it appears the Michigan law does the same, albeit for different reasons....“The Michigan Constitution gives clear authority to the Civil Service Commission over conditions of employment for the state’s workforce. Experts have suggested today only a vote of the Civil Service Commission could enact Right to Work policies for state workers...”
Petitions seek ‘right to work’ in Ohio  Toledo Blade   ...As Michigan lawmakers prepare today to make the Wolverine State the latest right-to-work state, petitions are circulating on Ohio streets to put a similar issue directly before Buckeye voters...
Virginia GOP Official Calls Union Members ‘Terrorists’  ThinkProgress   ...Union workers who were protesting the passage of so-called “right-to-work” laws outside the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan are “terrorists,” according to a former high-ranking official in the Republican Party of Virginia who now serves in a county-level elected office...
Tom Harkin: Conservative Media 'Manufactured' Fiscal Cliff Crisis 'To Scare People' (VIDEO)  Huffington Post   ...Republican leadership is resistant to raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a key piece of the White House plan. Meanwhile, Democrats are reluctant to making changes to Medicare or Social Security that GOP has suggested...
Arizona funnels business to CCA through its school-to-prison pipeline  The Guardian   ...Casa Grande invited a private prison firm to help make a high-school marijuana bust. Can you spot the conflict of interest?...
Teamsters back on strike in Auburn against United Natural Foods  The Seattle Times   ...Warehouse workers and drivers went back on strike in Auburn against United Natural Foods Thursday night after company officials told union members that 72 of 163 striking workers would be permanently replaced, according to a news release from Teamsters Local 117...
James Hoffa on Michigan now being a ‘right-to-work for less’ state  Current TV   ...He and Bill Press speak about how the far right is fired up over Romney’s defeat. Hoffa says, “How do you weaken the Democratic Party in Michigan? It’s labor. And it’s the same in Ohio.” Hoffa says that this is absolutely political payback...

Today's Teamster News 03.19.12

The Private Prison Industry: Resistance Isn't Futile  Huffington Post   ...The private prison industry is on the march. In recent months the industry moved to take over 24 state prisons in southern Florida and buy five prisons in Ohio. Now it's making moves in Michigan. But the industry doesn't always win...
Whistleblower Gets Sham Justice From Wall Street Court  Bloomberg   ...mandatory arbitration with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority may be the single largest ongoing abdication of legal rights -- affecting millions of people -- that exists in this country...
Nixon vetoes workplace bills  St. Louis Post-Dispatch   ...One bill would narrow the state’s employment discrimination law, and the other would push occupational disease claims to the workers' compensation program...
New York Lawmakers Vote to Limit Public Pensions  New York Times   ...Lawmakers on Thursday morning approved a hard-fought measure to cut the retirement benefits for future public employees in New York City and across the state, dealing a defeat to labor unions at the end of a dramatic all-night session...
RI coalition seeks tax hike on wealthiest earners  Turn to 10   ...A coalition of organized labor and advocates for the disabled and the homeless in Rhode Island rallied at the State House on Tuesday, asking state lawmakers to raise taxes on wealthy residents to prevent further budget cuts...
UPS to Purchase TNT Express for $6.8 Billion  Bloomberg   ...United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) raised its offer for TNT Express NV (TNTE) by 5.6 percent to 5.16 billion euros ($6.8 billion) to secure the biggest deal in the U.S. company’s 105-year history and challenge Deutsche Post (DPW) AG...

Privatize this, Ohio!

Ohio's Legislature is considering privatizing, well, just about everything. The Lottery. The prisons. The turnpike. The schools. College dormitories.

The Toledo Blade (one of the only newspapers in the country to oppose Nafta) asks a couple of good questions:

Why the rush to sell off Ohio's assets?

Are we giving away state and local assets, which taxpayers have spent a lot of money to build, for less than they are worth?

Will privatizing actually cost less?

Will privatization limit our ability to make decisions and deliver good services?

Who will benefit from these deals, and will that adversely affect making of good policy?

The answers are easy: Political payback, yes, no, yes, Kasich's friends.

Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan -- they're all going the privatization route, thanks to their Governors Gone Wild. Here's just one example of what happens when a taxpayer asset -- in this case a prison -- is privatized (thanks firedoglake):

“It was a mini riot, and yet no guards intervened.”

That is the description of the situation which Antoney Jones found himself in almost immediately after arriving at the Idaho Correctional Center. Jones, a black gay man, was intentionally placed by guards into a housing unit where he would be assaulted by other prisoners. “Prisoners throughout the pod lined the rails and began yelling, ‘Kill the nigger,’ ‘Get the fag’ and ‘Kill the rat.’”

Mr. Jones’ story is one of more than a dozen similar ones found in the complaint of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Idaho against CCA for their operation of ICC, a prison so notorious for its violence that it’s been dubbed “gladiator school” by those housed there. The violence is so pervasive particularly because the prison is private; by routinely hiring unqualified staff and reducing staffing levels to the barest of minimums, the prison is literally a breeding ground for violent activity.

It's our turn: Ballot referenda in ID, ME, OH



Ohio Teamsters in the early stages of the fight against SB5.

Usually it's the corporate-backed Tea Party types who sponsor ballot initiatives to roll back progress. But now it's labor's turn. There are three big ballot referenda coming up in the fall, and we're hoping they mark a turning point in the referendum wars.

You probably knew about SB5 in Ohio. But did you know that Idaho voters will cast ballots on three anti-teacher initiatives in November 2012? The Huffington Post reports,

SB 1108 restricts teachers' collective bargaining rights and ends tenure for new teachers, SB 1184 funds the purchase of technology and laptops for students from the pot of money used to pay teachers' salaries and SB 1110 implements a merit pay system for teachers.

This spring, educators and students in Idaho turned out at the statehouse to protest the measures, which were introduced by Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna.

Penni Cyr, president of the state teachers' union, the Idaho Education Association, told The Huffington Post that the laws were an overreach by some conservatives in the legislature and were even opposed by some Republican members..."One out of four teachers in Idaho could ultimately lose their jobs because of the money that is being moved to pay for technology."

...Cyr pointed to the fact that organizers were able to get far more signatures than were necessary to qualify for referendums on the ballot.

In Maine, reports HuffPo,

...a coalition is working to reinstate same-day voter registration after Gov. Paul LePage (R) signed a bill overturning the 38-year-old law in June.
The registration deadline was pushed back to two business days before election day.
Maine citizens have the ability to essentially veto a law by ballot initiative. The Protect Maine Votes coalition -- 18 groups that include unions, civil libertarians, consumer advocates and homeless groups -- has turned in more than enough signatures to meet the 57,277-signature threshold to get the measure on the ballot in November, but it is waiting for the state to certify that they are valid.

And as of now, thinks are looking good for repeal of corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich's heinous SB5 law.
The Teamsters' friends at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center will support these efforts. They're important not just in and of themselves, but because they'll help build a progressive movement for strengthening democracy through the ballot box.

And just for good measure, did we mention that Arizona is likely to recall their Senate president, Russell Pearce? He's an ALEC puppet who promoted anti-immigration laws on behalf of the private prison industry (they need more "customers," you know).

Today's Teamster News 08.20.15

Teamsters
City Council Stands In Way Of Carriage Horse Ban, de Blasio Tells Activists  New York Times   ...Mayor Bill de Blasio made a promise as a candidate to animal-rights activists that he would end the Central Park horse-carriage industry on the first day of his administration. Nearly 600 days into his tenure, the horses are still clopping. And the mayor has a new message for activists: Talk to somebody else...
Strike Out  Tucson Weekly   ...Shortly after his return, he had an altercation with a bus rider who snuck in a beer. The man ended up throwing the beer in Kirk's face, after Kirk asked him to get rid of it. "Passengers realize that there is no accountability ... the disrespect ... they don't have to abide by any rules," he says. All-in-all, there have been 22 assaults on bus drivers in the past 13 months, according to the Teamsters Local Union 104, which is leading the strike. That includes beer-throwing, spitting and more violent incidents...
Bus Service Resumes To Normal In Loudoun County  Washington Post   ...Teamsters Local 570 and Transdev have been in talks over a collective bargaining agreement for the past six months, according to Loudoun County officials...

Global Labor & Trade
Chinese Shares Trade Lower Again After Days Of Volatility  BBC News   ...The mainland's benchmark Shanghai Composite was 1.5% down to 3,735.92 points. The negative open comes after the index had seen strong volatility since the beginning of the week...
Russia Used To Have A Powerful Weapon In Its Energy Sector. Not Anymore.  Washington Post   ...For years, Russia’s ability to choke off energy shipments any time tensions spiked with the West was a potent threat, one that could force much of Europe to shiver during the wintertime. But with energy prices swooning, the Kremlin’s pipeline politics are looking a lot less threatening...

State & Living Wage Battles
Unions Press Congress To Take Off On FAA Bill  The Hill   ...The AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department is pushing Congress to approve a new round of funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) when lawmakers return to Washington next month. The FAA bill, which includes funding for air traffic controllers, is scheduled to expire on Sept. 30...
Missouri Orders New Measures To Prevent Spread Of Bridgeton Landfill Fire  St. Louis Post Dispatch   ...Missouri regulators are ordering the owner of the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill to add more safeguards and develop a backup plan to prevent the spread of an underground fire past existing defenses...
Landfill Fire Slowing, Closer To Radioactive Waste  KMOX   ...The Pattonville Fire Protection District is keeping a close eye on the Bridgeton Landfill, after new data shows the underground fire may be getting closer to nuclear material buried in the nearby Westlake Landfill...
Justice Dept. Presses Civil Rights Agenda In Local Courts  New York Times   ...Burlington, Wash., was a small city fighting what seemed like a local lawsuit. Three poor people said that their public lawyers were too overworked to adequately represent them in municipal court cases. The dispute went mostly unnoticed for two years, until the Obama administration became involved. Unannounced, the Justice Department filed documents in the case and told the judge that he had broad authority to demand changes in Burlington and nearby Mount Vernon. The judge quickly agreed and ordered the cities to hire a new public defense supervisor. He also said he would monitor their legal aid program for three years...
After Criticism, HUD Says It’s Trying To Give The Boot To Public Housing Families Who Earn Too Much Money  Washington Post   ...In response to an unsparing audit by its watchdog, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has flipped its stance and now says it is urging housing authorities nationwide to evict tenants who earn too much to qualify for government subsidies...
Court Documents: Legal Challenge To N.C. Voter ID Could Be Settled  Winston-Salem Journal   ...The recent federal trial on North Carolina’s Voter Information Verification Act that ended about two weeks ago did not deal with the state’s photo ID requirement that goes into effect in 2016. It only dealt with other provisions of the law, which reduced the early voting period, eliminated same-day voter registration, prohibited county election officials from counting ballots cast in the wrong precinct but correct county, and abolished preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds...
KC City Council To Meet, Clarify Minimum Wage Issues  WDAF   ...Workers in Kansas City could get some clarity on the minimum wage issue Thursday afternoon after the City Council meets to discuss the ordinance. The council meets at 3 p.m...

U.S. Labor
Uber Missed Criminal Records Of Drivers, Prosecutors Assert  New York Times   ...For more than a year, regulators in various cities have questioned whether Uber, the ride-hailing service, vets its drivers for criminal backgrounds as carefully as traditional taxi companies. Now the district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles have offered perhaps the most concrete evidence to date that people convicted of murder, sex offenses and various property crimes have driven for Uber, despite assurances from the company that it employs “industry-leading” screening...
Private Prison Firms Buy Access To Public Officials At Lavish Industry Conferences  Truthout   ...The prison industry in the United States has grown so large that there are no less than seven professional associations for people who work at prisons and jails. The industry conferences held by these associations provide a perfect venue for private corrections companies to influence government officials with little public oversight, according to a recent report by the watchdog group In The Public Interest (ITPA)...

Social Justice & Other News
U.S. Consumer Prices Rise For Sixth Straight Month  Wall Street Journal   ...The consumer-price index, which reflects what Americans pay for everything from razors to radishes, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in July from a month earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday. From a year earlier, prices are up a very mild 0.2%, but when excluding volatile food and energy categories, the gain in the so-called core index was a more solid 1.8%...
The Military’s Outdated Gender Standards Are Finally Breaking Down  Think Progress   ...While women still face numerous obstacles when it comes to serving in the military, one barrier is soon to be broken. In an interview with the Navy Times Tuesday Adm. Jon Greenert said women would soon be welcome to participate in one of the military’s most elite units: – the Navy SEALs...
Goldman Sachs' New Loan Program Enters Underregulated, Potentially Abusive Loan Marketplace  Truthout   ...Though the bank itself hadn't directly seeded high-interest mortgages into communities of color around the country, like Countrywide or other banks that offered mortgages directly had done, Goldman Sachs had profited from selling subprime mortgage-backed securities - and from betting on the failure of these same products. "That was one of the reasons the [financial] crisis really took off," Murray said...
Ohio Planned To Import Death Penalty Drug Illegally  Mother Jones   ...The state of Ohio planned to illegally import sodium thiopental, a drug used for executions, according to a Food and Drug Administration letter obtained by BuzzFeed through a Freedom of Information Act request...
A Regulator’s Deal With Promontory Skirts A Big Problem  New York Times  ...Since by necessity it focuses on specific allegations, it leaves untouched a larger problem that goes beyond breaches of consultants’ supposed independence: the increasing extent to which regulators and prosecutors have come to rely on consultants to investigate suspected bank wrongdoing, rather than devoting the time and resources to do investigations themselves...
Black Lives Matter Isn't Stopping  Politico   ...Memo to 2016 candidates from Black Lives Matter: We will continue to disrupt your events no matter what you do or say, and we won’t stop anytime soon...
Obama Administration Plans To Overhaul Rules On Student Debt Forgiveness  Washington Post   ...The Obama administration said Wednesday it will overhaul the loan forgiveness process for students who believe they have been defrauded by their colleges, in light of the collapse of controversial for-profit Corinthian Colleges...

Today's Teamster News 07.18.13

Bangladesh Government Allows Workers To Form Unions  ThinkProgress   ...Bangladesh’s government approved a labor law on Monday that would make it easier for workers to form unions. The legislation also included provisions that create a fund to improve workers’ living standards and require companies to deposit 5 percent of profits into employee welfare funds...
License plate cameras track millions of Americans  Washington Post   ...The spread of cheap, powerful cameras capable of reading license plates has allowed police to build databases on the movements of millions of Americans over months or even years, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released Wednesday...
The 1 Move That Could Suddenly Pull 300,000 Workers Out Of Poverty  Huffington Post   ...Legislation introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives could pull hundreds of thousands of the country's working poor out of poverty, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities...
Barclays fights US electricity price manipulation fine through the courts  Guardian   ...Barclays has pledged to fight a $470m (£300m) penalty for allegedly manipulating electricity prices in California by taking the case through the US judicial system...
Jack Lew: Delaying Dodd-Frank Rules Raises Threat Of More Bank Bailouts  Associated Press   ...U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says delays in writing rules to put the financial overhaul law into effect have raised the prospect that taxpayers might again have to bail out big banks that fail...
U.S. seeks new tactic in financial crisis prosecutions  Reuters   ... U.S. federal prosecutors are considering a new strategy for criminally charging Wall Street bankers who packaged and sold bad mortgage loans at the height of the housing bubble, according to a federal official familiar with the investigation...
IRS cancels one furlough day, cuts costs elsewhere  Reuters   ...The Internal Revenue Service said it was cancelling an agency shutdown that had been scheduled for Monday and required by federal budget cuts...
Big Money Makes State and Federal Politics Powerful (opinion)  New York Times   ...Art Pope invested heavily in local North Carolina elections, which ultimately resulted in the redistricting of 13 Congressional and 170 legislative districts...
Surplus celebrated as poverty grows (opinion)  Fort Wayne Journal Gazette   ...Around the same time state leaders were boasting that Indiana was closing its June books with $1.9 billion in reserves, a report from the Indiana Institute for Working Families was released showing poverty in Indiana is sharply increasing...
Statehouse gan throws Ohio in reverse (opinion)  Toledo Blade   ...The new state budget is equally regressive as economic and social policy...
Unions wage legal fight against Michigan’s right-to-work law  Washington Times   ...The legal battle over Michigan’s new right-to-work law shows no signs of flagging. Right-to-work proponents suffered a small setback when Michigan’s Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the legality of the law...
GOP Lawmaker In Utah Wants To End Compulsory Education In The State  Talking Points Memo   ...State Sen. Aaron Osmond (R) argued that certain "parents act as if the responsibility to educate, and even care for their child, is primarily the responsibility of the public school system..."
State Dept. approves ND-to-Alberta gas pipeline  Associated Press   ...The U.S. State Department has approved construction of the North Dakota portion of a gas pipeline from Tioga into the Canadian province of Alberta, Sen. John Hoeven said Tuesday...
CCA asks judge to bar media from joining lawsuit  Associated Press   ...Private prison company Corrections Corporation of America is asking a federal judge to deny a request from Idaho news organizations to keep documents open in a lawsuit over conditions at a CCA-run prison...
Teamsters Call For Quick Approval Of Administration Nominees  IBT ...Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today congratulated Senate Leader Harry Reid for forging a compromise that allows consideration of nominees for key administration posts...
Port Truck Drivers In New Jersey Reject Company’s Lies And Vote YES To Form A Union IBT ...Truck drivers employed by Australia-based Toll Group at the company’s New Jersey division voted overwhelmingly – by a margin of nearly 70 percent – to form a union and affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 469...
Buffalo EMTs, Paramedics’ Victory Spotlighted On Leslie Marshall Show  Leslie Marshall Show   ...Kevin Drysdale, president of Teamsters Local 375 in Buffalo spoke with radio show host Leslie Marshall about new, tentative agreement for EMTs and paramedics working for Rural/Metro. Download the audio here...
City, Teamsters Find Common Ground With Approval of Long-Awaited Collective Bargaining Agreement  Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Patch   ...Lake Forest Park City Council unanimously approved a long-awaited collective bargaining agreement with the Teamsters Local 117 representing maintenance workers at its recent meeting...
PolyOne plans to close Donora plant  Pittsburgh-Tribune Review   ...On Tuesday, the PolyOne’s plant supervisors announced that the company will close its facility in Donora, Pennsylvania by fall 2014. Teamsters Local 205 represents the roughly 100 employees at the plant...

Today's Teamster News 06.25.13

American factory exec says he's being held hostage by scores of angry workers in Beijing  Associated Press   ...An American executive said Monday he has been held hostage for four days at his medical supply plant in Beijing by scores of workers demanding severance packages like those given to 30 co-workers in a phased-out department...
76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck  CNN Money   ...Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all...
U.S. Surveillance Is Not Aimed at Terrorists  Bloomberg   ...monitoring phone calls is hardly the way to catch terrorists. They’re generally not dumb enough to use Verizon...
Court makes it harder to sue businesses  Associated Press   ...The court's conservatives, in two 5-4 decisions, ruled that a person must be able to hire and fire someone to be considered a supervisor in discrimination lawsuits, making it harder to blame a business for a co-worker's racism or sexism. The court then decided to limit how juries can decide retaliation lawsuits...
Supreme Court to decide whether union-business agreement valid  The Republic   ...The Supreme Court will decide whether a business and a union's agreement is valid after the business helped the union organize in return for help with a ballot initiative...
Lawmakers want to stop government from buying USA flags from China   Daily Caller   ...Lawmakers in the House of Representatives are renewing a push to stop the federal government from buying and flying American flags made outside the country...
They’re not telling us all of it  Trade Reform   ...I met with 22 Congressional offices last week.  None of them had seen the TPP language...
Rising middle class fuels Brazil's protests  Forbes   ... in the protests that have gripped Brazil since last week, regional experts say economic growth is actually feeding discontent, as a rising middle class puts demands on social services such as education and transportation that the government has failed to meet...
7-Eleven convenience stores raided as part of US probe  Associated Press ...Federal authorities say they’ve raided 7-Eleven convenience stores in two US states as part of a probe into human smuggling, identity theft and money laundering...
McDonald's pay practice scrutinized by federal authorities  Citizens’ Voice   ...As a lawsuit against a local McDonald's franchise gains national attention, federal authorities are investigating the company's practice of forcing employees to be paid only by debit cards that come with an assortment of fees...
Twinkies Set to Make 'Sweetest Comeback' in July  ABC News   ...Hostess is now owned by the private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co...
Wearing a mask at a riot is now a crime  CBC News   ...A bill that bans the wearing of masks during a riot or unlawful assembly and carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence with a conviction of the offence became law today (in Canada)...
Tennessee Ends $40 Million in Child Allowances for Unemployed   Associated Press   ...The state is notifying Tennesseans drawing unemployment benefits that they will soon lose a weekly $15-per-child allowance as part of a new law signed by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam...
State of Ohio skips union, picks private food service  Columbus Dispatch   ...A Philadelphia mega-company that provides food and beverage service at ballparks, national parks, hospitals and schools nationwide has been picked to provide private food service for Ohio prisons...
Alaska minimum wage hike plan gets go-ahead   Associated Press ...The organizers of a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in Alaska have been given the go-ahead to begin collecting signature, Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell said Monday....
Montana will prosper with equal pay for equal work  (opinion)  Billings Gazette   ...Fifty years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, American women earn, on average, 77 percent of what their male counterparts do. In Montana, women are earning only 67 percent for doing the same work, putting Montana in 39th place for pay equity...
Indiana gives BP a pass on mercury  Chicago Tribune   ...Under the terms of an earlier decision by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the BP refinery can legally discharge an annual average of 23.1 parts per trillion of mercury — nearly 20 times the federal water quality standard...
Indiana grain elevator blast kills 1 worker  Associated Press   ...An explosion Monday inside a grain elevator killed a worker at a sprawling northwestern Indiana farm co-op, authorities said...
Teamster UPS Vote  IBT   ...National Master Contract 34037 (Y) 29576 (N)...
Teamster UPS Freight Returns  IBT   ...1897 (Y) 4244 (N)...
Pepsi Plant Employees Reject Contract Offer  Associated Press   ...Employees at the Pepsi Beverage plant in Huntington, who are members of Teamsters Local 175, have unanimously rejected a contract offer they claim would erode their current benefits...
Carteret firm's truckers to vote Friday on joining Teamsters union  NJ.com   ...Friday’s vote, which follows a contentious unionization campaign, involves 112 short and long-haul drivers and support workers for Toll Global Forwarding...
Listen To The Rick Smith Show’s Broadcasts From His People’s Tour Of America  IBT   ...The Teamsters are supporting Brother Rick Smith as he takes his labor radio show from his home in Harrisburg, Pa. on a cross-country tour from June 11 to July 5. On the way, he is meeting with union leaders and workers about the state of the American labor movement and the challenges facing the middle class. Come back to this page daily to hear the latest from his road travels...

Today's Teamster News 07.16.13

Democrats Confident They Have 51 Votes For Nuclear Option  Talking Points Memo   ...Senate Democrats are confident that they’ve rounded up the 51 votes needed to nuke the filibuster for executive branch nominations, should they follow through with their threat to change the rules if Republicans block seven pending nominees...
McDonalds Tells Workers To Budget By Getting A Second Job And Turning Off Their Heat  ThinkProgress   ...McDonalds has partnered with Visa to launch a website to help its low-wage workers making an average $8.25 an hour to budget...it actually underscores exactly how hard it is for a low-paid fast food worker to get by.
US blocks crackdown on tax avoidance by net firms like Google and Amazon  The Guardian   ...France has failed to secure backing for tough new international tax rules specifically targeting digital companies, such as Google and Amazon, after opposition from the US forced the watering down of proposals that will be presented at this week's G20 summit...
Judge to mull whether airlines owe WTC owners  Associated Press   ...A judge will decide whether the owners of the World Trade Center can try to make aviation companies pay billions of dollars in damages stemming from the Sept 11 attacks. Lawsuit says defendants were negligent in allowing hijackers to board...
Audits: Prison vendor charged for unserved meals  Associated Press   ...A private vendor in line to begin feeding roughly 100,000 prison inmates in Ohio and Michigan has a track record of billing for food it doesn't serve, using substandard ingredients and riling prisoners with its meal offerings, past audits in several states show...
Arizona failed to distribute federal aid to struggling homeowners  The Republic   ...Arizona has failed to pass along tens of millions of dollars in federal aid to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure, despite being one of the states hit hardest by the housing bust...
New e-commerce strategies threaten UPS, FedEx  Reuters   ...UPS and FedEx might be worried about international shipments to slowing economies like China, but perhaps they should be more concerned about what's going on in their own back yards...
'Moral Monday' crowd rallies for women's rights; 101 arrested  WRAL.com   ...About 100 people were arrested Monday after their singing and clapping protest outside the state Senate chamber was declared an unlawful assembly, in what has become a weekly demonstration against Republican initiatives...
North Carolina Lawmakers to tweak law cutting jobless benefits  Winston-Salem Journal   ...North Carolina lawmakers plan to make some changes in a new law that cuts unemployment benefits after the U.S. Labor Department pointed out some parts of the law that do not comply with federal regulations...
Concern mounts as Ohio labor groups watch Michigan Supreme Court refuse to intervene in RTW controversy  PR NewsChannel   ...With Ohio’s Right to Work battle at a political standstill for the summer, labor advocates have had a moment to take stock of the nationwide battle for worker rights. And the labor group advocates don’t have to look far to find one of the best examples of why failure is not an option...
Super-Sized Terminal on the Horizon at Port of Oakland  Journal of Commerce   ...The Port of Oakland’s board of commissioners has unanimously approved a lawsuit settlement that could produce the port’s first super-sized terminal...
Buffalo-Area Emergency Medical Crisis Looming With Teamsters Strike  IBT   ...At the annual “Taste of Buffalo” this weekend, local paramedics and EMTs protested their employer, Rural/Metro Corporation. The 400 first responders, members of Teamsters Local 375, have voted to strike on July 15 at midnight, due to Rural/Metro’s substandard wage offer...
First Student Mechanics Join Teamsters   IBT   ...School bus mechanics with First Student in Pine Bush, N.Y., have voted unanimously to join Local 445 in Rock Tavern, N.Y. The seven mechanics joined the Teamsters seeking the guarantees and protections of a contract, including better wages, benefits and working conditions...
Pacific Harbor Line, BLET ink five-year labor agreement  Progressive Railroading   ...Pacific Harbor Line Inc. (PHL) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) recently signed a new five-year agreement covering the short line's operating and maintenance-of-way employees...