Teamsters at odds with BMW The Press-Enterprise ...Southern California Teamsters, furious that luxury vehicle manufacturer BMW is firing its unionized workers and turning its Ontario distribution center over to an outside contractor, say they'll fight on national and possibly international levels...
Senate Healthcare and Pension Reform Bill is 'Terrible' for Workers, Says Teamsters VP Point Pleasant Patch ...Monday's state Senate vote undermines collective bargaining, says Fred Potter...
New Jersey union sues over pension fund payments Reuters ...A New Jersey labor union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday over the failure by Governor Chris Christie to make payments to the state's pension funds, claiming workers' constitutional rights were violated...
Battle over beer legislation WISN.com ...A group of Republican lawmakers is urging Gov. Scott Walker to kill a measure they recently passed. The craft brewer provision...
O'Brien says right-to-work veto override vote can wait until fall Manchester Union-Leader ...Speaker of the House William O’Brien said he will wait until the fall to attempt an override of Gov. Lynch’s veto of the right-to-work bill...
Unions: 2nd vote possible if state concessions rejected Connecticut Post ...If state unions narrowly reject a $1.6 billion concessions package by week's end, labor leaders may find a way to try to salvage the deal and push forward with a second vote...
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Workers get their protest on in NJ, NY, CA, PA (VIDEO)
#BLOOMBERGVILLE - "STAND BY ME" from Rhodes Pictures on Vimeo.
Has anyone noticed that the U.S. is in a sustained period of labor activism? The mainstream media sure doesn't.
Here's what a quick review of rallies, protests and tent cities came up with:
There's a rally to save collective bargaining rights in San Jose tomorrow at 5:30.
The Second Battle of Trenton starts tomorrow at noon in, well, Trenton, to save collective bargaining for health care and to oppose the punitive pen-ben bill that forces unions to take the fall for the misdeeds of Wall Street and politicians. There's also a Christieville up behind the Statehouse.
Bloombergville continues in New York protesting the mayor's savage budget cuts (the Phoenix Suns' Steve Nash showed up yesterday). And if you missed it, a boatload of nurses rallied today in New York.
Rite-Aid workers are protesting against health care cuts in Harrisburg, Pa., tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.
And the Solidarity Sing Along will happen right on schedule tomorrow at the Rotunda in Madison at noon.
They're also protesting today in Greece, Luxembourg, Belarus, Germany, Chicago, Madrid, Syria, and Washington, D.C., mostly over austerity, but in Washington over the Wal-Mart decision.
Whoa! WI GOP sen likes porn, strip clubs, swinger sites
Cowardly Rob Cowles, another of the "family values" Republican senators with a dirty secret (can you say "randy Randy Hopper"?) is up for recall. Like the other six Wisconsin Republicans being recalled, he voted for
The amendment is so brazen that Scott Walker said he might veto it (proof's in the pudding, though...).
We Are Wisconsin released a press statement reminding us all of a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story three years ago that reported
...Cowles had more than $50,000 invested in two companies — Rick’s Cabaret International and VCG Holding — that operate numerous upscale strip clubs throughout the United States. Under state law, Wisconsin officials have to disclose only whether their investments are above or below $50,000.
Along with owning 15 strip clubs, Rick’s Cabaret also runs an extensive number of erotic Web sites, holds an annual Gentleman’s Club Owners Expo and publishes several magazines, including TEEZE and Exotic Dancer.
The firm’s Web sites include names such as “coupletouch,” a site for swingers to meet one another; “naughtybids,” an online auction site for all things porn, such as one-on-one stripping shows and props used by porn stars in their films; and “xxxpassword,” which gives subscribers entry to unlimited porn sites for $39.95 a month.Kelly Steele, We Are Wisconsin spokesperson, can be excused for a little self-righteousness. She said
The voters in Rob Cowles’ district can decide whether or not they approve of a politician who talks about ‘family values’ while investing heavily in strip clubs, XXX movie peddlers, and online hardcore pornography – but Cowles’ attempt to hide that data from the public is truly disgraceful.Now if you live in Wisconsin, and especially if you live in Cowles' district (Green Bay and environs), remember this name: Nancy Nusbaum. She's the real Democrat challenging Cowles. A fake Democrat is running, too, Otto Junkerman, an 82-year-old Republican who's trying to cause trouble for the Democrats at taxpayers' expense. Do what you can to help out Nancy! We're pretty sure she doesn't have $100,000 invested in pornographic enterprises.
BMW trashes US workers after getting loans from Fed
BMW Rally from Alas Media on Vimeo.
Literally. The company is trying to treat these long-time employees like so much trash to be thrown into the street. Earlier this month, BMW told 65 Teamsters that on Aug. 31, the day their contract expires, their jobs will be outsourced to a third party (which probably uses misclassified independent contractors).
Teamsters held a rally next week. The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reported,
About 150 employees, Teamsters union representatives and their family members blocked a portion of Lowell Street across from the center.
Some supporters waved American flags.
Others held up signs that read "BMW declares war on workers" and "BMW destroys good American jobs."...
"This is an attack on American workers," said Rigo Tirado, president of the Teamsters Local Union 495, which represents the affected warehouse employees.To add insult to injury, the German carmaker got low-interest loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Their
...and in exchange, they mock America’s laws and try to destroy working families.Local 495 in Los Angeles is committed to the long, hard fight to save their jobs. Watch the video.
Blame NAFTA for drug violence
Capitalism gone mad is to blame for the drug wars in Mexico, argues Ed Vulliamy in a Guardian op-ed, Ciudad Juarez is all our futures. Juarez, he says, is a model for the post-NAFTA capitalist economy.
...Recruits for the drug war come from the vast, sprawling maquiladora – bonded assembly plants where, for rock-bottom wages, workers make the goods that fill America's supermarket shelves or become America's automobiles, imported duty-free. Now, the corporations can do it cheaper in Asia, casually shedding their Mexican workers, and Juarez has become a teeming recruitment pool for the cartels and killers. It is a city that follows religiously the philosophy of a free market.
"It's a city based on markets and on trash," says Julián Cardona, a photographer who has chronicled the implosion. "Killing and drug addiction are activities in the economy, and the economy is based on what happens when you treat people like trash." Very much, then, a war for the 21st century.The drug wars have been allowed to continue because politicians are addicted to the cash supplied by banks that launder money for the cartels, Vulliamy says. He quotes Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, who says the drug wars result from,
...effective global government by multinational banks – banks that...have been for years kept afloat by laundering drug and criminal profits. Cartel bosses and street gangbangers cannot go around in trucks full of cash. They have to bank it – and politicians could throttle this river of money, as they have with actions against terrorist funding. But they choose not to, for obvious reasons: the good burgers of capitalism and their political quislings depend on this money...If that sounds improbable, consider this Bloomberg story from about a year ago:
Wachovia ... had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine....And we offer this tidbit, just in case you hadn't heard about the 40,000 people killed in the drug wars or the horrific things the cartels do, like
Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product...
...sewing one victim's flayed face to a soccer ball or hanging decapitated corpses from bridges by the ankles; and innovative torture, such as dipping people into vats of acid so that their limbs evaporate while doctors keep the victim conscious.It's all about control of the lucrative drug trade routes to the U.S. According to the Associated Press,
Koch bros. echo chamber exposed (VIDEO)
In case you haven't been keeping up with the Kochtopus tentacles...
Yay! MI-ers sue over taxation without representation law
This just in: Michiganders are challenging the emergency financial manager (i.e., local dictator) law in court.
According to the New York Times,
According to the New York Times,
More than two dozen residents of Michigan filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against top officials in the state contending that a new law broadly expanding the powers of emergency managers in the most financially troubled cities violates Michigan’s Constitution.
The lawsuit, filed in Ingham County Circuit Court, contends that the law approved by Michigan lawmakers this year improperly allows the state to place new costs on municipalities without paying for them and, in essence, bars local residents from picking their own elected representatives...Chris Savage has a thorough report on the lawsuit and the campaign to repeal the law at A2Politico. He quotes one of the plaintiffs in the suit, Ann Arbor resident Michael Merriweather:
...when I turn on the television and see local governments in Benton Harbor or Detroit being dismissed, assets and services taken over and sold off, by an unelected, unaccountable, bureaucrat, it is impossible for me not to feel outraged.”Find out more about Michigan Forward, which is working to repeal the law, here.
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