Monday, January 13, 2014

Today's Teamster News 01.13.14

UPS Freight Teamsters Overwhelmingly Approve New National Contract  teamster.org   ...UPS Freight Teamsters have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new national five-year master agreement that increases wages, significantly strengthens pension benefits and takes on the issue of subcontracting...
Ed Emery: Right to work would mean lower wages for Missourians  Progress Missouri   ...ALEC Co-Chair and State Senator Ed Emery finally admitted yesterday what proponents of so-called 'right to work' laws have long been trying to hide from the public, that the legislation would result in lower wages for the middle-class...
U.S. Politicians Want to Fast-Track the Super-Secret, Super-Controversial TPP  Slate   ...“Blindly approving or disapproving agreements that have largely been negotiated in secret would represent a derelict of duty for Congress. If there is nothing to hide in these agreements, we should be allowed to debate and amend these deals in the open...”
Ford “Know[s] Everyone Who Breaks the Law” Using Cars They Made — Why Aren’t They Doing Something About It?  The Volokh Conspiracy   ... Ford executive Jim Farley stated, in a panel discussion: We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing. By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone. He later retracted that...
Honeywell under investigation for Chinese-made parts in US warplanes  The Guardian   ...The US Justice Department is investigating export and import procedures at Honeywell International Inc after the firm included Chinese parts in equipment it built for the F-35 fighter jet, three sources familiar with the matter said...
All December Job Gains Went to Women  New York Times   ...Women gained, on net, 75,000 jobs in December; men lost, on net, 1,000 jobs. This was the first time since December 2007 that a month’s job gains were captured entirely by women...
West Virginia chemical spill causes huge disruption for residents  Associated Press   ...Frustration is mounting for many of the 300,000 West Virginia residents who have gone without clean tap water since a chemical spill on Thursday. Business owners with empty dining rooms and quiet aisles of merchandise around West Virginia's capital city were left to wonder how much of an economic hit they will take from the spill...
Meet Freedom Industries, the Company Behind the West Virginia Chemical Spill  Bloomberg Businessweek   ...State records in West Virginia show that a man named Carl L. Kennedy II joined Gary Southern in forming the company years ago. A well-known restaurant owner and man-about-town in Charleston, according to the Gazette, Kennedy is a twice-convicted felon. The paper reported on Sunday that he pleaded guilty in federal court in West Virginia in 2005 to tax evasion and was sentenced to three years in prison, a penalty that was reduced after he agreed to wear a wire and make controlled cocaine buys in a separate investigation...
Data Breaches: Target, Neiman Marcus  Credit Slips   ...We don't know all of the details about what happened at Target and Neiman Marcus, but there's a really obvious weakspot in the US payments infrastructure that should be corrected, irrespective of whether it would have prevented the Target and Neiman Marcus breaches:  the use of two-factor authentication, namely chip-and-PIN cards, which are standard outside the US and have been effective in reducing fraud...
Surveillence of Citizens Is ALWAYS Aimed at Crushing Dissent  Washington Blog   ...Much of the political surveillance of the 1960s and the 1970s and of the period going back to World War I consisted in efforts to identify organizations that were critical of government policies, or that were proponents of various causes the government didn’t like, and to gather information on their adherents...
Private equity and Washington: A love story  Politico   ...This month alone, former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) signed up with Chicago-based Victory Park Capital in an advisory role, while recently departed former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski joined PE giant Carlyle Group. Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will begin full time at Warburg Pincus as president in March...
CN Rail says beavers, rain to blame for Burnaby derailment  CBC News   ...CN Rail has completed its initial investigation into the derailment of nine coal cars in Burnaby, B.C., Saturday morning, and says that heavy rain and the workmanship of beavers are to blame...
Economic Prosperity and Economic Democracy: The Worker Co-Op Solution  Truth-Out   ...Workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) are a response to capitalism's failure to deliver economic prosperity and socialism's failure to deliver economic democracy...
You're Likely Eating Seafood That Came into the US Illegally (And Here's Why That's Really Bad)  Alternet   ...The Marine Mammal Protection Act mandates that all seafood imported into this country be accompanied by proof that it was caught using methods no more harmful to marine mammals than those used by U.S. fisheries. Unfortunately, the National Marine Fisheries Service has never enforced that provision of the law...