Sunday, January 26, 2014

Today's Teamster News 01.26.14

Wal-Mart lays off 2,300 Sam's Club workers  USA Today   ...The layoffs, which cut 2% of the membership club's employee count of about 116,000, mark the largest since 2010, when the Sam's Club unit laid off 10,000 workers as it moved to outsource food demonstrations at its stores.
Bill Durling, a spokesman at Sam's Club, says that a little less than half of the cuts were aimed at salaried assistant managers...
Former Venture Capitalist Worth $8 Billion Compares Criticism Of Rich To Nazi Germany  Buzzfeed   ...Tom Perkins, a founder of the KPCB, compared the current wave of ostracism towards the uber-rich to attacks on Jewish people by the Nazis during World War II. Perkins, of course, is a member of the ultra-wealthy club, with an estimated net worth of $8 billion and ownership of a San Francisco penthouse he spent $9 million to construct.)...
They’re Fast-Tracking the Future, TPP Style – But We Can Stop Them  TradeReform   ...TheWikiLeaks documents show that every other country in the negotiations stood against American intellectual property demands...
Gender Wage Gap for Union Members Is Half the Size of Non-Union Workers' Wage Gap  National Women's Law Center   ...female union members earn over $200 per week more than women who are not represented by unions—an increase that represents a larger union premium than men receive...
Why are US corporate profits so high? Because wages are so low  Reuters   ...Companies have been unable to raise prices much because of the economic recovery has been fragile. But they’ve still managed to boost profits beyond anything ever seen before because they’ve got away with employing as few workers as possible at as low a rate as possible...
GDP By Industry for 2012  Economic Populist   ...Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing is an astounding 19.5% of GDP which is unchanged from before the recession.  Real estate and rental and leasing by itself actually grew, whereas finance and insurance shrank their percentage of the GDP pie.  Considering this sector was the cause of economic implosion, this is probably not a good thing to have it being almost 20% of the overall economy...
Swarms of drones could be the next frontier in emergency response  NBC News   ...a group at Carnegie Mellon University ... is building a swarm of cheap, small flying helicopters that could come to the aid of officers across the country who find themselves facing off against suspects they can’t always see...
Security Check Firm Said to Have Defrauded U.S.  New York Times   ...The company that conducted a background investigation on the contractor Edward J. Snowden fraudulently signed off on hundreds of thousands of incomplete security checks in recent years, the Justice Department said...
The Federal Government Shouldn’t Directly Contribute To America’s Job-Quality Problem  Economic Policy Institute   ...far too many people working for private firms— but for the benefit of the federal government, with their wages ultimately paid by the taxpayers—are likely working for poverty wages. This is unacceptable; it is damaging to those workers and their families, and it hurts the economy by reducing demand for goods and services—currently a problem of crisis proportions...