Saturday, July 26, 2014

Today's Teamster News 07.26.14

Teamster News
Teamsters Win Settlement For Taxi Driver Barred From Speaking At Public Meeting  IBT   ...Teamsters Local 922 scored a major victory for a D.C. taxi driver who will receive a monetary settlement as part of an agreement reached with the city after he was barred from speaking at a D.C. Taxi Commission (DCTC) meeting over concerns that his accent made him difficult to understand...
Hinckley Springs Employees Are Back At Work After 25-Day Strike  Des Plaines Valley News   ...Teamsters union members at the Hinckley Springs water bottling plant at 6055 S. Harlem Ave. in Chicago ended their 25-day strike on July 17. ...the workers felt the offer presented by DS Services of America Inc., which owns and operates the Hinckley Springs plants, was the best under the circumstances...
Trade
German NGO Says TTIP Will Undermine Global Food Security  EurActiv   ...The planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US threatens the concept of sustainable food security, the development NGO Brot für die Welt announced at a presentation of its annual report, in Berlin...
Ethiopia Becomes China’s China In Global Search For Cheap Labor  Bloomberg News   ...Huajian is nonetheless becoming a case study of Ethiopia’s emerging potential as a production center for labor-intensive products from shoes to T-shirts to handbags....
State Battles
Governor Rick Scott Shows What A Real Scandal Looks Like  Time Magazine   ...There’s nothing inherently wrong with government support for a train linking Miami and Orlando ... but it looks pretty sketchy after Governor Scott (at the urging of his conflicted chief of staff) rejected $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed rail project that would have eventually linked Miami, Orlando and Tampa. ...
WEDC to hold its board meeting at China outsourcer  Jake's Economic TA Funhouse   ...Here's more on the absurdity of Gov Walker's quickly-backfiring ads against Trek bicycle. Walker's pet "jobs creator" organization, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), has its next Board meeting on Monday, and it's located at the headquarters of Briggs and Stratton Corporation in Wauwatosa...
On the stump, Hanaway calls for ‘right to work’, eliminating state income tax, and tort reform  PoliticM   ...Hanaway is the only announced Republican candidate for (Missouri) governor in 2016...
War On Workers
40-hour workweek just a memory, survey finds  South Bend Tribune   ...The "Take Back 60" study found that 88 percent of the 617 respondents who took the online survey last month said they work more than 40 hours a week...
Construction Worker On Fort Bragg Killed When Trench Caves In  Fayetteville Observer   ...Federal labor investigators are working to determine how a trench on Fort Bragg collapsed, killing a man Thursday morning...
Fired Walmart CEO to Get $4.5 Million To Leave Job  2 Paragraphs   ...Walmart also suffers from some PR problems, given its much publicized low-wage workforce, an unsightly percentage of whom are also using government-funded food stamps to sustain themselves...
At 3 Years Old, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Gives Americans A Soapbox  Huffington Post   ...Despite vehement opposition, the CFPB continues to build on a solid track record that to date includes winning $4.6 billion in damages for 15 million consumers harmed by illegal practices. Included in that figure are major accomplishments, like forcing credit card companies to return $1.5 billion to consumers duped by add-on products and changing lending rules to ensure loans can and will be paid back so there will never again be a repeat of the Great Meltdown of 2008. The agency has also started the arduous process of taking entities that offer predatory student loans to the mat in court...
Miscellaneous
Senator’s Bill Is Stricter On N.S.A. Than House’s  ...Senator Patrick J. Leahy said Thursday that next week he would file a new version of a bill aimed at ending the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records collection program after extensive negotiations with the Obama administration and privacy groups...