Teamsters
Ho-Ho-Kus resident in third decade driving Thanksgiving parade floats NorthJersey.com ...While millions watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from the comfort of their couch or in the crowds along Manhattan streets, Eddie Devereaux has had a unique perspective for the past 22 years. The Ho-Ho-Kus resident drives a float each year. He got the gig as a member of Teamsters Theatrical Union Local 817, which provides all of the drivers for the annual event...
Trade
NAFTA doesn’t benefit working people (LTE) The Windsor Star ...If NAFTA and all the other free-trade deals since have been so good for us, why is it that current unemployment is so stubbornly high, that child poverty is higher than ever in Canada and that food bank use is at an all-time high?...
State Battles
The Koch Brothers' Next Frontier National Journal ...Over the past two years, at least 40 bills aimed at weakening or repealing clean-energy mandates have been introduced in legislatures across the country, according to Colorado State University's Center for the New Energy Economy. But not a single state has done away with its renewable-energy standard. Ohio came the closest...
Downgraded: The Macro Outlook in Wisconsin Econbrowser ...The Department of Revenue’s Wisconsin Economic Outlook, released last week, details a noticeable deterioration in forecasted economic performance, in just the past eight months...
War on Workers
The Absurdity of How Walmart Treats Employees, in One Viral Thanksgiving Photo News.Mic ...An Oklahoma City Walmart is allegedly asking employees to donate food to help their coworkers make ends meet during the holiday season. A sign on the collection bin reads, "Let's succeed by donating to associates in need!!!"...
A Landmark Retail Workers 'Bill of Rights' Passes Unanimously In San Francisco Huffington Post ...the law, which passed the 11-member, all-Democratic board unanimously, requires the city's large chain retailers to post workers' schedules at least two weeks ahead of time. Workers will be owed supplemental pay if unexpected changes are made to their schedules, or if they're required to be "on call" and their shifts are suddenly canceled. The law, championed by Supervisor David Chiu, also requires that the employers offer any extra hours they have to their current workforces, rather than bringing on more part-time or temporary workers...
Hundreds of University of California students walk out over proposed tuition hike Reuters ...Hundreds of University of California students walked out of classes on Monday to protest a planned 25 percent tuition increase they say will make the cost of education across the 10-campus system too expensive...
Wall Street is taking over America's pension plans The Intercept ...Wall Street spent upwards of $300M to influence the election results. And a key part of its agenda has been a plan to move more and more of the $3 trillion dollars in unguarded government pension funds into privately managed, high-fee investments — a shift that may well constitute the biggest financial story of our generation that you’ve never heard of...
Senate Report: Scale of Wall Street Holdings Are “Unprecedented in U.S. History” Wall Street on Parade ...Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, released an alarming 396-page report that details how Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks have quietly, and often stealthily through shell companies, gained ownership of a stunning amount of the nation’s critical industrial commodities like oil, aluminum, copper, natural gas, and even uranium. The report said the scale of these bank holdings “appears to be unprecedented in U.S. history...”
The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats (opinion) Politico ...The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution...
Troubling Questions on Role of Military in Ayotzinapa Case as National Crisis Builds; Political Class and Governing Institutions Discredited on a Scale Not Seen for Generations Popular Resistance ...When Iguala, Guerrero municipal police and masked men in unmarked black uniforms opened fire on unarmed students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college last September, killing six people and kidnapping 43 students, they lit the fuse of a national crisis...
Unions Are Among the Very Few Interest Groups that Represent the Middle Class Center for American Progress Action Fund ...the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Automobile Workers, and the National Education Association, or NEA—and a few other groups, such as AARP, the National Governors Association, or NGA, and the collective advocacy efforts of universities, are among the only groups that more often than not lobby for policies the middle class supports...
W-S Sanitation Worker Hit By Car Dies WFMY News ...A Winston-Salem sanitation worker that was hit by a car while on the job died early Tuesday morning...
