Teamsters
Virginia Teamsters Strike At TW Perry Construction Supplier teamster.org ...Teamsters at TW Perry launched a strike early Tuesday morning against the local contractor supplier's bad faith bargaining. Frustration among workers, represented by Teamsters Local 639 in Washington, DC, has been building over several months...
New York's most famous rat Marketplace ...Both ugly and effective, Scabby makes regular appearances during labor disputes. He's even been taken to court, when an asbestos contractor argued that the rat qualified as "disruptive activity."...
Federal Data Shows Regional Broadliners’ Troubled Safety Record teamster.org ...Performance Food Group (PFG) drivers have the highest number of fitness and safety violations among the top 10 broadline foodservice industry players...As the Federal Trade Commission continues its antitrust review of Sysco’s proposed merger with US Foods, smaller regional competitors like PFG, Reinhart Foodservice and other distributors have been the focus of news reports as potential divestiture buyers...
Volusia County Declares 'Impasse' With Already-Woefully Underpaid Sheriff's Deputies Headline Surfer ...Bob Walker, business agent for Teamsters 385 out of Orlando knows the drill all too well and he thinks it stinks...
Trade
Democrats Step Up Efforts to Block Obama’s Trade Agenda New York Times ... President Obama is facing new opposition from fellow Democrats to one of his top priorities: winning the power to negotiate international trade agreements and speed them through Congress...
Dems rally opposition for fast-track trade The Hill ...A group of House Democrats is teaming up with labor, environmental and religious groups to rally against fast-track trade authority for President Obama...
Enormous, Humongous Trade Deficit Falls To Enormous, Humongous Level Economy in Crisis ...A trade deficit of $39 billion, while lower than it had been, is still an enormous, humongous amount drained from our economy in a single month. It demonstrates the extent to which our trade “partners” are not reciprocating and actually “trading” with us...
TTIP Papers Published As EU Ombudsman Demands More Transparency EurActiv ...It is the first time that the Commission has published the legal language and binding rules the EU is pushing for during free trade agreement negotiations. The TTIP talks have been dogged by accusations of secrecy and suspicions that big business is having too much influence on negotiations...
State Battles
Ohio labor supporters rally against post midterm elections Right to Work push Keep Ohio's Heritage ...With midterm elections solidifying GOP control in many of the nation’s Right to Work battleground states, labor supporters are gearing up for the inevitable: battles over Right to Work...
Right to work to be biggest battle in upcoming NM legislative session KOB4 ...Right to work - three little words we will be hearing over and over again during New Mexico's 60-day legislative session. It's a proposal to end compulsory union membership in the state. Business leaders fired the opening shots Wednesday in their campaign to get it into the law books – and it promises to be the mother of all battles this year...
Koster Asks Court To Force Bridgeton Landfill Owner To Collect More Data St. Louis Post Dispatch ...Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is asking a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge to order the owner of the Bridgeton Landfill to immediately begin collecting data that could show whether an underground fire is nearing radioactive waste...
Paid Sick Days, More Workplace Benefits For D.C. Workers Roll Call ...Overall, workplace rights may be changing in the District of Columbia, but until Congress implements broader legislative changes, sick days, pregnancy accommodations and family leave won’t be a given for the rest of the country — even as they are for Hill staffers...
Bill Would Raise Kansas’ Minimum Wage $3 Kansas City Star ...A Wichita Democrat is sponsoring a bill that would raise the state’s minimum wage by $3 dollars by 2017. Rep. Jim Ward’s proposal would raise the wage by $1 – to $8.25 an hour– on July 1. The wage would then go up to $1 a year during the next two years...
Conservatives Have a New Plan for Busting America's Unions Vice ...After years of fighting organized labor in state houses and on Capitol Hill, conservatives opened up a fresh battleground in Kentucky last month, pushing a brand new crop of anti-union laws in counties across the state. Propped up by major conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the "right-to-work"ordinances—which weaken unions by allowing employees to opt out of paying dues—test the boundaries of US labor laws, putting the fate of union workers squarely in the hands of local, rather than state, governments...
War on Workers
EPA Delays Regulations On Cutting Carbon At Coal Power Plants Houston Chronicle ...A final rule was due by law on Jan. 8, a year after it was first proposed. But the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it would wait until midsummer, and issue the new power plant rules with a separate regulation aimed at cutting the pollution blamed for global warming from the existing coal-fired power fleet...
The GOP's Social Security Assault Has A Human Cost (opinion) Huffington Post ...perhaps in an attempt to add to the false hysteria over Social Security's finances, they're refusing to make this routine correction. If it stands, disability insurance benefits for 11 million people -- benefits that are meager in the best of times -- will be cut by 20 percent next year...
Most of America’s rich think the poor have it easy Washington Post ...the majority of the country's most financially secure citizens (54 percent at the very top, and 57 percent just below) believe the "poor have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return." America's least financially secure, meanwhile, vehemently disagree — nearly 70 percent say the poor have hard lives because the benefits "don't go far enough."...
A Ban On Child Labor In Tobacco Fields (opinion) New York Times ...some cigarette companies and growers have said they will voluntarily restrict child labor in tobacco fields. Though welcome, these steps should be reinforced by new federal rules. Children as young as 7 are working on tobacco farms in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia...
Car Loans See Rise In Missed Payments Wall Street Journal ...Borrowers who took out auto loans over the past year are missing payments at the highest level since the recession, fueling concerns among regulators, analysts and some in the car industry that practices that helped boost 2014 light-vehicle sales to a near-decade high could backfire...
Worker Killed By Garbage Truck In Franklin Lakes, Police Seek Witnesses NJ.com ...A trash hauling company employee died after a garbage truck his co-worker was driving hit him in an apparent accident Wednesday, borough police said...
Miscellaneous
In Low Gasoline Prices, an Opening Emerges for Higher Taxes Wall Street Journal ...The sharp drop in gasoline prices over the past few months is providing a rare political opening for state and federal officials who want to raise gasoline taxes to repair highways and boost construction jobs...
