Teamsters
Agreement between Los Angeles, Long Beach port truck drivers, Carson firm allows Teamsters to enter negotiations San Jose Mercury News ...Drivers with Carson-based Shippers Transport Express, a wholly owned subsidiary of SSA Marine, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and their supporters plan to host a press conference in Wilmington on Friday to validate their union authorization cards, opening the door for the Teamsters to begin negotiating a contract, according to Justice for Port Drivers and the Teamsters...
Teamsters Local 728 Reaches Tentative Agreement With First Student WTOC ...A representative with Teamsters Local 728 Union has told WTOC it has reached a tentative agreement with First Student after months of negotiations...
Trade
Why The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is A Pending Disaster Huffington Post ...Republicans who now run Congress say they want to cooperate with President Obama, and point to the administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as the model. The only problem is the TPP would be a disaster...
Stopping the Biggest Corporate Power Grab in Years Foreign Policy in Focus ...How fighting back against one arcane, Nixon-era trade negotiating procedure could put a stop to a global corporate coup...
Austerity Killing You? How About A Trade Deal? Huffington Post ...It is a mark of the delusion of Europe's leaders that the EU is putting its chips on a trade deal with the U.S. -- the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. TTIP is not really a trade deal at all but a series of measures intended to promote further deregulation of economic, financial, health, labor, safety, privacy, and environmental protections on both sides of the Atlantic. TTIP was designed by corporations to weaken labor and government -- and would do just about nothing to get Europe out of its austerity trap...
State Battles
Republicans Prefile Right-To-Work Legislation In NM House Albuquerque Business First ...Three members of the Republican-controlled state House announced Monday they prefiled legislation that would prohibit automatic union membership in New Mexico and give workers the right to join or financially contribute to a union — or not...
Butler County Discusses Right-To-Work Ordinance Bowling Green Daily News ...Butler County Judge-Executive David Fields said he expects the Fiscal Court to take a vote on a right-to-work ordinance, but that vote might not come until February...
Fischer Signs $9 Minimum Wage Ordinance Louisville Courier Journal ...Mayor Greg Fischer signed the ordinance increasing the minimum wage to $9 an hour in Jefferson County on Friday. The law increases the wage to $7.75 by July 1, to $8.25 by July 2016 and $9 by July 2017, and ties future increases to the Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index for urban cities in the region...
New IRS Rules On Dark Money Likely Won’t Be Ready Before 2016 Election ProPublica ...The Internal Revenue Service says it won't come out with new proposed rules for so-called dark money groups until late spring at the earliest, increasing the likelihood that no changes will take effect before the 2016 elections...
War on Workers
New GOP Congress Fires Shot At Social Security On Day One Talking Points Memo ...The largely overlooked change puts a new restriction on the routine transfer of tax revenues between the traditional Social Security retirement trust fund and the Social Security disability program. ...experts say it would likely mean any reallocation would have to be balanced by new revenues or benefit cuts...
House Republicans Change Rules on Calculating Economic Impact of Bills New York Times ...The change on “dynamic scoring” — ardently sought since the 1990s by Republicans — could ease passage of major tax cuts by showing that their impact on economic growth would substantially reduce their cost to the Treasury. The move is widely seen as a way for Republican leaders to set ground rules for an ambitious overhaul of the entire United States tax code...
Atlanta Stagehands Fight ‘Labor Pimps’ Pushing Temp Work, Low Wages In These Times ...while those performances net entertainers and concert venues massive amounts of money, the backstage workers like the ones who made Beyoncé’s live performance July 15 in Atlanta possible can’t say the same. Those employees are now attempting to organize a union, hoping to reverse the trend of eroded wages and benefits for the stagehands and others who make these performances so profitable...
Business Groups File Lawsuit To Block NLRB’s Union-Organizing Rule Wall Street Journal ...Several business trade groups filed a lawsuit Monday to block the National Labor Relations Board’s new rule that would speed union-organizing elections, alleging the board overstepped its authority...
Oil plummets, but don't expect lower fares soon Sydney Morning Herald ...Oil prices may have plunged to near six-year lows, but travellers are unlikely to see Qantas or Virgin Australia rush to slash fares any time soon – or lower their much maligned fuel surcharges on international flights...
In the US, one lesson from oil prices: rich people win, again Guardian ...The most visible economic impact is in gasoline prices, with regular pump prices down about 70 cents a gallon from year ago levels, according to AAA. Consumers across the board benefit from this by having a little more disposable income, but Harris said the impact on households is uneven. Rich people win, again. About 56% of the expense savings goes to households in the top two-fifths of the income distribution versus only 24% to families in the bottom two-fifths…
Mercedes-Benz says will move U.S. headquarters to Atlanta Reuters ...Mercedes-Benz will move its U.S. headquarters to Atlanta from northern New Jersey, affecting about 1,000 employees, the company said on Tuesday. The Daimler AG unit is moving to cut costs...
Worker Killed in Mill Accident North Coast Journal ...A 64-year-old contract worker was killed this morning when his boom lift apparently came into contact with a high voltage line at an Arcata mill...
Miscellaneous
Why Uber Will—And Should—Be Regulated Slate ...Nothing is new under the sun, and that includes the Uber controversy. Price regulation of taxis was thrown into disarray in the 1920s when mass production drove down the cost of cars. When that happened, anyone, including part-timers, could pick up a passenger for a high fare during times of peak demand, depriving the taxis of fares from low-cost trips that they needed to survive and reintroducing price confusion. Governments invented the medallion system to block the part-timers from unraveling the market by siphoning off the lowest-cost fares...
