Teamsters
Hoffa: Presidential Veto of Keystone Hurts Middle Class Americans teamster.org ...Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa expressed his disappointment in President Obama’s decision today to veto the Keystone Pipeline Act despite bipartisan support in both the House of Representatives and Senate...
Teamsters Seen As Upping Effort To Be Clark County Schools Union Las Vegas Review Journal ...A three-member Nevada Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board unanimously agreed to change its 13-year-old policy that requires a supermajority vote for one union to oust another. That decision came in the wake of the Teamsters overwhelming victory in a vote to determine whether workers wanted the Teamsters or ESEA to represent them...
Teamsters Port Division Responds To Tentative Contract Agreement Between The PMA And ILWU Long Beach Post ...“The longshoreman have fought for more than 100 years for a seat at the economic table; it is now the truckers turn,” the statement continued. “The Teamsters will continue to support the drivers’ fight for a seat at the economic table until justice is served.”...
BLET Members Ratify New Contract With Long Island Rail Road BLET ...On February 22, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) by a 71 percent majority...
Trade
Lawmakers grapple with ‘fast track’ trade bill Marketwatch …Lawmakers from both parties are trying to strike a difficult balance as they wrangle over the final intricacies of a bill that would expedite consideration of trade deals...
Devastating Impacts Of “Secretly Negotiated” TTIP Trade-Deal Between EU And US, Obama Blocks Making Its Terms Public Centre for Research on Globalization ...Basically: U.S. President Barack Obama is demanding that European nations weaken their regulations, but has been encountering stiff resistance from some, which has dragged out negotiations...
Fighting Fast Track: Is It Really China Or Us? (opinion) Huffington Post ...Those deals and others like them have led to the U.S. accumulating more than $10 trillion in trade deficits over the past 20 years, far more than the rest of the world combined. Those deals have emptied small and large cities from Trenton to St. Louis of millions of jobs that would have provided a decent income to urban America. Instead our cities are burned out and in the case of Detroit and others, bankrupt...
WTO Rules Against China In Steel Anti-Dumping Dispute Tax News ...The panel found that the Chinese measures did not fully respect the prescribed WTO methods to calculate dumping margins. It also said that China failed to demonstrate that its domestic industry had been adversely affected by imports of the product in question, and said that Chinese anti-dumping procedure came short of the WTO requirements in terms of due process and transparency...
State Battles
About 2,000 rally against right-to-work in Wisconsin Associated Press …About 2,000 construction workers, electricians, carpenters and other union members rallied at the Wisconsin state Capitol on Tuesday, pushing back against a fast-tracked right-to-work bill backed by Republicans and Gov. Scott Walker...
Wisconsin Republicans worry about protest redux as right-to-work debate begins Washington Post ...In 2011, large protests against bills undercutting the political power of public employee unions rocked the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, sparking recall elections that nearly toppled Gov. Scott Walker (R). Four years later, Republicans want to avoid a repeat as they consider another measure that would curb union power...
Right-to-work offers little for Wisconsin's economy Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ...Wisconsin may soon become the 25th right-to-work state. Republicans in the state Senate have the votes — and there is little Democrats can do to stop the train. It's left the station...
Scott Walker’s Economic Mess: How Worker Wages Were Gutted In Wisconsin Salon.com ...I was in Wisconsin for the labor uprising of 2011. Faced with the threat from newly elected Gov. Scott Walker of eviscerated collective bargaining protections, unions and their allies brought hundreds of thousands of workers into the streets in protest. They fought like their lives depended on it. Four years later, we now know that they did...
Right-To-Work Debate Begins In Wisconsin With Hearing Denver Post ...Opponents of a Republican push to turn Wisconsin into a right-to-work state began to converge on the Capitol on Tuesday for a rally and to testify against the fast-tracked measure...
Oldham considers 'right-to-work' ordinance The Courier-Journal ...Some Oldham officials are hoping a proposed 'right-to-work' ordinance — which would prohibit mandatory union involvement as a condition of employment — could be the solution to a business park that, a decade after its $20 million purchase, "hasn't had the success the people who started it had initially hoped for," said Judge-Executive David Voegele...
Liquor privatization bill clears Pennsylvania House panel Associated Press ...A proposal to sell off most of Pennsylvania's state-owned liquor system and its wholesale distribution network moved ahead with a vote in the Legislature on Monday, although its prospects to become law remain uncertain...
'Paycheck protection' union-dues issue returns to the spotlight in Pa. Senate Penn Live ...The Senate State Government Committee on Monday voted 6-5 along mostly partisan lines to approve a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban the collection of union membership dues and political contributions from paychecks of state government and school district employees...
Two different Missouri Senate proposals to require photo IDs for voting St. Louis Public Radio ...The battle by Republican lawmakers to restore photo identification requirements in Missouri has moved over to the Senate, where two rather different approaches are being considered...
Minimum Wage To Rise In Alaska To $8.75 An Hour The Oregonian ...Voters in November overwhelmingly approved raising the minimum wage from $7.75 per hour to $8.75 per hour, effective Jan. 1. Because the state constitution calls for ballot measures to take effect 90 days after election results are certified, the raise doesn't take effect until Tuesday...
War on Workers
California Metrolink Derailment Is Latest in Series of High-Profile Crashes NBC News ...A commuter train derailment outside Los Angeles that sent 28 people to the hospital and left a tractor-trailer in flames was the latest in a series of high-profile accidents on the nation's rails...
Recent “Bomb Trains” Expose Regulatory Failures Oil Price ...even though the CPC-1232 cars have demonstrated that they are inadequately safe, much of the crude hitting the nation’s railways are not even traveling to that standard. Railcar manufacturers do not have the capability to ramp up production of the CPC-1232s fast enough, with a backlog of at least 50,000 cars. Meanwhile, there are still around 171,000 DOT-111s still in operation...
Telecom workers ratify agreement to end strike in New England Reuters ... Union members ratified an agreement on Sunday that ends a four-month-long strike by some 1,800 workers at FairPoint Communications, a major land-line telecommunications provider in northern New England, union officials announced...
U.S. refinery strike affects one-fifth of national capacity Reuters ...The largest U.S. refinery strike in 35 years entered its fourth week on Sunday as workers at 12 refineries accounting for one-fifth of national production capacity were walking picket lines...
Big Banks Face Scrutiny Over Pricing Of Metals Wall Street Journal ...U.S. officials are investigating at least 10 major banks for possible rigging of precious-metals markets, even though European regulators dropped a similar probe after finding no evidence of wrongdoing, according to people close to the inquiries...
