Monday, July 13, 2015

Today's Teamster News 07.13.15

Teamsters
Dauphinais Concrete Workers Choose Teamsters Local 170  Teamster.org  ...It didn’t take long for 19 ready-mix cement truck drivers and mechanics in Sutton, Mass., to become card-carrying Teamster members, after a one-day sign-up with Teamsters Local 170 in Worcester, Mass. Workers expressed their overwhelming interest in forming a union at Dauphinais Concrete. Shortly thereafter, Local 170 Secretary-Treasurer Mike Hogan reached a card-check agreement with the company...
Truckers at Los Angeles Port Vote to Unionize  Wall Street Journal  ...Short-haul truckers employed by Eco Flow in the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complexes voted unanimously to unionize, but the Teamsters still face an uphill battle to organize the wider labor pool. A group of truck drivers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach voted late Wednesday to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, becoming the fourth company at the port to unionize...
Teamsters score victory in drayage unionization push  JOC  ...Drivers for the Southern California drayage company Eco Flow voted this week to join the Teamsters Union. This development is not a surprise because Eco Flow was formed on the employee-driver model, but it is nevertheless a victory by the union in its attempt to organize drayage companies across the country...

Global Labor & Trade
Japan, U.S. aim to settle TPP rice issue  Japan News  ...Japan and the United States have ended their working-level talks for a Trans-Pacific Partnership deal by agreeing to make a political judgment on a proposed rice import quota later this month. The two countries aim to settle the issue, along with other difficult problems including automobile parts trade, at a meeting of TPP minister Akira Amari and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman...
U.S.-Canada Dairy Spat Sours Trade Talks  Wall Street Journal  ...Milk may do a body good, but it’s giving trade negotiators fits. Because of a decades-old dispute between the U.S. and Canada, dairy is emerging as the thorniest issue souring final talks to conclude a sweeping trade agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, linking 12 countries around the Pacific...
Clinton to face grilling by union leaders on trade, economic issues  Reuters  ...U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will meet privately this month with leaders of the nation's largest labor federation as she seeks to prevent a revolt by union members infuriated by her cautious stance on a looming trade deal, labor sources told Reuters. Leaders with the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group for 56 member unions representing more than 12.5 million workers, will press her on issues such as trade...
Obama Is in a Bind on Drugs That Could Cost Consumers Billions of Dollars  Bloomberg   ...The Obama administration is caught in a trap as it tries to bring home a trade deal with its Pacific Rim partners. Some of the chief beneficiaries may be big drug companies like Novartis AG, Roche Holding AG, and Pfizer Inc. while the losers could be consumers in both the U.S. and the region. The administration says it’s bound by congressionally imposed instructions to try to get as much current U.S. law as possible into trade accords...
Rights groups urge U.S. to reconsider Malaysia human-trafficking rating  Reuters  ...Human rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers urged the U.S. government on Thursday to reconsider plans to upgrade Malaysia from the lowest tier on its list of worst human trafficking hubs, citing a lack of evidence that Malaysia had made advances against trafficking...
Obama Won’t Let Some Mass Graves Stop the TPP  The Nation   ...When Congress finally passed fast-track trade authority last month, there was a major problem for President Obama and his trade negotiators: a provision of the bill forbid any fast-tracked trade deal from including countries on Tier 3 of the State Department’s human trafficking list.  Malaysia is home to many “outsourcing companies” that are, in reality, professional slaving operations: foreign workers...
Greece Agrees to Its Third European Bailout After Marathon Talks  TIME  ...The last round of talks on the Greek debt crisis went through the night on Sunday for 17 grueling hours, but when European leaders finally emerged from the negotiating rooms in Brussels on Monday morning, they announced that they had reached a unanimous deal to save Greece from going bankrupt and crashing out of the European currency union. But even from the rough contours outlined at a press conference on Monday morning, it was clear that Greece had bowed to nearly all the demands of its creditor nations...
'Austerity Has Won': Greece Submits to Divisive Reforms  Common Dreams  ...After 31 hours of tense weekend talks—and five years of crippling austerity—Greece and its foreign creditors have struck a deal: an €86 billion bailout that will keep Greece in the Eurozone in exchange for controversial economic reforms that include tax hikes, pension overhauls, and severe budget cuts if the nation misses fiscal targets imposed and monitored by the so-called Troika...
Malaysia: Widespread Forced Labor, Abuse of Migrants  Solidarity Center  ...The widespread abuse reported across industries and the number of workers involved demonstrate that these cases are not isolated incidents involving rogue employers, but workplace practices condoned within an officially sanctioned environment that denies fundamental human rights. The Asia-Pacific region has the greatest number of forced laborers in the world, accounting for more than 50 percent of all forced labor victims. Globally, forced labor generates $51 billion per year in illegal profits...
Investing in Agriculture in Developing Countries: Whole World Says Yes, WTO Says No  Alternet  ...Farmers, development activists and food security advocates are united in the need for resilient agro-ecological local food systems to achieve the right to food. Unfortunately, there remains an international constraint to achieving this: The global rules that actually govern agriculture—not just for trade but also domestic production—are set in the World Trade Organization, and they are appallingly unfair and antiquated...

State & Living Wage Battles
Scott Walker Wants To Run The Country. Here Is How He Ran Wisconsin.  Think Progress  ...With the wealthy and powerful Koch brothers behind him and a contentious state budget out of the way, Wisconsin’s polarizing Gov. Scott Walker will announce Monday evening what many have long suspected: that he will seek the Republican nomination for President in 2016. Much of Walker’s appeal to conservatives lies in his record of enacting far-right policies as the governor of a historically progressive, working class swing state...
Made in America: Walmart's Misleading Claims  Truthout  ...When Walmart kicked off its U.S. Manufacturing Summit on Tuesday, Walmart it posed as a friend of the American worker, a creator of U.S. jobs and a force for reducing inequality. But, as the American Manufacturing Association dutifully points out this week, we shouldn't be fooled by the giant retailer's newly populist rhetoric...
In Last-Minute Budget Change, Scott Walker Plans To Drug Test Everyone Who Needs Food Stamps  Think Progress  ...Just ahead of his official announcement that he’s running for president, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed his state’s budget into law while vetoing 104 items Sunday, twice as many as in the last two budgets. One significant change would make it easier for the state to drug test anyone who applies for food stamps...
Florida Supreme Court orders new congressional map with eight districts to be redrawn  Tampa Bay Times  ...The Florida Supreme Court took a wrecking ball to Florida's political landscape Thursday, throwing out the state's carefully crafted congressional districts drawn by the GOP-led Legislature and ordering a new map within 100 days. In the historic 5-2 ruling, the court not only ruled the maps were the product of an unconstitutional political gerrymandering, it signaled its deep distrust of lawmakers...
The Right’s Stealth Plan to Kill Unions: Do It County by County  Daily Beast  ...While many in Illinois, like Schmidgall, consider right to work impossible, they might want to start paying attention before counties begin turning anti-union one by one like they have in neighboring Kentucky. In last six months in there, Yessin has been instrumental in implementing right to work in 12 of Kentucky’s 120 counties. While he wouldn’t say who exactly he’s working with, Yessin made clear his organization is taking the fight to Illinois...
'This is our Selma': North Carolina voting rights trial threatens 50 years of progress  The Guardian  ...A landmark voting rights trial that opens in North Carolina on Monday will determine the way the 2016 presidential election is conducted in the state and could have long-lasting implications for the politics of the American south. The federal district court in Winston-Salem is expected to take at least two weeks to consider a legal challenge to the state’s recent changes to its voting laws...
Governor's finance office opposes bill raising minimum wage in California  LA Times  ...Citing significant new costs to the state and a negative effect on businesses, Gov. Jerry Brown's finance department is opposing a bill that would raise California's $9 minimum wage to $11 an hour on Jan. 1 and boost it again to $13 a year later...
Scott Walker Poised To Give Payday Lenders Radical New Powers To Prey On The Poor  Think Progress   ...Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has just a few days to decide whether to extend vast new business privileges to payday lending companies in his state. The measure would allow payday lenders to start selling new lines of products to their customers. It would also license them to market annuities, a complex financial product in which the consumer effectively gambles on how long they will live...

U.S. Labor
Faced With I-9 Immigration Raid During Negotiations, Chicago Meatpacking Workers Walked Off the Job  In These Times  ...The mostly Latino immigrant workforce had found out several weeks earlier that they were they were going to be audited by the Department of Homeland Security, which meant their immigration papers would be closely scrutinized and workers found with falsified or otherwise improper documents would be fired. They were on strike. More than 100 workers left the plant for two and a half hours...
Starbucks and Other Corporations to Announce Plan to Curb Unemployment of Young People  New York Times  ...Spearheaded by Starbucks and its chief executive, Howard Schultz, nearly 20 big American corporations will unveil a plan on Monday to find jobs for 100,000 unemployed young people over the next three years. The effort, to be called the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative, is aimed at the estimated 5.6 million Americans ages 16 to 24...
Hillary Clinton Wins Key Endorsement From American Federation of Teachers  TIME  ...Hillary Clinton has secured the first major union endorsement of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The American Federation of Teachers, a powerful, 1.6 million-strong national union, voted on Saturday to endorse the former secretary of state, calling Clinton a “champion” for “working families”...
Healthcare packages likely to be revised in UAW, Detroit Three talks: WSJ  Reuters  ...Healthcare packages are likely to be revised and profit-sharing agreements could be altered in talks for new contracts scheduled to begin on Monday between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and The Big Three U.S. automakers, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the negotiations...
Ford will move its small car production out of the country in 2018   Daily Kos  ...The Ford Motor Company will move its production of C-Max and Focus small cars to an undesignated foreign nation in three years, the company announced Thursday. A likely new location is Mexico. Focus is already built at plants in China, Argentina, Germany, Russia, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam. Germany has a C-Max factory. Ford currently manufactures those automobiles at its plant in Wayne, Michigan, where it employs some 4,400 workers...
Santa Clara County workers represented by SEIU Local 521 to re-vote on contract agreement  KLIV  ...A re-vote on a contract agreement is scheduled for July 22nd for Santa Clara County workers represented by the SEIU Local 521. The second vote was called for by the union after they found evidence of misrepresentation to the unit’s membership about the overall agreement. Union members voted last week against the deal...
USW starts contract talks with ArcelorMittal, U.S. Steel  NWI Times  ...The United Steelworkers union has kicked off contract talks with ArcelorMittal and U.S. Steel. Union officials expect a difficult bargaining session since the industry has been struggling with a record level of imports and has laid off workers nationwide. ArcelorMittal lost $728 million in the first quarter, while U.S. Steel lost $75 million...
What’s Next for the Domestic Workers Movement?  The Nation  ...Five years after that first victory movement leaders at the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), an organization we co-founded in 2007, have paused to reflect on what the legislative strategy has achieved and where we must go from here...

Miscellaneous
Why Clinton and Bush are battling over immigration  CNN  ...Clinton, who has at times been tepid in the past, is taking the most liberal positions possible on undocumented immigrants' rights -- including supporting a pathway to citizenship. Bush, who's been a leading Republican advocate of immigration reform, doesn't share that position, even as he strikes a more inclusive tone than many of his primary opponents...
How Aggressive Policing Affects Police Officers Themselves  The Atlantic  ...The lawsuit, which was filed four months ago, takes issue with the department’s alleged implementation of quotas for arrests and court summonses. Such quotas are prohibited in New York, as well as in several other states, but the NYPD, the plaintiffs maintain, nevertheless holds officers to monthly goals for making arrests and writing tickets...
Pope Blasts 'Unbridled Capitalism'; Begs Forgiveness from Native Americans  Common Dreams  ...In a far-reaching speech in Bolivia on Thursday, Pope Francis offered his apologies to, and begged forgiveness from, the native people of the Americas as he acknowledged the brutal treatment they received throughout the so-called "conquest of America." In a speech that also touched on the need to rapidly move away from the destructive model of unbridled capitalism—which he described as the "dung of the devil"—Francis went much further than any of his predecessors...
Mexican Drug Lord “El Chapo” Guzmán Escapes From Prison (Again)  Slate  ...n a huge embarrassment for President Enrique Peña Nieto's government, Mexico's most notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, escaped from a maximum security prison for the second time in 15 years. The kingpin escaped through a one-mile-long tunnel that opened up in a shower area of his cell, according to the Associated Press. The tunnel had ventilation and lighting as well as a motorcycle connected to a rail...
NAACP Ends South Carolina Boycott After Confederate Flag Comes Down  Common Dreams  ...Late Saturday afternoon, the NAACP voted to end the organization's longtime boycott of South Carolina, just a day after the Confederate battle flag came down from the South Carolina Statehouse. The civil rights organization said in a tweet that its National Board of Directors passed an 'Emergency Resolution' to end the boycott...
Psychologists Collaborated with CIA & Pentagon on Post-9/11 Torture Program, May Face Ethics Charges  Democracy Now  ...A new independent review has revealed extensive details on how members of the the American Psychological Association, the world’s largest group of psychologists, were complicit in torture, lied and covered up their close collaboration with officials at the Pentagon and CIA to weaken the association’s ethical guidelines and allow psychologists to participate in the government’s enhanced interrogation programs after 9/11...