Teamsters take stand against fast track

The Teamsters joined some 1,200 fellow union members and fair trade advocates at a Capitol Hill rally today to call on Congress to stop pushing for fast track trade promotion authority that would allow a quick up-or-down vote on bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Teamsters and other union members rally on Capitol Hill.

A bevy of lawmakers came out to show their support and voice their opposition to fast track. They said legislation, which is expected to be introduced by the Senate Finance Committee any day, would be a boon for big business at the expense of American workers. It would allow deals like the 12-nation TPP to ship U.S. job overseas, cut wages at home and allow unsafe food and products into this country.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) pledged to stand with workers against this corporate-backed trade vehicle that would harm workers across the globe:

We are here to fight. No more secret trade deals. Are you ready to fight? No more special deals for multinational corporations! Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to fight anymore deals that say they will help the rich get richer and leave everyone else behind?

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) noted big business is pushing hard for fast track and the TPP because it will help their profits soar:

These trade agreements mean everything to corporate America. They want fast track because it is good for their bottom lines. These guys are worker sellouts!

Several other speakers stressed the need to hold lawmakers responsible for their votes, and said that those who vote the wrong way will face the wrath of fair trade backers. Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, called on workers to head to the halls of Congress and let their members know their thoughts on fast track:

You make sure you tell them you put them there and you can take them out of there!

Today's Teamster News 02.07.14

Senate Fails to Pass Three-Month Extension of Jobless Aid  New York Times   ...The Senate failed to move forward on a three-month extension of assistance for the long-term unemployed on Thursday, leaving it unlikely that Congress would approve the measure soon while undercutting a key aspect of President Obama’s economic recovery plan...
Fast-Track Bill’s Path in Congress Gets Bumpier  Wall Street Journal   ...In 2002, 27 of 222 House Republicans voted “no” on whether to give President George W. Bush fast-track authority. This time, some 60 House Republicans might oppose the legislation, according to estimates from two people following the matter...
Annual U.S. trade deficit with China sets new record in 2013  manufacture this   ...Since 2009, the trade deficit with China has risen by 40%...
Report: For-profit probation industry hurts America’s poorest  Salon   ...in several states, private firms with little-to-no oversight or regulation supervise draconian probation plans, which hits the poorest the hardest. Many of these probation cases relate to unpaid fees in the first, rendering the probation charges disproportionately punitive for the poorest offenders...
Why Walmart is getting too expensive for the middle class  Yahoo Finance   ...Walmart is struggling with weak sales and an underperforming stock price. The company recently cut its profit outlook...
The Highly Educated Working Poor, Toiling at a University Near You  AlterNet   ...They're strategizing, organizing and mobilizing against the immoral economics of inequality being hung around America's neck by the likes of Wal-Mart, McDonald's and colleges...
Private construction payrolls continue to show resilience  Sober Look   ...Over the past 5 months the proportion of jobs from construction has remained unusually stable - from 10 to 15% of total new monthly private payrolls...
Elizabeth Warren: Let's Stop Scamming Our Vets  Mother Jones   ...This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would protect elderly veterans from financial scams and sketchy financial advisers...
The Top Priority in the Missouri State Legislature? Lowering Your Wages  AFSCME   ...The very first bill to receive a hearing in this year’s legislative session in Jefferson City was HB 1099, a so-called “right-to-work” measure aimed at undermining unions.  It’s just one of many union-busting bills on the calendar this year...
California Drought Impact Seen Spreading From Fires to Food Cost  Bloomberg   ...The drought that’s gripping California may soon have the rest of the country seeking relief. The emergency, which follows the state’s driest year on record, is likely to boost the prices of everything from broccoli to cauliflower nationwide. Farmers and truckers stand to lose billions in revenue, weakening an already fragile recovery in the nation’s most-populous state...
Duke Energy plant reports coal-ash spill  Charlotte Observer   ...Duke Energy said Monday that 50,000 to 82,000 tons of coal ash and up to 27 million gallons of water were released from a pond at its retired power plant in Eden into the Dan River, and were still flowing...
Candidate opposes right-to-work step  The Tribune-Democrat   ...“I don’t really understand the logic behind it. In a democratic system, where the majority of workers vote to join a union, I’m not sure what gives a minority the right to say ‘we’ll take advantage of the benefits of the union, but we’re not going to pay for the cost.’...
Michigan governor's budget includes money for Detroit pensions  Reuters   ...In what would be a major step toward resolving Detroit's historic bankruptcy case, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on Wednesday unveiled plans to use state funds to help pay for Detroit worker pensions in his proposed $52.1 billion state budget...
Vermont Students, Workers Object to Tuition Dollars Being Used to Fund Poverty Wages  Truthout   ...Rising tuition, faculty cuts and non-living wages for janitors and food workers in Vermont institutions of higher learning are prompting student labor organizers to ask if tuition dollars should be used to exacerbate inequality...

Shareholders to SEC: Expose corporate "dark money" in politics

Wouldn't it be nice to know how much of your money is being spent to elect anti-worker politicians to office?

If you have any retirement savings, you probably own stock in a public corporation. And the CEOs of those corporations can spend your money however they wish on politics -- without telling you.

Since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, corporations have been pouring millions of dollars into shadowy groups to influence elections. In the 2012 election, up to $400 million was funneled into these "dark money" groups -- that's 500 percent more than in the previous presidential election before Citizens United.

More often than not, that corporate money is being spent to elect anti-worker candidates to public office.

A new SEC rule being considered would require publicly traded companies to disclose to shareholders the corporate funds spent on political campaigns.

Supporters of the new rule, led by Public Citizen, held an event in Washington yesterday where Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged the SEC to shine a light on the "dark money" spent by corporations:

We don't have to have legislation for the SEC to do the right thing. They have the power to do the right thing right now. There is no reason for saying a corporation wants to be able to spend shareholders' money and not tell shareholders how that money is being spent.

Advocates for transparency in corporate political spending are also supporting the Shareholder Protection Act, legislation introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to force the SEC to enact a political disclosure rule. Menendez was also at yesterday's event and said the SEC does not need the legislation to write the new rule now.

 Law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

There is no rule at the SEC that requires public companies to tell their shareholders what they are up to in partisan elections.

If the law of the land allows corporations to spend unlimited money on politics, investors deserve to know when, why and how much.

As the Sunlight Foundation observes, the recent government shutdown was just one symptom of the dysfunction sewn by the dark money infecting DC -- all in the interests of right-wing fanatics and their corporate sponsors:

Not all that ails our democracy can be blamed on the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, but $1.2 billion in spending by outside groups—at least $300 million of that from undisclosed donors—doesn’t help create a working democracy.

Legislation such as the DISCLOSE Act is still the best chance at comprehensive disclosure of all dark money. But an SEC rule will result in greater accountability by companies that decide to spend money on politics, it will inform investors about how a company spends its profits, and it will help the public identify the messenger behind many of the political ads they see.

A new SEC rule wouldn't solve all of our problems. It probably won't even reduce corporate political spending all that much. But it would be a nice change from the secrecy that shrouds political spending. 

And it will give us a chance to hold CEOs accountable when they spend money on politicians who attack working people.

Today's Teamster News 09.30.13

Wegmans blames Teamsters for anti-Buffalo banner at Bills game  The Buffalo News   ...In addition to passing out union leaflets at the Bills game, the Teamsters were accused of using the airplane to fly over the stadium with a “Wegmans wants Buffalo to lose” banner...
JPMorgan’s Biggest Mistake  Bloomberg   ...the derivatives trades resulted in losses of $6.2 billion plus an additional $920 million in fines -- so far...
Elizabeth Warren Calls For Big Changes To Student Loans  Huffington Post   ...College graduates struggling to repay their student loans should have an easier time getting their debt eliminated if they go into bankruptcy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Saturday...
Social Security Does Not Redistribute From Young to Old, It Is a Public Pension System  Center for Economic and Policy Research   ...If workers contributed the same amount to a privately managed pension fund and then collected an annuity in their retirement no one would call it a redistribution from young to old...
Half of British pilots admit to falling asleep in cockpit -survey  Reuters   ...According to the British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA), 56 percent of 500 commercial pilots admitted to being asleep while on the flight deck and, of those, nearly one in three said they had woken up to find their co-pilot also asleep...
Gasoline Prices down 35 cents per gallon year-over-year  Calculated Risk   ...Some of the year-over-year price decline is related to slightly lower Brent oil prices, but most of decline is because there were refinery and pipeline issues last year at this time...
Government Blurs the Lines Between Bad Guys and Average Americans  The Big Picture   ...If you’ve ever cared about privacy while using the Internet in public, you might be a terrorist. At least that’s the message from the FBI and Justice Department’s Communities Against Terrorism initiative...
TPP Protestors Scale Trade Building To Bring Attention to Secretive Deal  The Real News   ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership has nothing to do with trade or freedom, and ongoing demonstrations could encourage those on the inside to speak up...
Stuck: State of Working Ohio 2013  Policy Matters Ohio   ...While the national recovery is weak, Ohio’s is much worse...
UAW releases 2014 union-built vehicles list  UAW   ...The new editions to the list include Ford Motor Co.’s Fusion sedan, made for the first time at the Flat Rock (Mich.) Assembly Plant as a result of 2011 bargaining between the UAW and Ford...
Wisconsin leads nation in removing most people from Medicaid  The Cap Times   ...By a wide margin, Wisconsin would remove more low income people from Medicaid than any other state as part of a plan advanced by Gov. Scott Walker still awaiting federal approval...
Govt to Sue North Carolina Over New Voter Law  Associated Press   ...The Justice Department will sue the state of North Carolina for alleged racial discrimination over tough new voting rules, the latest effort by the Obama administration to fight back against a Supreme Court decision that struck down the most powerful part of the landmark Voting Rights Act and freed southern states from strict federal oversight of their elections...
Rising foreclosures hurt Island as nation recovers  Newsday   ...New foreclosure cases on Long Island are spiking, even as the mortgage crisis fades in the rest of the United States...

'Labor was there, leading the way'

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's speech to the AFL-CIO convention over the weekend was even better than we reported yesterday. She (correctly) warned that the U.S. Supreme Court is about to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business. But she said some other true and powerful things as well -- mostly about organized labor.

Alternet brought us part of the speech, and we thought you really would want to read it:

When important decisions are made in Washington, too often, working families are ignored.  From tax policy to retirement security, the voices of hard-working people get drowned out by powerful industries and well-financed front groups.  Those with power fight to take care of themselves and to feed at the trough for themselves, even when it comes at the expense of working families getting a fair shot at a better future. 

This isn’t new. Throughout our history, powerful interests have tried to capture Washington and rig the system in their favor. But we didn’t roll over. At every turn, in every time of challenge, organized labor has been there, fighting on behalf of the American people. 

At the beginning of the 20th Century, when factories were deathtraps, when owners exploited workers and children, and when robber barons amassed the kind of power and influence that made them think they were modern day kings, the American people came together under the leadership of progressives to bring our nation back from the brink. And labor was there, leading the way. 

Labor was on the front lines to take children out of factories and put them in schools. Labor was there to give meaning to the words "consumer protection" by making our food and medicine safe. Labor was there to fight for minimum wages in states across this country. 

Powerful interests did everything they could to block reform. But our agenda was America’s agenda, and we prevailed. 

A generation later, when our country was mired in the Great Depression, when people were on bread lines and looking for work, we fought back.  We created jobs by investing in infrastructure and public works. We brought light and power to our poorest and most remote areas. We established federal laws on wages and hours. We enshrined into law the right to organize. We made banking boring and put real cops on the beat on Wall Street. And because we believed those in old age should not be mired in poverty, we created Social Security.  And all along that journey, labor was there, leading the way. 

Once again, the powerful interests did everything they could to stop it. But our agenda was America’s agenda, and we prevailed. 

When political injustice threatened to break our democracy, members of the labor movement were there, working for jobs and freedom, marching right alongside the Reverend Dr. King, fighting together for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. 

When hard working families were getting squeezed, labor was there, fighting alongside our beloved Ted Kennedy, and now we have the Family and Medical Leave Act, we have the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and we have continued to protect Medicare. 

And in 2008, when the economy crashed and it was time to reign in financial predators and Wall Street banks, labor was there—you were there—standing shoulder to shoulder with me, standing with President Obama, and fighting for consumer protection. And thanks to those efforts, we now have a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – with a confirmed Director to lead it. And just so everyone knows, that little agency has already returned half a billion dollars to families who were cheated by big financial institutions and helped tens of thousands of consumers solve their problems with big banks. 

In every fight to build opportunity in this country, in every fight to level the playing field, in every fight for working families, we have been on the front lines because our agenda is America’s agenda.

Read the whole thing here.

Confirmed CFPB head will stand up for workers

Richard Cordray had already proven to be a fine choice to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). On his watch, the agency recovered millions of dollars and halted credit card, home foreclosure and predatory lending scams. Now his tenure has been legitimized.

The Senate approved his nomination to serve as CFPB director last night. It ends a two-year struggle to have his nomination considered. President Obama installed Cordray, Ohio's former attorney general, in January 2012 after Republicans refused to allow a confirmation vote. That changed yesterday when Senate leaders reached an agreement to move forward.

The Teamsters strongly supported his nomination. Teamster General President James P. Hoffa previously lauded Cordray's record:

Richard Cordray is a solid public official who has done much to protect Ohio's retirees, investors and business owners from financial fraud.

The consumer bureau was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that overhauled federal financial regulatory powers. Republicans, however, did not like several aspects of it, including having a single director instead of a five-member commission.

But as Americans for Financial Reform first highlighted and we mentioned earlier this year, the CFPB under his leadership has gotten a lot done for Americans, including returning more than $450 million to consumers cheated by credit card companies and writing new regulations that prohibit banks and mortgage companies from disguising costs and making loans borrowers can't afford.

Hard-working Americans deserve an advocate who will be on our side. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said it best earlier this year during a March hearing:

The American people deserve a Congress that worries less about helping big banks and more about helping regular people who've been cheated on mortgages, on credit cards, on student loans, on credit reports.

Amen.

Student loan interest rates double. Congress takes vacation.

Working Americans with dreams of attending college themselves or sending their children there are now being saddled with additional costs due to congressional inaction. Overnight the student loan rate doubled to 6.8 percent, meaning the average college student will pay an additional $2,600 for their education, according to Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

Higher education, already out of reach for many, just became more so. And why? Because lawmakers cannot come to a consensus on a policy. Instead they just let the interest rates on new federal Stafford loans go up. The federal government should not be balancing the budget on the backs of the nation's future generations.

The potential damage that could come from the higher lending rate is staggering, according to experts. Ted Beck, president and chief executive officer of the National Endowment for Financial Education, said a lifetime of student loan debt could become the new American normal if changes aren't made:

You could have generations that never get in the economic mainstream. If you never get into the whole U.S. economic system because you've been held back by too much debt ... we could have a lot of people who just never really come anywhere near their potential.

The same USA Today article details how there could also be a trickle-down effect on the entire economy caused by higher loan rates. More and more, those who do go to college will have to put off home ownership, contributing to their retirement or qualifying for such things as car and small business loans.

James P. Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said it best when he explained in a recent column how higher student loan rates would hurt working- and middle-class families:

Higher education has long been the stepping stone to a better life.  But that stone is being swept away by a tide of student debt.

Thankfully, Congress can still take action to minimize the damage. Senate Democrats are likely to bring to the floor a measure next week that would roll back the increase and extend the former 3.4 percent loan rate another year. But the longer-term answer is to comprehensively revamp the system, something Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is advocating.

Whatever the solution, Capitol Hill shouldn't jeopardize the future by punishing today's students.