TEAMSTERS
Port truck drivers and warehouse workers strike together for better wages and 'employee' status KPCC ...Truck drivers who haul cargo at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are on strike again this week - this time with some new comrades on their picket lines: warehouse workers. Workers from California Cartage, a warehouse at the Port of L.A., have joined striking truckers who drive for Pacific 9 Transportation and XPO Logistics, creating the potential for disruption at two key links in the cargo supply chain...
CA Port Driver Strike Lingers Go By Trucks ...Drayage drivers for two trucking companies at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have entered their 15th week of striking. The drivers, who are classified as independent contractors for XPO Logistics and Pacific 9 Transportation, are seeking employee status. Teamsters and the organization Justice for Port Truckers are backing the strike...
Teamsters at Sysco Ratify New 3-Year Contract Local 117 ...In the end, solidarity won the day. On Saturday, October 24, Teamster drivers and warehouse workers, employed at Sysco, voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new three-year contract. In contract negotiations, Sysco was proposing a two-tier system which would have divided the group and rolled back industry standards with respect to wages, health and welfare and seniority. But Teamsters at Sysco would not be pushed around...
Union Begins Coca-Cola Negotiations, Trades Initial Contract Proposals Local 727 ...The Teamsters Local 727 Coca-Cola Bargaining Committee met with Coca-Cola representatives on October 28 to kick off new contract negotiations. Both the union and management traded initial, non-economic contract proposals. Economic proposals for wages, pensions and health and welfare will be forthcoming. After several hours of deliberations following the exchange, both sides agreed to reconvene on Thursday...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Trans-Pacific Partnership Provision On Trade Disputes Draws Criticism NPR ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement the Obama administration is trying to sell to Congress includes a seemingly obscure and controversial provision. It's called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS among wonks. Under the system, cases are arbitrated by one of two bodies - the World Bank or a division of the United Nations. To date, the U.S. has been sued 17 times and won all its cases...
Froman tells UK: No to EU means no to trade deal Politico ...Michael Froman, U.S. trade representative, said the U.S. is “not particularly in the market for free trade agreements with individual countries.” The Obama administration has focused on wrapping up multilateral trade deals like TTIP (with the EU) and TPP (with Pacific partners). The Americans hope to finalize the deal with Europe before President Obama leaves office, an official said last week...
House uses rare procedure to revive Export-Import bank USA Today ...The House launched a rare effort Monday to circumvent Republican leadership in hopes of reviving the Export-Import Bank, which conservatives managed to choke off earlier this year. Business groups have pushed hard to renew the bank's charter. The bank provides loans and loan guarantees to allow foreign customers to buy U.S. goods and services...
Ontario mayors urge Trudeau to protect auto sector from TPP deal Globe and Mail ...Fresh discontent is surfacing over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that Canada signed in the dying days of Stephen Harper’s government. Mayors representing 20 Ontario cities, from Oshawa to Windsor, with a significant number of auto-sector jobs on Wednesday called on Mr. Trudeau, the prime-minister-designate, to protect their industry from being sideswiped by the TPP...
Greece’s Bailout Deal with Europe Is Starting to Show Cracks Foreign Policy ...The European Union’s agreement to provide Greece with the 86 billion euros, or $95 billion, bailout that Athens needs to stay solvent is beginning to show signs of strain, with creditors threatening to delay an October payment as Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras struggles to implement promised austerity reforms...
Austerity cuts are causing mental distress and are linked to rise in suicides, health professionals warn Independent ...In the UK, suicide rates rose in 2011 and 2012. Men especially seem to be at risk: the male suicide rate is the highest it's been since 2001 and, for men between the ages of 45 and 59, the highest since 1981. After five years of austerity, families, charities, mental health professionals, campaigners and researchers have been highlighting what they regard as the profound effects on mental health...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
McCrory signs controversial immigration bill Winston-Salem Journal ...North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed legislation Wednesday that targets “sanctuary cities” and immigrant identification, turning back pleas from advocates to veto a bill that they say harms immigrants and businesses that rely on immigrant labor. While protesters have been a constant presence at the Executive Mansion in Raleigh to urge McCrory to veto the measure, there were no protesters seen around the sheriff’s office...
Campaign to ditch workers' comp Fort Stockton Pioneer ...A series of new laws has cut workers’ compensation benefits, given employers and insurers more control over medical care, and made it more difficult for workers to qualify for coverage. But other than Texas and Oklahoma, no state has allowed companies to simply opt out. One Texas lawyer is helping companies opt out of workers’ compensation and write their own rules. What does it mean for injured workers?...
Can Fast-Food Work Ever Be A Decent Job? These Swedish McDonald's Workers Say Yes Fast Coexist ...What can a union do for low-wage workers? Comparing the lives of McDonald's workers in Chicago and Sweden shows the difference organizing can make. "Life is pretty hard right now," says KeJioun Johnson, a 20-year-old, part-time McDonald's cashier who lives with his single mom (a part-time bus driver) in government-subsidized housing...
Jersey City council expands paid sick leave law NJ.com ...Almost everyone working in Jersey City will be able to accrue paid sick leave, thanks to a measure adopted by the City Council tonight. The council in 2013 made the city the first in the state to mandate that most private employers provide their workers with paid sick leave. The council voted 7-1-1 to approve the measure (Ord. 15.145)...
U.S. LABOR
Michigan Transit Workers Fight To Prevent City Bus System From Eliminating Their Pensions In These Times ...For the drivers behind the wheel of this top-of-the-line fleet, not all is well: Grand Rapids bus drivers are without a signed union contract, because city officials want to cut their pension funds. One Rapid board member has called the current pension system a “terrible plan” and claims the board wants to “do better” for drivers, the board claims the pension fund is $2.6 million in the red. The drivers disagree...
UAW-GM workers set to vote on agreement with 'significant gains' MLive ...In a proposed agreement with General Motors, the UAW touts "significant gains" for workers, though only voting will tell if the rank-and-file agrees with this sentiment. In the proposed deal, workers would have traditional wages within eight years. It's similar to an agreement reached with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles...
In Historic Ruling, NLRB Says Tucson Taxi Drivers are Employees Market Watch ...In a groundbreaking ruling, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Tucson, Arizona, has determined that more than 200 taxi drivers employed by AAA Transportation/Yellow Cab are employees and are therefore eligible for union representation. The ruling is the first of its kind for taxi drivers...
When Bank Workers Occupy the Banks The Nation ....After about eight years of seeing Main Street households get owned by Big Finance, front-line bank workers are now trying to reclaim Wall Street, branch by branch. In Los Angeles, where communities are still reeling from the financial crisis, front-line bank employees, and activists last week occupied the lobbies of Wells Fargo and Bank of America and demanded fair terms for the customers and the workforce...
Workers Pay The Price For Amazon’s New One-Hour Delivery Think Progress ...Amazon’s one-hour delivery option launched in the Bay Area this week, but the workers behind the scenes of the “Prime Now” service say they’re paying a steep price to make the super-fast turnaround a reality.
Prime Now drivers are suing Amazon over pay that amounts to less than the California minimum wage. Drivers in the Los Angeles market make $11 an hour, but buy their own gas, insurance, and auto maintenance service...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Amid Flood of Dark Money, Groups Make Simple Request of FEC: 'Do Your Job' Common Dreams ...Decrying the unprecedented flow of so-called "dark money" into the U.S. political process, a coalition of civic and religious organizations, environmentalists, and academics on Tuesday submitted comments to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), calling on the agency to—put simply—do its job...
Criminalizing the Classroom: Inside the School-to-Prison Pipeline Democracy Now ...New York City has more than 5,000 police officers patrolling the city’s schools—that’s more than the combined number of school guidance counselors and social workers. Nationwide, more than 17,000 officers work in the school. What happens when students are arrested in the classroom?...
A GOP Debate Without a Winner—Or Much of a Point The Nation ...Donald Trump lost interest mid-way through the third Republican presidential debate. It’s a bad night for Trump when his most memorable line is a closing-statement claim of credit for negotiating a shorter debate: “I got it down to two hours so we can get the hell out of here.” The billionaire contender’s disdain for the whole affair was appropriate after an empty night of whining about the media...
The Budget Deal Clears the House of Representatives The Atlantic ...The final major vote of John Boehner’s drama-filled tenure as House speaker turned out to have very little drama at all. A bipartisan majority in the House on Wednesday afternoon easily approved the two-year budget agreement that Boehner negotiated with fellow congressional leaders and the Obama administration. The vote was 266-167...
Immigrant Women Launch Indefinite Hunger Strike, Asking To Be Freed From Detention Center Think Progress ...Detained women seeking asylum or other forms of humanitarian relief began an indefinite hunger strike at an immigration detention center in Texas on Wednesday night, sending hand-written letters to the federal government calling for their release. At least 27 immigrant women refused dinner on Wednesday at the T. Don Hutto detention center...
Showing posts with label Sysco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sysco. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Friday, October 9, 2015
Today's Teamster News 10.09.15
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters Applaud Introduction of Pension Accountability Act By Sen. Portman Teamster.org ...The Teamsters Union applauds the efforts of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to pass legislation that would guarantee thousands of retirees and workers threatened by deep cuts to their pensions a meaningful voice in deciding their own future, without the threat of the Treasury Department nullifying their decision if it judges that the insolvency of the fund would be "systemically important" by causing a liability of more than $1 billion to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)...
Tenatative Agreement Reached With Sysco Over Food Service Contract Local 117 ...Teamsters Local 117 has achieved a fully-recommended tentative agreement with Sysco over a contract involving 220 drivers and warehouse workers employed at the company’s food service distribution center in Kent. The union and the company reached the agreement late Wednesday night at the Teamsters Union Hall in Tukwila...
Union pay increases slowly at U Minnesota Daily ...For the past six years, administrators, faculty and staff have had wages increase by more than 2 percent, while members of the Teamsters Local 320 have had their pay increase by about 1 percent, according to University data. Since 2014, administrators, faculty and civil service staff have seen a 2.33 percent average wage bump. If current negotiations between Teamsters and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3800, 3937 and 3801 stand the unions would experience an average pay increase of .875 percent...
Teamsters reach tentative agreement with SoCal chains Supermarket News ...The Teamsters Union said Wednesday it will recommend approval of new contracts with three Southern California chains. Voting is scheduled for Oct. 16 through Oct. 18, the union said. The contracts cover drivers and employees at the warehouses, dairies and manufacturing plants of Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons. Vons is now owned by Albertsons and Ralphs is a division of Kroger Co...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
After Years of Backroom Secrecy, Public Will Finally Get to See Full TPP Text Common Dreams ...After being shrouded in secrecy for years, the full contents of the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will soon be brought into the sunlight. According to Kevin Collier at Daily Dot, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has said the text will be made available to the public at large in approximately 30 days—on or around November 7...
TPP Treaty Full Text: WikiLeaks Releases Trans-Pacific Partnership Intellectual Property Rights Chapter IBTimes ...WikiLeaks claims it has obtained the final negotiated text of the Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that covers intellectual property rights. It addresses internet services, medicines, publishers, civil liberties and biological patents. The agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries has been called the biggest global trade deal in decades...
Japan's Amari says not willing to renegotiate TPP trade pact Reuters ...Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari said on Friday he is not willing to renegotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she opposed the free trade pact. Amari, speaking to reporters, urged U.S. lawmakers to back TPP and said going back on the deal now could hurt U.S. credibility...
Hillary Clinton's TPP deal disapproval is 'a critical turning point' The Guardian ...From the start, the Trans-Pacific trade pact that Barack Obama is trumpeting faced rough going on Capitol Hill, not least because some of Congress’s most powerful Republicans – among them the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell – were complaining about it. But the pact’s chances of winning ratification in Congress diminished on Wednesday when Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, said: “Based on what I know so far, I can’t support this agreement”...
China’s Heft Gives It Ammunition Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Wall Street Journal ...On the surface, China appears a clear loser by its exclusion from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which aims to deepen economic ties and lower or eliminate tariffs in the 12-member bloc led by the U.S. and Japan. But company executives and economists say that despite China’s slowing growth, at least in the near term it is well armed against harm from TPP...
No End to Austerity for Serbian Seniors Balkan Insight ...Public debate on the issue has raged since last November, when the government imposed its cuts on the public sector ranging from 10 per cent off salaries to as much as 25 per cent off pensions. The measures sparked a national outcry, with education and pensioners’ trade unions being among the first to protest against the cutbacks. But a group of pensioners’ trade unions went a step further...
Tunisia Labor Movement Shares Nobel Peace Prize Solidarity Center ...For its role in brokering a peaceful path to democracy, Tunisia’s labor movement today was named a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee recognized the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet—comprised of longtime Solidarity Center ally the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers—for establishing “an alternative, peaceful political process"...
Breaking Ground: Mexico’s Miners Push for Worker Rights Solidarity Center ...Mine workers in Mexico labor in difficult and sometimes deadly working conditions. But through their union, the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSSRM, known as “Los Mineros”), they are winning collective bargaining pacts. The union is breaking ground by raising the visibility of the work and activism of women members...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
New York's $15 minimum wage hike ignites national interest CBS ...New York's plan to give fast-food workers a $15 minimum wage is spurring similar efforts in states around the country - even as Gov. Andrew Cuomo's push to enact an across-the-board $15 wage faces vocal opposition at home. In a campaign modeled after the successful push by fast-food workers in New York, groups in 18 states are creating citizen "wage boards" to pressure elected officials to raise the minimum wage...
Hearing on Voter ID Will Take Place This Month WFDD ...State attorneys want a federal judge to dismiss a legal challenge to North Carolina’s voter-identification law before the presidential primary in March. It’s a controversial issue that’s been on hold while a related court case is being considered. When the voting rights trial happened this summer, voter ID wasn’t part of the case...
Struggling Phoenix Workers Demand $15 Minimum wage New Times ...Arizona workers shared their stories with a panel of government and business leaders Thursday at a community meeting about raising the minimum wage. Workers across the country have rallied under Fight for $15's banner since 2012 to raise the minimum wage. In response, several cities, including Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, have bumped pay to $15 an hour...
Jeb Bush Is Completely Wrong About the Voting Rights Act The Nation ...Bush says the VRA is no longer necessary, but his home state of Florida has been a hotbed of voter suppression since 2000. It’s a fallacy to assert that the VRA was important in 1965 but no longer needed. In 2011, Bush’s home state of Florida passed a severe law shutting down voter-registration drives—which was later blocked in court—and cutting early-voting days, which led to seven-hour lines during the 2012 election...
The Fight for $15 Is Making Significant Progress on Wages. Now It’s Time for Step 2: Unions. In These Times ...It’s a safe bet that most working people would like a pay raise. They are also often reluctant to ask for one, let alone demand a doubling of their hourly rates. Low-wage Americans—the 42 percent of workers making less than $15 an hour—know all too well that they don’t just want more; they need more simply to survive at the lowliest version of the American standard of living. Increasingly, they are pressing their demands more forcefully, possibly inventing a new form of unionism as they persevere...
U.S. LABOR
33 Workers Dead After U.S. Cargo Ship Lost at Sea. Could It Have Been Prevented? In These Times ...Search and rescue teams officially gave up hope yesterday after a failed five-day effort to locate 33 cargo ship workers lost at sea in the waters near the Bahamas. The sailors and other shipboard workers are presumed dead in the wreck of the U.S.-flagged commercial vessel El Faro, which disappeared October 1 in the high winds and heavy seas of Hurricane Joaquin. The last voyage of the El Faro has already taken on the air of maritime mystery...
New UAW-FCA deal gives Tier 2 workers path to top pay Detroit Free Press ...Fiat Chrysler entry-level workers could reach a new wage of $29 an hour over eight years, putting them at par with senior colleagues and effectively eliminating the much-hated two-tier pay scale under a new proposed deal between the UAW and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The proposal was reached just prior to the Wednesday night deadline of 11:59 p.m., averting a potential midnight strike by 40,000 unionized workers...
Union campaign targeting Boeing South Carolina moves online with NLRB ruling Post and Courier ...The International Association of Machinists is using a new method to recruit Boeing South Carolina workers, taking advantage of a recent ruling that lets labor unions collect electronic signatures on election authorization cards. The National Labor Relations Board rule went into effect Sept. 1. It allows workers to log onto a website and submit such cards via the Internet...
Are Bosses Necessary? The Atlantic ...A radical experiment at Zappos may herald the emergence of a new, more democratic kind of organization. The company abolished managers, eliminated job titles, denounced its own organizational hierarchy, and vested all authority in a 10,000-word constitution that spells out a radical new system of self-governance. Freed from direct supervision, employees are expected to join various impermanent democratic assemblies called “circles” (headed, but not run, by a “lead link”)...
Right-Wing Urban Outfitters Now Asking Employees to Work for Free Alternet ...Urban Outfitters has become known for three things: 1) Offending every possible marginalized group under the sun with apparel that features really tasteless messages; 2) allegedly stealing designs from up-and-coming artists and selling them as their own; and 3) having a president and CEO, Richard Hayne, who has given money to anti-gay marriage crusader Rick Santorum and other Republican politicians. Now the company is making news for its boldest action yet: asking employees to work for free!...
Jobless claims fall to near a 42-year low Reuters ...While businesses appear to have little reason to let workers go these days, in recent months they have not shown much gusto in adding new hires. U.S. employers added just 142,000 jobs to their payrolls in September and 136,000 in August, which was well below the averages in prior months of about 200,000 new jobs added every month. The slowdown in hiring has boosted expectations the Fed will wait until early next year to raise interest rates for the first time in a decade...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Partisan Divide Widens Over Immigration Policy NPR ...It probably won't surprise you that there's a growing polarization among Americans over how to deal with several immigration policy proposals. Whether it's Donald Trump's idea for a massive border fence or the proposal to change the Constitution so that babies of unauthorized residents aren't automatically made citizens, Republicans and Democrats are hardening their views, according to a new national survey issued by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center...
Obama Won't Support Extending Deadline for Rail Safety Equipment Bloomberg ...President Barack Obama plans to enforce a deadline for rail operators to install safety technology by the end of the year, despite warnings from railroads including Union Pacific Corp. and Amtrak that they can’t meet the mandate and would have to suspend some service without an extension. Railroads have had seven years to install positive train control technology, which can slow or stop trains to avoid crashes...
Courts Are Striking Back Against The Criminalization Of Homelessness Think Progress ...For the third time in as many months, a federal court has struck down a city’s panhandling ban for violating the First Amendment’s free speech protections. The most recent case concerned an anti-panhandling ordinance in Grand Junction, Colorado, which outlawed “aggressive panhandling”...
Autopsy Shows Oklahoma Used Wrong Drug to Kill Man Who Said His Body Was 'On Fire' Common Dreams ...Oklahoma correctional officials in January used the wrong drug to execute Charles Warner, who said his body was "on fire" after the injection was administered, according to his autopsy report released Thursday. Oklahoma correctional officers received the same incorrect drug on September 30 ahead of the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip, who received a stay from Governor Mary Fallin after she was made aware of the erroneous delivery...
Teamsters Applaud Introduction of Pension Accountability Act By Sen. Portman Teamster.org ...The Teamsters Union applauds the efforts of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to pass legislation that would guarantee thousands of retirees and workers threatened by deep cuts to their pensions a meaningful voice in deciding their own future, without the threat of the Treasury Department nullifying their decision if it judges that the insolvency of the fund would be "systemically important" by causing a liability of more than $1 billion to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)...
Tenatative Agreement Reached With Sysco Over Food Service Contract Local 117 ...Teamsters Local 117 has achieved a fully-recommended tentative agreement with Sysco over a contract involving 220 drivers and warehouse workers employed at the company’s food service distribution center in Kent. The union and the company reached the agreement late Wednesday night at the Teamsters Union Hall in Tukwila...
Union pay increases slowly at U Minnesota Daily ...For the past six years, administrators, faculty and staff have had wages increase by more than 2 percent, while members of the Teamsters Local 320 have had their pay increase by about 1 percent, according to University data. Since 2014, administrators, faculty and civil service staff have seen a 2.33 percent average wage bump. If current negotiations between Teamsters and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3800, 3937 and 3801 stand the unions would experience an average pay increase of .875 percent...
Teamsters reach tentative agreement with SoCal chains Supermarket News ...The Teamsters Union said Wednesday it will recommend approval of new contracts with three Southern California chains. Voting is scheduled for Oct. 16 through Oct. 18, the union said. The contracts cover drivers and employees at the warehouses, dairies and manufacturing plants of Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons. Vons is now owned by Albertsons and Ralphs is a division of Kroger Co...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
After Years of Backroom Secrecy, Public Will Finally Get to See Full TPP Text Common Dreams ...After being shrouded in secrecy for years, the full contents of the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will soon be brought into the sunlight. According to Kevin Collier at Daily Dot, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has said the text will be made available to the public at large in approximately 30 days—on or around November 7...
TPP Treaty Full Text: WikiLeaks Releases Trans-Pacific Partnership Intellectual Property Rights Chapter IBTimes ...WikiLeaks claims it has obtained the final negotiated text of the Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that covers intellectual property rights. It addresses internet services, medicines, publishers, civil liberties and biological patents. The agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries has been called the biggest global trade deal in decades...
Japan's Amari says not willing to renegotiate TPP trade pact Reuters ...Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari said on Friday he is not willing to renegotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she opposed the free trade pact. Amari, speaking to reporters, urged U.S. lawmakers to back TPP and said going back on the deal now could hurt U.S. credibility...
Hillary Clinton's TPP deal disapproval is 'a critical turning point' The Guardian ...From the start, the Trans-Pacific trade pact that Barack Obama is trumpeting faced rough going on Capitol Hill, not least because some of Congress’s most powerful Republicans – among them the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell – were complaining about it. But the pact’s chances of winning ratification in Congress diminished on Wednesday when Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, said: “Based on what I know so far, I can’t support this agreement”...
China’s Heft Gives It Ammunition Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Wall Street Journal ...On the surface, China appears a clear loser by its exclusion from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which aims to deepen economic ties and lower or eliminate tariffs in the 12-member bloc led by the U.S. and Japan. But company executives and economists say that despite China’s slowing growth, at least in the near term it is well armed against harm from TPP...
No End to Austerity for Serbian Seniors Balkan Insight ...Public debate on the issue has raged since last November, when the government imposed its cuts on the public sector ranging from 10 per cent off salaries to as much as 25 per cent off pensions. The measures sparked a national outcry, with education and pensioners’ trade unions being among the first to protest against the cutbacks. But a group of pensioners’ trade unions went a step further...
Tunisia Labor Movement Shares Nobel Peace Prize Solidarity Center ...For its role in brokering a peaceful path to democracy, Tunisia’s labor movement today was named a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee recognized the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet—comprised of longtime Solidarity Center ally the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers—for establishing “an alternative, peaceful political process"...
Breaking Ground: Mexico’s Miners Push for Worker Rights Solidarity Center ...Mine workers in Mexico labor in difficult and sometimes deadly working conditions. But through their union, the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSSRM, known as “Los Mineros”), they are winning collective bargaining pacts. The union is breaking ground by raising the visibility of the work and activism of women members...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
New York's $15 minimum wage hike ignites national interest CBS ...New York's plan to give fast-food workers a $15 minimum wage is spurring similar efforts in states around the country - even as Gov. Andrew Cuomo's push to enact an across-the-board $15 wage faces vocal opposition at home. In a campaign modeled after the successful push by fast-food workers in New York, groups in 18 states are creating citizen "wage boards" to pressure elected officials to raise the minimum wage...
Hearing on Voter ID Will Take Place This Month WFDD ...State attorneys want a federal judge to dismiss a legal challenge to North Carolina’s voter-identification law before the presidential primary in March. It’s a controversial issue that’s been on hold while a related court case is being considered. When the voting rights trial happened this summer, voter ID wasn’t part of the case...
Struggling Phoenix Workers Demand $15 Minimum wage New Times ...Arizona workers shared their stories with a panel of government and business leaders Thursday at a community meeting about raising the minimum wage. Workers across the country have rallied under Fight for $15's banner since 2012 to raise the minimum wage. In response, several cities, including Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, have bumped pay to $15 an hour...
Jeb Bush Is Completely Wrong About the Voting Rights Act The Nation ...Bush says the VRA is no longer necessary, but his home state of Florida has been a hotbed of voter suppression since 2000. It’s a fallacy to assert that the VRA was important in 1965 but no longer needed. In 2011, Bush’s home state of Florida passed a severe law shutting down voter-registration drives—which was later blocked in court—and cutting early-voting days, which led to seven-hour lines during the 2012 election...
The Fight for $15 Is Making Significant Progress on Wages. Now It’s Time for Step 2: Unions. In These Times ...It’s a safe bet that most working people would like a pay raise. They are also often reluctant to ask for one, let alone demand a doubling of their hourly rates. Low-wage Americans—the 42 percent of workers making less than $15 an hour—know all too well that they don’t just want more; they need more simply to survive at the lowliest version of the American standard of living. Increasingly, they are pressing their demands more forcefully, possibly inventing a new form of unionism as they persevere...
U.S. LABOR
33 Workers Dead After U.S. Cargo Ship Lost at Sea. Could It Have Been Prevented? In These Times ...Search and rescue teams officially gave up hope yesterday after a failed five-day effort to locate 33 cargo ship workers lost at sea in the waters near the Bahamas. The sailors and other shipboard workers are presumed dead in the wreck of the U.S.-flagged commercial vessel El Faro, which disappeared October 1 in the high winds and heavy seas of Hurricane Joaquin. The last voyage of the El Faro has already taken on the air of maritime mystery...
New UAW-FCA deal gives Tier 2 workers path to top pay Detroit Free Press ...Fiat Chrysler entry-level workers could reach a new wage of $29 an hour over eight years, putting them at par with senior colleagues and effectively eliminating the much-hated two-tier pay scale under a new proposed deal between the UAW and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The proposal was reached just prior to the Wednesday night deadline of 11:59 p.m., averting a potential midnight strike by 40,000 unionized workers...
Union campaign targeting Boeing South Carolina moves online with NLRB ruling Post and Courier ...The International Association of Machinists is using a new method to recruit Boeing South Carolina workers, taking advantage of a recent ruling that lets labor unions collect electronic signatures on election authorization cards. The National Labor Relations Board rule went into effect Sept. 1. It allows workers to log onto a website and submit such cards via the Internet...
Are Bosses Necessary? The Atlantic ...A radical experiment at Zappos may herald the emergence of a new, more democratic kind of organization. The company abolished managers, eliminated job titles, denounced its own organizational hierarchy, and vested all authority in a 10,000-word constitution that spells out a radical new system of self-governance. Freed from direct supervision, employees are expected to join various impermanent democratic assemblies called “circles” (headed, but not run, by a “lead link”)...
Right-Wing Urban Outfitters Now Asking Employees to Work for Free Alternet ...Urban Outfitters has become known for three things: 1) Offending every possible marginalized group under the sun with apparel that features really tasteless messages; 2) allegedly stealing designs from up-and-coming artists and selling them as their own; and 3) having a president and CEO, Richard Hayne, who has given money to anti-gay marriage crusader Rick Santorum and other Republican politicians. Now the company is making news for its boldest action yet: asking employees to work for free!...
Jobless claims fall to near a 42-year low Reuters ...While businesses appear to have little reason to let workers go these days, in recent months they have not shown much gusto in adding new hires. U.S. employers added just 142,000 jobs to their payrolls in September and 136,000 in August, which was well below the averages in prior months of about 200,000 new jobs added every month. The slowdown in hiring has boosted expectations the Fed will wait until early next year to raise interest rates for the first time in a decade...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Partisan Divide Widens Over Immigration Policy NPR ...It probably won't surprise you that there's a growing polarization among Americans over how to deal with several immigration policy proposals. Whether it's Donald Trump's idea for a massive border fence or the proposal to change the Constitution so that babies of unauthorized residents aren't automatically made citizens, Republicans and Democrats are hardening their views, according to a new national survey issued by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center...
Obama Won't Support Extending Deadline for Rail Safety Equipment Bloomberg ...President Barack Obama plans to enforce a deadline for rail operators to install safety technology by the end of the year, despite warnings from railroads including Union Pacific Corp. and Amtrak that they can’t meet the mandate and would have to suspend some service without an extension. Railroads have had seven years to install positive train control technology, which can slow or stop trains to avoid crashes...
Courts Are Striking Back Against The Criminalization Of Homelessness Think Progress ...For the third time in as many months, a federal court has struck down a city’s panhandling ban for violating the First Amendment’s free speech protections. The most recent case concerned an anti-panhandling ordinance in Grand Junction, Colorado, which outlawed “aggressive panhandling”...
Autopsy Shows Oklahoma Used Wrong Drug to Kill Man Who Said His Body Was 'On Fire' Common Dreams ...Oklahoma correctional officials in January used the wrong drug to execute Charles Warner, who said his body was "on fire" after the injection was administered, according to his autopsy report released Thursday. Oklahoma correctional officers received the same incorrect drug on September 30 ahead of the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip, who received a stay from Governor Mary Fallin after she was made aware of the erroneous delivery...
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Today's Teamster News 10.07.15
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters At Sysco Back in Negotiations Today After Unanimous Strike Vote Local 117 ...Teamster warehouse workers and drivers who are employed at the major food service conglomerate Sysco have voted unanimously to authorize a strike. Union members voted 150-0 in favor of authorizing a strike after the Company allegedly committed a series of Unfair Labor Practices. The National Labor Relations Board is investigating Sysco for charges of bad-faith bargaining, unilateral changes in working conditions, and worker intimidation...
LA-based port truck driver to join President Obama at White House Summit on Worker Voice AJOT ...On Wed., October 7, a port truck driver who was misclassified for years as an “independent contractor” but fought for – and won – the right to be classified as an employee and is now a member of Teamsters Local 848, will be a panelist at the first ever “White House Summit on Worker Voice.” The professional driver, a husband and father to two young children, who was fired for filing a claim for Wage Theft with the California Labor Commissioner, now works for Eco Flow Transportation...
County to consider contract that includes raise for jail staff Merced Sun Star ...A group of Merced County jail and detention center employees would see their first pay raise in six years under an agreement to be considered Tuesday by the Merced County Board of Supervisors. The county has been in negotiations since May with Unit 12 of Teamsters Local Union 856, which represents more than a dozen unarmed and nonsworn employees of jails and juvenile detention centers...
A Strike May Park San Francisco's Tech Buses Gizmodo ...San Francisco’s tech workers may be looking for a new ride to work if their shuttle bus drivers go on strike over contract negotiations. At a meeting yesterday in San Leandro, leaders of the Teamsters Local 853 advised members to be prepared for a strike if there’s no progress on the contract proposal that the union approved and sent to Compass Transportation back in August. The proposal would increase pay and improve benefits for drivers...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Obama’s trade deal faces stiff headwinds The Hill ...The White House’s announcement Monday of an international trade deal covering 40 percent of the world’s economy sets the stage for a bruising, months-long congressional battle that is already spilling into the 2016 presidential race. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement between the U.S. and 11 other nations from Asia to Latin America, faces stiff headwinds in both parties...
Vilsack: TPP text available in next 30 days Capital Press ...U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be made available in the next 30 days. Farmers and members of Congress will be able to read the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the next 30 days, the head of the USDA says. Lawyers are “scrubbing the text” of the trade deal between the United States and 11 other countries, making sure it is accurate...
China Responds Cautiously To TPP Deal, Which Analysts Say Will Bring Pressure For Faster Reforms IBTimes ...China has reacted cautiously to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP), which U.S. President Barack Obama said explicitly was designed to prevent “countries like China” from writing "the rules of the global economy." China’s Ministry of Commerce said it took an “open-minded attitude” to the deal, though Chinese analysts said it would increase pressure on Beijing to introduce further economic reforms...
The Meat Industry Is Licking Its Chops Over Obama's Massive Trade Deal Mother Jones ...The US meat industry scored a big victory this week when world leaders hammered out an agreement that would reduce trade barriers across the Pacific: from the United Sates, Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Chile on this side to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and Singapore on the other. So how would the TPP affect Big Meat in the United States? The industry is currently facing stagnant domestic demand for its product as Americans eat less meat. The TPP would open markets...
Breast Cancer Patient Arrested for Protesting TPP: "This is Price Gouging at the Cost of Lives" Democracy Now ...The United States and drug companies had pressed for longer monopolies on new biotech drugs, while multiple countries opposed the push, saying it could deny life-saving medicines to patients who cannot afford high prices. The compromise reportedly includes monopolies of between five and eight years. Last week in Atlanta, Zahara Heckscher, a cancer patient, disrupted TPP negotiations and was arrested...
The Trans-Pacific Pact Would Kill Jobs and Consumer Protection (opinion) New York Times ...The TPP includes investor protections also found in NAFTA that incentivize American job offshoring by eliminating risks otherwise associated with producing in low-wage countries. It would drive down our wages by putting Americans in competition with Vietnamese workers who make less than 65 cents per hour...
Three million #noTTIP signatures delivered to EU Commission in London The Economic Voice ...Over three million signatures from across Europe calling for TTIP to be scrapped were submitted to representatives of the European Commission in London at 11.30 am this morning, in the shadow of a 6 metre high inflatable TTIP Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse symbolised that while TTIP is presented as a 'trade deal,' critics argue that it actually constitutes an unprecedented corporate power grab...
IMF warns of stagnation threat to G7 economies The Guardian ...The International Monetary Fund is warning that the weak recovery in the west risks turning into near stagnation after cutting its global economic growth forecast for the fourth successive year. In its half-yearly update on the health of the world economy, the Washington-based fund predicted expansion of 3.1% in 2015, 0.2 points lower than it was expecting three months ago...
Tens of thousands protest government free-market measures for biggest demo in a year US News & World Report ...Tens of thousands of workers are demonstrating through Brussels to protest the free-market regulations and austerity measures that the center-right government has been pushing through during its first year in office. Belgium's three main unions joined hands Wednesday behind a common platform arguing that the government of Prime Minister Charles Michel is promoting big companies at the expense of the workforce...
IndustriALL Union files ILO complaint against Thailand Reuters ...IndustriALL, a global labor union with 50 million members, has filed a complaint against Thailand at the International Labour Organization in Geneva, the union said on Wednesday. The complaint, sent to the ILO's committee on freedom of association, details 18 cases of worker and labor abuses, IndustriALL said in a statement...
Cambodian Garment Workers Rally for Minimum Wage Raise Solidarity Center ...Some 21,000 garment workers from six unions at more than 60 factories across Cambodia dedicated their 30-minute lunch breaks to rallies calling for a higher minimum wage. The monthly minimum wage for garment and footwear workers is $128. Last year, Cambodia’s garment exports totaled $5.7 billion...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
W.Va. Gov. Tomblin Announces $100 Million Statewide Budget Cut WSAZ ...West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin on Monday announced a plan to save the state nearly $100 million. Tomblin said it is needed to curb the loss from declining coal and natural gas revenue. The governor said most state agency spending will be cut by 4 percent. Tomblin said the fiscal year deficit currently exceeds more than $250 million...
Gov. Brown signs bill aimed at eliminating gender wage gap LA Times ...California took a major step Tuesday toward closing the lingering wage gap between men and women, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed one of the toughest pay equity laws in the nation. Women in California who work full time are paid substantially less — a median 84 cents for every dollar — than men, according to a U.S Census Bureau report this year...
California minimum wage measure seeks to tap into income inequality worries SacBee ...Proponents of a statewide ballot measure to raise California’s minimum wage signaled Tuesday that their effort will seize on unrest over income distribution and frame the wage debate as one of fairness. In the first major event in support of the proposed initiative, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said they would lead the union-funded endeavor to hike the state’s base wage to $11...
Little Rock Workers Convene City's First Wage Board NPR ...As part of a national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, some Little Rock workers plan to convene the city’s first wage board Tuesday. Little Rock’s four-member board is made up of Democratic State Representatives Charles Blake and Vivian Flowers, the chair of Arkansas Community Organizations Donna Massey, and Revered Stephen Copley, who led the recent voter-approved effort to gradually raise the minimum wage in Arkansas to $8.50 by 2017...
U.S. LABOR
Al Jazeera America becomes the latest new media organization to unionize The Guardian ...Al Jazeera America’s digital newsroom became the latest new media organization to unionize on Tuesday. Staff voted in favour 32 to 5, the National Labor Relations Board declared after counting the ballots cast by eligible employees. Al Jazeera America is the latest of a number of newsrooms to unionize this year...
Pot growers at Maryland company get union representation Business Journal ...Bethesda Biomedical Inc., awaiting state approval for a license to grow marijuana and operate a medical marijuana dispensary, has reached an agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to represent its employees. The agreement covers wages, health care, a retirement pension and other benefits for Bethesda Biomedical’s future employees...
UAW threatens strike at Fiat Chrysler U.S. operations Reuters ...United Auto Workers members are planning to strike at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV U.S. plants as soon as Wednesday evening, the first work stoppage since 2007, threatening to bring manufacturing to a halt. A strike at its U.S. operations could cost the automaker $40 million a week in operating profit, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist with the Center for Automotive Research...
With Sanders at the Helm, Lawmakers Lobby for Labor Common Dreams ...With organized labor increasingly under attack in the U.S., a handful of lawmakers is pushing to make it easier for workers to join unions, allowing them to pool their collective power to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Tuesday unveiled new legislation, dubbed the Workplace Democracy Act, which would expedite the process for forming labor unions and penalize companies that delay negotiations...
Neoliberalism is crushing your mailman: The myth of the postal service’s financial ruin Salon ...The truth is that almost all of the postal service’s losses can be traced back to a single change in the law made by the Republican Congress in 2006. That year, the Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under the terms of PAEA, the USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years...
This Is What The World's Largest Companies Are Making Off Their Employees Huffington Post ...You’re going to want a raise after reading this. Marketing firm MVF Global has calculated the “true value” of employees around the world, and maybe not surprisingly there is a pretty large gap between what workers at the world’s largest companies are paid and what they're actually worth to the company...
The US Tells Other Countries to Respect Unions—Shouldn’t the US Do the Same? The Nation ... While the just-announced Trans-Pacific Partnership deal is flawed on many levels, it includes language that requires countries such as Vietnam to recognize and respect the right to form independent trade unions. Yet, while the US government tells other countries to respect the right to organize unions and collectively bargain, those rights have been under assault here...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Immigrant Rights Groups Will Start Protesting Obama Again Huffington Post ...Several immigrant rights groups announced Tuesday that they will spend a week protesting the deportation and detention policies of President Barack Obama, timed to mark the one-year anniversary of his announcement of executive actions to expand deportation relief. Obama, who has presided over more deportations than any other president, has long faced protests from immigrant rights activists...
Freedom for 6,000 Federal Prisoners The Atlantic ...About 6,000 federal inmates whose long sentences were reduced last year will be released at the end of October, marking the start of the most substantial effort yet to reduce America’s gargantuan prison population. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent judicial agency that oversees federal sentencing guidelines, first voted in April 2014 to reduce federal drug guideline sentences in an effort to curb prison overcrowding and excessive punishments...
Teamsters At Sysco Back in Negotiations Today After Unanimous Strike Vote Local 117 ...Teamster warehouse workers and drivers who are employed at the major food service conglomerate Sysco have voted unanimously to authorize a strike. Union members voted 150-0 in favor of authorizing a strike after the Company allegedly committed a series of Unfair Labor Practices. The National Labor Relations Board is investigating Sysco for charges of bad-faith bargaining, unilateral changes in working conditions, and worker intimidation...
LA-based port truck driver to join President Obama at White House Summit on Worker Voice AJOT ...On Wed., October 7, a port truck driver who was misclassified for years as an “independent contractor” but fought for – and won – the right to be classified as an employee and is now a member of Teamsters Local 848, will be a panelist at the first ever “White House Summit on Worker Voice.” The professional driver, a husband and father to two young children, who was fired for filing a claim for Wage Theft with the California Labor Commissioner, now works for Eco Flow Transportation...
County to consider contract that includes raise for jail staff Merced Sun Star ...A group of Merced County jail and detention center employees would see their first pay raise in six years under an agreement to be considered Tuesday by the Merced County Board of Supervisors. The county has been in negotiations since May with Unit 12 of Teamsters Local Union 856, which represents more than a dozen unarmed and nonsworn employees of jails and juvenile detention centers...
A Strike May Park San Francisco's Tech Buses Gizmodo ...San Francisco’s tech workers may be looking for a new ride to work if their shuttle bus drivers go on strike over contract negotiations. At a meeting yesterday in San Leandro, leaders of the Teamsters Local 853 advised members to be prepared for a strike if there’s no progress on the contract proposal that the union approved and sent to Compass Transportation back in August. The proposal would increase pay and improve benefits for drivers...
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Obama’s trade deal faces stiff headwinds The Hill ...The White House’s announcement Monday of an international trade deal covering 40 percent of the world’s economy sets the stage for a bruising, months-long congressional battle that is already spilling into the 2016 presidential race. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement between the U.S. and 11 other nations from Asia to Latin America, faces stiff headwinds in both parties...
Vilsack: TPP text available in next 30 days Capital Press ...U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be made available in the next 30 days. Farmers and members of Congress will be able to read the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the next 30 days, the head of the USDA says. Lawyers are “scrubbing the text” of the trade deal between the United States and 11 other countries, making sure it is accurate...
China Responds Cautiously To TPP Deal, Which Analysts Say Will Bring Pressure For Faster Reforms IBTimes ...China has reacted cautiously to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP), which U.S. President Barack Obama said explicitly was designed to prevent “countries like China” from writing "the rules of the global economy." China’s Ministry of Commerce said it took an “open-minded attitude” to the deal, though Chinese analysts said it would increase pressure on Beijing to introduce further economic reforms...
The Meat Industry Is Licking Its Chops Over Obama's Massive Trade Deal Mother Jones ...The US meat industry scored a big victory this week when world leaders hammered out an agreement that would reduce trade barriers across the Pacific: from the United Sates, Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Chile on this side to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and Singapore on the other. So how would the TPP affect Big Meat in the United States? The industry is currently facing stagnant domestic demand for its product as Americans eat less meat. The TPP would open markets...
Breast Cancer Patient Arrested for Protesting TPP: "This is Price Gouging at the Cost of Lives" Democracy Now ...The United States and drug companies had pressed for longer monopolies on new biotech drugs, while multiple countries opposed the push, saying it could deny life-saving medicines to patients who cannot afford high prices. The compromise reportedly includes monopolies of between five and eight years. Last week in Atlanta, Zahara Heckscher, a cancer patient, disrupted TPP negotiations and was arrested...
The Trans-Pacific Pact Would Kill Jobs and Consumer Protection (opinion) New York Times ...The TPP includes investor protections also found in NAFTA that incentivize American job offshoring by eliminating risks otherwise associated with producing in low-wage countries. It would drive down our wages by putting Americans in competition with Vietnamese workers who make less than 65 cents per hour...
Three million #noTTIP signatures delivered to EU Commission in London The Economic Voice ...Over three million signatures from across Europe calling for TTIP to be scrapped were submitted to representatives of the European Commission in London at 11.30 am this morning, in the shadow of a 6 metre high inflatable TTIP Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse symbolised that while TTIP is presented as a 'trade deal,' critics argue that it actually constitutes an unprecedented corporate power grab...
IMF warns of stagnation threat to G7 economies The Guardian ...The International Monetary Fund is warning that the weak recovery in the west risks turning into near stagnation after cutting its global economic growth forecast for the fourth successive year. In its half-yearly update on the health of the world economy, the Washington-based fund predicted expansion of 3.1% in 2015, 0.2 points lower than it was expecting three months ago...
Tens of thousands protest government free-market measures for biggest demo in a year US News & World Report ...Tens of thousands of workers are demonstrating through Brussels to protest the free-market regulations and austerity measures that the center-right government has been pushing through during its first year in office. Belgium's three main unions joined hands Wednesday behind a common platform arguing that the government of Prime Minister Charles Michel is promoting big companies at the expense of the workforce...
IndustriALL Union files ILO complaint against Thailand Reuters ...IndustriALL, a global labor union with 50 million members, has filed a complaint against Thailand at the International Labour Organization in Geneva, the union said on Wednesday. The complaint, sent to the ILO's committee on freedom of association, details 18 cases of worker and labor abuses, IndustriALL said in a statement...
Cambodian Garment Workers Rally for Minimum Wage Raise Solidarity Center ...Some 21,000 garment workers from six unions at more than 60 factories across Cambodia dedicated their 30-minute lunch breaks to rallies calling for a higher minimum wage. The monthly minimum wage for garment and footwear workers is $128. Last year, Cambodia’s garment exports totaled $5.7 billion...
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
W.Va. Gov. Tomblin Announces $100 Million Statewide Budget Cut WSAZ ...West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin on Monday announced a plan to save the state nearly $100 million. Tomblin said it is needed to curb the loss from declining coal and natural gas revenue. The governor said most state agency spending will be cut by 4 percent. Tomblin said the fiscal year deficit currently exceeds more than $250 million...
Gov. Brown signs bill aimed at eliminating gender wage gap LA Times ...California took a major step Tuesday toward closing the lingering wage gap between men and women, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed one of the toughest pay equity laws in the nation. Women in California who work full time are paid substantially less — a median 84 cents for every dollar — than men, according to a U.S Census Bureau report this year...
California minimum wage measure seeks to tap into income inequality worries SacBee ...Proponents of a statewide ballot measure to raise California’s minimum wage signaled Tuesday that their effort will seize on unrest over income distribution and frame the wage debate as one of fairness. In the first major event in support of the proposed initiative, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said they would lead the union-funded endeavor to hike the state’s base wage to $11...
Little Rock Workers Convene City's First Wage Board NPR ...As part of a national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, some Little Rock workers plan to convene the city’s first wage board Tuesday. Little Rock’s four-member board is made up of Democratic State Representatives Charles Blake and Vivian Flowers, the chair of Arkansas Community Organizations Donna Massey, and Revered Stephen Copley, who led the recent voter-approved effort to gradually raise the minimum wage in Arkansas to $8.50 by 2017...
U.S. LABOR
Al Jazeera America becomes the latest new media organization to unionize The Guardian ...Al Jazeera America’s digital newsroom became the latest new media organization to unionize on Tuesday. Staff voted in favour 32 to 5, the National Labor Relations Board declared after counting the ballots cast by eligible employees. Al Jazeera America is the latest of a number of newsrooms to unionize this year...
Pot growers at Maryland company get union representation Business Journal ...Bethesda Biomedical Inc., awaiting state approval for a license to grow marijuana and operate a medical marijuana dispensary, has reached an agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to represent its employees. The agreement covers wages, health care, a retirement pension and other benefits for Bethesda Biomedical’s future employees...
UAW threatens strike at Fiat Chrysler U.S. operations Reuters ...United Auto Workers members are planning to strike at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV U.S. plants as soon as Wednesday evening, the first work stoppage since 2007, threatening to bring manufacturing to a halt. A strike at its U.S. operations could cost the automaker $40 million a week in operating profit, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist with the Center for Automotive Research...
With Sanders at the Helm, Lawmakers Lobby for Labor Common Dreams ...With organized labor increasingly under attack in the U.S., a handful of lawmakers is pushing to make it easier for workers to join unions, allowing them to pool their collective power to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Tuesday unveiled new legislation, dubbed the Workplace Democracy Act, which would expedite the process for forming labor unions and penalize companies that delay negotiations...
Neoliberalism is crushing your mailman: The myth of the postal service’s financial ruin Salon ...The truth is that almost all of the postal service’s losses can be traced back to a single change in the law made by the Republican Congress in 2006. That year, the Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under the terms of PAEA, the USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years...
This Is What The World's Largest Companies Are Making Off Their Employees Huffington Post ...You’re going to want a raise after reading this. Marketing firm MVF Global has calculated the “true value” of employees around the world, and maybe not surprisingly there is a pretty large gap between what workers at the world’s largest companies are paid and what they're actually worth to the company...
The US Tells Other Countries to Respect Unions—Shouldn’t the US Do the Same? The Nation ... While the just-announced Trans-Pacific Partnership deal is flawed on many levels, it includes language that requires countries such as Vietnam to recognize and respect the right to form independent trade unions. Yet, while the US government tells other countries to respect the right to organize unions and collectively bargain, those rights have been under assault here...
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Immigrant Rights Groups Will Start Protesting Obama Again Huffington Post ...Several immigrant rights groups announced Tuesday that they will spend a week protesting the deportation and detention policies of President Barack Obama, timed to mark the one-year anniversary of his announcement of executive actions to expand deportation relief. Obama, who has presided over more deportations than any other president, has long faced protests from immigrant rights activists...
Freedom for 6,000 Federal Prisoners The Atlantic ...About 6,000 federal inmates whose long sentences were reduced last year will be released at the end of October, marking the start of the most substantial effort yet to reduce America’s gargantuan prison population. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent judicial agency that oversees federal sentencing guidelines, first voted in April 2014 to reduce federal drug guideline sentences in an effort to curb prison overcrowding and excessive punishments...
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Today's Teamster News 09.22.15
Teamsters
Teamsters-Sun Tran contract details not made public Arizona Daily Star ...The public hasn’t been clued in to the details of an agreement that ended a 42-day transit strike in Tucson. Teamsters Local 104 and Sun Tran management firm Professional Transit Management signed a two-year contract, good until June 30, 2017. Because the city is not a party to the labor agreement, the Tucson City Council does not have to approve the contract, said City Attorney Mike Rankin...
Teamsters at Sysco Vote 150-0 to Authorize a Strike Local 117 ...“Record attendance,” said Local 117 Secretary-Treasurer John Scearcy, to resounding applause. “This is serious. The company is coming after us, but we will be ready.” The Union hall was packed with Teamsters on Saturday who work at the massive food service conglomerate, Sysco. The bargaining team called the group to the hall for Saturday’s meeting and, in an incredible display of solidarity, members voted 150-0 to authorize a strike...
Republic Airways Aims To Duck Teamsters' Pay Subsidy Spat Law360 ...Republic Airways Holdings Inc. asked an Indiana federal judge Monday to stay any additional discovery as the court mulls whether to dismiss a lawsuit lobbed by the local Teamsters alleging the airline subsidized premium and bonus pay to pilots to undercut the union's ability to bargain collectively...
Global Labor & Trade
America's Collapsing Trade Initiatives Huffington Post ...Chinese president Xi Jinping will be in Washington this week on an official state visit. President Obama had hoped to impress Xi with an all but sealed trade deal with major Pacific nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to demonstrate that America is still a force to be reckoned with in China's backyard. But Obama's trade policy is in tatters...
TPP could have 'catastrophic effects' on Canada's economy: Unifor president CTVNews ...The president of Canada's largest private sector union says the Trans-Pacific Partnership could have "catastrophic effects" on the nation's economy. Unifor president Jerry Dias was responding to comments made by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper at the Globe and Mail debate on the economy Thursday. In the final segment of the debate, Harper said that Canada is entering the "final stages" of the 12-country trade negotiations...
26,000 Canadian jobs at risk as TPP auto talks resume, Unifor says Canada Manufacturing ...As Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiators from Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Japan meet to discuss the automotive-related features of the massive trade agreement, Unifor is calling on the Canadian contingent to “stand firm” on regional content rules for auto products and other sector-related provisions...
TPP nations to tackle sticking points at month's end Asian Review ...Trade ministers from the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership countries will meet from Sept. 30 to hammer out disagreements left unresolved after previous talks, aiming for a broad agreement before the political climate shifts. Two to three days of talks will be held in the U.S. city of Atlanta. Free trade rules for most of the 31 areas covered by the TPP were settled at the last round of talks in July...
Two Indigenous Solar Engineers Changed Their Village in Chile Truthout ...Liliana and Luisa Terán, two indigenous women from northern Chile who travelled to India for training in installing solar panels, have not only changed their own future but that of Caspana, their remote village nestled in a stunning valley in the Atacama desert. These soft-spoken indigenous women with skin weathered from the desert sun and a life of sacrifice are in charge of giving Caspana at least part of the energy autonomy that the village needs in order to survive...
Greece braces for more austerity as Tsipras sworn in as prime minister TribLive ...Weary Greece braced for more painful austerity Monday as Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister with a mandate to drive through unpopular reforms agreed with the nation's international creditors.
As a downpour swept Athens, The 41-year-old left-wing leader took his second oath of office in eight months...
Hyundai, Kia Workers Set to Stage Partial Strikes WardsAuto ...The Hyundai branch of the Korean Metal Workers Union will hold partial strikes this week after the automaker made a wage offer equal to roughly half of what the union had sought. Talks broke down ahead of the customary deadline for reaching a contract agreement before the country’s Chuseok Thanksgiving holiday...
Teamsters-Sun Tran contract details not made public Arizona Daily Star ...The public hasn’t been clued in to the details of an agreement that ended a 42-day transit strike in Tucson. Teamsters Local 104 and Sun Tran management firm Professional Transit Management signed a two-year contract, good until June 30, 2017. Because the city is not a party to the labor agreement, the Tucson City Council does not have to approve the contract, said City Attorney Mike Rankin...
Teamsters at Sysco Vote 150-0 to Authorize a Strike Local 117 ...“Record attendance,” said Local 117 Secretary-Treasurer John Scearcy, to resounding applause. “This is serious. The company is coming after us, but we will be ready.” The Union hall was packed with Teamsters on Saturday who work at the massive food service conglomerate, Sysco. The bargaining team called the group to the hall for Saturday’s meeting and, in an incredible display of solidarity, members voted 150-0 to authorize a strike...
Republic Airways Aims To Duck Teamsters' Pay Subsidy Spat Law360 ...Republic Airways Holdings Inc. asked an Indiana federal judge Monday to stay any additional discovery as the court mulls whether to dismiss a lawsuit lobbed by the local Teamsters alleging the airline subsidized premium and bonus pay to pilots to undercut the union's ability to bargain collectively...
Global Labor & Trade
America's Collapsing Trade Initiatives Huffington Post ...Chinese president Xi Jinping will be in Washington this week on an official state visit. President Obama had hoped to impress Xi with an all but sealed trade deal with major Pacific nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to demonstrate that America is still a force to be reckoned with in China's backyard. But Obama's trade policy is in tatters...
TPP could have 'catastrophic effects' on Canada's economy: Unifor president CTVNews ...The president of Canada's largest private sector union says the Trans-Pacific Partnership could have "catastrophic effects" on the nation's economy. Unifor president Jerry Dias was responding to comments made by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper at the Globe and Mail debate on the economy Thursday. In the final segment of the debate, Harper said that Canada is entering the "final stages" of the 12-country trade negotiations...
26,000 Canadian jobs at risk as TPP auto talks resume, Unifor says Canada Manufacturing ...As Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiators from Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Japan meet to discuss the automotive-related features of the massive trade agreement, Unifor is calling on the Canadian contingent to “stand firm” on regional content rules for auto products and other sector-related provisions...
TPP nations to tackle sticking points at month's end Asian Review ...Trade ministers from the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership countries will meet from Sept. 30 to hammer out disagreements left unresolved after previous talks, aiming for a broad agreement before the political climate shifts. Two to three days of talks will be held in the U.S. city of Atlanta. Free trade rules for most of the 31 areas covered by the TPP were settled at the last round of talks in July...
Two Indigenous Solar Engineers Changed Their Village in Chile Truthout ...Liliana and Luisa Terán, two indigenous women from northern Chile who travelled to India for training in installing solar panels, have not only changed their own future but that of Caspana, their remote village nestled in a stunning valley in the Atacama desert. These soft-spoken indigenous women with skin weathered from the desert sun and a life of sacrifice are in charge of giving Caspana at least part of the energy autonomy that the village needs in order to survive...
Greece braces for more austerity as Tsipras sworn in as prime minister TribLive ...Weary Greece braced for more painful austerity Monday as Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister with a mandate to drive through unpopular reforms agreed with the nation's international creditors.
As a downpour swept Athens, The 41-year-old left-wing leader took his second oath of office in eight months...
Hyundai, Kia Workers Set to Stage Partial Strikes WardsAuto ...The Hyundai branch of the Korean Metal Workers Union will hold partial strikes this week after the automaker made a wage offer equal to roughly half of what the union had sought. Talks broke down ahead of the customary deadline for reaching a contract agreement before the country’s Chuseok Thanksgiving holiday...
Strike delays hit Australian airports following border force worker strike China Post ...Travelers using Australia's international airports faced delays Monday and were warned of more to come as immigration and border force workers went on strike over pay and conditions. "These workers are angry, they're under pressure, they face major cuts to their take-home pay and workplace rights and government simply hasn't listened," said Nadine Flood, secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) representing workers...
State & Living Wage Battles
Capitol Workers to Strike Ahead of Papal Visit Roll Call ...A few hours before Pope Francis arrives in the District of Columbia for the first leg of his U.S. visit, Capitol food service and other government contract workers will walk off their jobs. The workers will strike Tuesday to renew their call for a $15-an-hour wage and the right to unionize. They plan to proceed to the Capitol and convene across from the East Front with religious leaders and presidential hopeful Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to pray for lawmakers to heed the pope’s message about economic inequality...
Bernie Sanders Minimum Wage Strike: Pope Visit Encourages Federal Workers To Protest, Presidential Candidate To Join International Business Times ...Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is expected to throw his weight behind a labor strike of federal minimum wage workers Tuesday ahead of Pope Francis' visit later that day in Washington. The group organizing the strike, Good Jobs Nation, will receive the support of a rising populist power in the Democratic field as they call on U.S. President Barack Obama to issue an executive order increasing the minimum wage of federal workers to $15 an hour...
20 Republicans may face retaliation for Missouri right-to-work vote STL Today ...their votes weren’t enough to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto during the Legislature’s annual veto session Wednesday. The bill died in the House with a vote of 96-63, 13 votes short of the 109 needed to override. Twenty Republicans voted against right to work. Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who is running for governor in 2016, called them out on it after veto session...
Voter ID Law in Limbo as Thousands Register KTRH ...Tuesday is "National Voter Registration Day," but those signing up in Texas could see major changes to the state's voter ID law ahead of next year's presidential primary. “The legislature has added the concealed weapons identification card as a form of valid photo ID, and there are number of valid government issued IDs with a photograph on them,” says Tom Berg at the League of Women Voters of the Houston Area...
NY gov's call for $15 minimum wage faces major challenges The Chronicle ...New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pledge this week to push for a state minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workers already faces substantial opposition and skepticism. Cuomo made the pledge Sept. 10 at a labor rally with Vice President Joe Biden following Cuomo administration approval of a phased-in $15 minimum for workers at chain fast-food restaurants...
U.S. Labor
UAW leaders take Fiat Chrysler contract to membership The Detroit News ...United Auto Workers leadership is attempting to address questions and concerns of 40,000 union members with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV before they vote on a tentative four-year deal in the coming week. Leaders, including UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, started meeting with local chapters over the weekend to discuss the proposed contract, as local chapters schedule informational meetings...
Registered nurses ratify labor pact at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center Kansas City Star ...Registered nurses at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center in Kansas City have ratified a new labor agreement that includes pay raises and changes in working conditions. Voting was scheduled to run through 12:30 a.m. Tuesday at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, which is among 17 hospitals covered by the tentative agreement negotiated by the National Nurses Organizing Committee of National Nurses United...
USW union asking members how to proceed NWI Times ...United Steelworkers meetings have been taking place in Burns Harbor, Gary and all across the country as the union looks at what to do next in negotiations with U.S. Steel. "Members of our USW bargaining committee have been holding meetings with our brothers and sisters at U.S. Steel locations around the country, reviewing the company's and the union's most recent contract proposals, discussing the status of negotiations and getting feedback from members about what our next steps should be," the union said in a recent update to members...
State & Living Wage Battles
Capitol Workers to Strike Ahead of Papal Visit Roll Call ...A few hours before Pope Francis arrives in the District of Columbia for the first leg of his U.S. visit, Capitol food service and other government contract workers will walk off their jobs. The workers will strike Tuesday to renew their call for a $15-an-hour wage and the right to unionize. They plan to proceed to the Capitol and convene across from the East Front with religious leaders and presidential hopeful Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to pray for lawmakers to heed the pope’s message about economic inequality...
Bernie Sanders Minimum Wage Strike: Pope Visit Encourages Federal Workers To Protest, Presidential Candidate To Join International Business Times ...Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is expected to throw his weight behind a labor strike of federal minimum wage workers Tuesday ahead of Pope Francis' visit later that day in Washington. The group organizing the strike, Good Jobs Nation, will receive the support of a rising populist power in the Democratic field as they call on U.S. President Barack Obama to issue an executive order increasing the minimum wage of federal workers to $15 an hour...
20 Republicans may face retaliation for Missouri right-to-work vote STL Today ...their votes weren’t enough to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto during the Legislature’s annual veto session Wednesday. The bill died in the House with a vote of 96-63, 13 votes short of the 109 needed to override. Twenty Republicans voted against right to work. Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who is running for governor in 2016, called them out on it after veto session...
Voter ID Law in Limbo as Thousands Register KTRH ...Tuesday is "National Voter Registration Day," but those signing up in Texas could see major changes to the state's voter ID law ahead of next year's presidential primary. “The legislature has added the concealed weapons identification card as a form of valid photo ID, and there are number of valid government issued IDs with a photograph on them,” says Tom Berg at the League of Women Voters of the Houston Area...
NY gov's call for $15 minimum wage faces major challenges The Chronicle ...New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pledge this week to push for a state minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workers already faces substantial opposition and skepticism. Cuomo made the pledge Sept. 10 at a labor rally with Vice President Joe Biden following Cuomo administration approval of a phased-in $15 minimum for workers at chain fast-food restaurants...
U.S. Labor
UAW leaders take Fiat Chrysler contract to membership The Detroit News ...United Auto Workers leadership is attempting to address questions and concerns of 40,000 union members with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV before they vote on a tentative four-year deal in the coming week. Leaders, including UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, started meeting with local chapters over the weekend to discuss the proposed contract, as local chapters schedule informational meetings...
Registered nurses ratify labor pact at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center Kansas City Star ...Registered nurses at HCA-affiliated Research Medical Center in Kansas City have ratified a new labor agreement that includes pay raises and changes in working conditions. Voting was scheduled to run through 12:30 a.m. Tuesday at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, which is among 17 hospitals covered by the tentative agreement negotiated by the National Nurses Organizing Committee of National Nurses United...
USW union asking members how to proceed NWI Times ...United Steelworkers meetings have been taking place in Burns Harbor, Gary and all across the country as the union looks at what to do next in negotiations with U.S. Steel. "Members of our USW bargaining committee have been holding meetings with our brothers and sisters at U.S. Steel locations around the country, reviewing the company's and the union's most recent contract proposals, discussing the status of negotiations and getting feedback from members about what our next steps should be," the union said in a recent update to members...
The Historical Roots of American Domestic Worker Organizing Run Deep In These Times ...Domestic workers and their advocates have been making an increasing number of headlines since 2010, when New York became the first state to pass a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Guaranteeing overtime and time off, such legislation has spread to four other states and is being fought for in many more. But organizing around domestic work has been ongoing since at least the 1930s, an often forgotten corner of the labor movement...
Social Justice & Other News
Scott Walker Drops Out Of 2016 Presidential Race Huffington Post ...Once considered a favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced Monday that he is dropping out of the race, amid sinking poll numbers and fundraising concerns. "I suspend my campaign immediately," he said at a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Walker implored other candidates to consider exiting the race as well, in order to winnow the field...
Pope Francis’s Philadelphia prison visit highlights crisis in US justice system The Guardian ...Behind barbed wire and under guard towers on the edge of north-east Philadelphia, Pope Francis will meet more than 100 men and women from a dangerously overcrowded prison population drawn largely from the poor, civil rights advocates say. The facility presents an extreme microcosm of two of the most pressing national prison problems: pretrial detention and overcrowding...
Americans Are Paying Way Too Much On Rent, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse Think Progress ...More than a quarter of renters in the United States have to put half of their income toward paying rent. But that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that things are almost certainly going to get worse. About half of all renters are paying more than the recommended 30 percent of income toward rent. Those rates are roughly double what they were in 1960...
US immigration back to pre–Great Recession levels, with Asians leading Aljazeera ...Immigration rates to the U.S. have rebounded to their pre-recession levels and the country’s percentage of foreign-born now is at its highest in more than a century, when boatloads of eastern and southern Europeans arrived at Ellis Island. But the face of immigration is dramatically different than it was just a decade ago, when the bulk of the influx came from Mexico and Central America. Asians now far outnumber the number of immigrants from Latin America...
Rights Campaigners Form Human Blockade to Stop Deportations Common Dreams ...Highlighting what they say is a "global human rights issue," dozens of rights campaigners on Monday morning locked themselves together and formed a human chain to block buses at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Takoma, Washington from carrying out deportations of suspected undocumented people...
Martin Shkreli on his “altruistic” motives: “I’m a capitalist — I want to create a big drug company” Salon ...On “CBS This Morning,” embattled Turing Pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli continued to defend his company’s decision to hike the price of Daraprim by 5,455 percent, claiming that “there are a lot of altruistic properties” to raising the cost. He denied that the increased cost was “drastic.” This new “reasonable profit” is being made at the expense of immunocompromised patients, such as pregnant women and babies, as well as those with AIDS or who are undergoing radiation therapy...
Social Justice & Other News
Scott Walker Drops Out Of 2016 Presidential Race Huffington Post ...Once considered a favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced Monday that he is dropping out of the race, amid sinking poll numbers and fundraising concerns. "I suspend my campaign immediately," he said at a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Walker implored other candidates to consider exiting the race as well, in order to winnow the field...
Pope Francis’s Philadelphia prison visit highlights crisis in US justice system The Guardian ...Behind barbed wire and under guard towers on the edge of north-east Philadelphia, Pope Francis will meet more than 100 men and women from a dangerously overcrowded prison population drawn largely from the poor, civil rights advocates say. The facility presents an extreme microcosm of two of the most pressing national prison problems: pretrial detention and overcrowding...
Americans Are Paying Way Too Much On Rent, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse Think Progress ...More than a quarter of renters in the United States have to put half of their income toward paying rent. But that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that things are almost certainly going to get worse. About half of all renters are paying more than the recommended 30 percent of income toward rent. Those rates are roughly double what they were in 1960...
US immigration back to pre–Great Recession levels, with Asians leading Aljazeera ...Immigration rates to the U.S. have rebounded to their pre-recession levels and the country’s percentage of foreign-born now is at its highest in more than a century, when boatloads of eastern and southern Europeans arrived at Ellis Island. But the face of immigration is dramatically different than it was just a decade ago, when the bulk of the influx came from Mexico and Central America. Asians now far outnumber the number of immigrants from Latin America...
Rights Campaigners Form Human Blockade to Stop Deportations Common Dreams ...Highlighting what they say is a "global human rights issue," dozens of rights campaigners on Monday morning locked themselves together and formed a human chain to block buses at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Takoma, Washington from carrying out deportations of suspected undocumented people...
Martin Shkreli on his “altruistic” motives: “I’m a capitalist — I want to create a big drug company” Salon ...On “CBS This Morning,” embattled Turing Pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli continued to defend his company’s decision to hike the price of Daraprim by 5,455 percent, claiming that “there are a lot of altruistic properties” to raising the cost. He denied that the increased cost was “drastic.” This new “reasonable profit” is being made at the expense of immunocompromised patients, such as pregnant women and babies, as well as those with AIDS or who are undergoing radiation therapy...
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Today's Teamster News 09.15.15
Teamsters
Thousands Of Teamsters March In New York Labor Day Parade Teamster.org ...Thousands of Teamsters in New York participated in the annual Labor Day parade on Saturday. Members from local unions representing a variety of industries including construction, motion picture, theatrical trades, warehouse, public services, sanitation, parking, brewery, soft drink, freight, funeral, moving and printing participated. In each of the local union contingents members held the new "Let's Get America Working - Union Strong, America Stronger" signs...
Atlanta Teamsters Ratify Sysco Contract, First Ever in Georgia Teamster.org ...Teamsters Local 528 members, whose fight to win union representation has lasted more than 18 months, ratified a first contract that provides strong union protections for more than 400 workers at Sysco’s Atlanta facility on Saturday. “This has been an uphill struggle, but these workers stood together through it all to negotiate a strong first contract that will protect them for years to come,” said Maurice Cobb, Teamsters Local 528 President...
Port truck drivers enter 10th week of wage-theft protests Press Telegram ...Truck drivers for a transportation company serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports entered their 10th week protesting what they say are more than $6 million in wages and expenses stolen by their employer, a Teamsters official said Monday. The drivers picketing at Pacific 9 Transportation’s Carson truck yard say they should be on the pay roll as employees but are instead misclassified as independent contractors...
Teamsters Vehemently Voice Opposition to Harmful Soda Tax Local 727 ...Teamster representatives and beverage industry members showed their strength and solidarity in vehement opposition of 12th Ward Ald. George Cardenas’ proposed penny-an-ounce soda tax. Dozens of Local 727 members dressed proudly in work shirts displaying Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and other soft drink logos packed Chicago’s City Council chambers for a Health Committee hearing on Sept. 9 as opponents of the harmful tax outnumbered supporters by an estimated 40 to 1...
Local 727 Continues to Raise Hotel Industry’s Working Standards Local 727 ...Teamsters Local 727’s campaign to raise wages and working standards at Chicago-area hotels recorded another victory last week when DoubleTree Arlington Heights shuttle bus drivers ratified their first union contract. The five-year agreement includes annual wage increases, paid sick/personal days and crucial job protections such as a grievance and arbitration procedure, seniority and non-discrimination clauses, and roll-off for discipline...
Teamsters Raise $37,500 for Camp Papillon Teamsters Canada ...On Thursday, the Teamsters Union sent the profits from the Teamsters Quebec Omnium to the Director General of the Quebec Society for Disabled Children and Camp Papillon, Ronald Davidson. A total of $37 500 was donated to the camp that that, each year, welcomes close to 700 children with disabilities by giving them a chance to experience outdoor living in a secure environment...
Global Labor & Trade
Labor Will Keep Up Trade Pressure on Democrats National Journal ...Two months after the passage of controversial trade legislation that stirred tensions within the Democratic Party, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said organized labor has no plans to back down when it comes time for Congress to ratify passage of a sweeping Pacific trade deal. Asked if his group would apply pressure to Democrats on the issue—even if it came up close to the election—Trumka replied, “Yes”...
Auto parts differences between Japan, U.S. and others seen clouding prospects for next TPP ministerial talks Japan Times ...The 12 countries taking part in Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations are likely to face difficulties in arranging a ministerial meeting as Japan, the United States and others were unable to narrow the gap over the automotive sector in recent working-level talks. The participating nations are aiming to hold a ministerial session later this month or in early October, after they failed to reach a broad TPP accord at their previous ministerial discussions...
Thailand looks to join US-led TPP Today Online ...Thailand is interested in joining the ambitious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact being touted by the United States, but needs to study the terms and conditions of the new trade bloc first, Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak has said. “We are very interested, but we must weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully,” Mr Somkid told the Bangkok Post...
Uruguay Pulls Out Of ‘Secret’ Talks On Trade In Services Eurasia Review ...Just a week before the deadline for submitting national offers on liberalisation of services sectors under the on-going “secret” talks for a Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez decided on September 7 to abandon the plurilateral negotiations. The Uruguayan president’s action follows a decision taken on September 5 by a large majority of the Frente Amplio, the governing leftist political coalition, against Uruguay continuing to be part of the TiSA negotiations...
Germany Closes Its Border With Austria, Hoping to Stop the Refugee Flow Mother Jones ...The German government has announced that the country is closing its border with Austria and also suspending train traffic to and from its southern neighbor, the route by which tens of thousands of refugees have entered Germany in recent days. Those borders have been open for nearly 20 years under the Schengen Agreement, which turned most of the European Union into one large free-travel zone with no internal border checks...
Brazil unveils a massive $17 billion austerity package that won't make people happy Business Insider ...Brazil announced a massive $17 billion austerity package Monday in a bid to boost its ailing economy amid a deepening crisis that has already caused a shock downgrade of its credit rating. The package -- announced at a news conference by Planning Minister Nelson Barbosa -- includes freezing public sector salary raises and hiring, entirely eliminating 10 of 39 ministries, cutting 1,000 jobs and slashing housing and health-related social spending...
Forced Labor Rampant in Uzbekistan Fall Cotton Harvest Solidarity Center ...Health care workers in Uzbekistan are toiling in cotton fields and third- and fourth-year university students are now on their way as well, forced by the government to labor in the country’s fall harvest, according to stories compiled by the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights. The nonprofit organization also is highlighting news that minors again may be forced into picking cotton...
State & Living Wage Battles
Missouri GOP governor candidates urge right-to-work override Kansas City Star ...Five likely Republican candidates for Missouri governor have sent a letter to state lawmakers urging them to overturn Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of so-called right to work legislation. The candidates are Eric Greitens, Catherine Hanaway, Peter Kinder, Randy Asbury, and John Brunner. The veto session starts Wednesday. The bill under consideration would prohibit the collection of mandatory union dues. The vote is likely to be close...
Vote postponed on minimum wage bill WIAT ...A vote on legislation to keep municipalities in Alabama from independently raising the minimum wage has been postponed in the state House of Representatives. The bill was introduced last week by Rep. David Faulkner (R – Mountain Brook), not long after the Birmingham City Council voted to raise minimum wage from $7.25 an hour, the federal rate, to $10.10 an hour, to be phased in over two years...
Anti-union group offers petition to end prevailing wage Detroit Free Press ...A group looking to end Michigan's prevailing-wage law turned in enough signatures Monday to put the issue before the Legislature. The 390,959 signatures in 44 boxes still have to go through a review with the Michigan Secretary of State to determine whether there are at least 252,523 valid signatures...
NJ's paid sick leave bill stalls North Jersey ...A bill that would require employers to give workers paid sick time off remains stalled over whether the statewide law should be the final word on what employers must do, or whether it should allow towns to pass their own laws in the future. The bill, which has the backing of committees in the Senate and the Assembly, has gotten bogged down over whether the law should supersede nine municipal paid sick leave laws...
10 Cities Where It’s Most Terrifying To Scrape By On Minimum Wage Huffington Post ...Recently, New York became the first state to approve a $15 minimum wage for the state’s 200,000 fast-food cooks and cashiers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo used the occasion to announce a campaign to make New York the first state in the nation to adopt the same standard for all of its workers. In fact, workers making minimum wage in New York counties have had it relatively easy, at least compared with the following 10 counties...
U.S. Labor
No deal yet: UAW, Fiat Chrysler pulled an all-nighter Detroit Free Press ...No deal yet as the UAW and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles continued to negotiate through the night after extending the existing collective agreement on an hour-by-hour basis in anticipation of signing a tentative agreement soon. The pace of the talks slowed a bit in the predawn hours but a core group continued to soldier on. Full resumption of bargaining is expected to resume by midday...
The Verizon Standoff and the Future of Labor, Communication and Privacy Counterpunch ...On August 1, 2015, the IBEW and CWA contract with Verizon expired. However, unlike previous years, they decided to not strike, a move meant to undermine the company’s hiring and housing of scabs. This is a labor struggle that will have a major impact on the entire labor movement. “I think the days of the short strike is over. Verizon wants to break the union and is willing to overwork lower levels of management in the process,” said Dan Murphy, a retired member of the union...
ATI declines USW offer to return to bargaining table Times Online ...he United Steelworkers tried to get Allegheny Technologies back to the bargaining table ahead of a scheduled mediation Friday, but the company declined to bargain. USW spokesman Wayne Ranick said the company still stands firm to its “last, best and final” offer made more than a month ago before the company locked out thousands of union members...
This Is How Bad the Sharing Economy Is for Workers The Nation ... The “sharing” or “gig” economy—think Airbnb, Uber, and Taskrabbit—has made massive fortunes reducing labor to disassembled microtasks; unfortunately, it’s shrunk workers’ rights too. But as our jobs are redefined by labor-brokering platforms, some advocates are trying to redefine labor rights for a digital economy. Currently, the gig economy trades labor fluidly across online platforms...
How Cities Can Join the Fight Against Wage Theft Truthout ...Unpaid labor, which is sometimes referred to as wage theft, is a national problem that affects working families and deprives large amounts of money from being circulated in our communities. Estimates on the issue range as high as $30 billion in unpaid wages. The US Department of Labor alone collects hundreds of millions of dollars in wages that were originally not paid, touching only the tip of the iceberg...
Scott Walker wants to destroy what’s left of America’s unions Slate ...On Monday, the Wisconsin governor released his plan to strangle unions, titled “My Plan to Give Power to the People, Not the Union Bosses.” He would end collective bargaining for federal employees, as per his move in 2011; he would require complete disclosure for union expenditures and total compensation of union officers; he would sign a national “right to work law;” he would repeal wage controls for federal infrastructure projects; and he would eliminate the National Labor Relations Board...
Social Justice & Other News
Why Non-Voters Matter The Atlantic ...In 2014, just 41.9 percent of the voting-age citizen population of the United States voted. But the people who voted are not only in the minority, they form an unrepresentative minority. In many salient ways, voters are not like nonvoters: voters are richer, whiter, and older than other Americans. "Why Voting Matters," shows how their votes produce a government that caters to their interests—and how boosting turnout would lead to a more representative democracy...
Colleges Flush With Cash Saddle Poorest Students With Debt Common Dreams ...NYU is not the only university with a billion-dollar endowment to leave its poorest students with heavy debt loads. More than a quarter of the nation’s 60 wealthiest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans. At the University of Southern California, which has a $4.6 billion endowment, low-income students graduate with slightly more debt than NYU’s graduates: $23,375...
Ferguson "People's Report" Unveils Bold Plan To Achieve Racial Equity Common Dreams ...A panel of activists, researchers, community members, and other volunteers on Monday unveiled a new report with 189 "calls to action" to address the scourge of racial inequity in and around St. Louis, Missouri, illuminated by a year of protests following the police shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August. Brown's death at the hands of a white police officer galvanized new questions and demands over institutional racism in the U.S...
The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration The Atlantic ...Influenced by the civil-rights movement, Moynihan focused on the black family. He believed that an undue optimism about the pending passage of civil-rights legislation was obscuring a pressing problem: a deficit of employed black men of strong character. “The Negro Family” argued that the federal government was underestimating the damage done to black families by “three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment” as well as a “racist virus in the American blood stream”...
Thousands Of Teamsters March In New York Labor Day Parade Teamster.org ...Thousands of Teamsters in New York participated in the annual Labor Day parade on Saturday. Members from local unions representing a variety of industries including construction, motion picture, theatrical trades, warehouse, public services, sanitation, parking, brewery, soft drink, freight, funeral, moving and printing participated. In each of the local union contingents members held the new "Let's Get America Working - Union Strong, America Stronger" signs...
Atlanta Teamsters Ratify Sysco Contract, First Ever in Georgia Teamster.org ...Teamsters Local 528 members, whose fight to win union representation has lasted more than 18 months, ratified a first contract that provides strong union protections for more than 400 workers at Sysco’s Atlanta facility on Saturday. “This has been an uphill struggle, but these workers stood together through it all to negotiate a strong first contract that will protect them for years to come,” said Maurice Cobb, Teamsters Local 528 President...
Port truck drivers enter 10th week of wage-theft protests Press Telegram ...Truck drivers for a transportation company serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports entered their 10th week protesting what they say are more than $6 million in wages and expenses stolen by their employer, a Teamsters official said Monday. The drivers picketing at Pacific 9 Transportation’s Carson truck yard say they should be on the pay roll as employees but are instead misclassified as independent contractors...
Teamsters Vehemently Voice Opposition to Harmful Soda Tax Local 727 ...Teamster representatives and beverage industry members showed their strength and solidarity in vehement opposition of 12th Ward Ald. George Cardenas’ proposed penny-an-ounce soda tax. Dozens of Local 727 members dressed proudly in work shirts displaying Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and other soft drink logos packed Chicago’s City Council chambers for a Health Committee hearing on Sept. 9 as opponents of the harmful tax outnumbered supporters by an estimated 40 to 1...
Local 727 Continues to Raise Hotel Industry’s Working Standards Local 727 ...Teamsters Local 727’s campaign to raise wages and working standards at Chicago-area hotels recorded another victory last week when DoubleTree Arlington Heights shuttle bus drivers ratified their first union contract. The five-year agreement includes annual wage increases, paid sick/personal days and crucial job protections such as a grievance and arbitration procedure, seniority and non-discrimination clauses, and roll-off for discipline...
Teamsters Raise $37,500 for Camp Papillon Teamsters Canada ...On Thursday, the Teamsters Union sent the profits from the Teamsters Quebec Omnium to the Director General of the Quebec Society for Disabled Children and Camp Papillon, Ronald Davidson. A total of $37 500 was donated to the camp that that, each year, welcomes close to 700 children with disabilities by giving them a chance to experience outdoor living in a secure environment...
Global Labor & Trade
Labor Will Keep Up Trade Pressure on Democrats National Journal ...Two months after the passage of controversial trade legislation that stirred tensions within the Democratic Party, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said organized labor has no plans to back down when it comes time for Congress to ratify passage of a sweeping Pacific trade deal. Asked if his group would apply pressure to Democrats on the issue—even if it came up close to the election—Trumka replied, “Yes”...
Auto parts differences between Japan, U.S. and others seen clouding prospects for next TPP ministerial talks Japan Times ...The 12 countries taking part in Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations are likely to face difficulties in arranging a ministerial meeting as Japan, the United States and others were unable to narrow the gap over the automotive sector in recent working-level talks. The participating nations are aiming to hold a ministerial session later this month or in early October, after they failed to reach a broad TPP accord at their previous ministerial discussions...
Thailand looks to join US-led TPP Today Online ...Thailand is interested in joining the ambitious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact being touted by the United States, but needs to study the terms and conditions of the new trade bloc first, Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak has said. “We are very interested, but we must weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully,” Mr Somkid told the Bangkok Post...
Uruguay Pulls Out Of ‘Secret’ Talks On Trade In Services Eurasia Review ...Just a week before the deadline for submitting national offers on liberalisation of services sectors under the on-going “secret” talks for a Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez decided on September 7 to abandon the plurilateral negotiations. The Uruguayan president’s action follows a decision taken on September 5 by a large majority of the Frente Amplio, the governing leftist political coalition, against Uruguay continuing to be part of the TiSA negotiations...
Germany Closes Its Border With Austria, Hoping to Stop the Refugee Flow Mother Jones ...The German government has announced that the country is closing its border with Austria and also suspending train traffic to and from its southern neighbor, the route by which tens of thousands of refugees have entered Germany in recent days. Those borders have been open for nearly 20 years under the Schengen Agreement, which turned most of the European Union into one large free-travel zone with no internal border checks...
Brazil unveils a massive $17 billion austerity package that won't make people happy Business Insider ...Brazil announced a massive $17 billion austerity package Monday in a bid to boost its ailing economy amid a deepening crisis that has already caused a shock downgrade of its credit rating. The package -- announced at a news conference by Planning Minister Nelson Barbosa -- includes freezing public sector salary raises and hiring, entirely eliminating 10 of 39 ministries, cutting 1,000 jobs and slashing housing and health-related social spending...
Forced Labor Rampant in Uzbekistan Fall Cotton Harvest Solidarity Center ...Health care workers in Uzbekistan are toiling in cotton fields and third- and fourth-year university students are now on their way as well, forced by the government to labor in the country’s fall harvest, according to stories compiled by the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights. The nonprofit organization also is highlighting news that minors again may be forced into picking cotton...
State & Living Wage Battles
Missouri GOP governor candidates urge right-to-work override Kansas City Star ...Five likely Republican candidates for Missouri governor have sent a letter to state lawmakers urging them to overturn Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of so-called right to work legislation. The candidates are Eric Greitens, Catherine Hanaway, Peter Kinder, Randy Asbury, and John Brunner. The veto session starts Wednesday. The bill under consideration would prohibit the collection of mandatory union dues. The vote is likely to be close...
Vote postponed on minimum wage bill WIAT ...A vote on legislation to keep municipalities in Alabama from independently raising the minimum wage has been postponed in the state House of Representatives. The bill was introduced last week by Rep. David Faulkner (R – Mountain Brook), not long after the Birmingham City Council voted to raise minimum wage from $7.25 an hour, the federal rate, to $10.10 an hour, to be phased in over two years...
Anti-union group offers petition to end prevailing wage Detroit Free Press ...A group looking to end Michigan's prevailing-wage law turned in enough signatures Monday to put the issue before the Legislature. The 390,959 signatures in 44 boxes still have to go through a review with the Michigan Secretary of State to determine whether there are at least 252,523 valid signatures...
NJ's paid sick leave bill stalls North Jersey ...A bill that would require employers to give workers paid sick time off remains stalled over whether the statewide law should be the final word on what employers must do, or whether it should allow towns to pass their own laws in the future. The bill, which has the backing of committees in the Senate and the Assembly, has gotten bogged down over whether the law should supersede nine municipal paid sick leave laws...
10 Cities Where It’s Most Terrifying To Scrape By On Minimum Wage Huffington Post ...Recently, New York became the first state to approve a $15 minimum wage for the state’s 200,000 fast-food cooks and cashiers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo used the occasion to announce a campaign to make New York the first state in the nation to adopt the same standard for all of its workers. In fact, workers making minimum wage in New York counties have had it relatively easy, at least compared with the following 10 counties...
U.S. Labor
No deal yet: UAW, Fiat Chrysler pulled an all-nighter Detroit Free Press ...No deal yet as the UAW and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles continued to negotiate through the night after extending the existing collective agreement on an hour-by-hour basis in anticipation of signing a tentative agreement soon. The pace of the talks slowed a bit in the predawn hours but a core group continued to soldier on. Full resumption of bargaining is expected to resume by midday...
The Verizon Standoff and the Future of Labor, Communication and Privacy Counterpunch ...On August 1, 2015, the IBEW and CWA contract with Verizon expired. However, unlike previous years, they decided to not strike, a move meant to undermine the company’s hiring and housing of scabs. This is a labor struggle that will have a major impact on the entire labor movement. “I think the days of the short strike is over. Verizon wants to break the union and is willing to overwork lower levels of management in the process,” said Dan Murphy, a retired member of the union...
ATI declines USW offer to return to bargaining table Times Online ...he United Steelworkers tried to get Allegheny Technologies back to the bargaining table ahead of a scheduled mediation Friday, but the company declined to bargain. USW spokesman Wayne Ranick said the company still stands firm to its “last, best and final” offer made more than a month ago before the company locked out thousands of union members...
This Is How Bad the Sharing Economy Is for Workers The Nation ... The “sharing” or “gig” economy—think Airbnb, Uber, and Taskrabbit—has made massive fortunes reducing labor to disassembled microtasks; unfortunately, it’s shrunk workers’ rights too. But as our jobs are redefined by labor-brokering platforms, some advocates are trying to redefine labor rights for a digital economy. Currently, the gig economy trades labor fluidly across online platforms...
How Cities Can Join the Fight Against Wage Theft Truthout ...Unpaid labor, which is sometimes referred to as wage theft, is a national problem that affects working families and deprives large amounts of money from being circulated in our communities. Estimates on the issue range as high as $30 billion in unpaid wages. The US Department of Labor alone collects hundreds of millions of dollars in wages that were originally not paid, touching only the tip of the iceberg...
Scott Walker wants to destroy what’s left of America’s unions Slate ...On Monday, the Wisconsin governor released his plan to strangle unions, titled “My Plan to Give Power to the People, Not the Union Bosses.” He would end collective bargaining for federal employees, as per his move in 2011; he would require complete disclosure for union expenditures and total compensation of union officers; he would sign a national “right to work law;” he would repeal wage controls for federal infrastructure projects; and he would eliminate the National Labor Relations Board...
Social Justice & Other News
Why Non-Voters Matter The Atlantic ...In 2014, just 41.9 percent of the voting-age citizen population of the United States voted. But the people who voted are not only in the minority, they form an unrepresentative minority. In many salient ways, voters are not like nonvoters: voters are richer, whiter, and older than other Americans. "Why Voting Matters," shows how their votes produce a government that caters to their interests—and how boosting turnout would lead to a more representative democracy...
Colleges Flush With Cash Saddle Poorest Students With Debt Common Dreams ...NYU is not the only university with a billion-dollar endowment to leave its poorest students with heavy debt loads. More than a quarter of the nation’s 60 wealthiest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans. At the University of Southern California, which has a $4.6 billion endowment, low-income students graduate with slightly more debt than NYU’s graduates: $23,375...
Ferguson "People's Report" Unveils Bold Plan To Achieve Racial Equity Common Dreams ...A panel of activists, researchers, community members, and other volunteers on Monday unveiled a new report with 189 "calls to action" to address the scourge of racial inequity in and around St. Louis, Missouri, illuminated by a year of protests following the police shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August. Brown's death at the hands of a white police officer galvanized new questions and demands over institutional racism in the U.S...
The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration The Atlantic ...Influenced by the civil-rights movement, Moynihan focused on the black family. He believed that an undue optimism about the pending passage of civil-rights legislation was obscuring a pressing problem: a deficit of employed black men of strong character. “The Negro Family” argued that the federal government was underestimating the damage done to black families by “three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment” as well as a “racist virus in the American blood stream”...
Monday, August 10, 2015
Today's Teamster News 08.10.15
Teamsters
Picketers At Calgary BURNCO Location Protest Employee Lockout Global News ...The lockout affects members of Teamsters Union Local 362, which covers employees at plants in Airdrie, Springbank and Okotoks.The union says the biggest sticking point with the negotiations is seniority, which employees don’t want to give up...
Sun Tran Strike: Day 5 Arizona Daily Star ...Teamsters want a pay raise and improved workplace safety conditions. Sun Tran says its offer “amounts to an increase of $2.7 million over the recommended three-year contract, while the offer issued by Teamsters Local Union 104 amounts to a $20.3 million increase.” Sun Tran also says it’s working with the union to address assaults on drivers and a mold issue in a maintenance building...
Teamster: Even The Top Guys In UFC Are Underpaid SB Nation ...While Thursday's announced garnered plenty of attention, details were still a little vague. To get a better idea of what exactly the Teamsters and UNITE HERE were trying to accomplish I spoke last Friday with Chris Griswold, Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters, Local 986...
Global Labor & Trade
Child Labor On The Rise In West Africa As Demand For Cocoa Grows Wall Street Journal ...Despite nearly 14 years of government and industry efforts aimed at combatting child labor in cocoa production, 21% more children are illegally laboring on cocoa farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast than five years ago, according to a Tulane University study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor...
How El Salvador’s Supreme Court Is Undermining Democracy—With Washington’s Help The Nation ...In fact, plans to undermine leftist governance in El Salvador go back years before the election of Sánchez Cerén, the first guerrilla leader of the leftist Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front (FMLN) party to become president of El Salvador. The strategy centers on the country’s Supreme Court—and the US government has been in on it from the beginning...
Greece And Creditors In Final Push For Bailout Huffington Post ...Greece and international creditors sought to put final touches on a multi-billion euro bailout accord on Monday to keep the country financially afloat and meet an important debt repayment to the European Central Bank within days...
State & Living Wage Battles
Washington State Poised To Become Leader In Oil Train Safety Ahead Of Massive Increase In Traffic Puget Sound Business Journal ...Washington state is quickly becoming a leader in crude oil train safety standards. That's good because the state is gearing up to become a high-traffic zone for the controversial trains...
Corps Of Engineers Should FUSRAP-Up West Lake's Toxic Waste St. Louis Post-Dispatch ...The best solution for cleaning up radioactive waste buried at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton is to give control of the site to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...
California Effort To Issue Driver’s Licenses To Immigrants Receives Surge Of Applicants New York Times ...When Alberto Fraire drives past a police car these days, he no longer worries about steep fines, or perhaps being hauled to jail and tangling with the immigration system. When California began issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants this year, he was one of the first in line...
Amid Push For Higher Minimum Wage, Concern Rising About Workers Cheated Out Of Proper Pay U.S. News & World Report ...As a campaign to raise the minimum wage as high as $15 has achieved victories in such places as Seattle, Los Angeles and New York, it has bumped up against a harsh reality: Plenty of scofflaw businesses don't pay the legal minimum now and probably won't pay the new, higher wages either...
Another Sign That Momentum Is Building On Paid Parental Leave In The U.S. Huffington Post ...In the latest sign that support for paid family leave is growing in the U.S., Adobe on Monday announced a big expansion of benefits, including up to half a year of paid time off for new mothers...
U.S. Labor
The Outrageous Ascent Of CEO Pay Huffington Post ...For the last thirty years almost all incentives operating on American corporations have resulted in lower pay for average workers and higher pay for CEOs and other top executives. Consider that in 1965, CEOs of America's largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers. Now, the ratio is over 300 to 1...
Sysco Profit Drops, Hurt By US Foods-Related Costs Wall Street Journal ...Sysco Corp. said profit in its latest quarter fell, as the company booked charges stemming from its abandoned plan to acquire rival US Foods Inc...
Twisting Words To Make ‘Sharing’ Apps Seem Selfless New York Times ...Of course, marketing by its very nature involves concocting the most appealing expressions to attract consumers. But start-ups that enable consumers to summon drivers, lunch deliveries or domestic help at the tap of an app have added incentives to portray themselves in feel-good terms. Government regulators, legislators and courts in the United States have started scrutinizing the app-mediated service sector with the idea of determining whether longstanding consumer protection and labor rules apply to these new delivery models...
AT&T, Union Continue Negotiations After Contracts Expire Bloomberg Business ...AT&T Inc. and the Communications Workers of America continued talks on new labor contracts as current agreements covering more than 24,000 employees in the southeast U.S. expired...
CTU President: Contract Talks Haven’t Broken Down WBBM ...Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis disagrees contract talks with school officials have reached the “acrimonious” stage. She says meetings with public school officials have been very cordial and teachers have even been willing to take a pay freeze...
Social Justice & Other News
Virginia Recalling Specialty License Plates With Confederate Flag NPR ...Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles will begin recalling specialty license plates depicting the Confederate battle flag following a federal judge's decision last week to dissolve an injunction that barred officials from blocking such plates...
The Confederate Flag Just Came Down In ‘The Last Capitol Of The Confederacy’ Think Progress ...According to GoDanRiver.com, the Danville city council voted 7-2 last week to remove the Third National flag of the Confederacy from the lawn of the Sutherlin Mansion, a historic building which houses a museum paid for with public funds. The flag was erected in 1995 on the house’s lawn to commemorate its historical significance — namely, that it hosted the last official meeting of the Confederate presidential cabinet, making it the “Last Capitol of the Confederacy.”...
Congress’s Cybersecurity Plan Has Some Major Flaws Think Progress ...One complaint privacy advocates have is that CISA, as written, undercuts existing privacy laws that give citizens power to hold companies responsible for any digital recklessness...
Segregation 101 Huffington Post ...Surveys of black families have found that most would prefer to live in racially integrated neighborhoods. But black families face a variety of obstacles in finding houses to buy or apartments to rent in such areas. Moreover, racial segregation isn't simply a byproduct of the fact that blacks have, on average, lower incomes than whites. Even middle-class African-American families tend to live in racially segregated areas; they, too, face discrimination when looking for apartments to rent or houses to buy...
Fox News v. Donald Trump: It’s Hard To Destroy A Monster Of Your Own Creation Salon.com ...For years, Fox News provided Donald Trump a platform to talk about politics to an audience of conservative voters. The network’s employees constantly bombarded him with questions and encouragement regarding his presidential ambitions. When he finally did run, Fox promoted and defended his candidacy in the face of near universal criticism. His presence at Fox News’ debate helped make it the most-watched primary debate in history. And after all that, when he finally got up on stage, Fox News shivved him...
A Gaggle Of Future Governors Just Had A Great Time In Maui Huffington Post ...Last month, a group of state attorneys general flew to Maui for the annual meeting of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. For several days, the top law enforcement officers -- who are often referred to as "aspiring governors" because of their tendency to run for and win higher elected office -- attended panels and swapped legal expertise on issues facing their states. They also mixed with executives, lawyers and lobbyists at a Waldorf Astoria resort that boasts tropical gardens, a swim-up bar and a grand view of Wailea Beach...
Picketers At Calgary BURNCO Location Protest Employee Lockout Global News ...The lockout affects members of Teamsters Union Local 362, which covers employees at plants in Airdrie, Springbank and Okotoks.The union says the biggest sticking point with the negotiations is seniority, which employees don’t want to give up...
Sun Tran Strike: Day 5 Arizona Daily Star ...Teamsters want a pay raise and improved workplace safety conditions. Sun Tran says its offer “amounts to an increase of $2.7 million over the recommended three-year contract, while the offer issued by Teamsters Local Union 104 amounts to a $20.3 million increase.” Sun Tran also says it’s working with the union to address assaults on drivers and a mold issue in a maintenance building...
Teamster: Even The Top Guys In UFC Are Underpaid SB Nation ...While Thursday's announced garnered plenty of attention, details were still a little vague. To get a better idea of what exactly the Teamsters and UNITE HERE were trying to accomplish I spoke last Friday with Chris Griswold, Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters, Local 986...
Global Labor & Trade
Child Labor On The Rise In West Africa As Demand For Cocoa Grows Wall Street Journal ...Despite nearly 14 years of government and industry efforts aimed at combatting child labor in cocoa production, 21% more children are illegally laboring on cocoa farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast than five years ago, according to a Tulane University study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor...
How El Salvador’s Supreme Court Is Undermining Democracy—With Washington’s Help The Nation ...In fact, plans to undermine leftist governance in El Salvador go back years before the election of Sánchez Cerén, the first guerrilla leader of the leftist Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front (FMLN) party to become president of El Salvador. The strategy centers on the country’s Supreme Court—and the US government has been in on it from the beginning...
Greece And Creditors In Final Push For Bailout Huffington Post ...Greece and international creditors sought to put final touches on a multi-billion euro bailout accord on Monday to keep the country financially afloat and meet an important debt repayment to the European Central Bank within days...
State & Living Wage Battles
Washington State Poised To Become Leader In Oil Train Safety Ahead Of Massive Increase In Traffic Puget Sound Business Journal ...Washington state is quickly becoming a leader in crude oil train safety standards. That's good because the state is gearing up to become a high-traffic zone for the controversial trains...
Corps Of Engineers Should FUSRAP-Up West Lake's Toxic Waste St. Louis Post-Dispatch ...The best solution for cleaning up radioactive waste buried at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton is to give control of the site to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...
California Effort To Issue Driver’s Licenses To Immigrants Receives Surge Of Applicants New York Times ...When Alberto Fraire drives past a police car these days, he no longer worries about steep fines, or perhaps being hauled to jail and tangling with the immigration system. When California began issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants this year, he was one of the first in line...
Amid Push For Higher Minimum Wage, Concern Rising About Workers Cheated Out Of Proper Pay U.S. News & World Report ...As a campaign to raise the minimum wage as high as $15 has achieved victories in such places as Seattle, Los Angeles and New York, it has bumped up against a harsh reality: Plenty of scofflaw businesses don't pay the legal minimum now and probably won't pay the new, higher wages either...
Another Sign That Momentum Is Building On Paid Parental Leave In The U.S. Huffington Post ...In the latest sign that support for paid family leave is growing in the U.S., Adobe on Monday announced a big expansion of benefits, including up to half a year of paid time off for new mothers...
U.S. Labor
The Outrageous Ascent Of CEO Pay Huffington Post ...For the last thirty years almost all incentives operating on American corporations have resulted in lower pay for average workers and higher pay for CEOs and other top executives. Consider that in 1965, CEOs of America's largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers. Now, the ratio is over 300 to 1...
Sysco Profit Drops, Hurt By US Foods-Related Costs Wall Street Journal ...Sysco Corp. said profit in its latest quarter fell, as the company booked charges stemming from its abandoned plan to acquire rival US Foods Inc...
Twisting Words To Make ‘Sharing’ Apps Seem Selfless New York Times ...Of course, marketing by its very nature involves concocting the most appealing expressions to attract consumers. But start-ups that enable consumers to summon drivers, lunch deliveries or domestic help at the tap of an app have added incentives to portray themselves in feel-good terms. Government regulators, legislators and courts in the United States have started scrutinizing the app-mediated service sector with the idea of determining whether longstanding consumer protection and labor rules apply to these new delivery models...
AT&T, Union Continue Negotiations After Contracts Expire Bloomberg Business ...AT&T Inc. and the Communications Workers of America continued talks on new labor contracts as current agreements covering more than 24,000 employees in the southeast U.S. expired...
CTU President: Contract Talks Haven’t Broken Down WBBM ...Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis disagrees contract talks with school officials have reached the “acrimonious” stage. She says meetings with public school officials have been very cordial and teachers have even been willing to take a pay freeze...
Social Justice & Other News
Virginia Recalling Specialty License Plates With Confederate Flag NPR ...Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles will begin recalling specialty license plates depicting the Confederate battle flag following a federal judge's decision last week to dissolve an injunction that barred officials from blocking such plates...
The Confederate Flag Just Came Down In ‘The Last Capitol Of The Confederacy’ Think Progress ...According to GoDanRiver.com, the Danville city council voted 7-2 last week to remove the Third National flag of the Confederacy from the lawn of the Sutherlin Mansion, a historic building which houses a museum paid for with public funds. The flag was erected in 1995 on the house’s lawn to commemorate its historical significance — namely, that it hosted the last official meeting of the Confederate presidential cabinet, making it the “Last Capitol of the Confederacy.”...
Congress’s Cybersecurity Plan Has Some Major Flaws Think Progress ...One complaint privacy advocates have is that CISA, as written, undercuts existing privacy laws that give citizens power to hold companies responsible for any digital recklessness...
Segregation 101 Huffington Post ...Surveys of black families have found that most would prefer to live in racially integrated neighborhoods. But black families face a variety of obstacles in finding houses to buy or apartments to rent in such areas. Moreover, racial segregation isn't simply a byproduct of the fact that blacks have, on average, lower incomes than whites. Even middle-class African-American families tend to live in racially segregated areas; they, too, face discrimination when looking for apartments to rent or houses to buy...
Fox News v. Donald Trump: It’s Hard To Destroy A Monster Of Your Own Creation Salon.com ...For years, Fox News provided Donald Trump a platform to talk about politics to an audience of conservative voters. The network’s employees constantly bombarded him with questions and encouragement regarding his presidential ambitions. When he finally did run, Fox promoted and defended his candidacy in the face of near universal criticism. His presence at Fox News’ debate helped make it the most-watched primary debate in history. And after all that, when he finally got up on stage, Fox News shivved him...
A Gaggle Of Future Governors Just Had A Great Time In Maui Huffington Post ...Last month, a group of state attorneys general flew to Maui for the annual meeting of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. For several days, the top law enforcement officers -- who are often referred to as "aspiring governors" because of their tendency to run for and win higher elected office -- attended panels and swapped legal expertise on issues facing their states. They also mixed with executives, lawyers and lobbyists at a Waldorf Astoria resort that boasts tropical gardens, a swim-up bar and a grand view of Wailea Beach...
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Today's Teamster News 06.30.15
Teamsters
Teamsters to US Foods, Sysco: Restore Labor Relations, Customer Confidence Teamster.org ...Following today’s announcement that Sysco terminated its merger agreement with US Foods, the Teamsters Union cited the decision as a critical step toward restoring labor relations and renewing customer confidence at the two companies. “As Sysco and US Foods move forward, we remain committed to a meaningful dialogue about the future health and prosperity of these companies,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa...
EVSC, Teamsters exchange contract proposals, negotiations to occur again Tuesday Courier & Press ...Contracts expire at the end of June 30 and an agreement has not yet been reached, but discussions are occurring between the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. and Teamsters Local 215 negotiating teams. EVSC and Teamsters officials met on Monday afternoon. Local 215 President Chuck Whobrey said the union offered a proposal, the EVSC negotiating team countered, and the union offered another proposal...
Global Labor & Trade
In bipartisan ceremony, Obama signs trade legislation, calls for infrastructure bill Washington Post ...President Obama hailed a "true bipartisan effort" on Monday as he signed a package of trade bills into law, and he called on Washington to summon a similar spirit of compromise to address the nation's crumbling infrastructure. Obama was joined by seven members of Congress, including two Republicans, during a signing ceremony for the two bills, which will give his administration "fast-track" authority to complete trade accords and provide retraining for workers displaced by trade pacts...
TPP ministerial meeting set for last week of July: source Reuters ...A ministerial meeting aimed at finalizing the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal is set for the last week of July, a source close to the negotiations said on Monday on condition of anonymity. The meeting of trade ministers from the dozen countries involved would likely mark the final stage in the TPP negotiations, a massive trade pact covering 40 percent of the world's economy...
New trade battle looms on the horizon The Hill ...President Obama’s prized fast-track authority is a done deal in Congress, but Washington is already steeling for the next major trade battle — this one over lawmakers’ approval of a sweeping Pacific Rim agreement. Completion of talks in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could come as early as August, setting up a fall fight over ratification that is all but certain to spill into the 2016 presidential race...
Trade vote puts Froman on faster track Politico ...Following Congress’ hard-fought approval of “fast-track” trade authority last week, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman vowed not only to complete the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership but an even bigger pact with the European Union and three other major trade deals — all in the 18 months remaining in President Barack Obama’s term. It could add up to the biggest trade blitz in history, transforming the rules under which the world does business...
Thousands Of Greeks March For A No Vote On Austerity Measures Buzzfeed ...Thousands of Greeks gathered outside the country’s parliament on Monday night to campaign for a No vote in Sunday’s referendum on whether to accept austerity measures demanded by international organizations. Following months of negotiations between the left-wing Syriza-led government and international institutions, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called an all-or-nothing referendum...
13,700 Moroccan Call Center Workers Win Union Solidarity Center ...Some 13,700 workers won collective bargaining rights at 11 call centers across Morocco, a major victory for the country’s union movement that culminates a three-year effort to help call center workers form a union. Elections took place between June 1 and June 10, and the results were announced late last week. The Union Marocaine du Travail (Moroccan Labor Union, UMT) also won the right to represent all the country’s workers at the national level...
State & Living Wage Battles
Pennsylvania’s Contentious Charter School Fight Think Progress ...On Sunday, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill allowing a state-run district, the Achievement School District, to take control of low-performing public schools. The bill would require that the lowest performing schools would make huge changes in three years by converting to charter schools or contracting out work. The bill has been controversial among some education advocates, who argue that these bills are an effort to privatize education or deprioritize spending on public schools...
Study: Repealing prevailing wage will hurt Michigan Michigan Radio ...One new study suggests repealing Michigan’s prevailing wage law is a bad idea. Smart Cities Prevail and the Midwest Economic Policy Institute — two groups that support union-level pay and benefits for workers on publicly-funded construction projects — say their research shows overturning the prevailing wage would have “quite profound impacts” on Michigan’s economy...
Prevailing wage remains sticking point in budget stalemate Wisn.com ...Nearly 60 percent of public projects in Wisconsin would not be subject to the prevailing wage law under a proposal introduced Monday by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos as the state budget stalemate enters its fifth week. What to do with the prevailing wage -- a law that sets minimum salaries for construction workers on a variety of public projects -- is one of several large issues that Republicans who control both the Senate and Assembly have not been able to agree on...
House speaker: Minimum wage hike 'unlikely' to pass this session Oregon Live ...House Speaker Tina Kotek said Monday it's "unlikely" that her proposal to raise Oregon's minimum wage to $13 an hour has enough support to pass before the end of session, all but confirming the Legislature won't vote on the issue until at least next year...
Puerto Rico Unemployment at 12.6%, Poverty at 41% 24/7 ...At the depth of the recession, unemployment reached 10.1% in the United States. Today, its sits at 5.5%, and job additions have surged at an average rate of over 250,000 a month. Puerto Rico has an unemployment rate of 12.6%, another sign of how poorly off the territory’s economy is. Puerto Rico’s civilian labor force is small, only 1.42 million, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, about the same as Nevada’s...
Meet One Of The First Home Care Workers In The Country To Win A $15 Minimum Wage Think Progress ...Kindalay Cummings-Akers has been working as a personal care attendant, caring for the elderly and disabled in their homes, for nearly a decade. But she will soon be making $15 an hour for the first time ever after she and her union, 1199SEIU, reached an agreement with Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) at the end of last week. Home care workers have long been poorly paid, thanks in part to the fact that they are excluded from federal minimum wage and overtime requirements.
Victory for Democracy as Court Sides with Voters over 'Self-Dealing Legislators' Common Dreams ...In a decision hailed as a "major victory for voters," the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld an Arizona ballot initiative, adopted by voters in 2000, which took redistricting power away from elected politicians and gave it to a nonpartisan commission. The 5-4 decision, which saw Justice Anthony Kennedy serving as the swing vote, allows redistricting commissions to remain in place across the country and in turn works to curb the practice known as gerrymandering...
Citizenship proof for federal voter registration form rejected Tucson.com ...Arizona cannot require people to produce proof of citizenship before they register to vote, at least not for federal elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday. The justices upheld a ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that said neither Arizona nor Kansas can demand the federal Election Assistance Commission add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal registration form the panel designed...
Fast-Food Restaurants Should Raise Minimum Wage, New York Panel Says New York Times ...The minimum wage for fast-food workers in New York should be raised substantially, maybe even to $15 an hour, a state panel appointed to study the issue said on Monday. The three-man panel, known as a wage board, agreed that fast-food restaurants that are parts of national chains should be required to pay more than the state’s minimum wage of $8.75 an hour. But the panel said it was not ready to make a full recommendation...
U.S. Labor
President Obama overtime rule could raise wages for 5 million Politico ...President Barack Obama will this week release a long-awaited overtime rule aimed at raising wages for 5 million people as soon as 2016, according to sources familiar with the plans. The proposed rule will more than double the salary level under which virtually all workers qualify for overtime pay whenever they work more than 40 hours in any given week. That threshold, now $23,660, will rise to $50,440...
Thousands of Santa Clara County Union Workers Set to Strike NBC ...Santa Clara County's largest union is on the verge of a strike. The union includes 911 dispatchers, public health nurses and many others. The union voted to strike if they can't reach a contract agreement with the county by Tuesday. The union has complained of unfair labor practices and worker shortages. The county says it's taking those concerns seriously and is close to making a deal...
Boston Airport Workers Strike, Join Growing Campaign to Unionize Subcontracted Airport Employees In These Times ...On the morning of June 17, a large group of non-union airport employees went on strike at Boston’s Logan Airport, with about 100 of them picketing outside the facility. The contracted workers belong to G2 Secure Staff and ReadyJet Flight Support; workers accuse both companies of engaging in unsafe labor practices and say they are seeking a fairer work environment and a union...
FairPoint workers seek more time to consider severance deal before layoffs Portland Herald Press ...FairPoint Communications workers in Maine have until Tuesday night to accept a voluntary severance deal before up to 80 employees are laid off in order of reverse seniority. But union leader Peter McLaughlin said that many employees had not received their severance offers as of Monday afternoon. McLaughlin, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Local 2327 in Augusta, said the union is asking North Carolina-based FairPoint to push back its 11:59 p.m. Tuesday deadline...
Largest federal workers union sues OPM over breach The Hill ...The country’s largest federal workers union has filed a class action lawsuit against the government agency at the center of the recent hack that exposed millions of people’s sensitive information. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) on Monday became the first to sue the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in the wake of the massive data breach that has shaken the government...
Justices Take up Dispute Over Union Fees ABC News ...The Supreme Court will consider limiting the power of government employee unions to collect fees from non-members in a case that labor officials say could threaten membership and further weaken union clout. The justices said Tuesday they will hear an appeal from a group of California teachers who say it violates their First Amendment rights to have to pay any fees if they disagree with a union's positions and don't want to join it...
Miscellaneous
Americans Are Ready to Fight Powerful Interests New York Times ...Not long ago same-sex marriage was abhorrent to a majority of Americans, but now, according to polls, most approve of it. Meanwhile, the Confederate flag is being removed from public buildings and grounds. And even conservatives now agree fewer people should be imprisoned. But economic inclusiveness is proving more elusive. Yet Americans may be signaling they're ready for such a fight. Witness the current battle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the elections of Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio...
President Obama’s immigration actions face skeptical judges Politico ...Two judges who dealt a significant blow to President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration last month will again play key roles in deciding whether the controversial programs are legally sound. Fifth Circuit Court Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Jerry Smith, both Republican appointees, in May ruled against the Obama administration’s request to proceed with the executive actions — which would protect more than 4 million immigrants here illegally from being deported...
Renting: Awful for Just About Everyone Right Now The Atlantic ...A recent report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard, puts some numbers on just how bad this problem is: About half of all renters in the U.S. are using more than 30 percent of their income to cover housing costs, and about 25 percent have rent that exceeds 50 percent of their monthly pay. It’s not just the poorest city-dwellers who are feeling the rent pressure...
Robert Reich: Economic Apartheid in America Alternet ...In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 requires plaintiffs to show only that the effect of a policy is discriminatory, not that defendants intended to discriminate. The decision is important in the fight against economic apartheid in America – racial segregation on a much larger geographic scale than ever before...
Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are on the wrong side of history and they want us to know it Daily Kos ...As if determined that the South should retain its poor reputation on civil rights for another generation or two, the attorneys general of three states are saying "not so fast, Supreme Court" when it comes to marriage equality. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has told county clerks that they can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and judges and justices of the peace that they can refuse to marry them...
"This Flag Comes Down Today": Bree Newsome Scales SC Capitol Flagpole, Removing Confederate Flag Democracy Now ...On Saturday, Bree Newsome, a 30-year-old African-American woman, was arrested at the state Capitol after scaling the 30-foot flagpole and unhooking the Confederate flag. As police officers shouted at her to come down, Bree Newsome shimmied to the top, took the flag in her hand and said, "You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today!"...
Teamsters to US Foods, Sysco: Restore Labor Relations, Customer Confidence Teamster.org ...Following today’s announcement that Sysco terminated its merger agreement with US Foods, the Teamsters Union cited the decision as a critical step toward restoring labor relations and renewing customer confidence at the two companies. “As Sysco and US Foods move forward, we remain committed to a meaningful dialogue about the future health and prosperity of these companies,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa...
EVSC, Teamsters exchange contract proposals, negotiations to occur again Tuesday Courier & Press ...Contracts expire at the end of June 30 and an agreement has not yet been reached, but discussions are occurring between the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. and Teamsters Local 215 negotiating teams. EVSC and Teamsters officials met on Monday afternoon. Local 215 President Chuck Whobrey said the union offered a proposal, the EVSC negotiating team countered, and the union offered another proposal...
Global Labor & Trade
In bipartisan ceremony, Obama signs trade legislation, calls for infrastructure bill Washington Post ...President Obama hailed a "true bipartisan effort" on Monday as he signed a package of trade bills into law, and he called on Washington to summon a similar spirit of compromise to address the nation's crumbling infrastructure. Obama was joined by seven members of Congress, including two Republicans, during a signing ceremony for the two bills, which will give his administration "fast-track" authority to complete trade accords and provide retraining for workers displaced by trade pacts...
TPP ministerial meeting set for last week of July: source Reuters ...A ministerial meeting aimed at finalizing the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal is set for the last week of July, a source close to the negotiations said on Monday on condition of anonymity. The meeting of trade ministers from the dozen countries involved would likely mark the final stage in the TPP negotiations, a massive trade pact covering 40 percent of the world's economy...
New trade battle looms on the horizon The Hill ...President Obama’s prized fast-track authority is a done deal in Congress, but Washington is already steeling for the next major trade battle — this one over lawmakers’ approval of a sweeping Pacific Rim agreement. Completion of talks in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could come as early as August, setting up a fall fight over ratification that is all but certain to spill into the 2016 presidential race...
Trade vote puts Froman on faster track Politico ...Following Congress’ hard-fought approval of “fast-track” trade authority last week, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman vowed not only to complete the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership but an even bigger pact with the European Union and three other major trade deals — all in the 18 months remaining in President Barack Obama’s term. It could add up to the biggest trade blitz in history, transforming the rules under which the world does business...
Thousands Of Greeks March For A No Vote On Austerity Measures Buzzfeed ...Thousands of Greeks gathered outside the country’s parliament on Monday night to campaign for a No vote in Sunday’s referendum on whether to accept austerity measures demanded by international organizations. Following months of negotiations between the left-wing Syriza-led government and international institutions, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called an all-or-nothing referendum...
13,700 Moroccan Call Center Workers Win Union Solidarity Center ...Some 13,700 workers won collective bargaining rights at 11 call centers across Morocco, a major victory for the country’s union movement that culminates a three-year effort to help call center workers form a union. Elections took place between June 1 and June 10, and the results were announced late last week. The Union Marocaine du Travail (Moroccan Labor Union, UMT) also won the right to represent all the country’s workers at the national level...
State & Living Wage Battles
Pennsylvania’s Contentious Charter School Fight Think Progress ...On Sunday, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill allowing a state-run district, the Achievement School District, to take control of low-performing public schools. The bill would require that the lowest performing schools would make huge changes in three years by converting to charter schools or contracting out work. The bill has been controversial among some education advocates, who argue that these bills are an effort to privatize education or deprioritize spending on public schools...
Study: Repealing prevailing wage will hurt Michigan Michigan Radio ...One new study suggests repealing Michigan’s prevailing wage law is a bad idea. Smart Cities Prevail and the Midwest Economic Policy Institute — two groups that support union-level pay and benefits for workers on publicly-funded construction projects — say their research shows overturning the prevailing wage would have “quite profound impacts” on Michigan’s economy...
Prevailing wage remains sticking point in budget stalemate Wisn.com ...Nearly 60 percent of public projects in Wisconsin would not be subject to the prevailing wage law under a proposal introduced Monday by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos as the state budget stalemate enters its fifth week. What to do with the prevailing wage -- a law that sets minimum salaries for construction workers on a variety of public projects -- is one of several large issues that Republicans who control both the Senate and Assembly have not been able to agree on...
House speaker: Minimum wage hike 'unlikely' to pass this session Oregon Live ...House Speaker Tina Kotek said Monday it's "unlikely" that her proposal to raise Oregon's minimum wage to $13 an hour has enough support to pass before the end of session, all but confirming the Legislature won't vote on the issue until at least next year...
Puerto Rico Unemployment at 12.6%, Poverty at 41% 24/7 ...At the depth of the recession, unemployment reached 10.1% in the United States. Today, its sits at 5.5%, and job additions have surged at an average rate of over 250,000 a month. Puerto Rico has an unemployment rate of 12.6%, another sign of how poorly off the territory’s economy is. Puerto Rico’s civilian labor force is small, only 1.42 million, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, about the same as Nevada’s...
Meet One Of The First Home Care Workers In The Country To Win A $15 Minimum Wage Think Progress ...Kindalay Cummings-Akers has been working as a personal care attendant, caring for the elderly and disabled in their homes, for nearly a decade. But she will soon be making $15 an hour for the first time ever after she and her union, 1199SEIU, reached an agreement with Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) at the end of last week. Home care workers have long been poorly paid, thanks in part to the fact that they are excluded from federal minimum wage and overtime requirements.
Victory for Democracy as Court Sides with Voters over 'Self-Dealing Legislators' Common Dreams ...In a decision hailed as a "major victory for voters," the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld an Arizona ballot initiative, adopted by voters in 2000, which took redistricting power away from elected politicians and gave it to a nonpartisan commission. The 5-4 decision, which saw Justice Anthony Kennedy serving as the swing vote, allows redistricting commissions to remain in place across the country and in turn works to curb the practice known as gerrymandering...
Citizenship proof for federal voter registration form rejected Tucson.com ...Arizona cannot require people to produce proof of citizenship before they register to vote, at least not for federal elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday. The justices upheld a ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that said neither Arizona nor Kansas can demand the federal Election Assistance Commission add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal registration form the panel designed...
Fast-Food Restaurants Should Raise Minimum Wage, New York Panel Says New York Times ...The minimum wage for fast-food workers in New York should be raised substantially, maybe even to $15 an hour, a state panel appointed to study the issue said on Monday. The three-man panel, known as a wage board, agreed that fast-food restaurants that are parts of national chains should be required to pay more than the state’s minimum wage of $8.75 an hour. But the panel said it was not ready to make a full recommendation...
U.S. Labor
President Obama overtime rule could raise wages for 5 million Politico ...President Barack Obama will this week release a long-awaited overtime rule aimed at raising wages for 5 million people as soon as 2016, according to sources familiar with the plans. The proposed rule will more than double the salary level under which virtually all workers qualify for overtime pay whenever they work more than 40 hours in any given week. That threshold, now $23,660, will rise to $50,440...
Thousands of Santa Clara County Union Workers Set to Strike NBC ...Santa Clara County's largest union is on the verge of a strike. The union includes 911 dispatchers, public health nurses and many others. The union voted to strike if they can't reach a contract agreement with the county by Tuesday. The union has complained of unfair labor practices and worker shortages. The county says it's taking those concerns seriously and is close to making a deal...
Boston Airport Workers Strike, Join Growing Campaign to Unionize Subcontracted Airport Employees In These Times ...On the morning of June 17, a large group of non-union airport employees went on strike at Boston’s Logan Airport, with about 100 of them picketing outside the facility. The contracted workers belong to G2 Secure Staff and ReadyJet Flight Support; workers accuse both companies of engaging in unsafe labor practices and say they are seeking a fairer work environment and a union...
FairPoint workers seek more time to consider severance deal before layoffs Portland Herald Press ...FairPoint Communications workers in Maine have until Tuesday night to accept a voluntary severance deal before up to 80 employees are laid off in order of reverse seniority. But union leader Peter McLaughlin said that many employees had not received their severance offers as of Monday afternoon. McLaughlin, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Local 2327 in Augusta, said the union is asking North Carolina-based FairPoint to push back its 11:59 p.m. Tuesday deadline...
Largest federal workers union sues OPM over breach The Hill ...The country’s largest federal workers union has filed a class action lawsuit against the government agency at the center of the recent hack that exposed millions of people’s sensitive information. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) on Monday became the first to sue the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in the wake of the massive data breach that has shaken the government...
Justices Take up Dispute Over Union Fees ABC News ...The Supreme Court will consider limiting the power of government employee unions to collect fees from non-members in a case that labor officials say could threaten membership and further weaken union clout. The justices said Tuesday they will hear an appeal from a group of California teachers who say it violates their First Amendment rights to have to pay any fees if they disagree with a union's positions and don't want to join it...
Miscellaneous
Americans Are Ready to Fight Powerful Interests New York Times ...Not long ago same-sex marriage was abhorrent to a majority of Americans, but now, according to polls, most approve of it. Meanwhile, the Confederate flag is being removed from public buildings and grounds. And even conservatives now agree fewer people should be imprisoned. But economic inclusiveness is proving more elusive. Yet Americans may be signaling they're ready for such a fight. Witness the current battle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the elections of Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio...
President Obama’s immigration actions face skeptical judges Politico ...Two judges who dealt a significant blow to President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration last month will again play key roles in deciding whether the controversial programs are legally sound. Fifth Circuit Court Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Jerry Smith, both Republican appointees, in May ruled against the Obama administration’s request to proceed with the executive actions — which would protect more than 4 million immigrants here illegally from being deported...
Renting: Awful for Just About Everyone Right Now The Atlantic ...A recent report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard, puts some numbers on just how bad this problem is: About half of all renters in the U.S. are using more than 30 percent of their income to cover housing costs, and about 25 percent have rent that exceeds 50 percent of their monthly pay. It’s not just the poorest city-dwellers who are feeling the rent pressure...
Robert Reich: Economic Apartheid in America Alternet ...In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 requires plaintiffs to show only that the effect of a policy is discriminatory, not that defendants intended to discriminate. The decision is important in the fight against economic apartheid in America – racial segregation on a much larger geographic scale than ever before...
Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are on the wrong side of history and they want us to know it Daily Kos ...As if determined that the South should retain its poor reputation on civil rights for another generation or two, the attorneys general of three states are saying "not so fast, Supreme Court" when it comes to marriage equality. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has told county clerks that they can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and judges and justices of the peace that they can refuse to marry them...
"This Flag Comes Down Today": Bree Newsome Scales SC Capitol Flagpole, Removing Confederate Flag Democracy Now ...On Saturday, Bree Newsome, a 30-year-old African-American woman, was arrested at the state Capitol after scaling the 30-foot flagpole and unhooking the Confederate flag. As police officers shouted at her to come down, Bree Newsome shimmied to the top, took the flag in her hand and said, "You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today!"...
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