Today's Teamster News 12.16.13

Pope Francis In Peace Message Attacks Mega-Salaries With 'Crumbs' For Poor  Huffington Post   ...Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap...
Rich People’s Idea of Charity: Giving to Elite Schools and Operas  Alternet   ...a large portion of the charitable deductions now claimed by America’s wealthy are for donations to culture palaces – operas, art museums, symphonies, and theaters – where they spend their leisure time hobnobbing with other wealthy benefactors...
Is this the end of in-flight phone calls?  Salon   ...There’s a government showdown in the making, and it’s all about cellphones: specifically, if passengers on US flights should be allowed to make phone calls or not...
The 1% is Hogging so much of our Income that it’s Holding the Economy Back  Informed Comment   ...“If the typical American family still got today the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would earn about 25 percent more and have an astounding $13,000 more a year...
Poverty nation: How America created a low-wage work swamp  Salon   ... a quarter of people who have jobs today make so little money that they also receive some form of public assistance, or welfare – a proportion that’s much higher in some of the fastest growing sectors of the workforce. Or that 60 percent of able-bodied adult food-stamp recipients are employed...
IBM faces shareholder lawsuit over cooperation with NSA  CNet   ...IBM's cooperation with a National Security Agency surveillance program caused sales in China to "abruptly halt" and the company's stock price to decline, a shareholder lawsuit claims...
US Government Pays Contractors Twice as Much as Civil Servants for the Same Work  Bill Moyers   ...the budget deal just worked out between the White House and Capitol Hill will prevent a government shutdown and all of its attendant global financial inconveniences. But it does nothing to curtail wasteful spending on companies that are among the nation’s richest and most powerful – from Booz Allen Hamilton, the $6 billion-a-year management-consulting firm, to Boeing, the defense contractor boasting $82 billion in worldwide sales...
Pushing for Justice at Walmart  The Daily Beast   ...Dominic Ware was a charismatic leader in the nationwide Our Walmart campaign, fighting for better working conditions—until he got fired after speaking out for himself and his coworkers...
Amid Healing Labor Market, Long-Term Unemployment Still Dire  US News   ...As Washington fights about jobless benefits, the long-term jobless make up a remarkably high share of the unemployed...

Outsourcing: 5 ways corporations grab your tax dollars

Greedy corporations just can't seem to get enough outsourcing, as they take control of public assets like roads, parking meters, schools and prisons.

None of this is news to anyone. But it seems the scope of outsourcing is growing and the pace is accelerating. Just in the past few days we note news items about the corporate takeover of our schools, our water, our prisons and our national air space. Corporations even manage to persuade taxpayers to pay for creating assets -- like football stadiums -- that benefit people who are already wealthy.

Here's a quick rundown:

Charter schools: Forbes reported recently on the corporate grab for local education dollars in a story, "Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express To Fat City." The magazine told it like it is:

On Thursday, July 25, dozens of bankers, hedge fund types and private equity investors gathered in New York to hear about the latest and greatest opportunities to collect a cut of your property taxes.

There are now more than 6,000 charter schools in the United States, 3,500 more than a decade ago, and they're educating 2.3 million children. These corporate schools can pick which students they admit, but local taxpayers pay for them. They're a great way for politicians to reward their cronies. In Ohio, Forbes reports,

...two firms operate 9% of the state’s charter schools and are collecting 38% of the state’s charter school funding increase this year. The operators of both firms donate generously to elected Republicans. 

Sadly, kids in corporate schools don't do any better than kids in public schools.

Air traffic control: Bloomberg tells us "Discussions about removing government management of the U.S. air-traffic control system are the most serious in two decades."

"Privatization is not the answer," responded a commenter identified as Exctyengr:

Most of these knuckleheads never served in the military nor flew in the air traffic system. ... We privatized much of the military and we got Blackwater and Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root and how did that work out?  Did we get our money's worth?  Were there scandals? 

Prisons, of course: The Center for Media and Democracy reports prison industry giants like Corrections Corporation of America are making big profits by locking states into occupancy quotas and “low-crime taxes." Some states state are by the corporation to keep prisons full or pay a fee for unused beds. Cost-cutting by private prisons companies "has led to numerous lawsuits and litigation, fines, and increased need for federal oversight, at great cost to taxpayers, communities, inmates and their families." Instead of taxpayer money going to safer communities, it goes to CEO salaries: GEO Group CEO George C. Zoley's compensation was an eye-popping $22,315,704 from 2008-2012, almost all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

NFL Football: Gregg Easterbrook at The Atlantic argues:

Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams. 

Well, at least the players are allowed to belong to unions.

Water: In Fryeburg, Maine, a local taxpayer named Bruce Taylor doesn't want Nestle getting a sweetheart deal from state regulators to buy water for its Poland Springs bottled water business. Maine's Public Utilities Commission members all have financial ties to the corporate giant (no surprise there). Taylor told al-Jazeera America,

“They’re buying a commodity at a cheap regulated rate from a monopoly they own and are reselling it for a high profit in the form of bottled water you find in your local 7-11,” Taylor said. 

Taylor believes Nestle is paying too little for water and making too much profit off of Maine. He suggested “an inverted water rate for any commercial water that leaves the state of Maine.”

For more about the perils of outsourcing, read the Center for Media and Democracy's series on Outsourcing America Exposed.

Today's Teamster News 07.12.13

Consumer groups fret as first round of European trade talks nears end  McClatchy   ...as negotiators prepare to end the first round of talks in Washington on Friday, many consumer groups in the United States and Europe fear their governments will be a little too flexible, rushing to help corporations cash in on billions of dollars in new business...
George Steinmetz, National Geographic Photographer, Arrested Taking Photos Of Kansas Feedlot  Huffington Post   ...Kansas' ag gag law, the Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act ... bars individuals from entering and photographing an animal facility not open to the public...
The Rise Of Food Stamp Use In America  Business Insider   ...Earlier today, the House passed the Farm Bill without any funding provision for food stamps...
Low-wage workers strike at Smithsonian museums  Washington Post   ...Low-wage workers connected with the nation’s marquee museum network held a strike on Thursday, continuing a string of recent demonstrations to promote better pay for employees at federal buildings...
Walmart Living Wage Dispute In D.C. Undermines Company's Murky Pay Claims  Huffington Post   ...the company's balk at a $12.50 starting wage in D.C. suggests that the typical store worker actually earns a good deal less than $12.78...
Warren presses Wall Street regulators to take more bad actors to trial  The Hill   ...Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) scolded financial regulators on Thursday, questioning why they had sought settlements with many of Wall Street's bad actors instead of taking those firms to trial...
Warren Joins McCain to Push New Glass-Steagall Law for Banks  Bloomberg   ...U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said she and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are introducing a bill aimed at re-creating the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era measure that separated commercial and investment banking...
NTSB investigates whether Asiana pilot was blinded before crash  Los Angeles Times   ..."We really don't know what it could have been," Hersman said. "We need to look into it. We need to understand what he's talking about."...
Teamsters: Time for a raise for Hernando government workers  Tampa Bay Times   ...The union representing about 400 Hernando County government workers brought a message to the bargaining table this week: The time has come to make up for lost wages, and an across-the-board 6 percent increase should do it...
Teamsters pension plan returns 13.56% in 2012, topping benchmark  Pensions & Investments   ...Teamsters Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan returned 13.56% in 2012, outpacing its Wilshire's Trust Universe Comparison Service benchmark return of 13.25%...
Chicago Undertakers In Teamsters Union Go On Strike  aol   ...The funeral workers are right, in a sense, to fight against SCI's proposal: For them, the new deal is a much, much worse deal...

Today's Teamster News 01.21.13

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther's King's Legacy by Challenging So-Called Right-to-Work Laws  SEIU   ...More than 50 years after Dr. King warned of being "fooled by false slogans" such as "right-to-work," working people are facing a string of coordinated, corporate-backed attacks -- including a push for so-called "right-to-work" laws...
Congress Hasn't Averted the Real Fiscal Cliff  Huffington Post   ...the $559.8 billion in the total trade deficit for 2011 represents a loss of 7,277,400 jobs. This explains why we have had a virtually jobless recovery since the end of the recession and why the unemployment rate has stayed high for so long...
Mr. Fisher Goes to Washington  Economic Populist   ...Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher (said) …  large financial institutions considered “too big to fail" …exact an unfair tax upon the American people. Moreover, they interfere with the transmission of monetary policy and inhibit the advancement of our nation’s economic prosperity...
Is Italy the next domino?  Macro Business   ...With a slowing economy, the idea that taxing the private sector more appears to be the same mistake that has been made in other nations...
Overcharging of batteries likely culprit in Boeing 787 fires, aviation and battery experts say  Associated Press   ...It’s likely that fires on two Boeing 787 Dreamliners were caused by overcharging lithium ion batteries, aviation safety and battery experts said Friday, pointing to developments in the investigation of the Boeing incidents as well as a battery fire in a business jet more than a year ago...
Prison Reform, Kasich Style: More Drugs, More Crime and More Costs to Local Government  Plunderbund   ... there has been a “spike in criminal activity near a recently privatized Ohio prison...”

Hoffa gives Pink Slip Rick what for

Hoffa in Detroit on Labor Day.

Check out this Labor Day op-ed by Teamster President Jim Hoffa. His criticisms of Pink Slip Rick could apply to all of the Governors Gone Wild.

We need good jobs to spur the growth of our economy. Real job creation is what Floridians need, not corporate backslapping and the privatization of our most critical services.

Hoffa takes aim at Scott for pursuing a corporate agenda that's bad for workers. A big part of that agenda is to turn prisons over to private interests, which then loot the taxpayer:

There's no doubt that Scott and some of the state's lawmakers have been influenced by corporate front groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC. ALEC is a conduit between lawmakers and corporations to craft model legislation. It aggressively promotes policies that give prison companies more business, like locking up more prisoners. This may be good for corporate interests, but it's bad for Florida.

I applaud Floridians for taking a stand and letting anti-worker politicians know their state is not for sale. Teamsters are fighting side by side with Florida Department of Corrections officers against Scott and the Legislature's decision to privatize prisons in 18 southern counties. Privatization could result in the loss of up to 4,000 correctional officer jobs within the DOC, the third-largest prison system in the nation.

Read the whole thing here.

Today's News 09/10/10

U.S. Sees Heightened Threat in Mexico Wall Street Journal ...The Obama administration sees the drug-related violence sweeping Mexico as a growing threat to U.S. national security...

U.S. Rebukes Health Insurers Wall Street Journal ...The Obama administration ... on Thursday told health insurers that it will track those who enact "unjustified" rate increases...

China Trade Surplus Narrows; Surplus With US Still High Wall Street Journal ...China's trade surplus narrowed sharply to $20.03 billion in August, but its surplus with the U.S. accounted for 90% of the total...

As FAA prepares to propose new limits on pilot hours, advocates complain about delay Associated Press ...the FAA is set to propose new regulations on how many hours airlines can schedule pilots to be on duty or in the cockpit...

Prospect of work stoppage in 2011 threatens NFL Washington Post ... the NFL appears closer to labor strife than it has been in more than two decades...