Today's Teamster News 02.24.14

State Battles
Wisconsin’s Legacy for Unions  New York Times   ...Mr. Walker’s landmark law — called Act 10 — severely restricted the power of public-employee unions to bargain collectively, and that provision, among others, has given social workers, prison guards, nurses and other public employees little reason to pay dues to a union that can no longer do much for them. Members of Mr. Beil’s group, the Wisconsin State Employees’ Union, complain that their take-home pay has fallen more than 10 percent in recent years, a sign of the union’s greatly diminished power...
Trade
Fast Track to Nowhere: America’s Failed Trade Policy  Campaign for America's Future   ...Froman’s strategy now is to try to move the negotiations over the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards completion, using the treaty to convince legislators to pass fast track. Administration officials are reportedly hoping that they can mobilize enough Wall Street and corporate America muscle to cobble together sufficient votes in a lame duck session after the elections to move forward...
Tariff, intellectual property on agenda on 3rd day of TPP talks  Global Post   ...Countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks will tackle contentious issues including tariff removal and intellectual property rights on the third day of a ministerial conference Monday in Singapore...
Most wanted drug lord captured in Mexico  Associated Press   ...Guzman was hit with multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. as his drug empire stretched throughout North America and extended branches into Europe and Australia. Guzman’s play for power against local cartels caused a bloodbath in Tijuana and made Ciudad Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. In 2013, he was named “Public Enemy No. 1″ by the Chicago Crime Commission, only the second person to get that distinction after U.S. prohibition-era crime boss Al Capone...
The War on Workers
You Need to Work at Least 67 Hours a Week to Afford Rent While Making the Minimum Wage AFL-CIO Now   ... In more than half the states, you'd have to work more than 80 hours a week...
Scandal of Europe's 11m empty homes  Guardian   ...Housing campaigners denounce 'shocking waste' of homes lying empty while millions cry out for shelter...
Detroit automakers worry about UAW money struggles  Associated Press   ...They worry that the 382,000-member UAW could be absorbed by a more hostile union. Such a merger could disrupt a decade of labor-management peace that has helped America's auto industry survive the financial crisis and emerge much stronger, according to a person with knowledge of executive discussions...
IMF Fires a Warning Shot at the Fed on Deflation  Wall Street on Parade   ...The IMF is clearly worried about the onset of the kind of intractable deflation that plagued the U.S. and the global economy during the Great Depression of the 30s...
Americans rising up against government: Column  USA Today   ..."The most plausible explanation is that someone up top at the DHS or ICE suddenly realized that publicly calling for bids on a nationwide surveillance system while nationwide surveillance systems are being hotly debated was ... a horrible idea..."
San Francisco Protesters Take Aim at Twitter’s Tax Breaks  In These Times   ... SEIU, the largest public sector union in San Francisco, is taking renewed aim at Twitter over the major tax break it received from City Hall in 2011...

Links 07/14//10

Fed Sees Slower Growth Wall Street Journal
Monthly Trade Gap Is Biggest Since '08 Wall Street Journal
Obama and the Pink Scare Wall Street Journal
FedEx Looks to 777s To Deliver an Edge Wall Street Journal
New York press banks on foreclosures New York Times
Harry Reid sets vote on Wall Street reform Politico
The Democrats' middle-class problem Politico
Job market's a gray area: older workers outnumber teens Bloomberg
Study: Many workers' retirement savings will run out too soon Associated Press