Today's Teamster News 04.24.15

Teamsters
Cedar Falls Schools, Teamsters open labor talks  WCF Courier  ...Teamsters Local 238 is in the middle of a two-year contract with Cedar Falls Schools, and officials are only bargaining on wages and insurance, said district spokeswoman Janelle Darst. A total of 46 people are covered by the agreement, including various custodial positions, groundskeepers, mail deliverers, laundry workers, warehouse workers, plumbers, painters, carpenters, technicians and electricians...

Global Labor & Trade
Obama 'Fast Track' Trade Agenda Advances In Senate  Huffington Post   ...The Senate Finance Committee endorsed Obama's request for "fast track" legislation, which would renew presidential authority to present trade deals that Congress can endorse or reject but not amend. If the House and Senate eventually comply, Obama is likely to ask them to approve the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which involves Japan, Canada and Mexico, but not China. Other trade proposals could follow...
Obama admonishes his base on trade  Politico  ... President Barack Obama told his progressive base that their stance on trade is retro. While Republicans have backed fast-tracking a 12-nation Pacific trade agreement, it’s Democrats who have balked, with liberal voices like Elizabeth Warren warning that the deal would fuel outsourcing and lost wages...
Pelosi criticizes Obama-backed trade bill  The Hill   ...Weighing in for the first time since the trade promotion authority (TPA) legislation was introduced last week, Pelosi said the bill lacks safeguards protecting U.S. workers and fritters an historic opportunity to improve worker rights, food safety and the environment across the globe...
Democrats Balk At Obama Plan To Cut Funding For Workers Hurt By Trade Deals  Huffington Post  ...The rift between President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats over trade policy deepened Wednesday as the administration opposed an effort to fully restore aid for American workers who lose their jobs to international trade...
Obama is failing us all by ignoring the need for currency rules in TPP  (opinion) The Guardian  ...If we recognize the need to address the trade deficit, and the centrality of the value of the dollar, then it is mind-boggling that the Obama administration would not have sought to include rules on currency in the TPP. After all, the Obama administration has been in office more than six years and allowed large trade deficits to persist...
Newly Leaked TTIP Draft Reveals Far-Reaching Assault On US/EU Democracy  Common Dreams   ...A freshly-leaked chapter from the highly secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, currently under negotiation between the United States and European Union, reveals that the so-called "free trade" deal poses an even greater threat to environmental and human rights protections—and democracy itself—than previously known, civil society organizations warn...
Hey Mr. President: Transparency Applies to the TPP, Too   (opinion) Truthout.org   ...when it comes to transparency you can't play pick and choose. You can't be transparent about a counterterrorism operation that went horribly wrong, but then be incredibly secretive about something like... the TPP...

State & Living Wage Battles
Illinois Lawmakers To Consider Right-To-Work  WTHI   ...An Illinois legislator expects Right to Work to be debated in the state legislature.  Right to Work bills prohibit workers from being forced to join labor unions.  Indiana and Wisconsin passed Right to Work laws amidst a huge controversy...
Democrats Are Rallying Around $12 Minimum Wage  New York Times   ...Democrats in Congress are uniting around a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour. Within the next several days, Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that deals with labor issues, plans to introduce a bill to increase the minimum wage, in steps, from its current level of $7.25 to $12 by 2020...
Religious Groups To Scott Walker: Don’t Drug Test The Poor  Think Progress   ...Wisconsin faith leaders from across the religious spectrum are calling on their state legislature to reject a proposal from Gov. Scott Walker (R) that would impose drug tests for some recipients of government-funded aid, arguing such screenings don’t work and unfairly stigmatize the poor...
NLRB Files Brief Supporting Unions' Lawsuit, Calling County Right-to-Work Laws Preempted  Bloomberg News   ...The National Labor Relations Board April 17 urged a federal district court in Kentucky to invalidate a county ordinance that prohibits the use of union-security provisions in collective bargaining agreements and regulates other practices that are either permitted or prohibited by federal law...
66% of San Jose’s Confirmed Wage Theft Money Goes Unawarded; Ordinance Proposed   We Party Patriots   ...San Jose is considering a wage theft ordinance which would help the labor commission recoup lost wages and deny permits and licenses to companies with pending wage theft violations.  The proposal is similar to one passed in Santa Clara County last year.  San Jose’s version is being supported by city council members Don Rocha, Margie Matthews, Ash Kalra, and Magdalena Carrasco.  The ordinance has been sent to the Rules and Open Government Committee...
The homeless man who works in the Senate   (opinion) Washington Post   ...In the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, 63-year-old Charles Gladden works alongside some of the nation’s most powerful people. But unbeknown to any of these bigwigs, or even to his employer, Gladden is homeless. Alongside hundreds of other federal contract workers, he protested the fact that our government doesn’t require the companies it does business with to pay what he considers a living wage....

U.S. Labor
Have We Seen the End of the Eight-Hour Day?  The Nation   ...Along with wages and conditions, hours used to be a basic concern in worker organizing. But since the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 enshrined the 40-hour week, hours have tended to be taken for granted. This is changing only because, in recent years, employers have entered a devastating new race to the bottom: Involuntary part-time is becoming the new norm for low-wage workers, together with schedules so unpredictable and varying that one can’t easily get another job, or go to school, or be a reliable parent...
Unions converge in Jersey City to protest legislation that they say will cut American jobs  NJ.com ...More than 100 strong, labor leaders and union workers demonstrated at the plaza in Journal Square this afternoon, urging lawmakers to vote down a federal bill they say would take jobs away from Americans. Led by Ray Greaves, a former Bayonne City Council member and chairman of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the group -- which included the Hudson County Central Labor Council, Food & Water Watch, ATU, NJ Industrial Union Council, Anakbayan and Communications Workers of America  -- spread the word to anyone in Journal Square who stopped to listen....

Miscellaneous
House Republicans vote against American consumer, again   Daily Kos  ...Proving once again how much disdain Republicans really have for the American public, the House passed a bill Wednesday, 250-173, to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Because they really, really don't want us to have any recourse against predatory businesses trying to fleece us...
Fed’s Rate Decisions Hang On Dollar, Growth Concerns  Wall Street Journal   ...The strong U.S. dollar and an unsteady global economy are emerging as primary concerns for Federal Reserve officials as they prepare for a policy meeting next week to consider the timing of the first interest-rate increase since before the financial crisis...
Airmail Via Drones Is Vexing For Prisons  New York Times   ...Drones flying over prison walls may not be the chief concern of corrections officials. But they say that some would-be smugglers are experimenting with the technique as an alternative to established methods like paying off officers, hiding contraband in incoming laundry and throwing packages disguised as rocks over fences into recreational yards...
It's Not The 1% Controlling Politics. It's The 0.01 Percent.  Mother Jones   ...In other words, about 1,200 Americans control more than 40 percent of election contributions. Notably, between 2010 and 2012, the total share of giving by these donors jumped more than 10 percentage points. That shift is likely the direct result of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down decades of fundraising limits and kicked off the super-PAC era. And this data only includes publicly disclosed donations, not dark money, which almost certainly means that the megadonors' actual share of total political spending is even higher...
Inequality’s Big Enabler? The Tax Code. (opinion)  Washington Post   ...Of the 10 largest tax expenditures, only two — the $70 billion-per-year earned-income tax credit and the $57 billion child tax credit — favor the poor. The others disproportionately benefit the top 20 percent of earners, according to a Congressional Budget Office report...

The big rig: Most shocking Wall Street heist yet

Some men rob with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.

You try to be cynical about Wall Street, but you just can't keep up.

The latest scandal in the world of high finance and risky trading involves the London-based bank Barclay’s. It just shows that the greed of the one percent knows no limits.

Barclay’s already paid more than $450 million to U.S. and British bank regulators to settle charges that it manipulated LIBOR. But the scandal is spreading to more big banks. It's a gigantic financial crime.

But first about LIBOR: It stands for the "London Interbank Offered Rate." It's the average interest rate that big London banks say they'd charge if they were borrowing from other banks. The LIBOR rate is a guide to rates charged for trillions -- yup, trillions -- of dollars in loans throughout the world financial system.

This is complicated stuff. But one thing isn't complicated: a bunch of rich guys stole money. Maybe even yours.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains, instead of setting the LIBOR rate according to future worth, the bankers rigged the interest rate so their derivative gambling paid off at the expense of anyone on the other side of the bets. Reich tells us who else is involved:

So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclay's …whose top executives have been forced to resign, and whose traders' emails give a chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks.

But Wall Street has almost surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects -- JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America -- because every major bank participates in setting the LIBOR rate, and Barclay's couldn't have rigged it without their witting involvement.

This is massive fraud, Reich adds:

This is insider trading on a gigantic scale. It makes the bankers winners and the rest of us -- whose money they've used for to make their bets -- losers and chumps.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the LIBOR rate affects a mind-blowing $800 trillion in various financial contracts – that’s 10 times the annual output of the entire planet!

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi sums up the stakes like this:

This is unbelievable, shocking stuff. A sizable chunk of the world's adjustable-rate investment vehicles are pegged to Libor, and here we have evidence that banks were tweaking the rate downward to massage their own derivatives positions.

The impact of the crime isn't entirely clear yet and may not be for months. We do know this: Hundreds of local governments in America may have been fleeced by Wall Street if LIBOR rates were artificially lowered. According to the Economist:

[The city of] Baltimore entered into over $100m in interest-rate swaps…Lower LIBOR-linked payments to the city would have meant less money to cover the outgoing fixed-rate payments. If LIBOR was artificially suppressed, the city would have been losing millions annually.

Naked Capitalism puts the LIBOR swindle in perspective

When people go to conduct business, they expect (or at least once did) to be treated fairly by vendors. And it wasn’t that long ago that regulators would come down hard on firms that broke the rules, not based on any computation of damages, but on the idea that certain types of behavior were not tolerated.

Once again, the super-rich have demonstrated they will do anything for profit, including robbing all of us blind. This scandal proves how thoroughly rotten the banking system is and why stronger enforcement is still desperately needed.

-- Union Thug

Today's Teamster News 06.08.12

Mortgage Rates In U.S. Fall To Record Lows With 30-Year At 3.67%  Bloomberg   ...Mortgage rates in the U.S. dropped to record lows for a sixth straight week as concerns over slowing job growth pushed investors into the safety of government bonds that guide interest costs...
Oil Heads For Longest Weekly Losing Streak In 13 Years  Bloomberg   ...Oil fell a second day in New York, heading for the longest weekly losing streak in more than 13 years, on speculation the economies of the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest crude consumers, will slow and curb fuel demand...
The Fortunate 400  Reuters   ...Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each. This is one of many stunning revelations in new IRS data that deserves a thorough airing in this year's election campaign...
House Democrats Propose Increasing Minimum Wage To $10  ThinkProgress   ...The minimum wage hit its peak buying power in 1968; to have the same buying power today, the minimum wage would have to be $9.92. If the minimum wage had been indexed to the Consumer Price Index since 1968, it would be approximately $10.40 today...
Nuns' group plans bus trip to protest the Ryan budget  CNN   ...NETWORK, a group founded by 47 Catholic sisters that speaks out on social justice issues in particular, will be hitting states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia in order to reveal “how federal budget cuts proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-WI), and passed by the House of Representatives will hurt struggling families in these states,” a release by the group reads...
LABOR: Clock to start early for Teamsters, UPS  The Press-Enterprise   ...More than a year before its current contract expires, the Teamsters are gearing up for its next round of discussions with UPS...
Labor battle brewing between Teamsters, Waste Management  KOMO News   ..."It's a basic equity concept. it's equal pay for equal work. and i think everybody can understand that if you're working side by side with somebody performing exactly the same job and they're getting paid so much more than you, that's not right," said Tracey Thompson of Teamsters Local 117...