Today's Teamster News 05.29.12

Food Fight: Contractor Accused of $750 Million Overcharge for Wartime Grub  Wired   ... The congressmen want documents and information within 10 days from both the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the Switzerland-based company, Supreme Foodservice GmbH. This might be difficult, because the Pentagon has alleged Supreme Foodservice — which has been paid $5.5 billion since 2005 to supply food to more than 250 bases and outposts – did not maintain invoices and truck manifests (.pdf) while transporting food, water and other materiel; nor did the company provide data to investigators on fuel costs, price estimates and even correct flight plans...
Defectors describe horror, heartbreak in North Korea's labor camps  CNN   ...Horrific heart-breaking accounts of being quite literally worked to death have emerged over recent years. But the camps continue and Pyongyang still refuses to acknowledge their existence...
Walker DNR Appointee Sought to Privatize Trout Streams  Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op   ...Scott Gunderson, appointed by Scott Walker to a top position in the DNR, once pushed for legislation that would have privatized thousands of miles of Wisconsin’s waterways, including portions of every trout stream in the state...
Teamsters Ask Windsor Dump Truck Drivers to Join  Today's Trucking   ...Remember when Windsor-area dump truck drivers staged a protest over low wages? Well, it looks like Teamsters Local 879 would like the drivers to join the union...
Tory back-to-work bill will get stock rolling Thursday  Canada.com   ...Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt hopes freight service will resume at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. by Thursday after tabling a back-to-work bill for its striking workers on Monday...

Today's Teamster News 04.06.12

The Invisible Army  The New Yorker   ...The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. ... Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses... Capitalism’s Dirty Secret: Corporations Don’t Create Jobs, They Destroy Them  naked capitalism   ...For the last four decades, U.S. corporations have been sinking our economy through the off-shoring of jobs, the squeezing of wages, and a magician’s hat full of bluffs and tricks designed to extort subsidies and sweetheart deals from local and state governments that often result in mass layoffs and empty treasuries...
Americans brace for next foreclosure wave  Reuters   ...a painful part two of the slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures...
Attorney: Fake Democrats in Wisconsin committing criminal election fraud  Raw Story   ...Six fake Democrats running in upcoming recall primaries to push back the election date in Wisconsin are violating the law, according to an election attorney...
Gregg now calls for repeal of right to work  Journal Gazette   ...at an Indianapolis stop he said if he is elected governor of Indiana, the new right-to-work law will be repealed...
Teamsters Hold Election April 13  Summerville Patch   ...as the state seeks to privatize school bus services, two of three of the privatized fleets in South Carolina have joined Teamsters 509. Now, a third district could have union representation for bus drivers...