Today's Teamster News 04.28.15

Teamsters
Hoffa: Latest Trade Push is a War on Workers  Huffington Post  ...President Obama in an interview last week downplayed the impact of unfair trade on the U.S. workforce, arguing that many manufacturing jobs are low paying. But I disagree with the president. This nation's manufacturing base provides a pathway to prosperity for many Americans, especially those who work union jobs...
Port Truck Drivers on Strike at Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach   Teamster.org  ...Primary picket lines are now up company yards in the greater Los Angeles area and in San Diego, and truckers and their supporters are picketing company trucks at marine terminals, rail yards, and customer warehouses as far away as the US/Mexico border...
Port truck drivers strike against four companies  LA Times  ...Picket lines went up outside the trucking yards of Pacific 9 Transportation, Intermodal Bridge Transport, Pacer Cartage and Harbor Rail Transport, said Barb Maynard, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union, which is supporting the truckers. Maynard estimated the number of drivers striking at several hundred...
Port’s Short-Haul Truck Drivers Walking Picket Lines  Times of San Diego   ...Port truck drivers walked picket lines at an Otay Mesa freight drayage company Monday morning as they and their counterparts in Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike against the short-haul transport companies for which they work. Drivers working at ports in San Diego, Los Angeles and Long Beach voted Saturday to strike following a recent ruling that the drivers are misclassified as “independent contractors”...
Flexjet Pilots Sue Luxury Jet Airline For Union Busting  Teamster.org  ... group of jet pilots filed a lawsuit Friday against airline Flexjet, LLC and OneSky, its Cleveland-based parent company, claiming they were illegally harassed and terminated for speaking out in favor of unionization and better working conditions. The pilots are seeking representation from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Airline Division, which represents over 80,000 workers in the aviation industry...
Shareholders Rein In Golden Parachutes   Forbes  ...Louis Malizia, assistant director of the Teamsters Capital Strategies department at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said his initial assumption following the financial crisis was that golden parachutes would be stigmatized by the public before fading away...

Global Labor & Trade
12-country TPP talks end without a breakthrough  Japan Times   ...Chief negotiators from 12 countries aiming to forge a Pacific free trade initiative finished four days of talks on Sunday, a Japanese official said, apparently without making major progress. The trade officials from the United States, Japan and 10 other countries gathered in a Washington suburb with intellectual property, including data on new drugs, and reform of state-owned entities as their main issues...
Trade Fight Galvanizing the Left  Roll Call   ...If they can’t stop the TPA bill, the nearly 70 voting House members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus are determined to make such a ruckus that the party’s 2016 candidates — presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in particular — realize Obama’s middle-of-the-road approach to trade, or any major policy area, is not acceptable...
Obama shifts his pitch for the Trans-Pacific Partnership   Washington Post  ...The sharp shift in the way Obama is now presenting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade deal in the Asia-Pacific region, illustrates his biggest challenge as he tries to wrap up a late-term policy victory over fierce opposition from fellow Democrats...
Elizabeth Warren Tells Obama To Put Up Or Shut Up On Trade   Huffington Post   ...On Saturday, Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) responded with a letter essentially telling Obama to put up or shut up. If the deal is so great, Warren and Brown wrote, the administration should make the full negotiation texts public before Congress votes on a "fast track" bill that would strip the legislative branch of its authority to amend it...
2,009 Organizations Call on Congress to Oppose Fast Track Authority for the TPP  Citizens Trade  ...An unprecedentedly united movement of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, Internet freedom and other organizations escalated their campaign to defeat Fast Track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) today with a joint 2,009-group letter urging Congress to oppose it...
Trans Pacific Partnership is bad deal for senior citizens  (opinion) The Hill  ...Prescription drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world and last year they increased by 13 percent. If Congress enacts the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in its current form, it could increase those expenses for seniors and all Americans dramatically...
Currency provisions essential in Asian trade pact  (opinion) Detriot Free Press   ...While the economy is growing stronger every day, many people in Michigan still don't feel the success at home or in their pocketbooks, which is why it's imperative we promote policies to help hardworking families get ahead. And a bad trade deal jeopardizes all the shared progress we've made...

State & Living Wage Battles
Mayors to Rauner: 'Follow our lead, don't cripple our progress'  Chicago Sun-Times  ...A group of suburban mayors is pushing back against Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal to cut in half the amount of state money that goes to municipalities, saying their residents are asked to pay the price for the state’s lack of fiscal discipline...
Bernie Sanders and other senators urge ‘living wage’ for Senate workers  MarketWatch  ... A group of nine senators is pushing for Senate contract workers to be paid a “living wage” following reports of workers barely getting by. Roll Call writes that the senators, including Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, wrote Monday to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee: "The U.S. Congress should be working to improve the economic security of middle class families across the country"...
State Senate shelves minimum wage measure  Oneida Daily Dispatch   ...A proposal to let cities in New York state set their own minimum wages was shelved by lawmakers in the state Senate on Monday — dealing a setback to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and others who want the state to relinquish its total control of the wage...
Prevailing wage reform proposed in Pa. House  Herald-Mail Media  ...Pa. Rep. Jesse Topper is pushing for prevailing-wage reform that would allow school districts to pay market rates for construction, rather than adjusted rates determined by the Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor & Industry...
Florida Passes Law That Bans Discriminating Against Pregnant Women In Public  Think Progress  ...Last week, the Florida legislature passed a bill banning discrimination against pregnant women at work as well as in public places like restaurants or hotels. The bill amends the state’s Civil Rights Act by adding pregnancy to race, sex, and physical disability as protected classes...

City considers minimum wage increase   Minnesota Daily   ...The Minneapolis City Council approved a resolution earlier this month to create a group to research the possible effects of raising the city’s minimum wage. The group will investigate the economic impact of raising wages and consider concerns from both workers and businesses. It will give recommendations to city officials before the year ends...

U.S. Labor
UAW to protest proposal to close DHHS offices  Lansing State Journal  ...The United Auto Workers Local 6000 will on Tuesday begin demonstrating against a proposal to close Michigan Department of Health & Human Services offices around the state...
Union files NLRB charge against Lyondell Basell for impasse   Reuters  ...The United Steelworkers union filed a charge with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board against Lyondell Basell Industries for declaring an impasse in negotiations with striking Houston refinery workers, the union said on Monday. Lyondell declared the impasse on April 14 following the rejection of its "last, best and final" contract offer by striking workers...
Manufacturer cuts hundreds of N.C. jobs as operations move overseas  Charlotte Business Journal   ...The company will eliminate 143 positions in Lenoir and 82 jobs in Greensboro, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, filed with the N.C. Department of Commerce. Avery Dennison is ending manufacturing operations in both locations and moving production to Juarez, Mexico, and to Honduras...

Miscellaneous
Connecting Baltimore Riots to Lead Poisoning, Wealth Disparity  Mediaite   ...Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s statement that “a riot is the language of the unheard,” Dyson suggested it would be difficult to condemn this riot without also mentioning the broad context for why a local community would destroy itself. “What we don’t have commentary about is the theft of capital from these urban post-industrial conditions”...
Why Millions of Americans Feel Like They Have No Power Over Their Lives  Alternet  ...Companies are treating workers as disposable cogs because most working people have no choice. They need work and must take what they can get. Although jobs are coming back from the depths of the Great Recession, the portion of the labor force actually working remains lower than it’s been in over thirty years...

Today's Teamster News 07.26.14

Teamster News
Teamsters Win Settlement For Taxi Driver Barred From Speaking At Public Meeting  IBT   ...Teamsters Local 922 scored a major victory for a D.C. taxi driver who will receive a monetary settlement as part of an agreement reached with the city after he was barred from speaking at a D.C. Taxi Commission (DCTC) meeting over concerns that his accent made him difficult to understand...
Hinckley Springs Employees Are Back At Work After 25-Day Strike  Des Plaines Valley News   ...Teamsters union members at the Hinckley Springs water bottling plant at 6055 S. Harlem Ave. in Chicago ended their 25-day strike on July 17. ...the workers felt the offer presented by DS Services of America Inc., which owns and operates the Hinckley Springs plants, was the best under the circumstances...
Trade
German NGO Says TTIP Will Undermine Global Food Security  EurActiv   ...The planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US threatens the concept of sustainable food security, the development NGO Brot für die Welt announced at a presentation of its annual report, in Berlin...
Ethiopia Becomes China’s China In Global Search For Cheap Labor  Bloomberg News   ...Huajian is nonetheless becoming a case study of Ethiopia’s emerging potential as a production center for labor-intensive products from shoes to T-shirts to handbags....
State Battles
Governor Rick Scott Shows What A Real Scandal Looks Like  Time Magazine   ...There’s nothing inherently wrong with government support for a train linking Miami and Orlando ... but it looks pretty sketchy after Governor Scott (at the urging of his conflicted chief of staff) rejected $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed rail project that would have eventually linked Miami, Orlando and Tampa. ...
WEDC to hold its board meeting at China outsourcer  Jake's Economic TA Funhouse   ...Here's more on the absurdity of Gov Walker's quickly-backfiring ads against Trek bicycle. Walker's pet "jobs creator" organization, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), has its next Board meeting on Monday, and it's located at the headquarters of Briggs and Stratton Corporation in Wauwatosa...
On the stump, Hanaway calls for ‘right to work’, eliminating state income tax, and tort reform  PoliticM   ...Hanaway is the only announced Republican candidate for (Missouri) governor in 2016...
War On Workers
40-hour workweek just a memory, survey finds  South Bend Tribune   ...The "Take Back 60" study found that 88 percent of the 617 respondents who took the online survey last month said they work more than 40 hours a week...
Construction Worker On Fort Bragg Killed When Trench Caves In  Fayetteville Observer   ...Federal labor investigators are working to determine how a trench on Fort Bragg collapsed, killing a man Thursday morning...
Fired Walmart CEO to Get $4.5 Million To Leave Job  2 Paragraphs   ...Walmart also suffers from some PR problems, given its much publicized low-wage workforce, an unsightly percentage of whom are also using government-funded food stamps to sustain themselves...
At 3 Years Old, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Gives Americans A Soapbox  Huffington Post   ...Despite vehement opposition, the CFPB continues to build on a solid track record that to date includes winning $4.6 billion in damages for 15 million consumers harmed by illegal practices. Included in that figure are major accomplishments, like forcing credit card companies to return $1.5 billion to consumers duped by add-on products and changing lending rules to ensure loans can and will be paid back so there will never again be a repeat of the Great Meltdown of 2008. The agency has also started the arduous process of taking entities that offer predatory student loans to the mat in court...
Miscellaneous
Senator’s Bill Is Stricter On N.S.A. Than House’s  ...Senator Patrick J. Leahy said Thursday that next week he would file a new version of a bill aimed at ending the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records collection program after extensive negotiations with the Obama administration and privacy groups...

Today's Teamster News 10.08.13

Wegmans, teamsters back in talks   City Newspaper   ...Wegmans and representatives of Teamsters Local 118 are set to resume contract negotiations on Friday...
Hernando County, Teamsters, tentatively agree to 3 percent raise  Tampa Bay Times   ...Hernando County employees represented by the Teamsters Union settled Monday on a 3 percent across-the-board pay increase, their first since 2007...
The “Debt Ceiling” Smokescreen  Counterpunch   ...The media is ratcheting up “debt ceiling” hysteria to launch a surprise attack on Social Security and Medicare...
Democrats and Republicans Pedal to the Metal in Debt Ceiling/Shutdown Game of Chicken  naked capitalism   ...Norquist has been making the rounds trying to give everyone, meaning those Democrats who need to get the message that they need to whack all sorts of spending, especially Medicare and Social Security, the outlines of where Republicans think a budget deal lies...
U.S. trade official says to seek TPP deal by year-end  Reuters   ...The United States maintained it hopes to seal an ambitious trade pact on schedule by year-end despite resistance in some countries and the absence of President Barack Obama from a regional summit that is ironing out differences on the pact...
Rich People Just Care Less (opinion)  New York Times   ...A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power...
8 states where student debt is out of control  USA Today   ...The surprising top of the list goes to New Hampshire, which, with a whopping average debt of $32,440 for graduates running a loan tab, comes in at nearly $2,500 more than its nearest competitor...
Enron billionaire expands craven plot to abuse workers  Salon   ...the word “reform,” is now the preferred euphemism for “rip-off scheme.” In the context of pensions, it means pleading poverty to justify cuts to public employees guaranteed retirement income, all while preserving massive corporate welfare and, in many cases, funneling pension cash to Wall Street hedge fund managers...
'Why Isn't Poverty Falling? Weakening of Unemployment Insurance Is a Pivotal Factor'  Economist's View   ...One key reason why poverty has remained virtually frozen despite continued economic growth is the weakening of unemployment insurance...
Wind turbine blade manufacturer adds U.S. production and jobs  Salon   ... Big turbine blade manufacturer LM Wind Power put out word that it is “adding more than 850 jobs to support increased volumes from major customers” in the United States...
At a Nissan Plant in Mississippi, a Battle to Shape the U.A.W.’s Future  New York Times   ...It has enlisted thousands of union members in Brazil to picket Nissan dealerships there as the company prepares to co-sponsor the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The union has sent a team of Mississippi ministers and workers to South Africa, where Nissan has an assembly plant, to try to embarrass the company with accusations that it violates workers’ rights at the Canton plant...
NYC Bridge and Tunnel Bosses Won’t Budge on Foreign Steel  Portside   ...New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority refused to change its plans to spend $34 million on Chinese steel to repair the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge...
America's police are looking more and more like the military (opinion)  The Guardian   ... Last week, in a small county in upstate New York with a population of roughly 120,000 people, county legislators approved the receipt of a 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, donated by the US Defense Department to the county sheriff...
Near-destitute woman unable to buy €1.20 bus ticket now told to pay €720 penalty  ENet English   ...A woman who was caught earlier this year travelling on an Athens bus without the required €1.20 ticket and who was unable to pay the €72 fine has been told she is now liable for a €720 penalty at her local tax office, in a move that has been described as a "gratuitous blow" by the country's most prominent voluntary health clinic...
Eastern Ohio legislators push for restoration of Homestead Exemption  Youngstown Vindicator   ...Starting in 2007, under Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, everyone 65 and over and permanently disabled Ohioans qualified for the exemption, which saves them about $400 per year on their property taxes...

Today's Teamster News 08.25.13

John Lewis At March On Washington: ‘I’m Not Going To Stand By And Let The Supreme Court Take The Right To Vote Away’  ThinkProgress   ...Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) — who was the youngest speaker during the March on Washington in 1963 — delivered a passionate address about the importance of protecting voting rights at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial fifty years later, as thousands gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the historic event on Saturday...
Thousands march to Mall to mark ‘Dream’ anniversary  Washington Post   ...Saturday was a day to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington, and a vision one man delivered so forcefully that five decades later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech ranks with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech to Congress as among the most memorable in U.S. history...
In Paper War, Flood of Liens Is the Weapon  New York Times   ...liens, legal claims on property to secure the payment of a debt, were just the earliest salvos in a war of paper, waged by a couple who had lost their home to foreclosure in 2009 — a tactic that, with the spread of an anti-government ideology known as the “sovereign citizen” movement, is being employed more frequently as a way to retaliate against perceived injustices...
NSA abuses include Stalking ex-Girlfriends  Informed Consent   ...now we have LOVEINT or NSA analysts occasionally reading the emails of ex-lovers. It doesn’t happen a lot, the NSA told the WSJ, but often enough that there is a word for it...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It's a corporate coup d'etat--against us!  Hightower Lowdown   ...The nullification of our people's right to direct expenditures of our own tax dollars is but one of the horror stories being quietly packed into a political-and-economic bombshell benignly labeled TPP --the Trans-Pacific Partnership...
Bloomberg, Health Experts Denounce Obama's Gift to Big Tobacco in the TPP  Public Citizen   ...The Obama administration has drawn sharp criticism from leading health organizations, U.S. state representatives, and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg by caving to pressure from Big Tobacco to abandon safeguards for tobacco control policies in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the pending "free trade" deal with 11 Pacific Rim countries...
New Jersey Senate Candidate To Single Mothers: Stop Relying On Food Stamps And Go To Work!  ThinkProgress   ...Lonegan, who is the former New Jersey head for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, encouraged single mothers to roll up their sleeves and go to work, adding that free market policies and less government will free “individuals to achieve their best potential..."
Drawing Down: How To Roll Back Police Militarization In America (opinion)  Huffington Post   ...Today in America, SWAT teams are deployed about 100 to 150 times per day, or about 50,000 times per year -- a dramatic increase from the 3,000 or so annual deployments in the early 1980s, or the few hundred in the 1970s. The vast majority of today's deployments are to serve search warrants for drug crimes...
Who Are the Long-Term Unemployed?  The Atlantic   ...The long-term unemployed tend to be people who 1) are a little bit older, and 2) got laid off from their last job...
Mark Leibovich on Glitz and Greed in Washington  Bill Moyers   ...The tragic story is that what has grown up in this city that was supposedly built on public service is this permanent feudal class of insiders, of people who are not term limited. Of people who never leave and never die, figuratively never die. And who are there and who are doing very, very well for themselves, very, very well for Washington, and not very, very well for the United States...
Feds: PA Cyber Charter School founder Trombetta schemed to steal $1 million  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   ...For more than a year, federal investigators pursued suspicions about Nicholas Trombetta, a high-flying educator with small-town origins who created the biggest, richest cyber school in the state...

Today's Teamster News 08.19.13

A Night To Remember As the 38th Annual TNBC Comes to an End  IBT   ...members and leaders were recognized and rewarded for their dedication to the Teamsters National Black Caucus, locally and nationally...
Man Arrested for Attempting to Drive Over Union Demonstrators on a Picket Line  NH Labor News   ...On Thursday 08/15/13 the day on the line started out like any other, until an unnamed worker that is said to have been doing woodwork at this site decided to cross the line and get in the demonstrators faces…with his VAN...
Moral Monday, now in Charlotte, employs the language of faith  Charlotte Observer   ...The protests, which have received national attention, are not only grounded in religion but expanding their reach into churches. Organizers say they seek to reclaim the language of political morality...
Report: Rules skirted to give police chief raise  Associated Press   ...Gov. Scott Walker's administration gave the Capitol Police chief and his top deputy double-digit pay raises after moving them on paper to fake jobs and then back to their real posts...
Dems Defy Obama on Mortgage Protections  Mother Jones   ...President Barack Obama laid out his new housing plan, emphasizing the importance of safe, simple, affordable mortgages. But lawmakers in his own party are working against him, trying to gut historic new safeguards on home loans...
5 Companies That Make Money By Keeping Americans Terrified of Terror Attacks  Alternet   ...The drive to privatize America's national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors...
America's Growing Income Inequality Problem  Economic Populist   ...While the Great Recession might be relabeled the great wealth transfer from the middle classes to the super rich, it is not the actual cause for such American economic injustice.  The primary cause is Congress and their never ending giving to the rich through the U.S. tax code...
Greece privatisation boss Stelios Stavridis dismissed  BBC News   ...Mr Stavridis had only been in the job for four months but had faced criticism for the slow pace of privatisations...
Hiring in China by JPMorgan Under Scrutiny  New York Times   ...Federal authorities have opened a bribery investigation into whether JPMorgan Chase hired the children of powerful Chinese officials to help the bank win lucrative business in the booming nation...
“We’re Building a Domestic Army” – Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino Before Concord, NH Town Council  naked capitalism   ...What’s happening here is that we’re building a domestic military because it’s unlawful or unconstitutional to use American troops on American soil...