Let the Post Office fight off predatory lenders

One of the biggest unionized workforces in the United States, Post Office employees, may be able to help lift families out of poverty.

Postal workers provide reliable mail service to almost every American. They may also be able to help working families with basic financial services. Lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) want to use the Post Office to help the 68 million Americans who do not have access to basic financial services.

Warren articulates the problems those families face:

Collectively, these households spent about $89 billion in 2012 on interest and fees for payday loans and check cashing. That means the average underserved household spends roughly 10 percent of its annual income on interest and fees -- about the same amount they spend on food.

Think about that: about 10 percent of a family's income just to manage getting checks cashed, bills paid, and, sometimes, a short-term loan to tide them over. That's more than a full month's income just to try to navigate the basics. The poor pay more, and that's one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Warren goes on to propose that the Post Office could generate a badly needed additional revenue stream and fight off lenders that prey on the middle and working class families by offering check cashing, small loans and banking services at reasonable rates.

Warren's proposal could be especially helpful in parts of the country where banking services are hard to access.

Today's Teamster News 02.08.13

US citizens braced for austerity impact  Financial Times   ...The Pentagon has said that 800,000 civilian employees would see their hours cut by 20 per cent for the rest of the year and 46,000 temporary workers would be laid off. Other agencies would also see deep cuts in staff. There are estimates of a 25 per cent drop in border patrol agents, 600 fewer food safety inspectors at slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, and 1,200 fewer air traffic control operators...
Tax Holiday Ends, Consumers Scrimp  Wall Street Journal   ...Surveys show the majority of Americans who are aware of the tax increase say they plan to cut spending, and consumer confidence has wavered. Companies like Target Corp. and women's clothier Cato Corp. say the tax increase has crimped sales...
Profound Weight of Layoffs Is Seen in Work Trends Survey  New York Times   ...While about 8 percent of Americans are unemployed, nearly a quarter of Americans say they were laid off at some point during the recession or afterward...Of those laid off in recent years, nearly a quarter said they still had not found a job...
Postal Service dying from 1,000 cuts and a GOP stab in the back (opinion)  Los Angeles Times   ...Republicans are always insisting that the USPS be run like a good capitalist enterprise, but few, if any, private businesses could bear the burden of funding three-quarters of a century of retired employees’ medical costs over just one decade...
American Airlines And US Airways Near Merger Deal  Forbes   ...AA’s parent company, AMR Corp., is in the final stages of talks with US Airways Group on a merger deal, and an agreement could be reached as soon as February 15th...
Tunisia faces general strike after Belaid assassination sparks crisis  The Guardian   ...The UGTT, Tunisia's trade union federation, called the strike in protest at the murder of Chokri Belaid on Wednesday. It will be the first such strike since 1978...
Senators look to revamp local pension plans  Sun-Sentinel   ...A panel of Florida lawmakers on Wednesday debated how best to revamp 492 municipal pension plans across the state...
Washtenaw County takes stance against right-to-work legislation with unanswered legal questions  AnnArbor.com   ...the commission voted 6-1 to approve the resolution that not only served as a formal expression of the majority of the commission's opposition to the right-to-work measures passed by the lame duck Michigan legislature in December, but also to direct staff to expedite union contract negotiations...
Dayton: Tax cuts caused Minn. economic problems  Minnesota Public Radio   ..."In the decade after Minnesota's income tax reductions, our economy fared worse than the nation and most other states," Dayton said...
Voter poll pulls losing numbers for Corbett's lotto plan  Philly.com   ...Sixty-four percent of the voters polled said they oppose his plan to turn over control of the lottery to a British company, Camelot Global Services...
Walmart Workers Are Back on Strike Over a New Wave of Alleged Threats  The Nation   ...half a dozen workers in Laurel, Maryland, walked off the job in protest of alleged retaliation by Walmart management...
Workers at UNFI vote to ratify 5-year contract agreement  Auburn Reporter   ...Warehouse workers and drivers, represented by Teamsters Local 117, overwhelmingly voted to ratify a fully-recommended 5-year contract agreement with United Natural Foods, Inc. on Thursday...The agreement provides for the reinstatement of all workers, including the 72 who had been permanently replaced, health and welfare protections for workers, and meaningful wage increases...
Moreno Valley warehouse charged with harassing union  Press Enterprise   ...The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces workplace laws and supervises union elections, has issued a complaint against a Moreno Valley food distribution center... union officials filed labor board charges alleging that employees were harassed and threatened by company officials...
Arbitrator rules in favor of deputy sheriffs on pay  Capital Gazette   ...An arbitrator has ruled in favor of the county's deputy sheriffs union in its grievance against the county for failing to pay negotiated wage increases in fiscal 2010...The sheriff's deputies are represented by Teamsters Union Local 355...
Teamsters Release Video Of Sanitation Workers At Martin Luther King, Jr. March  IBT   ...more than 400 sanitation workers from Atlanta, Ga., Pensacola, Fla., Mobile, Ala. and Memphis, Tenn. joined workers from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to demand that Republic Services/Allied Waste treat its workers with respect...

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/07/5173245/teamsters-release-video-of-sanitation.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/07/5173245/teamsters-release-video-of-sanitation.html#storylink=cpy

Today's Teamster News 02.07.13

401Ks are a disaster (opinion)  USA Today   ...Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles...
RBS fined $612 million for rate rigging  Reuters ...Royal Bank of Scotland will pay $612 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations it manipulated benchmark interest rates, and regulators warned there is more to come in the global investigation. RBS became the third bank to pay fines in the Libor scandal...
China made 1.2B mobile phones in 2012  ZDNet   ...China produced 1.18 billion mobile phones in 2012, accounting for more than 50 percent of mobile phone sales worldwide...
China unveils major tax reforms to make rich pay more  The Guardian  ...China has unveiled sweeping tax reforms to make wealthy state-owned firms, property speculators and the rich pay more to narrow the gap between the urban elite and hundreds of millions of rural poor...
Greece orders seamen back to work on 6th day of strike  BBC  ...Workers manning ferry services to Greece's numerous islands have been demanding the payment of wages more than six months in arrears and the signing of collective work contracts with ferry companies...
Thanks To Congressional Incompetence, Saturday Mail Delivery Is History  ThinkProgress   ...Under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, Congress has for years forced the USPS to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of pensions for its employees, a requirement not made of any other public or private institution...
Pointless attacks on unions in Kansas, Missouri (opinion)  Kansas City Star   ...The unnecessary attacks on unions demonstrate how susceptible state legislatures are to outside forces...
Hearing on Missouri 'right to work' bill attracts crowd  Associated Press  ...A standing room only crowd spilled into the Capitol hallway Wednesday to watch a Missouri House committee hearing on a bill barring payment of union dues as a condition of employment...
Senate approves constitutional amendment on union elections  Northwest Indiana Times   ...All union organizing elections would have to be conducted by secret ballot under an amendment to the Indiana Constitution approved 33-16 by the Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday...
Local 150 will appeal judge’s dismissal of its challenge to right-to-work law  Post-Tribune   ...Attorneys for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 filed the notice to appeal Monday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond...
Maine Voter ID Law Not Recommended By Independent Elections Panel  Huffington Post   ..."The Commission, by a 4 to 1 vote, finds that the negative aspects of a Voter ID law outweigh its potential benefits and recommends that a Voter ID system not be pursued in Maine," read the report from the five-member panel...
Rich DeVos family gave $1.75 million to fight Michigan's Proposal 2 on union collective bargaining  Michigan Live  ...Betsy DeVos, Dan DeVos, Dick DeVos, Doug DeVos, Elisabeth DeVos, Helen DeVos, Maria DeVos, Pamella DeVos and Richard DeVos altogether gave $2.8 million to the Republican party, political candidates and conservative causes in Michigan last year, a MIRS report calculates...
Right-to-work bill finding little support in NH House  Nashua Telegraph   ...The House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee dealt a blow to the latest attempt to pass right-to-work legislation in New Hampshire. The committee voted 13-5 to recommend House Bill 322 be killed when the full House takes up the measure...
Sprucing Up Suppression: Pennsylvania GOP Proposes New Election-Rigging Scheme  Center for Media and Democracy  ...Pennsylvania's Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi intends to introduce legislation that would award that state's electoral votes proportionally according to the popular vote, rather than according to the winner in each Congressional district. If the plan had been in place for last November's election Romney would have received 8 of Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes...
Labor lawyer: Kansas union bill will silence workers  Associated Press   ...The payroll bill is one of several proposed measures that Democrats and union representatives see as eroding the rights of public employees to participate in the political process, whether it be supporting candidates with political action committees or advocating public policy changes...
Talks of Bus Strikes Still Alive  The Coastal Source  ...Talks of a possible bus strike for Beaufort County Schools are still up in the air...The Teamsters Union and Durham Services are trying to reach a compromise about possible pay raises for current bus drivers and better benefits, but Tuesday afternoon, rumors spread that Durham Bus Services walked out of the meeting...
Cecil supervisors approve police, public works contracts  Observer-Reporter  ...Public works employees, members of Teamsters Local 205, will receive a 3 percent salary increase over the course of their four-year contract...

Today's Teamster News 05.16.12

Wells Fargo Has Blood on Its Hands: Desperate Man Commits Suicide After Shocking Foreclosure Mistreatment  Alternet   ...right at the start the Rousseaus came up with proof that the bank had received the payment and had cashed the check. But the bank continued to claim it had missed the payment, gave the Rousseaus the runaround, started applying fees, and used it as an excuse to foreclose on the house anyway...
Work Is Work: Why Free Internships Are Immoral  The Atlantic   ...poorer students are at permanent disadvantage in the summer internship market...
Implementation of Colombia Trade Deal a New Low for Workers and the Environment  Public Citizen   ...At a time when nearly four out of ten Americans are unemployed or simply not participating in the labor force, it is unconscionable to implement a trade deal with Colombia – the unionist murder capital of the world...
3,700 post offices win reprieve  Associated Press   ...The U.S. Postal Service said Monday its decision to halt the closing of more than 3,700 post offices includes roughly 600 urban and suburban postal branch offices and satellite stations...
The Horrible Jobs Record Of The GOP's Favorite Governor  Business Insider   ...from an economic standpoint, he's not a good governor.,,
NLRB mulls reviving speedy union-vote rule  Washington Times   ...Teamsters President James P. Hoffa called the court decision “just another attack on workers and the American middle class.” “The decision lets anti-worker extremists game the system,” Mr. Hoffa said...

Today's Teamster News 01.24.11

VISION: Can a New High-Speed Rail System Save the American Dream?  Alternet   ...America is looking for answers and solutions, and it may have found a good one in the form of an ambitious national high-speed rail network...
One oil pipeline too many for Texas?  Los Angeles Times   ...TransCanada's plan to pipe in tar sands oil angers Texas landowners who say they resent being pushed around by a foreign company...
ATA Mounts Assault on HOS Proposal  truckinginfo.com   ...ATA says the proposed changes would hurt industry productivity and the economy, are too complex to be enforced and would not improve safety...
The Blue Collar Life (essay)  firedoglake   ...The men in suits make you focus on the unions with their high paying jobs while they sit in offices pushing pencils making eight times the amount that my husband makes...
Mortgage Giants Leave Legal Bills to the Taxpayers  New York Times   ...Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud...
Postal Service Eyes Closing Thousands of Post Offices  Wall Street Journal   ...Beginning in March, the agency will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices, on top of the 491 it said it would close starting at the end of last year...
The State of the Union: What the President Should Say  robertreich.org   ...the U.S. economy is now twice as large as it was in 1980 but the real median wage has barely budged...
Jeff Immelt’s GE: The Too Biggest To Fail  firedoglake   ...GE was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s bailout of shadow banking in 2008-09...