Headline News
Today’s Teamster News For January 26, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters Warn of Crisis at Kalitta Air Teamster.org …Kalitta Air operates a fleet of Boeing 747 aircraft in support of the global network of DHL Express, a division of the German logistics company, Deutsche Post DHL. The pilots are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Airline Division, Airline Professionals Association Teamsters Local 1224. The union conducted a survey to determine the pilots’ perspective of how they are treated by their management…
Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 743 Holds Prayer Vigil At UCMC Chicago Maroon …A union representing clerical and maintenance workers at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) expressed concern about members’ contracts with the University and UCMC at a prayer vigil yesterday evening. Teamsters Local 743 is negotiating for higher wages and improved retirement benefits in a new contract for their employees at the University…
Local 710 Continues Negotiations for ReaderLink Contract Local 710 …Negotiations for ReaderLink continued Tuesday, January 19, with both Teamsters Local 710 and the company exchanging initial proposals. The next bargaining session is scheduled for Tuesday, February 16. Local 710 represents 190 warehouse Teamsters at the ReaderLink Central Distribution Center in Romeoville, Ill. who handle the distribution of books to various retailers…
Local Teamsters decry potential pension cuts Bismarck Tribune …Teamsters from North Dakota traveled to Minneapolis on Monday to voice concerns about a potential 50 percent cut to their pension plans. Teamsters Local 638 business agent Jeff Diede said the decline of the stock market and the 2008 recession, along with more retired than active members, as well as companies that went bankrupt without completing their financial obligations, has put the fund into its present state…
Browning-Ferris appeals U.S. ruling on ‘joint employment’ Reuters …Unions and others who support the change say the decision is necessary to bring companies that indirectly control working conditions to the bargaining table and to curb the use of “permanent temps” who are paid less and do not get the same benefits as ordinary employees. Larry Daugherty, who heads the Teamsters affiliate trying to negotiate with Browning-Ferris, said the company’s appeal brings the parties one step closer to the bargaining table…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
France hit by day of protest as workers take to the streets The Guardian …Police have fired teargas at striking French taxi drivers who tried to march down a major Paris bypass on a day of protests against non-traditional car services such as Uber. The drivers are protesting against what they consider to be unfair competition from Uber and other non-licensed private hire cabs, and are seeking compensation…
Colombian Workers Coordinate National Strike Prensa Latina …In order to demand decent wages, reject privatization and support peace negotiations, Colombian trade union organizations prepare a national strike, confirmed today guild”s leaders. ‘We decided to protest due to the minimum wage increase (seven per cent), and the sale of public enterprises to private entities, we also will demand peace with social justice’, said to Prensa Latina Isaias Garzon, president of Sintradistritales, one of the major labor movements in Colombia…
New Tufts Study: “TPP Would Lead to Jobs Losses in All Countries” We Party Patriots …A new “more realistic” modeling of the effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) predicts 450,000 American job losses and a contraction of the economy by 0.54 percent. That percentage may seem small, but it is the equivalent of a $100 billion gut punch. The study, conducted by researchers Jerome Capaldo and Alex Izurieta at Tufts University, comes in the wake of several studies which have predicted positive effects resulting from the TPP…
Canada to agree to terms of TPP but ratification not guaranteed: minister Globe and Mail …Ottawa is poised to affix a Canadian signature to the text of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership accord next week, but International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland insists this doesn’t mean the government is approving the deal. The Trudeau Liberals remain officially uncommitted to the trade deal reached by the former Conservative government during the 2015 election campaign…
German Govt. Offers Politicians Opportunity to Peruse Secret TTIP Documents Sputnik News …The German government has reacted to criticism of secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations by providing a reading room in the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, where politicians will be able to read TTIP documents. TTIP is a bilateral trade agreement between the EU and US that aims to reduce regulatory barriers to trade…
USTR Says Services Deal Is On Pace For 2016 Completion Law360 …The U.S. trade representative on Saturday said negotiations for a 23-nation agreement aimed at making it easier for financial companies, telecoms and other service providers to compete internationally are on track to produce an agreement by the end of 2016. Ministers from some of negotiating states met informally near the end of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA)…
TTIP – An Opportunity For Big Business To Pick And Choose (opinion) Equal Times …Thanks to the Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue – created in 2002 as a forum for transatlantic regulatory cooperation on finance – US financial corporations can operate in the European Union (EU) without significant monitoring by European authorities. This type of regulatory cooperation between the EU and the US risks becoming compulsory and widespread under TTIP, the transatlantic trade deal, making multinationals from both sides of the Atlantic far too powerful…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
In Wisconsin, civil service change is another labor setback Madison.com …Gov. Scott Walker made a national name for himself among conservatives by redefining Wisconsin’s labor landscape, eliminating public unions, wiping out closed shops and erasing local prevailing wages. Now, coming off a short-lived presidential bid, he’s poised to deal state workers another blow by revamping the state’s 110-year-old civil service system…
New WV Senator Sworn In; Right-to-Work Passage Guaranteed WOWK …Republicans now have enough votes to overturn a promised veto from the Governor on Right-to-Work legislation. But Democrats insist, it’s a bad bill. “Instead, we’re wasting time chasing ghosts. Right to Work, which will do nothing to create a job in this state, or change anything in this state, except to defund unions,” said State Sen. Mike Romano, (D) Harrison. Right-to-Work was passed by the Senate last week; it’s awaiting action in the House…
Nebraska May Lift Its Unfair, Counterproductive Welfare Ban For Drug Felons Think Progress …A Nebraska lawmaker wants his state to join the movement to tear down one of the most harmful components of the conservative welfare reforms passed into law in the mid-1990s. State Sen. Adam Morfeld (D) has introduced legislation to opt out of a policy invented by former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) that bans people from receiving food stamps and welfare benefits for the rest of their lives if they are convicted of a drug crime…
How Unions Hope to Win a $15 Minimum Wage in California Daily Signal …Labor unions are pushing to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour with two initiatives competing for voters’ approval. Two different unions are trying to get questions on the ballot for Californians to have a say on a $15 minimum wage. “One in four Californians is living in poverty because wages are too low to feed a family. We have to do better by our kids,” Assembly member Roger Hernández, a Democrat, said…
New Yorkers making less than $15 wage cost government more, says University of California at Berkeley study Newsday …A new study found that New Yorkers making less than $15 an hour — the proposed new minimum wage — have qualified for billions of dollars in social services, according to the research by the University of California at Berkeley. The study, paid for in part by advocates of a higher minimum wage, is scheduled to be released this week…
North Carolina’s voter ID law goes on trial Reuters …Minority voters in North Carolina will have a harder time casting a ballot this presidential election year if a judge allows a law requiring photo identification at the polls to take effect, challengers of the law said in federal court on Monday. The trial in Winston-Salem is one of several closely watched voting rights battles that will play out across the country as Democrats and Republicans fight for the White House in November…
Missouri House passes voter ID measures KY3 …The Missouri House of Representatives passed two bills that would strengthen the state’s voter ID’s laws. The measures would require a voter show a photo ID, like a drivers license, before casting a ballot. One of the bills would create a constitutional amendment, meaning, if approved by the senate, the measure would go before the voters later this year…
Plan Would Take Politicians Out Of Redistricting WESA …Pennsylvania’s next redistricting effort is five years away, but one state lawmaker is already thinking about changing how it’s done. Sen. John Wozniak (D-Cambria) plans to propose an overhaul that would take politicians out of the process of redrawing district lines to accommodate population changes…
A Surprising Number of America’s Mayors Support $15 Minimum Wage Politico …Democratic presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders are struggling to push pocketbook concerns ahead of the hot-button issues such as terrorism that dominate on the GOP side, but surprising numbers of America’s most prominent mayors view poverty—and a higher minimum wage—as priorities for their cities…
U.S. LABOR
Judge denies request to force end to teacher sick-outs Times Union …A judge denied a second attempt by the Detroit Public Schools on Monday to obtain a temporary restraining order against teacher sick-outs that have closed dozens of buildings this month and kept thousands of students home. State Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens said the district didn’t present enough evidence to prove the teachers’ union or its president had encouraged members to miss work…
USW to rally in Chicago to demand a fair contract NWITimes …The union is planning a major rally at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday at the ArcelorMittal North America headquarters at 1 S. Dearborn St. in downtown Chicago. The USW hopes to show the company that workers and retirees remain united in their opposition to concessions that would lower their standard of living. Thousands of steelworkers marched, chanted and waved signs at rallies across Northwest Indiana in the late summer…
No Backspace: Workers Against NYC’s Growing ‘Gig Economy’ CityLimits …Everybody used to know what you meant when you said “I got a job.” Not anymore. Not when more than 40 percent of Americans work outside the single-employer full-time norm. Instead we have the “gig economy,” the “precariat,” freelancers, app-serfs, part-timers, temps. New York is one of the centers of this new world of work…
Chicago Window Workers Who Occupied Their Factory in 2008 Win New Bankruptcy Payout In These Times …Seven years after Republic Windows & Doors workers occupied a recently-shuttered factory in Chicago, making international news, and three years after they opened their own window company, they are receiving a $295,000 payout in bankruptcy court that is both a symbolic and pragmatic victory. When a company goes bankrupt, workers are usually at the end of the line to get paid, as they are considered “unsecured creditors” behind various secured creditors who are owed money…
Disney faces lawsuits for using H-1B visas to replace American workers Daily Kos …H-1B work visas are supposed to bring foreign workers to the U.S. to do specialized work for a few years when companies have trouble finding American workers to do those jobs. Tell that to Leo Perrero and Dena Moore, two former Disney employees who were replaced by H-1B workers—who they had to train to do their jobs…
The Work-Life Balance Goes to Court The Nation … Both cases represent the retail industry’s pattern of degrading working conditions, which often leads to economic turmoil or even job loss when workers’ family needs clash with Walmart’s workplace policies, which subject workers to unstable schedules, low pay, and threadbare benefits. Across the low-wage workforce, even the FMLA’s bare-minimal coverage just doesn’t work…
Union blames private contractors for Queens clean-up problems Fox5 …Harry Nespoli, the president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said the side streets are under contracts by the city to private plow companies who are not doing the job. He says the public workers are not supposed to touch those streets. Nespoli said he has stated numerous times that those contracts are a waste of money and he’s fighting to get that program ended when the contracts expire at the end of 2016…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Obama Ends Solitary Confinement For Juveniles In Federal Prison Think Progress …President Obama announced Monday night a ban on solitary confinement for juvenile and low-level offenders in federal prisons, saying that isolation is “increasingly overused” and can lead to “devastating, lasting psychological consequences.” In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Obama described the story of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old who was held in solitary confinement for two years…
Why Is the Undocumented-Immigrant Population Dropping? The Atlantic …The “crisis” of illegal immigration has become an article of faith in American politics. On the right, Republicans are jockeying over who will lock down the Southern border. “We have people pouring in. They’re pouring in,” Donald Trump says. The Obama administration disputes Trump, and yet to the astonishment of its Democratic allies, the Department of Homeland Security has relaunched raids to detain and deport hundreds of Central American families…
Female Detainees Allege Unlawful Strip Searches By Immigration Center Officials Think Progress …At least 31 female immigrant detainees have alleged that they were unlawfully strip searched at a California detention center contracted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to a complaint lodged by the immigrant advocacy group Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC)…
Paul Krugman: Children are dying in Flint because “small-government extremists” don’t want to give money to “Those People” Salon …In his column Paul Krugman argued that the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in Flint, Michigan isn’t the result of a single failed policy in a single American city, but the toxic combination of conservative ideology and race, “in which small-government extremists are empowered by the sense of too many voters that good government is simply a giveaway to Those People”…