Uncategorized
Today’s Teamster News For March 28, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Food Safety Advocates Alert Chipotle Customers About Unsafe Food Supplier Teamster.org … Community activists and workers held protests outside two Chipotle restaurants to inform customers about Taylor Farms. “When you don’t respect the rights of your workers who are the front line of food safety, it isn’t surprising that the safety of your products are also undermined,” said Ashley Alvarado, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 601 in Stockton, Calif., which has been supporting Taylor Farms workers in their effort to organize…
Teamsters Mourn Passing of Ken Howard Teamster.org …The Teamsters Union extends its deepest condolences to the friends and family of SAG-AFTRA President Ken Howard. As president of SAG-AFTRA, Howard built a strong relationship with all trade unions that work in the film, television and theatrical trades. His legacy will endure thanks to the historic merger of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012…
Drivers At Care Transit Vote To Join Teamsters Local 117 Local 117 …On Wednesday, March 23 drivers at Care Transit voted overwhelmingly to join Teamsters Local 117. The 13 drivers stood together to win a voice at work and improve their working conditions. “I am happy that we won our union. I’m proud to join my coworkers in standing up for our rights,” said driver Noureddine Lakhdar after the votes were tallied. Care Transit provides Metro ACCESS paratransit bus service for people with disabilities…
Why Won’t This French Company Talk To U.S. Workers? Labor Press …The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is calling on one of the largest providers of industrial and medical gases in the world to quit taking toxic anti-labor cues from stateside advisors — and immediately start talking with worker representatives. In a controversial bid that’s sparking anti-competitiveness concerns, Air Liquide is poised to purchase the biggest distributor of industrial, medical and specialty gases here in the United States for a whopping $13.4 billion…
Lyft’s Driver Peace Pact May Fail If Judge Heeds Teamsters Bloomberg …Lyft Inc. is offering about 100,000 drivers in California an average of $56.14 each and some non-monetary perks to drop claims that the ride-sharing company systematically exploits them. The Teamsters union says the settlement forfeits the main goal of the drivers’ lawsuit — to force Lyft to treat them as full-fledged employees rather than contractors…
Workers Picket Two Calif. Eateries Over Choice of Produce Supplier Public News Service …Adding to Chipotle’s woes, workers from one of its suppliers protested at two California restaurant locations on Thursday, alleging food safety and labor violations – not by Chipotle, but by the supplier. About 40 workers from Taylor Farms, which is based in Tracy, picketed at Chipotle restaurants in Manteca and Sacramento Doug Bloch, political director for the Teamsters Joint Council 7, helped organize the protest, aimed at the produce supplier…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Barbados Airport Workers Strike TeleSUR …There will be no flights out of the Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados before 6 p.m. today after air traffic controllers downed their tools and refused to work. The protest action was sanctioned by employees’ union the Barbados Workers Union (BWU). The workers are demanding the payment of BDS$33 million in outstanding increments…
Workers Campaign for Portable Benefits in East Africa Solidarity Center …The East African Trade Union Federation (EATUC)—representing national trade union centers in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda—is conducting a regionwide campaign for passage of a social security portability bill through the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA). Passage of the bill into law will benefit citizens crossing borders…
Free-Trade Opposition Unites Political Parties in Bloomberg Poll Bloomberg …Opposition to free trade is a unifying concept even in a deeply divided electorate, with almost two-thirds of Americans favoring more restrictions on imported goods instead of fewer. The latest Bloomberg Politics national poll shows the issue unites the country like few others, across lines of politics, race, gender, education, and income. A stunning rejection of what was a postwar cornerstone of American economic and foreign policies reverberates again and again in the answers to the poll’s questions…
TPP Under Fire in the U.S. As Other Signatories Advance Towards Ratification EFF …The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is taking a beating in the ongoing U.S. presidential election cycle, leaving some observers to wonder if it can survive such a political backlash against trade agreements. But as the leading candidates seem to compete for who can bash U.S. trade policies the hardest, other countries have been pressing forward to ratify the TPP since the deal’s signature in February…
Will TPP still be part of Obama’s legacy? Straits Times …United States Trade Representative Michael Froman said recently that the Obama administration is open to exploring potential fixes to objections raised against the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade pact. But with the US election season well under way and anti-trade sentiments bubbling to the fore, passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) this year – if ever – is looking increasingly impossible…
The Choice Is Not Between TPP or No Trade (opinion) Huffington Post …The high-profile presidential primary revolt against decades of damaging American trade policy finally has forced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) into mainstream media coverage. The usual free-trade-agreement cheerleading squad of chronic-job-offshoring corporations, Wall Street, agribusiness and their coterie of think tanks and pundits are unnerved…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Historic Deal Will Bring $15 Minimum Wage To California Think Progress …A statewide $15 minimum wage will soon be reality in California, thanks to a deal made between state legislators and labor unions. According to the Los Angeles Times, which spoke with sources close to the negotiations and first reported the story, under the deal, the current $10 per hour minimum wage will be increased by 50 cents in 2017 and again in 2018. The minimum wage would then be increased by $1.00 a year until 2022…
Nearly 1M in N.J. would benefit from $15 minimum wage, report says NJ.com …Boosting the state minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2021 would benefit one in four workers in New Jersey, 90 percent of whom are at least 20 years old, according to a report released on Wednesday. New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning research organization, released the labor data analysis to rebut the argument that only unskilled teenagers would benefit from hiking the minimum wage to $15…
NY lawmakers weigh minimum wage compromise WGRZ …This much is clear: Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers are discussing ways to reach a compromise on the governor’s push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Far less clear, however, is what shape that compromise may take. Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, acknowledged Wednesday that private talks with Assembly leaders on the minimum wage have been “fruitful”…
Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Requires an Education Campaign, Which the State Hasn’t Funded ProPublica …For the first time in a major election, citizens will be required to show approved forms of identification in order to vote. The law mandates that the state run a public-service campaign “in conjunction with the first regularly scheduled primary and election” to educate voters on what forms of ID are acceptable. But Wisconsin has failed to appropriate funds for the public education campaign…
A&P Supermarket Chain Stiffs 21,000 Pensioners, Government Will Pick Up $288 Million Tab In These Times …The bankruptcy and speedy sell-off of the A&P supermarket chain last year has revealed three pension plans covering more than 21,000 former employees as a financial train wreck, forcing a U.S. government agency to come to the rescue at the cost of about $288 million.These pension programs are separate and distinct from the joint labor-management plans handled together with locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union…
Restaurant workers to join Chicago Teachers Union’s strike Journal-Register … Fast-food workers organized by the Fight for $15 group say they will join the Chicago Teachers Union when its members shut down schools April 1. Fight for $15 organizers say planning is still underway and it hasn’t been determined how many workers or restaurants will be involved. The Fight for $15 campaign has held several strikes in Chicago since its launch…
Whiteness Still Pays in the Job Market The Nation …A new study disrupts the conventional notion of “meritocracy” in the hiring process, revealing how hidden bias colors the way employers evaluate individuals’ credentials, by looking at how race is read—“all other things being equal.” According to a controlled study on the experiences of job applicants of color, applicants who “whitened” their résumés did get an edge…
The Work That Makes Work Possible The Atlantic …The labor of caregivers—the majority of whom are women of color, often immigrant women—clearly enables vast percentages of economic productivity in the U.S., without compensation or benefits to acknowledge its value. A survey by the National Domestic Workers Alliance found that 65 percent of domestic workers don’t have health insurance and only 4 percent have employer-provided insurance coverage…
These 15 jobs have the widest gap in pay between men and women Washington Post …Study after study has shown that that a stubborn gender pay gap persists in what men and women generally earn, and that career decisions play a big role in explaining the difference. But when men’s and women’s pay in similar job categories are compared, where does the gap remain the highest? That’s a question Glassdoor, the careers and pay transparency web site, tried to answer in a new study…
Texas Companies Save Millions by Opting Out of Workers’ Comp, Study Finds Houston Press …Texas is the only state in the country that allows employers to opt out of workers’ compensation and leave their workers without coverage. It’s one of two states that allow employers to offer alternative benefit plans, commonly called “non-subscription plans.” And those are exactly what Stanford law professor Alison Morantz was studying, looking closely at how employers were saving this much money and what that might mean for injured workers…
Forty-Two Years Later, OSHA OKs Rule Protecting Workers From Silica Truthout …New workplace limits for a lung-damaging and ubiquitous substance called silica are about to take effect, decades after federal health experts warned that the nation’s existing rule was dangerously lax. Silica, found in rock and sand, poses a hazard when pulverized to a fine dust and inhaled — a problem on construction sites, during hydraulic fracturing operations and at a variety of other workplaces…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
The Cities Doubling Down on Highways The Atlantic …Baby Boomers and Millennials are moving back to city centers, eager to get rid of cars and walk to work and to nightlife. In many cities, including Milwaukee and Boston, planners have tried to encourage that walkability by tearing down urban freeways and putting parks and new businesses in their place. In many other cities, though, including Little Rock, states are doubling down on highways…
We’ve Barely Begun to Tap the Sun’s Mighty Power Mother Jones …It seems like every few weeks there’s some new measurement of how successful solar power is in the United States. In early March, industry analysts found that solar is poised for its biggest year ever, with total installations growing 119 percent by the end of 2016. This week, federal government analysts reported that in 2015, solar ranked number three in megawatts of new electricity-producing capacity brought online.