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Today’s Teamster News For April 4, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Durham School Bus Workers Choose Teamsters Teamster.org … School bus workers with Durham School Services in Ypsilanti, Mich., have voted to join Teamsters Local 243 in Detroit. The 109 drivers, monitors and mechanics united for respect, fairness and consistency in their working conditions at the nation’s second-largest provider of student transportation…
MillerCoors faces more antitrust scrutiny on Eden, N.C., brewery closure Business Journal …North Carolina has decided to investigate MillerCoors LLC’s decision to close its Eden brewery. The state will join the U.S. Department of Justice on its antitrust investigation into the merger of Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller, one of the current co-owners of MillerCoors. The Teamsters Union represents the 520 Eden brewery employees…
Contract between Fall River and Teamsters union terminated Herald News …Mayor Jasiel Correia II has terminated the Teamsters Local 251 contract affecting sanitation and street and highway workers in the Department of Community Maintenance, in a move that likely pulls the trigger on privatization. Under the terms of the DCM workers’ contract, which is expired, either party has the right to terminate the agreement…
Why the gig economy doesn’t work for everyone LA Times … One of the main strategies of labor activists to extend protections to contract workers is to turn them into employees. “Port truck drivers across America are misclassified as independent contractors,” said Barb Maynard, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union. About 65% of all truckers are not properly labeled as employees, according to a 2014 study by the nonprofit National Employment Law Project…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Workers at Cerro Verde copper mine in Peru plan strike next month Reuters …Workers at Freeport McMoRan Inc’s Cerro Verde mine in Peru, one of the country’s biggest copper deposits, plan to go on a 48-hour strike starting April 8 for unspecified reasons, the union said in a statement on Thursday. Freeport has a 53.56 percent stake in the mine, which produced about 32,000 tonnes of copper in January…
Nile Cotton Ginning Company workers on strike Daily News …Dozens of workers in the Nile Cotton Ginning Company went on an open strike Sunday inside the company’s headquarters in Mahalla, demanding the payment of late salaries. The headquarters was closed by the workers, who also stated that the administration decided to cancel scheduled bonuses. The workers vowed to continue their strike until their demands are met…
TPP ratification in US heading for ‘lame duck’ session in late 2016 NBR …US lawmakers and senior officials are leaning towards the likelihood of the Trans-Pacific Partnership achieving ratification in Washington DC during the so-called “lame-duck” session of Congress expected later this year, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key says…
It’s not just Europeans who will feel the consequences of TTIP New Statesman …As more is revealed about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), it is clear that it has little to do with improving trade. If implemented corporations will have the power to force governments to put corporate interests above the needs of their own citizens…
Mark Ruffalo: We’ve Had Enough With Failed Trade Policies (opinion) Huffington Post Many pundits were caught off-guard by the transpartisan fury over America’s trade policy rocking the presidential primary season. But it’s no surprise to me. I grew up in a working class family in Kenosha, Wisconsin. So I know why Americans have had enough of shiny promises, job-killing trade deals, and Wall Street bailouts that propel ordinary people into an economic nose dive…
A Trade Deal for the 21st Century: An Alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (opinion) Truthout …It looks like the major media outlets are doing their full court press to lay the groundwork for the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In recent weeks, the news and opinion pages have been filled with articles and columns on the wonders of trade and why all good people should support trade deals like the TPP…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
A year in, ‘the sky is not falling’ from Seattle’s minimum-wage hike Seattle Times …Only a year into Seattle’s journey toward a $15 minimum wage, local economists tracking the impacts say it’s too early to make conclusions about how the city’s minimum-wage “experiment” is going, but so far, critics’ dire predictions of mass job loss have not come true…
WAR on Voters: Big Money Streams into WI Supreme Court Race with No Disclosure PR Watch Once again, the biggest spender in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race isn’t one of the candidates. It’s a little-know dark money group, which is keeping its funders secret from Wisconsinites. Plus, thanks to a recent law change, the supposedly “independent” group is now allowed to coordinate directly with its favored candidate without disclosing that coordination to the public…
Profiteering masquerades as medical care for injured California workers Reveal News …A review of thousands of criminal court records by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting shows a system in which pay-to-play schemes trump patient care, particularly in unregulated treatments rejected by insurers and disputed in obscure courts throughout the state…
Leaked documents show strong business support for raising the minimum wage Washington Post …Whenever minimum wage increases are proposed on the state or federal level, business groups tend to fight them tooth and nail. But actual opposition may not be as united as the groups’ rhetoric might make it appear, according to internal research conducted by a leading consultant for state chambers of commerce…
Time Is Running Out for Obama to Act on a Living Wage (opinion) Huffington Post …The president can also use his executive authority to lift the incomes and security of working families by requiring companies that receive federal contracts to negotiate with workers who decide to join together and form a union. In doing so, he would follow the path of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who issued an executive order during World War II that required companies getting war-related contracts to allow their workers to organize unions…
U.S. LABOR
Detroit newspaper workers picket for “fair contract,” but no strike plans Michigan Radio …Employees at Detroit’s two major newspapers are working without a contract. Detroit News and Free Press staffers held an “informational picket” near the papers’ downtown headquarters Wednesday. The Newspaper Guild of Detroit is trying to negotiate a new contract with Gannett Media Company…
Chicago teachers go on strike, shutting down nation’s third-largest school system Washington Post …Thousands of Chicago teachers walked off the job Friday amid stalled contract negotiations, a one-day strike that school system officials decried as illegal and that union leaders described as a means to draw attention to the dire financial outlook of the city’s public schools and colleges…
Business groups sue DOL over new rule targeting anti-union consultants Business Journal …Business groups sued the Department of Labor over a new rule that requires employers to disclose any talks with outside consultants about how to craft their message to workers during union organizing rules. The new rule broadens a so-called “persuader” rule that previously required disclosure only when these consultants talked directly to workers…
100 CEOs Have More Saved Up for Retirement Than 41 Percent of U.S. Families Combined The Atlantic …Over the last few decades, companies have moved away from providing their workers with pensions, which used to offer a degree of security in retirement. But during that transition, pensions weren’t reliably replaced with retirement-savings accounts, such that now only about 40 percent of private-sector American workers have any kind of employer-provided or subsidized retirement plan, such as a pension or a 401(k)…
At the Court and in California, a Great Week for Labor The Atlantic …It’s been a very good week for American labor, and such weeks don’t come along often. On Monday, the Supreme Court delivered a four-to-four split decision in the Friedrichs case, which would have decimated public-sector unions had the Court been able to produce a fifth vote for the plaintiffs…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Sen. Elizabeth Warren Calls for Total Overhaul of Student Loan System Common Dreams …Earlier this month, the Democrat from Massachusetts roundly condemned the DOE for putting the desires of the student loan industry over the needs of students, referring to a scandal in which the DOE protected one of the country’s largest loan companies (Navient, formerly known as Sallie Mae) from repercussions for defrauding U.S. service members…
Uber antitrust lawsuit over pricing is green-lighted by judge Crain’s …Uber Technologies Inc. and its co-founder Travis Kalanick will have to defend a lawsuit that accuses them of running an antitrust scheme by using an app to set high surge fares. A Connecticut man can move forward with a claim that the company sets prices through an illegal algorithm, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan ruled on Thursday…
Report Shows Breaking the Law ‘Just a Cost of Doing Business for Big Pharma’ Common Dreams …As a new report shines light on 25 years of puny penalties for pharmaceutical industry lawbreaking, health activists worldwide are gearing up for a “Global Day of Action Against Pharma Greed,” scheduled to take place Friday. The report, released Thursday afternoon by Public Citizen, shows that “stronger enforcement is needed to deter pharmaceutical manufacturers from continuing to break the law and defraud federal and state health programs”…