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Today’s Teamster News For April 7, 2016
TEAMSTERS
California Cartage Warehouse Workers Protest Retaliation with Strike Teamster.org …Warehouse workers for California Cartage at the Port of Los Angeles are on strike for the third time in seven months as retaliation increased at the major warehouse. “Many of these workers have been organizing for over a year and should be protected from retaliation,” said Celene Perez, Co-Director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, which filed the charges and has been supporting the workers’ efforts in partnership with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters…
Union Continues Fight Against Coca-Cola’s Unjust Health Insurance Costs Local 727 …Teamsters Local 727 is taking its fight against Coca-Cola Refreshments to the next level because the company refuses to admit wrongdoing after charging employees higher insurance premiums than those explicitly set forth in the new collective bargaining agreement. The company maintained its position that it was not in violation of the collective bargaining agreement…
BLET members begin voting on tentative NJ Transit contract BLE-T.org …The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) has reached a tentative agreement with New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit) governing rates of pay and work rules for more than 400 locomotive engineers, assistant locomotive engineers and locomotive engineer trainees. The BLET was one of 11 unions bargaining jointly as the NJ Transit Rail Labor Coalition. A tentative agreement was announced on March 11, hours before a March 13 deadline for a possible strike or lockout…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Greek public sector workers strike over pension reforms Reuters …Flights were disrupted and hospitals ran on skeleton staff in Greece on Thursday in a strike called by public-sector workers against the pension and tax reforms sought by Greece’s foreign lenders. Thursday’s 24-hour walkout called by public sector union ADEDY coincides with a review by lenders of Athens’s compliance with terms of an international bailout agreed last year…
South Africa: Hundread of Metrorail Workers Expected to Strike in Cape Town EWN …Hundreds of Metrorail workers affiliated with the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) are expected to go on strike from tomorrow in the Western Cape. Metrorail says Satawu’s grievances are based around the employment of fixed and contract workers. The rail service’s regional manager Richard Walker says Metrorail has put in place measures to mitigate the impact of the industrial action…
Despite Major Legislative Advances, Colombian Domestic Workers Still Suffer In These Times …Colombian domestic workers have organized for their rights, leading to the 2014 signing of an international treaty to protect domestic workers’ rights. Any country that signs this treaty agrees to enact laws for fair terms of employment for domestic workers, such as minimum wage, standard work hours and paid annual leave. But ensuring that all Colombian employers adhere to these guidelines has proved to be a challenge…
Tensions Run High on US Presidential Campaign Trail as TPP Debate Continues ICTSD.org …Tensions in the US over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) continue running high as the presidential contest moves forward – posing renewed questions over when and whether Washington lawmakers will ratify the deal, even as the White House continues to make the case for its swift passage. Meanwhile, deliberations on the TPP are now underway in the legislature of another major member – Japan…
Political criticism erodes free trade support: Survey CNBC …Months of withering political rhetoric in the presidential campaign has eroded American support for free trade but not for immigration. The CNBC All-America Economic Survey, conducted March 21-23, finds that just 27 percent of the public agree that free trade “has helped the U.S.,” compared with 43 percent who say it has hurt. Support for free trade declined 10 points since the same question was asked in an April 2015 poll…
Washington House Democrats sign letter opposing Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal Seattle Times …About two dozen state Democratic lawmakers have signed a letter opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The letter, dated Wednesday, is addressed to Washington’s U.S. congressional delegation and urges them to vote against the deal if it comes before Congress…
The rising wave of privatisation damages healthcare in Europe (opinion) EurActiv …The austerity policies pursued in several European countries in the wake of the EU fiscal crisis are pushing the public health sector to the brink – and forcing more and more services into private hands. Of particular concern is the recent trade negotiations on agreements such as TTIP, TISA and CETA which could further open up healthcare for competition and hand a bigger role to private commercial providers, financial investors and insurance companies…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
CA Assembly Bill Quickens Overtime Pay For Farm Workers Capital Public Radio …A bill moving through the California Legislature would require farm laborers to receive overtime pay when they work more than eight hours in a day. Current law allows them to work up to ten hours a day, six days a week, before companies must pay overtime. The agriculture industry opposes the bill, which passed an Assembly committee Wednesday…
Wisconsin Republican Accidentally Tells the Truth About Voter ID Laws Gawker …Voter identification laws are commonly understood to be just one of the more common methods by which Republican lawmakers across the country attempt to suppress voter turnout. Rarely do said lawmakers openly admit that such policies are merely tools to swing elections…
Millions Of Workers Just Won The Right To Paid Time To Care For Loved Ones Think Progress …New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed a law on Monday that will make New York the fourth state in the entire country with a paid family program, joining California, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. That alone is notable given that residents of the other 46 states have no guarantee that they’ll get any pay at all if they take time off to care for a new child or a sick relative…
Colorado bill targets large companies without health insurance plans Denver Post …Legislation would impose fees on large employers that pay low wages and provide no health insurance. The money would go into a fund to support the state’s growing Medicaid costs. The legislation would apply to companies with 250 or more workers who earn less than $12 an hour. It might also make Colorado unique. According to supporters, no other state has a similar law in effect…
San Francisco becomes first US city to mandate fully paid parental leave The Guardian …San Francisco has become the first US municipality to mandate that employers offer fully paid parental leave, and activists hope the progressive new law will pave the way for policies across the country. The US is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity or parental leave to workers…
U.S. LABOR
Volkswagen Chattanooga unions spar Nooga.com …The American Council of Employees union has accused rival group United Auto Workers of exploiting Volkswagen’s emissions scandal in an effort to get a faster ruling from the National Labor Relations Board about the December election of maintenance employees. But the UAW says in new documents that VW is denying the group its collective bargaining rights…
Palm Bay, Titusville nursing home workers to strike over wages Florida Today …Nursing home workers at two facilities in Brevard have plans to go on strike for 24 hours starting April 14. Certified nursing assistants at Vista Manor in Titusville and The Palms Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Palm Bay say enough is enough when it comes to negotiating wages. Workers are able to join 1199 SEIU Florida union, which is backing the strike…
BU’s Non-Tenure Faculty Voted in Favor of Unionizing BostInno …On April 6, full-time and salaried faculty members at Boston University voted 4-to-one in favor of joining Faculty Forward, which is part of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509. This vote is only the latest development in the unionization of Boston-area faculty, as other lecturers and instructors at Bentley, Brandeis, Lesley, Northeastern and Tufts have already voted to align themselves with SEIU…
Donald Blankenship Sentenced to a Year in Prison in Mine Safety Case New York Times …Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company catapulted him from a working-class West Virginia childhood into a life as one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Appalachia, was sentenced on Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards…
Court lets Uber appeal a class-action lawsuit filed by its drivers LA Times …Uber has caught a break in a class-action lawsuit that could force the San Francisco company to treat many drivers as employees, not contractors. In a small victory for the on-demand transportation company, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said it would allow Uber to appeal a District Court order that certified a class of nearly 160,000 drivers in California…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Forget Panama: it’s easier to hide your money in the US than almost anywhere The Guardian …The term tax haven usually evokes an image of some faraway place like Belize or the Cayman Islands. Yet in 2015, in a ranking of tax havens most attractive for those looking to hide assets, the US came in third – surpassing Cayman and Singapore. The two places that were even better suited as tax havens for the rich were Switzerland and Hong Kong…
Immigration Reform In Arizona: Nationwide Boycott Over Anti-Immigrant Senate Bill 1377 Threatened IBTimes …A repeat of a 2010 nationwide boycott in Arizona would take place in the event a controversial new immigration-centered bill is signed into law, pro-immigrant groups in the state threatened Wednesday. Senate Bill 1377 would mandate undocumented immigrants convicted of certain crimes be ineligible for parole, forcing them to serve their entire sentences…
Pharma Giant Pfizer Blocked From Tax Evasion Alternet …Pfizer’s $160 billion merger with Dublin-based Allergan was scrapped because of new Treasury Department rules to stop such tax dodges. Pfizer is far from the first Pharma company to want to take the money and run. In 2014, Illinois-based AbbVie sought to merge with ADHD drug maker Shire which is based on a small island in the English Channel…