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Today’s Teamster News For May 25, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Lewisville School Bus Workers Join Teamsters Local 745 Teamster.org …On Friday, First Student school bus workers in Lewisville, Texas voted decisively in favor of joining Teamsters Local 745 in Dallas. The nearly 400-worker unit consists of drivers and monitors who are seeking a strong voice to address their workplace concerns. “We are elated to join the Teamster family,” said LaRae Saldivar, a First Student driver in Lewisville…
Teamsters at Darigold Vote Unanimously to Authorize Strike Local 117 …In a massive display of union solidarity, Teamsters who work at the Darigold processing plants in Seattle and Issaquah, voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike over the weekend. The final vote was 163-0. Voting took place at the Teamsters hall in Tukwila throughout the day on Saturday. “This vote sends a powerful message to the company that Teamsters at Darigold are serious about defending their livelihoods,” said John Scearcy, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters 117…
Jimmy Hoffa’s granddaughter joins Teamster 688 Schnucks handbilling Labor Tribune …“If he were here today, he’d be in St. Louis standing with you saying ‘What Schnucks is doing is just wrong and we’re urging shoppers to send that message to Schnucks.’” Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters legendary leader who brought millions of workers out of poverty and into the Teamsters Union, is being channeled in the current Schnucks dispute by his granddaughter, Barbara Dengel…
Schnucks deceiving public, employees over bargaining issue Labor Tribune …Schnuck Markets is conducting yet another deceitful effort to manipulate public opinion against Teamsters Local 688, which is fighting to save the jobs of 190 members who will be fired when the firm opens a new warehouse this summer. The company is charging that Local 688 refuses to conduct “effects bargaining” over the issue of the firings, which is deceiving…
Coca-Cola Members to Receive Retroactive 401(k) Contributions Local 727 …Coca-Cola Refreshments members will receive their contractually guaranteed 401(k) matching benefits retroactive to April 1 after Teamsters Local 727 representatives won a grievance earlier this month. The company violated section 23.3(b) of the contract when it failed to provide matching 401(k) benefits contributions…
Dirty hands: The unseen world of New York’s private waste industry Politico …The Teamsters and a large coalition of environmental and labor advocacy groups argue that lack of intervention has bred in some companies an insatiable desire for profit at the expense of workers’ and residents’ safety and decent recycling practices. In response to protests from advocacy groups, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has committed to a long-term study of the industry, expected out this spring…
Teamsters oppose beer mega-merger People’s World …America has laws against monopolies. Will they be enforced? Belgium-headquartered Anheuser-Busch Inbev last November announced plans to merge with UK-headquartered SABMiller. David Laughton, head of the Brewery Workers’ Conference of the Teamsters Union, says Miller Coors didn’t even wait for the merger before anti-competitive practices began…
Swift Transportation CEO Restructures Family Debts Wall Street Journal …The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which holds a small stake in Swift, has urged shareholders to vote for a proposal to do away with Swift’s dual class structure, under which the Moyes family controls the majority of voting rights in the company, and to vote against certain independent directors…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Police Help Lisbon Port Move Cargo Amid Dock Workers’ Strike ABC …Riot police have held back striking Lisbon dock workers while port operators remove ship containers stranded for several weeks by the walkout over pay and labor rights. Dozens of striking stevedores gathered outside gates at Lisbon’s port Tuesday and shouted at what they said were strike-breakers helping to load the containers on trucks…
US Lawmakers Cast Doubt on TPP Approval VOA …While President Barack Obama promotes trade opportunities between the United States and Asia, U.S. senators of both political parties tell VOA there is virtually no chance Congress will approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the near future. Speaking Monday in Vietnam, Obama said he was “confident” TPP would pass Congress, a prediction Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina described as “somewhere between delusional and overly optimistic”…
WikiLeaks Exposes Text from Secretly Negotiated TiSA Trade Deal TeleSUR …The website Wikileaks released on Wednesday classified documents from the Trade in Services Agreement, or TiSA, which is a huge trade agreement being negotiated in secret by the United States, the European Union and 22 other countries. The documents include a previously unknown annex to the TiSA core chapter on “State Owned Enterprises,” which imposes unprecedented restrictions on SOEs and will force majority owned SOEs to operate like private sector businesses…
TTIP Trade Deal to Have Effect on EU-Russia Economic Cooperation Sputnik News …The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently negotiated by the EU and US authorities, will impact the economic cooperation between Russia and the EU member states, Deputy Head of the Economic Section of the Russian Embassy to the United States Grigory Zasypkin told Sputnik. The senior diplomat noted that the European Union is one of Russia’s key partners…
Brazil’s New Government Is Already Planning to Balance the Budget on the Backs of the Poor Truthout …Just days after the Brazilian Senate voted to suspend former President Dilma Rousseff and subject her to an impeachment trial, the country’s new right-wing government is already planning to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. To be sure, Brazil’s economic problems are real and they are serious. The country is currently in the midst of its worst recession in decades…
After six years’ austerity, Greeks feel no joy from new debt deal Business Insider …While Greece’s government trumpeted a debt relief deal with other euro zone countries on Wednesday as the beginning of the end of its bruising six-year financial crisis, many Greeks remained unconvinced. After years of austerity measures demanded by Greece’s international creditors, Greeks wonder whether the sacrifices they have made to stay in the euro were worth the pain…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Court of Appeals reinstates Right to Work law Wisconsin State Journal …The Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Tuesday granted a stay of a Dane County Circuit judge’s decision to strike down the state’s right-to-work law, reinstating the law while an appeal is pending. The order by the state District 3 Court of Appeals, based in Wausau, overrules a decision throwing out the law on the grounds that the law unconstitutionally takes property from unions without compensation…
A Big Victory for Voting Rights in Ohio The Nation …Today, in a major victory for voting rights, a federal court restored the Golden Week period of early voting and same-day registration, which will make it easier for tens of thousands of Ohioans to cast a ballot in 2016. During the 2012 election, 80,000 people voted during Golden Week and 14,000 registered and voted on the same day…
Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly. Washington Post …In November, 17 states will have voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election. Eleven of those states will require their residents to show a photo ID. They include swing states such as Wisconsin and states with large African American and Latino populations, such as North Carolina and Texas…
Texas’ Strict Voter ID Law Goes Back To Court, With Half A Million Voters’ Rights At Stake Think Progress …One of the most conservative courts in the nation is hearing a challenge Tuesday to Texas’ voter ID law from from the state conference of the NAACP and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. These groups, represented by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, argues that the voter ID requirement suppresses the votes of people of color…
Raising the minimum wage would matter the most in Texas Houston Chronicle …Only 3.3 percent of hourly workers in America are paid exactly the federal minimum wage, which since 2009 has been $7.25. If you’re one of them, you most likely live in Texas. The Lone Star state has more minimum wage earners than any other state in the country, counting workers such as agricultural laborers who may be paid even less than that, according to new calculations from the Bureau of Labor Statistics…
How the Puerto Rico Bill Attacks the Minimum Wage Wall Street Journal …The Obama administration’s push to secure debt relief for Puerto Rico to boost the island’s sagging economy is clashing with its effort to push for higher U.S. wage floors. Legislation moving through Congress to tackle Puerto Rico’s debt crisis would exempt the island from new overtime-pay rules unveiled by the Obama administration…
New York Attorney General Accuses Domino’s of Wage Theft in Lawsuit NY Times …for years, according to the lawsuit against the corporate franchiser that owns Domino’s Pizza, the computer system used by franchises across the state systematically undercounted hours worked by employees, shortchanging them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The lawsuit was the latest salvo in a campaign by the attorney general against what he says is a pattern of corporations shortchanging low-wage workers…
U.S LABOR
‘Desperate’ Verizon Seeks Scabs to Offset Labor Strike Motherboard …Telecom giant Verizon has put out an urgent call for temporary employees as the company’s bitter feud with thousands of striking workers enters its seventh week. Last month, some 40,000 Verizon technicians and service employees walked off the job after a year of labor negotiations failed to produce a new contract…
1,700 AT&T workers on strike in San Diego Union-Tribune …About 1,700 San Diego AT&T workers remained on strike Tuesday over a contract grievance regarding the way that company monitors sales and customer service representatives. Members of the Communications Workers of America Local 9509 walked off the job late Thursday night. They are picketing at the company’s call center in Miramar and other locations…
Fast Food Workers Are Starting To Win The Fight For $15. What About The Battle For Union Rights? Think Progress …Ever since fast food workers staged their first strike in 2012, their basic demands have been twofold: an increase of their pay to at least $15 an hour, and the right to form a union. They’ve made significant headway on the first demand, helping to secure the passage of a $15 minimum wage in two states and a handful of cities. But now they plan to make good on the second half…
Car Wash Files For Bankruptcy To Avoid Paying Workers $262,000 In Stolen Wages Labor Press …Eight Little Village Car Wash workers in Chicago expecting to get $262,000 in owed wages discovered Thursday the car wash is filing for bankruptcy to avoid paying the wages owed. After a three and a half year campaign to reclaim the stolen wages, the workers find themselves at the beginning of another legal battle…
Pentagon Cafeteria Workers Faced Retaliation From Managers After Going On Strike Think Progress …Food service managers at the Pentagon have been illegally retaliating against workers for going on strike, attorneys for the National Labor Relations Board have found. Multiple employees at a Pentagon cafeteria managed by Seven Hills, Inc., participated in strikes alongside other federal contract workers across the Washington, D.C., area in recent years…
If Students’ Learning Conditions Are Teachers’ Working Conditions, These Students Are in Trouble The Nation …A new teacher survey from the rank-and-file caucus of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) shows that educators are squeezed from both sides, by harsh standards imposed from above, and unmet needs among their students, and are left with hardly any room to do their job…
Could Airports Really Shorten Those Hellish Lines by Privatizing Security? Slate …Even at airports where contractors perform screenings, the TSA mandates federal screening standards—which means that contracting would do little to mitigate the expensive, invasive, and slow practices that are handed down from Washington. the benefits of privatization, as it’s currently being discussed, have more do to with ground-level labor management and less with security…
Arguments that better overtime pay protection means less flexibility are untrue (analysis) EPI.org …The Department of Labor has issued a new rule, which expands the right to be paid time-and-a-half for overtime to salaried employees who earn less than $47,476 a year. Business groups that oppose the new rule claim that salaried employees will lose important work schedule flexibility when they become eligible for overtime pay. But the evidence shows this fear is unfounded…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Goodbye, Empty Nest: Millennials Staying Longer with Parents AP …Many of America’s young adults appear to be in no hurry to move out of their old bedrooms. For the first time on record, living with parents is now the most common arrangement for people ages 18 to 34, an analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center has found…
EU regulators clear $100 billion-plus AB InBev, SABMiller deal Reuters …The world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev gained EU antitrust approval on Tuesday for its $100 billion-plus acquisition of SABMiller on condition it sell almost the whole of SABMiller’s beer business in Europe. Reuters was the first to report that AB InBev’s concessions to sell substantial assets would secure the EU green light for one of the largest corporate takeovers ever…