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Today’s Teamster News For June 1, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Hoffa: Latest Predicted TPP Numbers Aren’t Much to Celebrate Teamster.org …A federal trade agency tasked with reporting on the economic benefits of proposed trade deals came up empty last month when it reviewed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has regularly served as a big booster of past trade agreements even when they didn’t warrant them, its evaluation of the 12-nation Pacific Rim deal was different. There was only so much lipstick USITC could put on this pig of a pact…
Teamster Airline Mechanics, Piedmont Airlines Reach Tentative Agreement Teamster.org …The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Teamsters Airline Division and Teamsters Locals 210, 355 and 776 have reached a tentative agreement on a five-year contract for approximately 300 Piedmont Airlines mechanics. The agreement reached on May 26 is a five-year contract moving forward and contains a 7 percent signing bonus…
Driver, Family Lead Port Strike Go By Truck …Yesterday at 4 p.m., Osoy and his young family led a delegation of his co-workers into the company announcing their intent to go on strike to protest Osoy’s illegal dismissal, specifically relating to unfair labor practice charges filed today against the company by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Osoy’s behalf…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
France labour dispute: Hollande digs in as rail strike begins BBC …President Francois Hollande of France has insisted that a controversial labour reform will not be withdrawn as strike action begins on the railways. “The text assures the best performance for businesses and offers new rights to employees,” he told a newspaper. Protesters clashed with police last week during marches against the bill, which makes hiring and firing easier…
Anti-Austerity Strike, Campesino Protests Rock Colombia TeleSUR …Anti-austerity protests in Bogota join nationwide agricultural strikes, piling the pressure on the Juan Manuel Santos government. The decision to privatize the public telecommunications company Empresa Telecomunicaciones de Bogotá (ETB) led to continued tensions in Bogota on Tuesday, with various groups marching against the decision of the City Council…
Retailers Like H&M and Walmart Fall Short of Pledges to Overseas Workers NYTimes …After more than 1,100 deaths exposed dangerous labor conditions in Bangladesh in 2013, brands like H&M, Walmart and Gap were among the most powerful companies that pledged to improve the safety of some of the country’s poorest workers. But human rights groups say that three years later, those promises are still unfulfilled, and that safety, labor and other issues persist…
Thailand Tipping Toward TPP VOA …Thailand’s military-led cabinet could formally agree as soon as next week to pursue Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) membership after clear signals from cabinet members in favor of joining history’s most expansive trade agreement. Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak told Japanese business leaders in Tokyo that Thailand would ask Japan for its support in joining the U.S.-led trade pact…
TTIP: European Commission attempts to resurrect deal as countries go cold on plan Independent …The European Commission is attempting to rebuild support for its controversial TTIP trade deal with America – amid concern countries across the continent are going cold on the plan. President of the Commission Jean-Claude Junker travelled to Paris to speak to a convention of French mayors in a bid to firm up support ahead of an EU leaders’ summit later this month…
Petro-states are going down and taking the world economy with them Salon …Once so wealthy from oil sales that they could finance wars, mega-projects, and domestic social peace simultaneously, some of them are now beset by internal strife or are on the brink of collapse as oil prices remain at ruinously low levels…
In Oil-Soaked Niger Delta, ‘Avengers’ Bombing Pipelines in Struggle for Compensation Common Dreams …In the oil-rich Niger delta, where communities suffer “enormous” effects from decades of spills, a militant group claiming responsibility for a spate of attacks on oil infrastructure now appears to have the backing of some community members. The Avengers, the Guardian reports, “say they are fighting to protect the environment and to win locals a bigger share of the profits”…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
9 counties sue Oregon over state’s paid sick-leave law Register-Guard ..Nine counties are suing the state, claiming Oregon’s new paid sick-leave law is an unfunded government mandate. ince January, Oregon law requires employers with at least ten employees to provide paid sick leave. Employers must provide one hour of sick time for every 30 hours an employee works, or 1 1/3 hours for every 40 hours worked…
State lawmakers override bill veto to ease Chicago pension payments Reuters …Chicago will be able to spread out state-mandated higher payments to its police and fire pensions after the Illinois Legislature on Monday overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that became entangled in a political impasse. The Senate voted 39-19 and the House voted 72-43 to undo Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto on Friday that the city claimed would lead to a $300 million property tax hike…
Native Americans move to frontlines in battle over voting rights Reuters …A growing number of Native Americans embroiled in court battles over changes to voting laws that could influence the outcome of some tight races in the November 2016 presidential and congressional elections. While the Native American population is small nationally, lawsuits involving tribes over voting problems have proliferated since the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013…
The Failure of Welfare Reform Slate …The death of welfare in Arizona isn’t an exception; the program has shriveled just as badly in many other states, especially across the Deep South and West. Even in most of the states that are more generous than Arizona about giving benefits to the poor, welfare has still dwindled during the postrecession era. That’s because its funding was never designed to grow along with inflation—or with the U.S. population…
Job Losses Expected As Maryland Governor Stuns Solar Industry With Clean Energy Veto Think Progress …For the past 12 years, Maryland has had a highly successful program requiring utilities to use more renewable energy. last week, Hogan reversed course and vetoed a bill that would have increased the RPS and given the state a way to reach its greenhouse gas emissions goals. “It was infuriating,” Maryland Delegate Bill Frick, who sponsored the Clean Energy Jobs bill, told ThinkProgress…
DC Council to Consider Revised Minimum Wage Bill ABC …A bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 in the nation’s capital has been revised to have a less dramatic impact on the city’s restaurant industry. A D.C. Council committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the bill, which would raise the minimum wage to $5.55 an hour for workers who rely on tips. That’s double the current minimum for tipped workers…
Armstead, Cole leading WV to doom (opinion) Gazette-Mail …Having pursued an extremely partisan agenda during the regular legislative session aimed at attacking working West Virginia families, members of the majority Republican “leadership” are now shrugging off the one and only task actually constitutionally required of the Legislature, passage of the state budget…
U.S. LABOR
New life for the labor movement: The Verizon deal is a huge victory for all workers Salon …Almost 40,000 striking Verizon employees go back to work on Wednesday, after contract negotiations assisted by the U.S. Labor Department yielded a breakthrough, ending the largest walkout in America in half a decade. The Communications Workers of America, one of two unions that walked out, has touted the deal as a victory for labor…
Child Care Center teachers vote to unionize, join SEIU Daily Trojan ….On May 25, childcare employees at the University Park Campus voted to unionize under the SEIU Local 99 group, which represents K-12 and community college employees throughout Southern California. The childcare workers under KinderCare, an American corporation operating for-profit childcare. Employees are hoping to resolve working conditions and enforce stricter teacher-to-child ratio standards…
Grocery workers ratify new UFCW union contracts NW Labor Press …After nine months of bargaining, members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 employed at Fred Meyer, Safeway, Albertsons, and QFC have ratified new three-year contracts in the Portland and Vancouver area, Eugene, Longview, Newberg, Bend, Burns, The Dalles, Hood River, Klamath Falls and Lakeview. The union members work in grocery, meat, central checkout, and non-food departments…
As Union Membership Has Fallen, the Top 10 Percent Have Been Getting a Larger Share of Income Alternet …As union membership has fallen over the last few decades, the share of income going to the top 10 percent has steadily increased. Union membership fell to 11.1 percent in 2014, where it remained in 2015. The share of income going to the top 10 percent, meanwhile, hit 47.2 percent in 2014—only slightly lower than 47.8 percent in 2012, the highest it has been since 1917…
Strikes Still Work (opinion) Gawker …For the vast majority of working Americans, wages have been almost flat for the past 35 years. How can regular working people get more money? Organize. And strike. Unionized Verizon workers—the sort of skilled but blue collar jobs that are accessible to people even without expensive college educations—have just ended their strike of more than six weeks…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
The False Stereotypes About Millennials Who Live at Home The Atlantic …The image of a spoiled upper-middle class adult spending all day on the couch playing video games is pretty far from the reality of most Millennials who wind up back home. Millennials who are most likely to wind up living with their relatives are those who come from already marginalized groups that are plagued with low employment, low incomes, and low prospects for moving up the economic ladder…
A Long-Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 Smithsonian.com …The words, an eyewitness account of the May 31, 1921, racial massacre that destroyed what was known as Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street,” are searing. The Oklahoma lawyer, father of famed African-American historian John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), was describing the attack by hundreds of whites on the thriving black neighborhood known as Greenwood in the booming oil town…
Europe: Deadly Crossings Drive Migrant Fatalities to New Heights Common Dreams …Describing a heartbreaking and horrific scene of hundreds of bodies floating on the surface of the Mediterranean, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) confirmed Sunday that more than 700 asylum seekers drowned last week, capping off the deadliest period for those fleeing war and violence in over a year…
Trump Has a Conflict-of-Interest Problem No Other White House Candidate Ever Had Mother Jones …What are the implications of the chief executive of the US government being in hock for $100 million (or more) to a foreign entity that has tried to evade laws aimed at curtailing risky financial shenanigans, that was recently caught manipulating markets around the world, and that attempts to influence the US government?…