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Today’s Teamster News For August 15, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters and United Airlines Reach Agreement in Principle for Technicians Teamster.org …The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and United Airlines announced jointly today that they have reached an agreement in principle for a joint contract covering the company’s approximately 9,000 technicians and related employees. The parties will complete final language soon and put the resulting tentative agreement out to vote by the technicians and related employees once the language has been finalized…
Two Big Labor Battles Reach an End at United NY Times …Negotiators from the airline and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reached a labor deal in the last round of United States mediated talks on schedule, the parties said in a joint statement on Friday. They said they must still complete contract language, after which it will become a so-called tentative agreement that the carrier’s 9,000 mechanics can vote to ratify or reject…
Atlanta Teamsters, Sierra Club Lead Protest of USTR, UPS CEO Appearances Teamster.org …Dozens of members of Teamsters Local 728, the Sierra Club and other unions voiced their opposition to the appearance of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman and UPS CEO David Abney at the Commerce Club this morning, saying the two were promoting agendas that would lessen the power of unions and cause jobs to be shipped overseas…
Teamster Shares Lifelong Love of Hockey With At-Risk Kids Local 727 …Teamsters Local 727 member Mark Truty loves his family and he loves his job at Rollex, but his first love was hockey. Truty, a 25-year Teamster, is a maintenance worker at Rollex. “The real heroes aren’t us volunteers. It’s the kids that come back week after week and the parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents who come every week and see what these kids are doing,” Truty said…
‘Scabbie’ Sets Sail to Oppose Titan’s Undercutting in Westchester Labor Press ….“Scabbie”, Labor’s trusty inflatable rat was a rare sight on the Harlem River this week, as Teamsters Local 456 dispatched the ugly rodent to protest Titan Concrete’s even uglier undercutting of area standards, wages and benefits in Westchester County. Bronx-based Titan Concrete truckers began appearing on the streets Westchester County earlier this spring…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Hyundai Workers in Korea Stage Partial Strike Wards Auto …Hyundai workers in Korea hold the latest of three strikes Friday, with 15,000 workers walking off the job for four hours on both the early and afternoon shifts. Union sources say the sticking point is not its demand for a 7.2% monthly wage increase and bonuses amounting to 30% of Hyundai’s 2015 net profit, to which management has not made a counter offer…
Kenya: County promotes 300 health workers to avert planned strike Daily Nation ….Migori County Government on Sunday moved to avert protests by effecting promotions for more than 300 health workers. Majority of those promoted were health workers who had planned an industrial action that would have paralysed activities in many public health facilities. Nurses and clinical officers had been complaining of stagnating in their job groups for years…
TPP decision likely to come after elections Manila Times …Thailand is likely to rely on a democratically elected government to decide whether to join the much-touted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as time is limited for the incumbent government to make a decision on the pact. According to commerce vice-minister Winichai Chaemchaeng, Thailand needs time to thoroughly study the effects of the TPP…
How progressives are putting Hillary Clinton in a tough spot on trade (again) Washington Post …”I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” she said in an economic speech outside Detroit on Thursday. “I’ll oppose it now, I’ll oppose it after the election and I’ll oppose it as president.” That’s about as clear as it gets. Clinton was trying to convince progressives who have been skeptical of her stance on trade that she is, indeed, on their side…
Political revolution can stop Trans-Pacific Partnership (opinion) Des Moines Register …We need to focus on the dangers of the TPP and the enormous coalition of the White House, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the thousands of corporate lobbyists that profit by politics as usual in Washington, D.C. As we organize for election day on Nov. 8, we need to mobilize Americans across the political spectrum to Stand Up and Fight Back to defeat the TPP and continue the political revolution that Iowa helped start…
Italy seeks new deal to scrap EU austerity as its economy stalls Independent …Italy is preparing to negotiate a new deal with the EU that will allow it to reject the politics of austerity and boost public spending in an urgent bid to rescue its crumbling economy. New figures released on Friday showed the Italian economy achieved 0 per cent growth in the second quarter of this year, down from an already disappointing 0.3 per cent in the first quarter…
It’s Getting Harder and More Expensive to Make Cars in Mexico Wall Street Journal …When car companies began flocking to Ciudad Juarez more than two decades ago, the big lure was labor, which was plentiful and inexpensive. Today, with an auto-production boom in high gear, those advantages are being chipped away. Toyota Motor Corp. , BMW AG , Ford Motor Co. and several other auto makers have committed to spend a combined $15.8 billion to build new assembly plants or expand existing factories…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Ruling on lawsuit blocking $12 an hour minimum wage expected next week ABC …Could Arizonans see $12 an hour minimum wage on their November ballots? Maybe. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joshua Rodgers is expected to rule next week on a lawsuit filed by the Arizona Restaurant Association challenging the petition signatures submitted to get the minimum wage initiative on November’s ballot. Under the initiative, the state’s minimum wage would increase from $8.05 an hour to $10 an hour in 2017 before a $12 an hour spike in 2020…
State of North Dakota preps for election after voter ID ruling Jamestown Sun …North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger said last week it’s too early to say what forms of identification will be accepted for voting in November’s election, but a plan is being developed after a federal judge recently ruled against the state’s new voter ID laws. On Aug. 1, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland issued a preliminary injunction, arguing the voter ID laws were unconstitutional…
Minimum Wage Hike Makes November Ballots In Colorado CBS …A gradual hike in the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 will be decided by Colorado voters this fall. A ballot measure to hike the minimum wage was certified by the Secretary of State Thursday as having the sufficient 98,000 or so signatures to make statewide ballots. Colorado’s current minimum wage is $8.31 an hour…
Workers rally around wages, race and plans to protest presidential debates The Guardian …Braving the heatwave sweeping the eastern US, thousands of workers marched in Richmond on Saturday chanting: “If you want our vote, come get our vote!” That was the overarching message of the first national Fight for $15 convention, which was held just weeks after both Democrats and Republicans held their conventions to nominate their candidates for the next US president…
$15 minimum wage movement to vote on organizing mass fast-food worker strike Politico …The “Fight for $15” minimum wage movement will hold its first-ever convention Saturday, where roughly 3,000 who will vote on a resolution calling for mass strikes among fast-food workers nationwide. Thousands of members of the movement head to Richmond, Va. this weekend, and among the items on the agenda is a resolution that would call on the organization to organize the fast-food strikes…
U.S. LABOR
United attendants back first combined contract since Continental merger Boston Globe …United Continental Holdings Inc.’s flight attendants approved a labor contract that will allow the carrier to put attendants from its two predecessor airlines on the same jets for the first time in the merged company’s six-year history. The Association of Flight Attendants voted 53 percent in favor of the five-year agreement, the union said in a statement Friday…
Ahead of contract talks, GE Appliances takes aim at union worker wages, health benefits WDRB …GE Appliances says the wages of about 4,000 union-represented production workers at Louisville’s Appliance Park are too high to be competitive in the low-margin appliance business. The statements come on the eve of negotiations for a new labor contract with the IUE-CWA Local 83761, which represents production workers at Appliance Park…
Professional fighters association launches union targeting UFC athletes FOX Sports …Talk about a union for professional mixed martial artists has simmered for years, and now a group of agents and lawyers finally has pulled the trigger. The Professional Fighters Association (PFA) officially launched this week with the union specifically targeting UFC athletes for representation. The PFA is led by famed baseball agent Jeff Borris along with attorney Lucas Middlebrook…
Trump Taj Mahal bankruptcy pits Carl Icahn’s casino against striking workers The Guardian …Icahn says striking workers have made it impossible to turn around a property that has lost him $100m and he will close the casino after the Labor Day holiday on 5 September. “We feel real, real disrespected that you would give to one part of your company and not give to the other,” said Chuck Baker, a 56-year-old cook who has put in 26 years at the Trump Taj Mahal…
Law allowing Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize upheld in Seattle Mashable …Seattle became the first city to allow drivers for ride-hailing companies to unionize when it passed landmark legislation last December. And that right is safe for now, after a judge ruled Tuesday it was too early for any party to challenge it. A federal judge dismissed a case brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that challenged Seattle’s collective bargaining ordinance, the first of its kind in any U.S. city…
Gender Wage Gap Raises the Stakes for the American Economy American Prospect …Full-time female workers across the country still earn just 79 cents for every dollar men earn, and the gap widens further for women of color. A new report on the gender wage gap by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, shines a light on why these disparities persist and what policies would most effectively eliminate them…
Today’s Tech Oligarchs Are Worse Than the Robber Barons (opinion) Daily Beast …A decade ago these guys—and they are mostly guys—were folk heroes, and for many people, they remain so. They represented everything traditional business, from Wall Street and Hollywood to the auto industry, in their pursuit of sure profits and golden parachutes, was not. Now from San Francisco to Washington and Brussels, the tech oligarchs are a fearsome threat whose ambitions to control our future politics, media, and commerce seem without limits…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
After Historic Swimming Gold, Simone Manuel Addresses Police Brutality And Racism Think Progress …On Thursday night in Rio, Manuel became the first African American woman to ever win an individual swimming medal at the Olympics. The significance of the moment was not lost on her, particularly considering the racial tensions back home. “It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality,” Manuel said after the race…
GOP Obsession With Austerity Is to Blame for Sluggish Economic Recovery Common Dreams …Fiscal austerity in the wake of the Great Recession—imposed by Republicans on the federal, state, and local levels—is responsible for the sluggish pace of economic recovery since 2009, states a new paper that undercuts conservative attempts to pin the blame on President Barack Obama…
Gaza’s Sick Pay Price of Blockade Truthout …Increasingly, the Ministry of Health in Gaza is struggling with a lack of funds for drugs and vital equipment. The funding shortfall is a direct consequence of the siege harming the economy. Israel, furthermore, prohibits a whole host of goods and construction materials from entering Gaza, citing “security reasons” and the possibility of “dual use,” military and civilian…
The Decline of Unions and the Rise of Trump (opinion) NY Times …Union decline has left the working class politically and economically vulnerable, and it’s this vulnerability Mr. Trump has been able to exploit. If unions had anything like their former influence, how many workers would buy the empty economic promises Mr. Trump is making — a man whose recently announced economic advisory team is made up largely of fellow billionaires, and who has said that hourly wages are too high?…
The Great White Hype: No One Is Energizing the White Working Class, Not Even Donald Trump The Intercept …It has become an article of faith among political pundits that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is energizing the white working class. Trump is “rallying white working class voters,” Bill Schneider wrote for Reuters in December. And yet, as New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore recently noted, poll numbers actually show that Trump is now less popular with the white working class than Romney was…