Uncategorized
Today’s Teamster News For August 9, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Teamster Ready Mix Drivers Reach Tentative Agreement Teamster.org …After a contentious contract rejection of the two major ready mix companies, Cemex and Central Concrete last weekend, a tentative agreement has been reached by the parties after an all-day bargaining session held on Sunday, August 7, 2016. The Teamsters were prepared to begin picketing every one of the employers’ ready mix facilities…
Local 710 Members at ReaderLink Ratify New Agreement Local 710 …Teamsters Local 710 distribution warehouse workers at ReaderLink have overwhelmingly ratified a new contract by a margin of nearly 3-to-1. Wages will increase 30 cents per hour each year of the three-year agreement, including retroactivity pay to January 4, 2016. Local 710 successfully negotiated many improvements that strengthen the bargaining unit as a whole…
Schnucks retaliates against Teamsters boycott by refusing to provide earned work certifications Labor Tribune …Schnuck Markets is refusing to provide fired Teamster Local 688 warehouse workers copies of their equipment certifications that would allow them to get another job that required the use of a forklift of pallet jack. “This is an outrageous, callous act of retaliation for our boycott,” said Mike Goebel, Local 688’s chief executive officer…
Teamsters Local 769 Nails Enterprise Rent-A-Car for Back Dues Teamsters 769 …A rental car company waited too long to challenge an order that it reimburse a labor organization out of its own funds for union dues that should have been deducted from employee paychecks, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit held. The court closed the case without reaching the merits of an unusual order that precludes the employer from recouping dues payments from the employees who would have made them but for the employer’s labor law violations…
Local 179 Wins $102K for Wrongfully Terminated Teamster JC 25 …Representatives of Teamsters Local 179 refused to give up on a longstanding grievance for a member who was wrongfully fired, but who now is returning to work with more than $100,000 in lost wages thanks to their efforts. Local 179 Recording Secretary Jim Babcock and several Teamster stewards at Stepan Company recently secured a final decision from an independent arbitrator upholding the original grievance…
City contract with Teamsters is a win-win Post-Gazette …It’s another win for working families thanks to cooperative negotiations between Mayor Bill Peduto and Teamsters Local 249. The Teamsters’ new contract agreement is a boost not only for the hardworking men and women who collect refuse in our city, but it’s a boost for their families and our communities. When workers get a raise, it allows them to rise out of poverty and strengthen their neighborhood businesses…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Nepal: Unilever workers end 28-day strike Kathmandu Post …Workers at Unilever Nepal’s Hetauda factory ended their 28-day strike on Sunday after reaching a three-point agreement with the management. The workers had been staging protests since July 10, demanding allocation of Rs200,000 as a “residential fund”. The workers said they were forced to intensify their agitation after the management refused to implement an agreement reached on May 29…
UK: Virgin train workers have voted for strike, RMT says City.Am …Workers on Virgin East Coast have voted to strike in a dispute over jobs, working conditions and safety, the RMT rail union said. Some 84 per cent of workers backed strike action, while nine out of 10 supported other forms of industrial action. The union balloted members in July over possible job losses…
Grassroots Democrats Are Making the TPP a Big Issue in Congressional Races The Nation …Trade policy in general—and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in particular—has become a vital concern for Democrats up and down the ballot. Just ask Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind, one of the few congressional Democrats who continue to make arguments for agreements such as the TPP…
Lame duck TPP vote could be disastrous for Dems—and America (opinion) The Hill …There’s one hot-button issue in this campaign that exemplifies what people see as wrong with the system: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Negotiated in secret under the advisement of multinational corporations, the TPP gives handouts to the multinational corporate class at the expense of the middle class. It pits workers here against those abroad, boosting profits of multinational corporations…
Lame-Duck Prospects Fading for Pacific Trade Pact Prosperous America …There’s at least one thing that both his and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns agree on: They want to unravel the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest regional trade pact meant to tie closer together the United States, Japan, and 10 other nations around the Pacific Rim. Over the protests of major U.S. business federations and the Obama administration, the presidential candidates argue that the pact benefits other countries’ workers over our own…
Slum Evictions Show Harsh Reality of Rio Olympics Inequality Alternet …Vila Autodromo, a favela near the epicenter of Rio’s Olympics, was razed to the ground to make way for the mega-event. But 20 families refused to leave. Oonce Brazil won the Olympic bid, it was also in the path of planned roads, parking lots, and “cleaned-up” banks of the lagoon. “These are the exclusion games,” Sandra de Souza, a Vila Autodromo resident who refused to leave the neighborhood, told The Independent. “It is an event by the rich for the rich”…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
North Carolina Spent Nearly $5 Million Defending Voter ID, And Lost Think Progress …North Carolina’s Republican governor and Republican-controlled legislature spent more taxpayer money defending their voter ID law than the state spent hiring outside lawyers over the previous decade. New data reveals state leaders spent nearly 5 million dollars since 2011 defending a voting law that “bears the mark of intentional discrimination”…
Voter-ID laws in jeopardy after Texas agrees to ease its rules MyAJC …In agreeing last week to relax its voter-ID requirements for the November election, Texas showed how far the legal climate has shifted with respect to the wave of state laws enacted over the last decade. The agreement came less than two weeks after a federal appeals court said Texas’s ID law was racially discriminatory…
Working families can’t get by on Florida’s minimum wage, study says Miami Herald …Florida’s minimum wage of $8.05 per hour isn’t enough to lift many working families out of poverty, according to a new study. In fact, it’s so low that it could discourage a second parent in a two-parent family from working because the cost of child care and transportation would outweigh any earnings. The study comes from the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University…
Baltimore City Council votes for $15 minimum wage, final vote expected next week Baltimore Sun …Baltimore’s lowest-paid workers moved one step closer on Monday to earning at least $15 an hour when the City Council gave preliminary approval to raising the minimum wage. The council voted 7-4 to back a plan to steadily raise the rate from the state’s current $8.75 minimum through 2022. Three council members abstained and one was absent…
Labor Advocates File Lawsuit Over $15 Minimum Wage Ballot Initiative In Mpls. CBS …Days after the Minneapolis City Council voted not to include a ballot initiative for an amendment to the city charter raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, advocates for the measure are making good on a promise to strike back…
U.S. LABOR
30,000 American Airlines workers to get 22% pay hikes USA Today …American Airlines reached an interim contract with 30,000 ground workers in a deal that union officials said would deliver an average pay raise of 22%. The agreement between American Airlines (AAL) and the TWU-IAM Association, announced Friday, covers 12 organized groups of workers in maintenance, fleet service other related jobs…
Grocery workers avoid strike, approve contract Union Tribune …Grocery workers voted Monday to approve a new union contract that covers employees at nearly 100 San Diego County stores. The three-year agreement approves modest raises, keeps current health care plans in place and gives employees longer notice about work schedules, the United Food & Commercial Workers union said…
Taj Mahal workers brace for October closure as Icahn says no to Trump Business Journal …Icahn has been mentioned several times as a possible pick for Secretary of Treasury by Trump – a selection hundreds of Atlantic City workers have denounced. “If this is the guy Donald Trump wants to be Treasury Secretary of the United States, then this country is doomed,” Bob McDevitt, leader of UNITE HERE Local 54, said in a statement following the Wednesday announcement that the Taj would close its doors…
SEIU files petition, accuses Mayo Clinic of ‘dubious ethics’ Post Bulletin …Ten members of Mayo Clinic’s food service department delivered petitions to the office of Mayo’s director of labor relations Monday. The move is the latest escalation in the ongoing fight between SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Mayo about the clinic’s tentative agreement transitioning about 700 employees across southern Minnesota off Mayo’s payroll and benefits program via subcontracting…
UFW will ‘sound the alarm’ on suspected heat deaths of farm workers Indy Bay …Amid reports of multiple suspected deaths of farm workers from the heat in and around Kern County, United Farm Workers leaders will “sound the alarm” on proactive steps all employers should immediately take to prevent fatalities and illness when temperatures hit triple digits. The UFW and UFW Foundation are actively investigating reports of as many as three recent fatalities…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Billionaire Bonanza as Wealth Surges Among One Percent Common Dreams …There is little doubt that the global one percent is winning. In fact, a new study has found that the number of billionaires reached an all-time high in 2015 at the same time that their portfolios and piggy banks also continued to grow to record proportions. According to the 2015-2016 Billionaire Census by international market research firm Wealth-X, the billionaire population grew by 6.4 percent last year…
Mike Pence Is Radically Anti-Public Health Huffington Post …Pence’s public record reveals a misunderstanding of basic science. The field of public health is dedicated to identifying and minimizing risk factors that negatively impact human health. Perhaps the most basic and fundamental example of this is the impact of smoking. The CDC has stated that smoking is the number one preventable cause of death in the US, responsible for nearly half-a-million deaths annually…
Elitism won’t defeat Trumpism (opinion) Washington Post …If the country is lucky, Trump will continue to do an excellent job of defeating himself. His racism and sexism are leading nonwhite voters and women to form a durable front of opposition. But his voters should not be demeaned or ignored, and his rise should shatter the complacency of the comfortable…
Humanity Just Ate Through Planet’s Annual Resource Budget Faster Than Ever Common Dreams …Earth Overshoot Day—the day on which people worldwide have officially used up more natural resources like air, food, and water than the planet can regenerate in a year—has come early. The 2016 threshold was hit on Monday, making it the fastest pace yet, according to a new report…