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Today’s Teamster News For September 1, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Cincinnati Teamsters Authorize Strike at Airgas Teamster.org …Drivers and plant operation workers at industrial gas company Airgas have voted to authorize a strike. The workers have been without a contract since Nov. 30, 2015, and went on a warning strike for one day on March 11, 2016. The workers, members of Teamsters Local 100, are fighting against Airgas’ insistence on placing cameras in workers’ restrooms and locker rooms at the Cincinnati facility…
Home Juice Members Receive Retroactive 401(k) Contributions Local 727 …Home Juice drivers and warehouse workers received retroactive retirement contributions this month as part of the terms of their new three-year contract. The Teamsters Local 727-represented members are now participating in the Teamsters National 401(k) retirement plan. The employer is making monthly contributions, which increase each year of the contract, on each member’s behalf…
UVM, Teamsters Reach 3-Year Settlement VT Digger …The University of Vermont has successfully completed negotiations on a 3-year contract with the Chauffeurs, Teamsters, Warehousemen and Helpers Union No. 597. The union represents full-time and regular part-time police officers, service officers, and dispatchers employed by the university. Terms of the new contract include across-the-board wage increases of 2 percent for the fiscal year that began on July 1…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Workers at Chile Codelco’s Salvador copper mine vote on strike Reuters …Workers at Chilean state-owned miner Codelco’s smallest copper mine began voting on Tuesday whether to accept a wage offer or go on strike, a potential headache for the company as it finds itself in a delicate financial position. Union leaders at the Salvador mine in Chile’s arid north say they are opposed to the wage offer…
UK: Southern Railway workers suspend strike over ticket office closures Daily Mail …A planned 24-hour strike by Southern Railway workers next week in a dispute over ticket office closures has been suspended, but a guards walkout will still go ahead. Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union were due to take action on September 7 in protest at plans to close a number of ticket offices. The union said “significant progress” was made in talks at the conciliation service Acas on Wednesday…
New Trade Deal Could Be Even Greater Threat to Public Services Than TTIP Common Dreams …A global trade deal currently being negotiated in secret and involving 50 different countries could prove to be a serious threat to public services. The Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) is a proposed international trade treaty between 23 parties, including the European Union and the United States. Unlike most trade deals, TISA is about services, not goods…
Obama Scrambles to Pass TPP As Corporate Tribunals Face Scrutiny Shadow Proof …With opposition mounting, President Barack Obama is scrambling to jam the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal through Congress before his term ends in 2017. Though opposition to TPP has typically focused on the threat of losing American jobs, another concern is coming front and center: loss of sovereignty through a byzantine process known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)…
TPP Is Not Dead, Unfortunately (opinion) Huffington Post …The reports of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s death have been greatly exaggerated, unfortunately. It would great news if the pact, which would mean more power for corporations over our lives and government, and fewer good jobs for Americans, were ready to be boxed and buried…
Protestors to Obama: ‘Climate threatened by TPP actions’ KCRA …Demonstrators gathered Wednesday outside the Lake Tahoe Summit venue to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is also known as the TPP. “(We want) to tell President Obama, ‘Look we supported you. We had your back, but you don’t have our back with the TPP and it can’t go through,’” Tuolumne County resident Elaine Hegen said…
TTIP is about to die, but here are the toxic trade deals about to take its place Independent …It seems that the anti-TTIP movement is close to winning its big prize – the death of a ‘trade’ deal which had more to do with extending the power of big corporations than exchanging goods. For a trade deal which had barely been heard of by most European politicians two and a half years ago, that’s quite a feat…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Supreme Court won’t reinstate North Carolina voter ID law CNN …The Supreme Court denied a request Wednesday from North Carolina to allow provisions of its controversial voting rights law to go back into effect. In a 4-4 split, justices left undisturbed a lower court opinion that struck down the law. The Supreme Court’s order means provisions of the law will remain off the books for November’s election…
California to launch retirement accounts for workers without pensions, 401(k)s East Bay Times …Faced with a possible epidemic of poverty-stricken seniors, California is poised to launch an ambitious program to enroll nearly 7 million low- and middle-income workers who lack pensions or 401(k)s in new state-directed retirement funds. The Legislature is putting the finishing touches on the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program…
Minnesota Supreme Court blocks $15 minimum wage, police insurance from Minneapolis’ ballot Star Tribune …Minneapolis voters will not weigh in this November on whether the city should raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour, following a ruling issued Wednesday by the state’s highest court. In a unanimous order released a day after it heard the case, the Minnesota Supreme Court sided with the city of Minneapolis…
Austerity-Mad Red States Received More Federal Aid Common Dreams …According to an analysis by The Hill reporter Reid Wilson of new data published by Pew Charitable Trusts on Monday, “the average state that voted against [President Barack] Obama twice relied on federal funding for an average of 33.8 percent of its budget.” In contrast, “Among the 27 states that voted for Obama twice, federal grants made up 29.9 percent of the average state budget”…
CA legislature OKs background checks for Uber, Lyft drivers SF Gate …Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Sacramento, said AB1289 is needed because the California Public Utilities Commission does not specify what kind of background check drivers must undergo, leaving passengers at risk. Cooper’s bill comes after Uber agreed this year to pay up to $25 million to settle a 2014 lawsuit filed by district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles that argued the company misled customers by suggesting its background checks on drivers were toughest in the industry…
Could the Presidential Election Be Hacked? FBI “Flash” Alert Urges States to Bolster Security Democracy Now …According to a new investigation by Yahoo News, FBI’s Cyber Division released a “flash” alert earlier this month and warned election officials across the nation to take new measures to bolster the security of their computer systems. Sources familiar with the document told Yahoo News that Arizona and Illinois were the two states compromised by the hacks…
Want to Reduce Crime? Raise Wages. (opinion) Morning Consult …A pair of recent reports estimates the extent of these public savings for two widely supported policies that would boost wages for low-paid workers, including those with criminal records who are entering or returning to the workforce. The first study finds that raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 would reduce criminal activity by 3 percent to 5 percent, saving American communities as much as $17 billion each year…
U.S. LABOR
Allina Nurses Ready To Strike On Labor Day CBS …Nurses at five Allina Hospitals plan to hit the picket line on Labor Day. They say they will stay there as long as it takes. On Wednesday afternoon, a community rally in support of the nurses was held at Stewart Park in Minneapolis. Nurses represented by the Minnesota Nurses Association voted on Aug. 18 to authorize an open-ended, unfair labor practice strike…
UPS pilots ratify new contract Wave3 …Pilots for UPS have ratified a new five-year labor agreement. The Independent Pilots Association announced the deal was approved by 91% of the members who voted. In a release announcing the contract, IPA listed the following item which they called Key components of the agreement: An immediate pay increase of 14.65% and 3% annual wage increases over the life of the contract, for a compounded increase of 29.04%…
AT&T Wireless Workers Approve New Benefits Contract Fortune …About 40,000 workers in AT&T’s wireless business approved a revised, four-year benefits contract, averting a further escalation of labor difficulties between the carrier and its largest union. The workers had voted down an earlier version of the contract, which mainly covers health benefits, last month. But AT&T and the Communications Workers of America went back to the table and hashed out a revised agreement on Aug. 3…
Part-Time Faculty Union On a Roll in Washington-Baltimore Area In These Times …Part-time faculty members at Goucher College officially won their right to a union this month when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finally counted disputed votes from a 2014 election. It’s a major step forward for the Goucher Faculty Union, an arm of Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 500…
Christie takes NJEA to court over public worker health care changes NJ.com ….The state attorney general filed a court order on Wednesday to compel representatives of the powerful teacher’s union to stop boycotting meetings about health care benefits for public employees, and hours later Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson agreed with the state’s request to hold a hearing on the issue…
National Labor Relations Board decides charter schools are private corporations, not public schools Washington Post …The National Labor Relations Board decided in two separate cases last week that — as far as federal labor law is concerned — charter schools are not public schools but private corporations. The decisions apply only to the specific disputes from which they arose, involving unionization efforts at charter schools in New York and in Pennsylvania…
Yale Graduate Students File Petition To Form A Union CT News Junkie …Taking advantage of a ruling last week by the National Labor Relations Board that gave students at private universities the right to organize, Yale graduate students filed a petition Monday to form a union. “We’re excited to get our election, win our election, and begin negotiating a contract that addresses the issues that our members have been facing for years,” Aaron Greenberg, chair of the Yale Graduate Students and Employees Organization (GESO), said…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Two Big Lies In Trump’s Immigration Speech Think Progress …Trump also spent considerable time depicting undocumented immigrants as violent criminals. According to Trump’s statistics, undocumented immigrants committed 25,000 homicides and cost the country $113 billion. The problem is that those statistics are false and misleading…
President Peña Says He Told Trump Mexico Refused to Pay for His Wall The Atlantic …The failure to talk about the wall became the most interesting part of what amounted to not much more than a grandiose press conference. That is, until Pena Nieto tweeted afterwards: “At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall”…
What a Black Lives Matter economic agenda looks like Washington Post …Amid all the news and noise that Trump’s black voter appeal created, an umbrella operation known as the Movement for Black Lives released an economic plan. Think of the Movement for Black Lives, also known as M4BL, like the civil rights movement: a broad, multi-pronged attempt to create social and legal change…
The Mysterious Private Police Force That’s Killing People In The Nation’s Capital Think Progress …Nationwide, it’s extremely difficult to get information from federal, state, and municipal police about any form of misconduct — especially extrajudicial killings. Still, most police departments are subject to public information laws that require them to turn over at least some records to anyone who wants them. Special police officer activity is even harder to track…