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Today’s Teamster News For October 14, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Some XPO Logistics Workers Vote to Unionize Wall Street Journal …XPO Logistics Inc. warehouse workers and truck drivers in Connecticut and Illinois have voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union said Thursday. A majority of 127 warehouse workers in North Haven, Conn., voted to become the first warehouse workers at XPO to form a union in the U.S., the Teamsters said. A majority of 74 drivers in Aurora, Ill., voted to join…
Teamsters Win Another Court Case Against FedEx Freight Teamster.org …The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected FedEx Freight’s efforts to avoid bargaining with Teamsters Local 439 that had won an NLRB election covering the company’s drivers at its Stockton, California facility. After Local 439 won an election, FedEx Freight refused to bargain and challenged the appropriateness of the bargaining unit…
FedEx Freight Must Recognize Drivers-Only Bargaining Unit Bloomberg …FedEx Freight Inc. must recognize a Teamsters local as the bargaining representative of its drivers at a California facility, a federal appeals court decided ( FedEx Freight, Inc. v. NLRB , 2016 BL 339525, 7th Cir., No. 16-1360, 10/12/16 ). The Seventh Circuit became the third federal appeals court to reject FedEx Freight’s invitation to strike down the National Labor Relations Board’s standard for determining appropriate bargaining units…
Stonington school bus drivers overwhelmingly vote to form union The Day …The union that represents drivers that work for the company that provides the town’s school bus service have voted to unionize. The drivers for First Student Transportation voted 20-3 Wednesday to form a union, said Teamsters local official Tom Schlink. It was a dramatic turnaround from a 2014 vote in which drivers rejected a union by a margin of 18-16…
Hoffa and Hall Take a Stand for Striking Ohio Workers Teamster.org …Solidarity is an important feature of the union movement. And yesterday, Teamster leadership engaged in it firsthand. Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa and General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall joined striking Libbey Glass workers in Toledo, Ohio on the picket line. Libbey Glass workers are represented by United Steel Workers Local 700, International Association of Machinists Local 105 and Glass Molders Plastics Local 59…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Workers at Nissan US fight for the right to organize IndustriALL …French and US trade unions joined forces with IndustriALL and French parliamentarians on 12 October in Paris, to call on Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn to stop the anti-union practices at the Nissan plant, Canton, Mississippi. For more than 10 years, management at the Nissan factory in Canton, Mississippi has been intimidating workers who show an interest in unionizing…
Japan Makes Early Push in Asia to Ratify TPP Trade Deal Wall Street Journal …The Japanese government on Friday urged Parliament to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal quickly, showing the drive in Asia to keep it alive despite opposition from U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. “Japan’s ratification would give an impetus for early ratification in the United States,” said Nobuteru Ishihara, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s minister in charge of TPP…
Japan hoping to pressure U.S. to follow its lead on TPP Japan Times …Undeterred by vigorous opposition in the U.S. to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Abe administration expressed determination Friday to swiftly ratify the free trade agreement and pressure Washington to follow in its footsteps…
Peruvians Face Riot Police as They March Against the TPP TeleSUR …Riot police cracked down on a diverse group of protesters against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in downtown Lima on Wednesday, with university student collectives, labor unions, health-based groups, leftist political parties, Indigenous communities, cultural movements, neighborhood associations, feminists and environmentalists all taking part…
Legal Action Launched Over Secrecy Surrounding TTIP, CETA Trade Deals Sputnik News …Legal action has been launched by campaign group ClientEarth against the European Commission for keeping secret official analysis of whether a major part of the EU-Canada and EU-US trade deals is actually legal, in a further example of lack of transparency over the deals…
Long Hours, Low Wages Alleged at Ivanka Trump Shoe Factory Racked …Workers at one Chinese footwear factory that, according to US customs data available on the ImportGenius database, has made more than 130,000 pounds of Ivanka Trump-brand shoes, describe being subjected to an array of workplace indignities, some that would potentially qualify as violations of local labor law…
Can Uber Conquer Latin America? Bloomberg …The region is especially important for Uber because of a strategic decision the company made halfway around the world. On Aug. 1, Uber agreed to leave China after losing more than $2 billion in two years doing war with its ride-hailing rival Didi Chuxing. Both companies were heavily subsidizing rides, burning through cash…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
California reforms target workers’ compensation fraud Reveal News …California is cracking down on graft in the state’s system of medical care for injured workers with two bills recently signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. The reforms will suspend felon medical providers from billing for workers’ compensation care and rein in a court-governed payment system that gave rise to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of unsanctioned treatment…
Voter ID in Wisconsin, a Slow-Motion Train Wreck PR Watch …A federal judge held a hearing Wednesday to determine if procedures put in place by Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to implement the state’s new voter ID law were sufficient to protect the right to vote. The advocacy organization One Wisconsin Now was asking the judge to suspend the state’s voter ID law for the November election or at a minimum force the state to fix demonstrated problems with the voter ID petition process…
McAuliffe calls for pay cuts, job freeze and reconsideration of Medicaid expansion Washington Post ….Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, in an attempt to balance the state’s $1.5 billion budget shortfall, plans to eliminate planned pay raises for state employees and teachers and will ask the General Assembly to dip into the rainy-day fund to keep funding intact for education, public safety and Medicaid…
Uber Drivers Ruled Eligible for Jobless Payments in New York State New York Times …Two former drivers for Uber are eligible for unemployment payments, New York State regulators have ruled, finding that they should be treated as employees rather than independent contractors, as the company has maintained. Unlike contractors, employees are entitled to a variety of rights and protections, including a minimum wage and workers’ compensation insurance, and are typically more costly for companies to rely on…
420,000 More Workers in Cook County Will Soon Have Paid Sick Leave In These Times …The Cook County Board of Commissioners in Illinois approved legislation that guarantees paid sick days to all workers in the county, bringing the Chicago suburbs in line with the city. Chicago passed its own paid sick leave ordinance in June. Under the ordinance, Cook County workers will be eligible for 40 hours, or about five days, of sick time per year, the same as workers in Chicago…
Will The Nation’s Capital Become a National Leader on Paid Leave? American Prospect …The clock is ticking, and pressure is mounting for the D.C. City Council to vote on the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015—a bill, that, if approved, would become the most progressive paid leave law in the country. Originally introduced last October, the measure has to be voted on by the end of 2016 lest it die in committee…
U.S. LABOR
Striking Allina nurses approve contract offer Star Tribune …Nurses approved a contract Thursday to return to work at five Allina Health hospitals in the Twin Cities, concluding a contentious, nine-month negotiation in which they voted down four prior contract proposals and went on two strikes for a combined 44 days. While similar to a contract offer the nurses rejected Oct. 3, the latest offer provided enough new financial incentives and guarantees about health benefits to earn nurses’ support…
The First Campus Strike in Over 30 Years Is Happening at Harvard The Nation … Both workers and students ditched the lunch line for the picket line last week in the first Harvard campus strike in over 30 years, transforming the polished Oxonian dining halls into a crucible of intersecting social struggles. On the first day of the strike, Harvard Yard brimmed with subversive school spirit, chanting about Harvard showing “your greedy side.” Clerical and janitorial workers joined the red-T-shirted strikers on the picket line…
There’s A Boycott Going On At Donald Trump’s Fancy New Hotel Huffington Post …A picket line of about two hundred D.C. workers snaked in front of the hotel entrance, discouraging any would-be guests from getting a room for the night. The boycott stems from a labor dispute at Trump’s luxury hotel in Las Vegas, where he’s refused to bargain with a union that won an election to represent workers there last year…
Union Officials And Elected Democrats Rally Against MBTA Privatization WBUR …Union officials and elected Democrats railed against privatization at the MBTA without charting a clear course for stopping those moves anytime soon. “It’s a systematic beat-down of the middle class,” said Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat. “That’s what it is. There’s no secret to it. For corporate America it’s become more important to pay a dividend than to pay a fair wage”…
Twin Cities janitors declare victory in union fight after 44-month campaign The Guardian …When Flores, a mother of five, walked out in February 2013, she was one of just eight janitors from stores in the Twin Cities to go on strike that day to demand better conditions. Flores was relieved not to get fired. Now, 44 months later and after a highly unorthodox organizing drive that included six more one-day strikes, Flores and other janitors who clean Target, Macy’s and Best Buy stores in the Twin Cities are declaring victory…
NLRB complaint against Postmates raises specter of fight over employee classification Chicago Tribune …The Chicago regional office of the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against on-demand delivery service Postmates last week alleging labor violations against its drivers, raising a question that has dogged the gig economy since the rise of Uber: Are the drivers employees?…
One chart shows how swiftly Uber and Lyft are killing traditional taxis Business Insider …Uber and Lyft are killing old-school taxis. While it may be a tired trend to talk about, it is also true, according to data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. This trend was put in stark relief in one chart from BAML’s monthly review of customer card usage…
The Uber economy looks a lot like the pre-industrial economy Quartz …Maybe Uber isn’t that innovative after all. A new study from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), finds that the “gig” economy model popularized by Uber has a lot in common with the economies of poor countries today, as well as the US and Europe before the Industrial Revolution. Uber and other “gig” companies like Lyft and TaskRabbit hire their workers as independent contractors rather than full employees…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Trump May Be Finished—but Trumpism Is Just Getting Started The Atlantic …Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is on life support after a barrage of damaging personal revelations last week sparked an unprecedented stampede of defections from Republican leaders. But, ironically, if that sequence of events proves the fatal blow to Trump’s tumultuous candidacy, it may help the ideas and animosities powering his campaign to live on inside the GOP…
Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf Steps Down Wall Street Journal …Wells Fargo & Co. Chairman and Chief Executive John Stumpf, under fire for the bank’s sales-tactics scandal and his own handling of its fallout, is stepping down from both roles, effective immediately, the bank said Wednesday. Mr. Stumpf will be replaced as head of the third-largest U.S. bank…
Sen. Warren Urges Obama to Fire ‘Unapologetic’ SEC Chief for ‘Brazen Conduct’ Common Dreams …Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday called on President Barack Obama to remove one of his top hand-picked financial regulators, saying the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had driven the agency off its course. In a 12-page letter to Obama, Warren took aim at SEC chief Mary Jo White, a Republican-leaning Independent who has refused to work on a rule that would enforce transparency in corporate political donations…
Police surveillance of black protesters won’t stop the movement Think Progress …An investigation by the ACLU in California found that police departments nationwide were using data meant for advertisers from the country’s most popular social media platforms to track black protesters. The report, which was released Tuesday, shows that 500 law enforcement agencies used a data-aggregating site Geofeedia to sift through and organize social media posts…
Justice Department to Track Use of Force by Police Across U.S. New York Times …The Justice Department said Thursday that it would start collecting nationwide data early next year on police shootings and other violent encounters with the public, after a series of protests and investigations since 2014 spurred by a string of deadly episodes. The project is meant to fill what officials say is a huge and frustrating void in publicly available data on the shootings that have roiled the country…
The Floodgates Are Open on Trump Sexual Assault Allegations Slate …New accusers are coming forward with accounts of Trump’s sexual misconduct, some saying they are infuriated by his denials. A Miss Teen USA 2001 contestant told the Guardian today that Trump “deliberately walked in” on her and another contestant in their dressing room…