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Today’s Teamster News For October 6, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Uncommon Contract Holds Promise for California Group Home’s Too Familiar Ills SF Patch …Last year, the Edgewood Center for Children and Families in San Francisco became the scene of a rare bid to unionize workers. On Monday, that struggle produced a deal that workers said could be a significant step in ending longstanding issues of rampant turnover and low morale. The contract, negotiated by a local branch of the Teamsters, raises starting wages from $13 to $18 an hour for frontline workers…
JCPS continues to cancel bus routes because of driver shortage WDRB …A shortage of bus drivers has left some students with Jefferson County Public Schools scrambling to get to school. “The ongoing issue for the past four years has been student discipline issues, and the district chooses not to listen to it or deal with it,” said John Stovall, the president of Teamsters Local 783. “It’s almost like if they think they ignore it, it will go away”…
Teamsters, unions question Dakota Access reconsideration Oil & Gas Journal …The Obama administration’s decision to withdraw and reconsider permits it issued for the proposed Dakota Access crude oil pipeline raises serious questions about the future of building US systems and the livelihoods of the project’s construction workers, general presidents of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and four other labor unions said…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Hyundai Battles Striking Workers As Global Ambitions Surge Forbes …Hyundai (and its sister company, Kia) is suffering through its first full strike in 12 years, with tens of thousands of workers across Korea walking off the job. Prior to the nationwide walkout, Hyundai unions staged 21 partial strikes this year, resulting in a production loss of at least 117,000 vehicles worth more than $2.5 billion…
Brazil bank worker strike becomes longest since 2004 Reuters … month-long strike by Brazilian bank workers has become the longest in 12 years, underscoring the impasse between employers and staff amid the nation’s harshest recession in eight decades. In a Tuesday statement, leaders from the Sindicato dos Bancários de São Paulo, Osasco e Região, the nation’s biggest banking industry union, said almost 10 rounds of negotiations have yielded no accord…
Merkel says controversial EU-US trade deal should still go ahead despite wave of anger Express …Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal negotiations hit trouble in the summer when German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel suggested Washington did not want to compromise with its European counterparts. Opponents of the deal argue it would weaken environmental standards and give too much power to multinational companies and there were major public protests across Europe over the summer as details emerged…
Don’t Be Fooled: The TPP Is Not About National Security (opinion) In These Times …NAFTA was the economic model for the ever more corporatist trade deals that followed, including the currently proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. The arguments for NAFTA also set the pattern for the debates over those deals. Whenever the economic case crumbles, “national security” becomes the fallback rationale…
Trump, China, and the Ties That Bind Racked …Made in China, the tie had now traveled twice across the Pacific Ocean and, as Trump had just weeks earlier secured the Republican presidential nomination, it now carried more political weight than ever. For more than a year, Trump’s opponents had continually seized upon his foreign-made goods to call out the hypocrisy of a campaign centering on a pledge to repatriate jobs that, in Trump’s telling, global trade had wrongfully taken from American workers…
UK: Asos Has Told Staff It Is Changing Contracts Following Workers’ Allegations BuzzFeed …employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity said this arrangement benefitted XPO and Asos more than employees. They alleged the system meant they were uncertain about how long they were expected to work every other week and were “essentially” given back extra hours worked in time off rather than money…
Over 10,000 Refugees Rescued in 48 Hours During Deadly Mediterranean Crossing Common Dreams …Over 10,000 people were rescued within 48 hours—on Monday and Tuesday—from sinking boats and rubber dinghies while attempting the dangerous crossing over the Mediterranean into Italy. And many didn’t survive the attempt: AFP reported Wednesday that 28 bodies have been recovered so far, and posted horrific photographs of surviving refugees climbing over corpses to reach rescuers…
On Your Mark, Give Birth, Go Back To Work NPR …”The U.S. is absolutely the only high-income country that doesn’t” provide paid maternity leave, says Jody Heymann of UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. In fact, of the 193 countries in the United Nations, Heymann says, 185 have national paid leave laws. Those that don’t are Papua New Guinea, Suriname, a few small South Pacific Island states — and the United States…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
Labor unions ask for summary judgment in WV right-to-work case Gazette Mail …Having been granted a preliminary injunction in August blocking enforcement of the state’s new right to work law, state labor unions have filed a petition in Kanawha Circuit Court seeking a summary judgment to overturn the law as being unconstitutional. Judge Jennifer Bailey granted the preliminary injunction Aug. 10 barring enforcement of the law until legal questions about the new law could be resolved…
Preventing Problems at the Polls: Florida American Progress …Although making fewer headlines during this election cycle than in the past, Florida has a rocky record on voting rights and election integrity. Florida disenfranchises inmates, parolees, probationers, and people with felony convictions. Moreover, its rights restoration process is notoriously difficult to navigate…
Texas’s Voter-Registration Laws Are Straight Out of the Jim Crow Playbook The Nation …The state has no online registration, and anyone who registers voters must be deputized by the county at a training session that typically occurs once a monthy, sometimes less. The volunteer deputy registrars (VDRs), as they’re known, must be deputized on a county-by-county basis, and they can only be deputized in counties adjacent to their own, which makes statewide drives practically impossible in a massive state like Texas, with its 254 counties…
D.C.’s Unemployment Benefit Gets A Boost — First Time In A Decade WAMU …D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has approved an increase to the District’s unemployment benefit from $359 per week to up to $425 per week. It’s the first time D.C.’s unemployment insurance has gone up since 2005. “My Administration has fought together alongside workers to raise the minimum wage and now increase unemployment benefits for the first time in 11 years,” Bowser said in a statement Tuesday evening…
Minneapolis study of $15 minimum wage cites benefits, draws skepticism Star Tribune …A long-awaited analysis of a $15 per hour citywide minimum wage in Minneapolis found it would boost pay for many workers without much impact on businesses — a finding that immediately drew skepticism from the business community. The study revealed to City Council members Wednesday spanned more than 200 pages and noted that about 71,000 workers in Minneapolis would benefit from a $15 an hour minimum wage…
U.S. LABOR
Fusion Staff Prepare To Unionize Buzzfeed …Fusion is the latest digital media company whose newsroom is working to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East. A majority of online staff at Fusion have signed union cards with the WGAE, the union said in a letter to the site’s editorial staff on Wednesday. The union will continue to organize before eventually asking the company for voluntary recognition…
More than 100 Uber Black drivers strike against new Uber terms Orlando Sentinel …More than 135 Uber Black drivers were out of work and on strike Wednesday at Orlando International Airport when a new contractual agreement issued by Uber would cause them to breach another contract with the city of Orlando. The new Uber agreement mandates that Uber Black drivers charge their customers $1.65 a mile, far below the $2.40 minimum set by a Orlando City ordinance…
Amazon Drivers Sue for Not Being Paid As Employees Money …This isn’t the first time Amazon has been hit with a lawsuit over driver classification. Last year, four drivers hired by a courier service to make Amazon Prime Now deliveries sued the company for withholding pay and benefits, similarly claiming that they earned less than minimum wage due to out-of-pocket costs…
Employers are turning to older workers to fill job needs Daily News …According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Baby Boomers totaled more than 75 million people in 2015 and were supplanted as the largest age demographic by the Millennials, who now represent more than one-quarter of the nation’s population. Baby Boomers who have retired from their long-term employers are now more likely than ever to take on other employment opportunities…
Harvard strike could be seen as a battle against the 1 percent. It’s not. Boston Globe …The first strike at Harvard University in more than 30 years pits the world’s richest university against hundreds of food service workers who walked off their jobs Wednesday after months of negotiations failed to produce a new contract. The dispute could easily be seen as a showdown between the 1 percent and low-paid service workers. But the situation is far more complex…
McDonald’s workers claim they were groped and solicited for sexual favors on the job Business Insider …McDonald’s workers are planning protests in three dozen US cities on Thursday over an array of sexual harassment claims against the burger chain. The protests, which will be held during the busy lunch hour, are meant to draw attention to 15 federal complaints filed with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the last month…
John Nichols: Donald Trump can’t figure out why his anti-union candidacy doesn’t attract union members CAP Times …The Republican presidential nominee — and favored contender of anti-union zealots such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — rallied his supporters in Manheim, Pennsylvania, Saturday night with a call for union members to show their support. To the Republican presidential nominee’s surprise, his appeal was answered with silence…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Hurricane Matthew Strengthens as Florida Governor Urges Evacuations NBC News …Hurricane Matthew strengthened yet again early Thursday as it crawled toward the United States, where as many as 1.5 million people were fleeing south Atlantic coastal areas. Evacuations were under way in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina after Matthew, which hammered Haiti and strafed Cuba, began battering the Bahamas…
Donald Trump’s tax returns show the American tax code favors the rich Salon …Thanks to the sheer size of the reported losses and some arcane provisions of the tax code, Trump might have enjoyed a two-decade federal income tax holiday, even as he pulled in millions of dollars in income from his businesses and TV gigs. It’s a nice arrangement if you can get it — and you almost certainly cannot…
The Paris Agreement is really happening — and it’s about more than climate change Think Progress …A wave of support from countries around the world has now set up the Paris Agreement — a historic global pact to curb greenhouse gas pollution and build resilience to climate change — to take effect in early November 2016. As President Obama put it, the Paris Agreement represents “the single-best chance that we have” to protect the planet from climate change…
Implicit Bias Is Real. Don’t Be So Defensive. Slate …“Implicit bias” isn’t an accusation. It doesn’t mean you’re bad. It means you’re normal. Animals prejudge one another based on appearance. Human beings are naturally tribal. So implicit bias, as a disposition, isn’t something you learn. It’s something you learn to overcome…
From Economist in Peru, to Janitor in America The Atlantic …A well-known archetype of underemployment is the “college-educated barista,” but other less-cited example are the immigrants who often hold degrees and were employed at white-collar jobs in their home countries. In the U.S. though, they face significant challenges—such as their legal status, occupational licenses, and language barriers—obtaining the same level of work…