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Today’s Teamster News For November 16, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Teamsters demand McKesson CEO return millions of dollars for role in opioid crisis Washington Post …The Teamsters union called Tuesday for health-care giant McKesson to take back millions of dollars in incentive pay from chief executive John H. Hammergren, citing damage to the company’s reputation caused by its role in the opioid crisis. Ken Hall, general secretary and treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, urged the company’s board of directors to use its “executive clawback policy to recover all or a significant portion of CEO Hammergren’s incentive pay”…
University of California workers strike for higher wages Merced Sun-Star …Hundreds of electricians, elevator mechanics, plumbers and other skilled-trades workers at UCLA and UC San Diego are planning separate one-day strikes this week to demand higher wages. A 24-hour strike will take place Wednesday at UCLA and on Thursday at UC San Diego, said Teamsters Local 2010, a union that represents nearly 800 skilled-trades workers at both schools…
Lawsuit claims driver misclassification by KLLM Transport JOC.com …A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of two truck drivers claims KLLM Transport Services misclassified employee drivers as independent contractors and failed to pay them overtime pay and expenses. Most of the California cases have involved port drayage, a sector the Teamsters union has sought to organize. Several drayage companies have paid hefty settlements after being accused of violating the state’s labor regulations…
Aubuchon Hardware workers on strike Burlington Free Press …A strike at Aubuchon Hardware’s distribution facility in Massachusetts is not expected to affect the company’s 22 Vermont stores, the president and CEO said Tuesday. Teamsters Local 170 Secretary/Treasurer Shannon George said Tuesday he too is “hopeful we can reach an agreement today.” But George said if negotiations don’t work out and Aubuchon begins supplying its Vermont stores using non-union workers, local unions in Vermont would “leaflet” stores to let customers know…
First Student Contract Disputed Valley News …A contract dispute between First Student and the union representing its bus drivers may have consequences for some school districts in New Hampshire, but the impacts shouldn’t be felt in the Upper Valley. other locations have a collective bargaining agreement in place that includes a no-strike clause. Despite that clause, Teamsters Union Local 633 Business Agent Jeff Padellaro told the Union Leader this week that all First Student employees could join the strike to support the cause if they wanted to…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Zimbabwe Informal Economy Workers: Bullied, Threatened Solidarity Center …Some 94 percent of Zimbabwe workers make their living outside the formal economy, and yet like Mudenda, they say they are harassed and bullied by authorities, according to a survey by the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCEIA), a Solidarity Center ally. Eighty-one percent of the 514 respondents say they have been bullied, with 22 percent specifying that the harassment involved both confiscation of goods and threats of violence…
Groups Across Europe Issue Statement on TTIP and Trump: “We Can Defeat Them Both” Common Dreams …While it was reported today that a senior German official had said that TTIP was ‘not realistic’ under Trump, the civil society statement states that TTIP was already widely acknowledged to be dead long before Trump’s election victory, and that the success of the campaign to stop the trade deal had been carried out by hundreds of thousands of activists and civil society groups on both sides of the Atlantic whose values were antithetical to those of Trump…
Australia: Dump trade pact, Greens to ask MPs Herald Sun …Federal parliament will be asked to dump a regional trade pact ahead of a likely US withdrawal under Donald Trump. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, yet to be confirmed by the US Congress, faces an uncertain fate after Mr Trump won last week’s presidential election. “Essentially it’s a blueprint for a corporate takeover of government,” Greens MP Adam Bandt told ABC radio on Wednesday…
Trump transition memo: Trade reform begins Day 1 CNN …President-elect Donald Trump will begin the process of reshaping America’s trade policy on Day 1 of his administration, according to a memo drafted by his transition team obtained by CNN. The document lays out the skeleton of Trump’s trade policy for the first 200 days of his presidency…
New Zealand PM Key talks to Trump: ‘It’s very early days’ Radio NZ …Mr Key talked to Mr Trump this morning, and said he specifically raised his wish to talk further about trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during his conversation. Speaking to reporters in Kaikoura today, Mr Key said they did not get into any specifics about the trade deal in their phone call…
RIP TPP: Trump did not derail the TPP – people power united across borders did that (opinion) Common Dreams …The news that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have given up on passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is welcome. That the TPP would be defeated by Congress if brought to a vote signals that Trojan-horse “trade” agreements that expand corporate power and shrink Americans’ wages are simply no longer politically viable…
To Safeguard the Paris Agreement, Trade Deals Must Align With Climate Policy (opinion) Alternet …Do our trade and investment agreements—current and proposed—create the space, send the right signals, and clear the path for the U.S. and other countries to meet their Paris commitments? The answer, on all fronts, is a resounding “no.” At the core of the Paris agreement is a commitment to keep global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
New Hampshire: Republicans Take Governor, House And Senate NH Labor News …All the votes have been counted and we are looking at a very rough road ahead. With the election of Donald Trump we will see a revived national effort to cut taxes for business, cut regulations on environmental protections, and repeal the Affordable Care Act. Here in New Hampshire we about to enter a new era of Republican control. The NH Senate stayed the same with 14 Republicans and 10 Democrats…
Wisconsin Professors Begin Researching How Voter ID Played A Role In Turnout WPR …Professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are researching the effect the state’s new voter ID laws had on turnout in this year’s presidential election. Milwaukee city officials pointed to the laws as the reason 41,000 fewer people participated in this year’s presidential election compared to 2012…
Minimum Wage In Misouri Getting Small Bump KTTS …The minimum wage is going up in Missouri. Beginning January first, it will go to $7.70 per hour, except for retail and service businesses with gross sales of less than 500-thousand dollars per year. The current minimum wage is $7.65 per hour. The minimum wage is re-calculated once a year, according to state law…
Paid sick leave battle continues in Pittsburgh WTAE …The battle for paid sick leave continues today in Pittsburgh. Commonwealth Court Judges are expected to hear arguments about an ordinance that would give most private sector employees the right to paid days off for illness. The ordinance was passed by City Council last year, but overturned by a judge…
San Jose City Council Aims to Make Minimum Wage $15 ABC …Bay Area cities are on the fast track to raise the minimum wage to $15 ahead of the state’s 2022 deadline. Right now, San Francisco is one of the highest at $13 per hour. Oakland will go up to $12.86 in January and San Jose is still at $10 an hour, the state’s minimum wage…
U.S. LABOR
Locked Out UAW Honeywell Workers Reject Latest Concession Offer WIN …Honeywell is using its corporate power and wealth to punish working families in South Bend Indiana and Green Island New York. Honeywell locked out hundreds of UAW Local 9 and Local 1508 workers in May after the workers voted to reject the latest company concession demands on a new labor contract…
Reality TV writer-producers picket A&E over low pay Crain’s NY …More than 100 reality and nonfiction writer-producers picketed A&E headquarters in Manhattan on Tuesday. They were protesting low reality-show pay. Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild of America, East, which represents the picketing writer-producers, described the wages as being lower than $15 per hour in many cases…
Sleepy’s drivers ruled employees; OT decision is next Philly.com …Are Sleepy’s mattress-delivery drivers eligible for overtime? A decision by a federal judge in a closely watched New Jersey case has paved the way for an answer in a lawsuit filed six years ago. In March 2010, a handful of drivers who delivered mattresses in New Jersey filed a lawsuit in federal court saying they were not paid overtime because they were wrongfully classified as independent contractors…
Walmart Warns Workers: Don’t Download Chat App From Labor Organization Consumerist …Walmart has been repeatedly accused of retaliating against, and covertly monitoring, employees who have protested for improved conditions and higher wages. Now the nation’s largest retailer is reportedly warning employees to not download an app from UFCW that can be used for workers to connect and organize outside of Walmart’s gaze…
3,500 Harvard Grad Workers Vote This Week On Union Representation WIN …3500 Harvard grad student workers are voting this week on joining the UAW. “We are trying to form a union here at Harvard University because as graduate students we perform teaching and research for the university. We believe that the university’s crucial mission is the teaching and research work,” said Avery Davis is with Harvard Graduate Students Union…
How Food-Labor Activists Are Preparing for President Trump Take Part …From farms and packing houses to grocery stores and restaurants, one in seven workers in the U.S. is employed in the food system. It is the single largest employment sector—and the lowest paying, with a median wage of $16,000, according to a new report by the Food Chain Workers Alliance…
Why Trump — or any other politician — can’t do much to bring back manual labor jobs LA Times …Some of those workers say they were responding in part to Trump’s repeated bashing of trade, and at the same time perceived Hillary Clinton as a poster child for the free-trade deals that her husband signed and President Obama tried to push through Congress. But it will be almost impossible for Trump to fulfill his promise to bring back most of the assembly line gigs lost to globalization, economists say…
Things Are About to Get Really Ugly for the Labor Movement American Prospect …The nation’s union movement is suffering from collective whiplash. As the Rust Belt states fell late last Tuesday night, so too did labor’s hopes for a Democratic president who had promised to lift up working people. Instead it was forced to confront the reality of an explosive faux-populist taking power in tandem with a pro-business GOP Congress…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Black Lives Groups Brace for ‘Law and Order’ Under Trump US News & World Report …While tens of thousands of people flooded downtown streets from New York City to Los Angeles on Sunday in a fifth day of protests against Republican President-elect Donald Trump, members of modern grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter are trying to figure out what will happen when Trump takes the Oath of Office in January…
Trump Administration Already Worries Civil Rights Groups AP …The nation’s largest civil rights organization says it will closely monitor President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration’s policies and actions to ensure that hard-fought civil rights gains are not lost without a protracted fight. “We will not accept proposals to roll back civil rights … not on our watch,” Wade Henderson, president of Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Monday…
With Wall Street “Licking Their Chops,” Sen. Warren Readies Fight Common Dreams …Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) minced no words Monday as she raised alarm over the likelihood that, under a Donald Trump presidency, her congressional colleagues would quickly move to dismantle the consumer protection agency that she helped found. “Anyone in Congress—GOP or Dem—who votes to weaken the [U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] CFPB, will declare loud & clear they represent giant banks, not working families”…
Investors Could Lose Influence Over Executive Pay Bloomberg …Donald Trump, who was elected U.S president last week largely on support from working-class voters, could scrap rules designed to make pay in corporate America more egalitarian if the Republican follows through on a promise to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act. Crafted in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the law contains provisions that strengthen investors’ ability to restrain outsized pay packages for company chiefs…
Mary Jo White to Step Down as S.E.C. Chief New York Times …Wall Street regulators began an exodus from Washington on Monday as Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced plans to leave the agency. The decision makes Ms. White, a former federal prosecutor who has served more than two decades in the federal government, the first major Obama administration appointee to step down…
Reince Priebus Promotion Another Big Win for the Koch Caucus PR Watch …The move came to name Priebus to the top spot as a bit of a shock to Trump’s base, some of whom referred to Priebus as #Ryansboy, but it is another big win for the Koch wing of the Republican Party. The Kochs already have deep ties to Trump’s running mate Mike Pence who took over the Trump transition team this weekend…
The potentially severe consequences of Trump’s deportation plans Washington Post …Donald Trump told “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl that he would deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants after he takes office next year. Two new analyses confirm that deportations could have severe consequences for the American economy. One of the analyses, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Monday, offers the first detailed estimates of how a policy of mass deportation would affect specific industries…