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Today’s Teamster News For April 26, 2016

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TEAMSTERS

UPS Airline Mechanics Demand No Healthcare Cuts in New Contract  Teamster.org  …UPS aircraft mechanics and other company workers affiliated with Teamsters Local 2727 are standing up to deeply concessionary contract proposals offered by the shipping giant that would significantly increase health care costs and do little to improve wages for its employees…

UPS Airlines mechanics plan to picket proposed health care cuts  Business First  …UPS Airlines mechanics say a contract proposed by United Parcel Service Inc. would significantly increase health care costs and do little to improve wages for its employees. The mechanics are represented by Teamsters Local 2727. In a news release, the union said attempts to negotiate a contract for workers have proven fruitless…

Quality Assurance Workers At Anheuser-Busch Join Teamsters  Teamster.org  …Quality Assurance workers at the Anheuser-Busch facility in Baldwinsville, NY, recently ratified their first contract with Local 1149. Steve Richmond, principal officer of Local 1149 and international representative for the Teamsters Brewery and Soft Drink Workers Conference, said that the breaking point for these workers came when the company wanted to shift more of the health care costs to the workers…

Pepsi Merchandisers Ratify New 4 Year Agreement  Teamsters 848  …Pepsi merchandisers represented by Teamsters Local 848 have ratified a new 4 year agreement that provides for higher wages, more company contributions for Health Care, and, for the first time, participation in the Pepsi 401-K matching plan that provides a $.50 company contribution for every $1 employee contribution… 

Teamsters at Schnucks express shock, fear, concern for their families, futures  Labor Tribune  …The union is in its third week of a massive community education campaign, not a call for a boycott, designed to bring the plight of its members to Schnucks customers. And is it working. Social media lit up immediately on Saturday, April 9, when the union began handbilling at four Schnucks stores…

Striking for a Fair Wage at the Ontario Food Terminal  Teamsters Canada  …The 12 workers at Fresh Taste Produce in Etobicoke want little more than a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. But after joining Teamsters Local Union 419 last November and trying to negotiate their first collective agreement in good faith, they realized they had no choice but to go on strike…

 

GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE

Strikes Across Europe as Angry Workers Respond to Harsh Austerity Cuts Sputnik News …Workers in France, Germany and Britain have joined others across Europe in a series of strikes amid bitter discord as the economies of Europe struggle to show strong growth years after the global financial crisis. Railway workers in France Tuesday (April 26) staged the latest in a string of walkouts in a dispute over pay and working conditions…

Lufthansa, Air Berlin Drop Flights as Airport Workers Strike  Bloomberg  …Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air Berlin Plc are scrapping more than 900 flights this week as a strike by public-services workers at German airports on Wednesday hobbles operations in Frankfurt, Munich and Cologne. Lufthansa, Europe’s third-biggest airline, is eliminating 895 flights, or 60 percent of the the 1,500 services it had scheduled for Wednesday…

Canada: Hundreds rally with UFCW 1288P strikers at Covered Bridge Potato Chips  UFCW  …More than 400 labour activists, allies, and family members joined UFCW Canada Local 1288P members on the picket line at Covered Bridge Potato Chips for a solidarity rally and protest to tell the company to get back to bargaining a fair first contract…

Chamber’s Donohue: TPP vote likely after the elections  The Hill  …A top U.S. business leader expects a vote on a massive Asia-Pacific trade agreement after the November elections. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said Monday that election-year pressures will force the Senate to vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during a lame-duck session to protect several vulnerable Republican incumbents…

US officials heading to NZ to talk TPP  Radio NZ  …A visit by US officials could be used to pressure the government into further concessions on the Trans Pacific Partnership deal, a long time critic of the trade pact says. The US team will meet officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in the next week or so to look at how New Zealand will put its obligations under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) into practice…

TTIP and Climate Change: A Tale of Two Cities from Paris to Hannover  (opinion) Suddeutsche Zeitung …German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama, who will meet next weekend in Hannover, are both profoundly aware of the importance of the climate crisis. Last year both were instrumental in securing the Paris Agreement on climate change. Yet in Hannover they are poised to undermine their joint climate legacy by pushing forward the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)… 

 

STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES

Fast Food Industry Looks To Skirt Labor Law, With An Assist From Scott Walker  Think Progress  …With fast food workers on the march nationwide, deep-pocketed corporate interests have quietly turned to state lawmakers for help. The quiet push uses low-profile legislation to shore up a liability firewall that has made it hard for workers in some industries to pursue their labor rights fully since the mid-1980s. Last month, buried in a stack of 59 different laws, Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a bill that made Wisconsin the latest state to join the party…

ALEC Spring Task Force Summit Agenda in Pittsburgh 2016  PR Watch  …Ironies abound in the 2016 agenda for the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which brings together corporate lobbyists and state legislators at luxury hotels to vote side-by-side on “model bills” that then pop up in states across the country. ALEC’s efforts to handcuff local democracy are just one of the highlights of ALEC’s 2016 Spring Task Force Summit agenda…

Thousands Of Maryland Voters Are Headed To The Polls For The First Time. Here’s Why.  Think Progress  …Last year, Maryland’s legislature passed a bill to restore the voting rights of more than 40,000 people who have completed felony sentences but remain on parole or probation, roughly half of whom live in Baltimore. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed the bill, but the legislature mustered the votes this February to override him and implement the change…

Despite reforms, Washington prison workers still feel unsafe  Herald Net  …The murder of a Monroe corrections officer in 2011 incited Washington to develop and deploy the nation’s most comprehensive approach to improving the safety of prison staff. But even with added security cameras, upgraded equipment and revised practices since Jayme Biendl’s death, more than half of those working inside Washington’s 12 prisons do not actually feel safer, according to findings in a performance audit presented to state lawmakers Wednesday…

Why a Judge Ruled North Carolina’s Voter-ID Law Constitutional  The Atlantic  …A judge in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, ruled Monday night that the state’s strict new voting law is constitutional, delivering a major win for conservatives who have sought to tighten laws across the country, and dealing a blow to efforts to stop those laws…

Kansas Governor Justifies Kicking 15,000 People Off Food Stamps  Think Progress  …For over five years now, Kansas has served as an economic policy experiment for anti-tax, small-government conservatives. Their lab work is costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars, crippling public service budgets, and making life harder for low-income families without reducing the state’s poverty rate at all…

 

U.S. LABOR

Union Leaders, Democratic Lawmakers Address Verizon Strikers At State House Rally  Philly.com  …More than 30,000 unionized Verizon workers have been striking for nearly two weeks after an ongoing dispute over pay, healthcare, and other labor issues could not be resolved at the bargaining table. With Verizon appearing well prepared to ride out the work stoppage thanks to recently trained non-union workers, success for the striking employees may depend on how much public pressure can be applied on the telecommunications giant to make a deal…

Crunch time in UPS-pilots talks? 5 takeaways  Courier-Journal  …United Parcel Service and its pilots union are set to return to the bargaining table this week after five years of negotiations, the last three of which have been under the oversight of a federal mediator. Why, after five years of closed-door talks, has the pilots union gone public with news of its strike authorization vote and the establishment of a strike operations center in Louisville?…

UAW addresses rumors of GM shutting down Lordstown complex  WFMJ  ..Recent rumors have emerged that General Motor’s Lordstown Complex could be shutting down due to the extension of the two week layoff. According to UAW Local 1714’s Facebook page, there has been no change since the initial decision to suspend production of the Chevy Cruze during the weeks of April 25 and May 2. That also includes UAW Local 1112…

Union to fight GE’s outsourcing plans  Insider Louisville  …A local union leader has taken issue with GE’s explanation for inefficiencies at a local distribution center. GE wants to outsource the work, which would affect 217 employees, including about 200 union members — but the union said it plans to fight to keep the work within the company. Glenn Hagan, vice president of the IUE-CWA Local 83761, said plant inefficiencies are a result of scheduling problems caused by a third party…

SEIU Sends Warning About Overtime Rules  Fox Illinois  …Home care workers say they regularly work overtime. Now, because they’re required by law to be paid overtime, the Rauner Administration is cracking down on their hours. Members of SEIU say the Rauner Administration’s new policy limiting hours to 40 a week doesn’t take into account what those who rely on home care workers need…

 

SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS

“No Such Thing as Closure”: Tamir Rice’s Family Settles for $6M with Cleveland  Common Dreams  …The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was shot to death by police while playing in a park in November 2014, has settled a federal lawsuit with the city of Cleveland for $6 million. “Although historic in financial terms, no amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a life,” the family’s attorneys said in a statement on Monday… 

Ryan says he doesn’t have the votes to pass a budget  Politico  …Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said he does not have enough GOP support to pass a budget, something he once called the basic function of governing when he was House Budget chairman. “You need the votes to pass a budget,” the Wisconsin Republican told reporters at a news conference when asked about the possibility of moving a fiscal blueprint…

Flint and America’s Corroded Trust  Mother Jones  …One of the city’s lead pipes has been replaced for the benefit of the press, but more than 8,000 additional service lines are likely corroded and still leaching toxic lead. It took a mom, a pediatrician, and a professor in Virginia to discover Flint’s children were being poisoned. It took cable television to get the nation to give a damn…