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Today’s Teamster News For December 15, 2016
TEAMSTERS
Teamster Move to Strike Vote at Purolator Teamsters Canada …Despite sincerely trying to find common ground with Purolator Courier, negotiations between the Teamsters and the company hit a standstill after 6 weeks of intense bargaining. Today the Purolator Negotiations Committee unanimously moved to ask members to endorse strike action through a strike vote…
‘Tis the season for labor organizing Connect Savannah …Efforts to unionize port truck drivers around the country have been met with resistance from private trucking companies, sometimes with the support of public servants. Last June, local police ran a group of union organizers out of Port Wentworth for handing out leaflets outside of XPO Cartage, a subsidiary of XPO Logistics, the port’s largest trucking company with over 150 contract drivers. Three members of Teamsters Local 728 were charged with impeding traffic in a public roadway…
CEDA Industrial Services Employees Locked Out Local 362 …The holiday season just got a lot harder for a group of hard-working employees at CEDA Industrial Services in Fort McMurray. Just two weeks before Christmas, CEDA has locked Teamster members out. Now they are left wondering what will happen to their jobs in an economy that is already suffering…
GT unions reject offer, insurance copays will increase to 20 percent Record-Eagle …Grand Traverse County employee unions rejected a compromise over a controversial insurance payment increase. Four Teamsters bargaining units rejected a county-backed deal that stipulated the workers pay 15 percent, instead of 20 percent, of their health insurance premiums next year, said Teamsters 214 business representative Bob Donick. He believes the employees didn’t trust county officials to not alter the deal…
Greenwich RTM rejects Teamster’s contract Greenwich Time …The Representative Town Meeting has sent a new labor contract between the town and the Teamsters Local 456 back to the bargaining table after rejecting the proposed agreement Monday night. By a vote of 105 to 70 with four abstentions, the body blocked further progress of the three-year deal with the union, which represents 389 full-time and 93 part-time employees working for the Board of Education…
GLOBAL LABOR & TRADE
Portugal: Airport ground and security workers’ strike threatens chaos over holidays News Online …Private security workers belonging to companies Prosegur and Securitas, who are responsible for checking passengers and employees and scanning baggage, are also expected to strike at the same time. Topping off what looks to be a complicated period for national airports, Groundforce employees have further threatened to strike on Christmas Eve…
British Airways braces for pre-Christmas strike CNN …Thousands of cabin crew workers at British Airways are preparing to strike just a few days before Christmas. The Unite union, which represents 2,500 BA cabin crew, said a strike could happen as early as December 22, disrupting roughly 50 short and long-haul routes. Most of the cabin crew members represented by the union work out of London’s Heathrow…
Kenya: nurses union calls off strike, signs pact with governors Daily Nation …Nurses’ union officials have called off their national strike after governors signed to recognise their Collective Bargaining Agreement, a decision that has earned the caregivers of up to Sh20,000 monthly allowances. Negotiations on the nurses four-year CBA will begin in January 2017 and will stretch until no further than March 2017…
Five ways the Trade in Services Agreement threatens public health and environment People’s World …TiSA is under negotiation between the U.S., the EU, Japan and 21 other countries, which together comprise two-thirds of the world’s economy. TiSA is the brainchild of Wall Street banks that want to stop new financial regulations and begin rolling back the relatively mild safeguards adopted after the 2007 financial crisis. But TiSA would also have a devastating impact on environmental and public health policy…
Vietnam Moves Away From Trans-Pacific Partnership VOA …Vietnam wants to support exports to keep its economy strong if the U.S. Congress fails to approve the planned U.S.-led Trans Pacific Partnership. Now, Vietnamese officials are taking steps to keep their country’s factories from being hurt if the TPP is not put in place. Vietnam’s economy has been dependent on the export of manufactured goods since the 1980s. Last year, Vietnam’s economy grew 6.7 percent….
Asia-Pacific: Japan Ratifies TPP, RCEP Gears Up for 2017 ICTSD.org …apan’s upper house of parliament ratified the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement on Friday 9 December, marking the final stage for the Asian economy’s approval of the accord. Japan is the second-largest economy by GDP in the Pacific Rim trade deal, surpassed only by the United States. Under the current TPP terms, both economies would need to ratify the trade agreement for it to enter into force…
China may penalize U.S. automaker over price-fixing; GM, Ford shares off Reuters …Shares of U.S. automakers General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co skidded on Wednesday after a Chinese official warned the government could slap a penalty on an unnamed U.S. automaker for monopolistic behavior. In a statement on Wednesday, GM did not say directly whether it was under investigation by Chinese authorities…
STATE & LIVING WAGE BATTLES
North Carolina G.O.P. Moves to Curb Power of New Democratic Governor New York Times …Republicans in the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday took the highly unusual step of moving to strip power from the incoming Democratic governor after a bitter election that extended years of fierce ideological battles in the state. Republican lawmakers who control the General Assembly introduced measures to end the governor’s control over election boards, to require State Senate approval of the new governor’s cabinet members…
Texas Bill Would Require Workers Under 18 to Get Their Parents’ Consent to Join a Union In These Times …Nestled between SB 74, which affects children with high mental needs in the foster system, and SB 76, which allows municipalities to prohibit sex offenders from living near a “child safety zone,” is SB 75, which seeks to protect children from labor unions. The bill would prohibit unions from accepting as a member anyone under 18 years of age unless the union first procures a signed consent form from the minor’s parent or guardian…
California: back wage measure for farm workers challenged LA Times …Gerawan Farming Inc. and Fowler Packing Co. contend that state legislators deliberately crafted provisions in Assembly Bill 1513, signed last year by Gov. Brown, to exclude them from protections afforded to companies that agree to compensate “piece work” laborers for their time spent on breaks, training, and other nonproductive activities…
Court upholds ruling against union in school right-to-work WTOL …The Michigan appeals court has upheld a decision that struck down a 10-year agreement between a Detroit-area school district and a union – a deal that was seen as a way to get around the state’s right-to-work law. In a 2-1 decision Wednesday, the court says it’s reasonable to believe that the Taylor Federation of Teachers “took deliberate action” to try to lock in union dues and membership for a long period before the law kicked in…
‘Fight for $15’ Wants To Raise Nevada’s Minimum Wage In 2017 Nevada Public Radio …In late November, about a hundred protesters gathered on the Strip, demanding that minimum wage be raised to $15 per hour. The protests coincided with others across the nation, under the banner of the “Fight for $15,” a movement dating back to 2012 when hundreds of fast-food workers walked off the job in New York City. Those who support the campaign hope to see Nevada’s minimum wage raised in the 2017 Nevada Legislature…
Unequal public-sector pay in Connecticut? Yes—taxpayers are getting a bargain! EPI …The Yankee Institute for Public Policy has published a report claiming that compensation for public-sector workers in Connecticut is 25 percent to 46 percent higher than for comparable workers in the private sector. The findings are at odds with careful research finding that public-sector workers typically receive compensation lower than or equal to comparable private-sector workers, with lower salaries partly or fully offset by better benefits…
U.S. LABOR
Delivery Drivers Sue Amazon Over Misclassification, Failure to Pay Overtime and the Minimum Wage In These Times …The new lawsuit against Amazon is similar to one of Liss-Riordan’s best known cases—a suit against FedEx that charged the company was misclassifying delivery drivers as independent contractors when the workers were, as a matter of law, regular employees. Liss-Riordan won that fight and, this year, FedEx announced that it would give up on a series of related legal fights and pay $240 million to some 12,000 drivers in 20 states…
MTA union workers threaten strike if contract demands aren’t met AM New York …The union that represents MTA bus and subway workers is shaping its contract requests around the dangers of the job — and workers have threatened to strike if terms aren’t met. With negotiations in full swing, members of Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 packed an MTA board meeting on Wednesday hoisting posters of workers injured on the job…
MLB owners, players ratify labor deal through 2021 Yahoo …Baseball owners and players have ratified the sport’s new five-year collective bargaining agreement, extending their labor peace to 26 years through 2021. The sides announced their approvals Wednesday, a day after holding votes in separate telephone meetings. After eight work stoppages from 1972-95, the sides have negotiated deals without a strike or lockout in 2002, 2006, 2011 and this year. The new deal expires Dec. 1, 2021…
Hundreds of workers go on strike at DC area airports WJLA …Hundreds of airport workers in the DC area went on strike Wednesday as part of the Fight for 15. The strikes were held at Washington Dulles International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. These jobs were designed to be supplemented with tips from passengers, but times have changed and the tips are not being received like they once were…
Some Granite City steelworkers get good news from U.S. Steel Belleville News-Democrat …More than 200 jobs are set to return as part of the Granite City Works operation is scheduled to begin operating again in mid-February, U.S. Steel said in a news release. The company plans to “adjust its hot strip mill operating configuration to support a previously announced asset revitalization process,” U.S. Steel said…
The future looks uncertain for 100,000 US workers employed by Chinese companies Quartz …Chinese companies currently employ more than 100,000 workers in the US, over 10 times more than a decade ago, thanks to a rise in Chinese investment in recent years. The majority of these employees are working in US companies that were acquired by Chinese enterprises, according to a Dec. 9 report…
Fed no longer expects labor market to get much better MarketWatch …Federal Reserve members appear to believe the U.S. labor market is nearly as good as it’s going to get and unlikely to show much more improvement. After their latest meeting that ended Wednesday, central-bank officials made a small but notable change in their assessment of the labor market after the Fed raised interest rates for the first time in a year…
SOCIAL JUSTICE & OTHER NEWS
Amazon Conducts First Commercial Drone Delivery Wall Street Journal …Amazon.com Inc.’s drone delivery program has liftoff—from a rural corner of England. Amazon last week made its first customer delivery by drone, carrying a package containing popcorn and a Fire TV video-streaming device several miles to a two-story farmhouse near Cambridge, U.K., in 13 minutes…
Bail money funds Louisiana courts. Now this powerful industry is fighting reform The Guardian …An industry built around a key feature of the American criminal justice system is ratcheting up its resistance to change. As bail reformers score legal victories throughout the US, one prominent New Orleans bail bonds agent, Matt Dennis, compared the threat posed to his industry to Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Europe…
Head Start is underfunded and unequal, according to a new study Washington Post …Head Start, the federal program that provides education, nutrition and health services to low-income children and their families, is not adequately funded and is administered so differently from state to state that children do not benefit equally, according to a new report from the National Institute for Early Education Research…