News Stories for February 15, 2012
The Seattle Times
About 400 short-haul truckers at the Port of Seattle decided Tuesday they'll return to work, ending a two-week walkout.
The mostly immigrant drivers represent about one-third of the typical daily truck fleet at the Port. The walkout slowed some cargo loads, but no ships were diverted or stopped, the Port says.
Port leaders will continue to meet with the drivers to grapple with safety issues, said Port spokesman Peter McGraw. Issues include overweight loads and worn or flawed truck chassis that are owned by freight companies and used and returned by drivers each day.
In addition, several trucking firms have agreed to boost the pay per load to $44 from $40 a trip; to compensate drivers stuck in line more than an hour; and to pay for some trips drivers make when they have no load, according to Paul Marvy, a labor-union researcher advising the truckers.
"This is an ongoing process. We will continue to fight as time goes on, to make sure these problems will be resolved," said Calvin Borders, of the new Seattle Port Truckers Association.Read the source story here.
Go Anacortes.com
Members of the United Steelworkers Union Local 12-591 gathered at the main gate at the March Point Tesoro refinery this morning, urging the company to bargain fairly in the current negotiations for a new three-year contract.
Union workers on the job joined the group during their lunch time. They headed back to work with flowers to lay at a memorial inside the refinery gates for workers lost on the job.
Local union representatives are negotiating with Tesoro following a tentative agreement between the national union and Shell Oil on Jan. 31. That agreement sets the pattern for local bargaining at refineries throughout the country.
The main issues are benefits and safety, said Local 12-591 President Steve Garey last week.Read the source story here.
The Washington Examiner
In a rare victory for organized labor in Virginia, the state Senate on Tuesday struck down an measure that would have prevented officials building the Dulles Metro rail project from signing onto a labor agreement that favors the use of union labor on the $6 billion project.
The House already passed a bill that promised to withhold $150 million in state funding for phase two of the rail project if officials insisted on using union labor.
But the Senate killed the measure Tuesday on a razor-thin 19-20 vote with one Republican abstaining. Opponents of the bill said restricting the labor agreements would endanger the Dulles rail project.
“What this bill is, make no mistake, is a poison pill," said Senator Janet Howell, D-Reston. "It will put in jeopardy the most important project in Northern Virginia.”Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
While unemployment insurance (UI) is running out for nearly 13 million unemployed workers, congressional Republicans have spent their time pushing a UI extension that included harsh and punitive requirements for jobless workers such as requiring unemployed workers to pay for reemployment services, acquire a high school degree, undergo drug testing and more. They also called for cutting 40 weeks of benefits from the unemployed.
Congress has reached a tentative deal extending UI–reportedly through the end of the year–that drops the most egregious proposals, yet caps at 73 the number of weeks for jobless benefits, down from the current 99. And in exchange for extending the desperately needed UI program for the nation’s nearly 13 million workers and maintaining the payroll tax cut, Republicans also insisted on forcing cuts on federal workers’ pensions to pay for jobless benefits.
AFGE President John Gage says the cuts to federal workers retirement “is simply wrong headed.” He told reporters this afternoon that two successive federal pay freezes have cost workers some $60 billion.Read the source story here.
Philly.com
More than 50 Teamsters rallied outside The Inquirer office building Tuesday, protesting the conduct of management of the newspaper's parent company as its ownership group mulls a possible sale.
Local 628 said it undertook the action to voice members' concerns that Philadelphia Media Network Inc. (PMN) and its hedge-fund owners have "demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice the journalistic integrity" of The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News "in their pursuit of profits."
For about an hour at midday, union members stood outside the main entrance on North Broad Street holding handwritten white poster board signs with slogans that referred to "hedge fund greed" and "journalistic integrity."
The Teamsters also passed out a flier critical of what their members see as management's favoring as buyers a group of local investors led by former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. "We have a right to expect our newspaper's publisher to put the interests of journalism above cronyism!" the flier states.Read the source story here.
Crooks and Liars
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a rising star in conservative circles who is facing a recall after assaulting workers' rights, may face a bigger problem than the recall. He may be in legal trouble as the investigation into his administration as Milwaukee county executive continues. It seems more and more likely that the governor was part of a broad conspiracy to use government resources for political purposes.
A 51-page criminal complaint [PDF] (the "Rindfleisch complaint"), which formally charges Kelly M. Rindfleisch with four felony counts of misconduct in public office, contains factual allegations which implicate a number of individuals, listed as "interested parties," including WI's controversial Republican Governor, in a wide-reaching criminal conspiracy to misuse public employees and resources for partisan political gain.Read the source story here.The Rindfleish complaint was filed in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Jan. 26, 2012 by Milwaukee County District Attorney John T. Chisholm. It's the product of an ongoing criminal investigation (the "John Doe" investigation) of the Milwaukee County Executive Office during Walker's tenure as County Executive there. The complaint specifically involves the period during which Tim Russell and then Rindfleish served as Walker's Deputy Chiefs of Staff.
[...] The factual body of the Rindfleisch complaint suggests that prosecutors are painstakingly examining evidence that may well place Walker at the center of a criminal conspiracy to illegally utilize employees within the Milwaukee County Executive Office to engage in fundraising and campaign activities on behalf of the Friends of Scott Walker and others during office hours at the expense of Milwaukee taxpayers.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker knew better than to run his gubernatorial campaign on a platform based on decimiating jobs in Wisconsin. But just one year into his term, he’s already become Job Killer in Chief, according to a new report by the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.
“Losses to Working Families Under Gov. Walker” highlights the effects of Walker’s actions, including large-scale job loss, attacks worker’s fundamental freedoms, loss of employment protections and benefits, the transfer of wealth to the 1 percent, loss of quality public education, increased taxes on low-income Wisconsinites, loss of health care coverage, loss of citizen access to the courts and the loss of honest, clean and open government. Here are a few of Walker’s “accomplishments.”
Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
Posted February 15, 2012Our Teamster brother Rob Moss, business agent for Local 695, wasn't going to let
Moss told WKBT in LaCrosse that Walker's assertion made him ill.
(Good one, Rob!)
Moss points out that Teamster workers agreed to take wage cuts to keep the brewery open when it was going through a rough patch. Collective bargaining, he said,
not only saved this brewer, it's moved this brewery forward.Walker's record on jobs, by the way, is just about the worst in the nation. Wisconsin is the only state to have lost jobs in six consecutive months. But that's what happens when you destroy collective bargaining rights.
Read the source story here.
Teamster.org
No one thought we had a chance.
When Florida’s Senate leadership filed a bill to privatize more than two dozen prisons, everyone figured it was a done deal.
If the bill passed, it would have devastated thousands of hardworking correctional officers. They would have lost their jobs. Many would have had to travel long distances and take a cut in pay – if they were lucky enough to find a new job. Some, who couldn’t afford to move or to travel, wouldn’t find jobs at all.
But the people who thought prison privatization was a foregone conclusion hadn’t accounted for the Teamster FDOC officers.Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
A scheme to privatize Florida’s prisons failed (19-21) in the state Senate yesterday after a huge public outcry led by Florida working families, community and civil rights groups. The plan was backed by extremist Gov. Rick Scott (R), private prison companies and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), one of the key players in the drive to privatize prisons throughout the nation.
The corporate takeover would have cost 3,800 workers their jobs, and Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams says it would have “devastated small communities, working families’ economic stability and safety.”
The privatization bill was one of the largest efforts so far to give private corporations control of a state’s prison system. It would have turned over control of 27 state prisons and work camps in 18 south Florida counties to the GEO Group—formerly Wackenhut Corrections.Read the source story here.
USA Today
The Teamsters union said Monday that its members at Wonder Bread and Twinkies maker Hostess Brands have voted to authorize a strike if a bankruptcy judge approves the company's request to cut their health care and pension benefits.
Local unions representing more than 7,500 Hostess workers held strike authorization votes over the past 10 days. A majority of members took part in the vote, with over 90% of those voting electing to authorize a strike, the union said.
Hostess had no immediate comment on the union actionRead the source story here.
Teamster Nation
That red line at the bottom is Wisconsin. Heckuva job, Scotty Boy.
Read the source story here.
The Stand
The timing is right for the Legislature to pass a proposal to build valuable infrastructure projects now at cut-rate prices while laying the groundwork for future economic expansion.
The “jobs bond” proposal — for which different drafts have been floated in the state Senate and House — is an ingenious idea to address the devastating construction unemployment rate that is the largest share of the state’s overall jobless rate.
By using small portions of existing (not new) revenue streams, such as the hazardous-substance tax to leverage $1 billion to $2 billion in bonds, we can fast-track the construction of public projects that would have been built anyway over the next several years. By building them sooner rather than later, the state would be able to take advantage of lower construction prices as contractors compete heavily for the relatively few number of construction projects that are currently available.
While the Senate and House outlines differ, the proposal ultimately would fund projects that would improve our quality of life and improve private-sector economic expansion.Read the source story here.
Crosscut.com
Workers nationwide are losing millions of dollars each week to wage theft as their employers, some unscrupulous, others scrambling to keep their businesses afloat, fail to pay the mandated minimum wage or overtime wages, or, in some cases, don’t pay their employees at all.
Wage theft is far more common than was known just a few years ago, according to a new report from the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International University.
“Employers are under a tight squeeze and looking for different ways to save money. Some are using wage theft as a business model to cut costs,” said Cynthia Hernandez, co-author of the report.Read the source story here.
Crooks and Liars
Bill Moyers talks with conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, who wrote "the bible" for the Reagan Revolution, worked on domestic policy for the Reagan White House, and served as a top treasury official under the first President Bush. Now he's a heretic in the conservative circles where he once was a star. Bartlett argues that right-wing tax policies -- pushed in part by Grover Norquist and Tea Party activists -- are destroying the country's economic foundation.
BILL MOYERS: Heather McGhee speaks of how the neoliberal economic experience of the last 30 years – including cutting taxes on the rich and waiting for the wealth and prosperity to trickle down -- has left her generation of Millennials standing under a spigot someone forgot to turn on. After a few drips and drops, it went dry. So did the very notion of equal opportunity for all. And today we’re living in a country deeply divided between winners and losers. Nowhere is that more evident than in our tax system – so distorted by loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions favoring the already rich and powerful that it no longer can raise the money needed to pay the government’s bills.Read the source story here.Among the people who saw this crisis coming was the conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, the supply-side champion who wrote the manifesto for the Reagan Revolution. Bartlett became a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House and a top official at the Treasury Department under the first George Bush. Yet for all those credentials, he is today an outcast from the very conservative ranks where he was once so influential. That’s because Bruce Bartlett dared to write a book criticizing the second George Bush as a pretend conservative who slashed taxes but still spent with wild abandon.
The subtitle says it all: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.
For his heresy Bartlett was sacked by the conservative think tank where he worked. Undaunted, this card-carrying advocate of free markets and small government has been a prolific writer for popular and academic journals and has just published a new book: The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform - Why We Need It and What It Will Take. It’s a layman’s guide through the jungle of a tax system that, thanks to rented politicians and anti-tax ideologues like Grover Norquist, enable the one percent to make off like bandits while our national debt soars sky-high. I talked to Bruce Bartlett soon after he had finished his new book.
- Daily Kos:
Mitt Romney reminds voters he really, truly hates unions - The Daily News:
Charges against 6 ILWU supporters dismissed; 2 others sentenced - The Hill:
Facing objections from the left and right, Boehner splits up transportation bill - Commercial Appeal:
Teamsters ratify contract at Memphis Kroger distribution center - Cleveland.com:
Blood collection workers strike Red Cross - The Political Carnival:
Koch Krony Scott Walker Nixes Factory Tour With President Obama Due To "Stomach Flu" - Think Progress:
Former Wall Street CEO Says Rule Reining In Banks' Risky Trading Doesn't Go Far Enough - The Washington Post:
Mitt Romney's one percent problem isn't going away - The Progressive:
Wis. Senate Passes Wetlands Deregulation in Midnight Session - Reuters:
Obama plan would end dozens of business tax breaks - Labor Notes:
Obama, Democrats Deal Setback to Airline Workers - American Progress:
President's Bureau of Labor Statistics Budget Will Lead to Better Policies for Workers - We Party Patriots:
WI Republican Introduces Legislation to Thwart Transparency, Silence Opponents of Corruption - In These Times:
Lawmakers Cut Deal to Help Unemployed, While Keeping Stereotypes of Jobless Alive - Daily Kos:
Collective bargaining ban for Arizona public workers may be stalled - Talking Union:
Occupy Atlanta Activists Arrested Supporting Union Telephone Workers - We Party Patriots:
Ironworkers, IMPACT Take Aim at Workplace Fatalies, Highlight the "Deadly Dozen" - NW Labor Press:
Oregon AFL-CIO President: We can't endorse based solely on a political party - Daily Kos:
American Airlines is about to screw its workers. Send a message: Save good American jobs