News Stories for May 10, 2012
In These Times
A federal judge is moving to end a tense labor standoff at Hostess Brands by bringing the heavy hand of bankruptcy law down in favor of the corporate managers and against the employees who produce the cakes and breads that have made the company famous.
Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
Hostess management -- you know, the people who want to yank as much money as they can out of the company for themselves before they kick the workers to the curb -- sent layoff warnings to employees on Friday.
The Teamsters are not amused. A stinging reply was drafted by Ken Hall, general-secretary treasurer, and Dave Dudas, director of the Bakery and Laundry Conference. They said the Teamsters are,
“ready, willing and able to negotiate” consensual labor changes but vowed not to “let the company force a poorly defined or inequitable turnaround plan on its employees that, despite our concessions, is destined to put Hostess out of business once and for all.”They pointed out that management wants to continue to underinvest in the company -- the same failed policy that caused the trouble in the first place.
Read the source story here.
Teamster.org
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa rebutted Mitt Romney's attack today on working families by noting he made his millions as a vulture capitalist who closed factories and sent jobs to China.
Romney, the former Bain Capital President and CEO and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, again demonstrated how disconnected he is with the average American by belittling the value and contributions of one of the last advocates for working men and women, labor unions. In his remarks at Lansing Community College, Romney blamed unions for job loss, the decline of American industry and the demise of American companies.
“Mitt Romney is the last person that should be pointing the finger at anyone for the decline of American businesses and job loss,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “This nonsense is coming from a man who made his millions dismantling companies and putting countless numbers of middle class workers out on the street. He is nothing more than a parrot, repeating whatever talking points that are put in front of him each day. This is not a man that should be in the White House as we continue down the path to economic recovery.”Read the source story here.
Teamster.org
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa rebutted Mitt Romney's attack today on working families by noting he made his millions as a vulture capitalist who closed factories and sent jobs to China.
Romney, the former Bain Capital President and CEO and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, again demonstrated how disconnected he is with the average American by belittling the value and contributions of one of the last advocates for working men and women, labor unions. In his remarks at Lansing Community College, Romney blamed unions for job loss, the decline of American industry and the demise of American companies.
“Mitt Romney is the last person that should be pointing the finger at anyone for the decline of American businesses and job loss,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “This nonsense is coming from a man who made his millions dismantling companies and putting countless numbers of middle class workers out on the street. He is nothing more than a parrot, repeating whatever talking points that are put in front of him each day. This is not a man that should be in the White House as we continue down the path to economic recovery.”Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today said Wisconsin voters are demanding change after a year of Gov. Scott Walker's job-killing policies. Hoffa’s statement followed the announcement that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett won the primary and will take on Gov. Scott Walker.
“The working men and women of Wisconsin have endured so much already at the hands of Scott Walker and they are demanding change,” said Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President. “Tom Barrett always cared about working families and the middle class when he was mayor of Milwaukee. I am confident he will still practice the same values and beliefs as the governor of Wisconsin.”
Despite Walker’s claims that targeting unions and collective bargaining was a way to balance the Wisconsin’s budget, the state has actually lost thousands of jobs over the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, Wisconsin has the worst job-creation record of all 50 states because of Walker's austerity program.Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
We think it's time for Maine Gov. Paul LePage to join the ranks of the unemployed. He shot his mouth off again on Sunday, according to TheHuffington Post, saying,
...all able-bodied out-of-work Americans need to "get off the couch" and go find employment.His fellow Republicans gave him a standing ovation.
They are perhaps unaware that the real unemployment rate is over 16 percent. That's people who need a full-time job and can't find one.
Replied some angry Mainers:
Mike Tipping, communications director for the Maine People's Alliance, said LePage's comments were "downright offensive to Maine people searching for work in a difficult economy, especially considering his embarrassing record of failing to invest in programs that create jobs and cutting assistance for the unemployed while at the same time giving massive new tax breaks to the wealthy."
Christine Hastedt, public policy director at Maine Equal Justice Partners, called them "a gross insult to working people who get up every day and become discouraged by the end of the day, because there's not a job for them."Read the source story here.
NBC Bay Area
The transportation manager for a major consortium of East Bay school districts, has pledged to dig through dozens of maintenance and inspection records following an NBC Bay Area investigation that raised his concerns about the maintenance of Durham School buses.
George Anich is the president of the South County Transportation Group (SCTG), a consortium of 10 East Bay school districts that contracts with Durham School Services.
They are responsible for safely transporting kids to and from school, however bus drivers are speaking out, concerned that their buses are breaking down.
“Screws are falling out and they are dropping on the kids heads,” Loraine Ramirez told chief investigator Tony Kovaleski. She is speaking out after six years behind the wheel of a Durham School bus.
“My bus leaks massive, and the brakes are going out right now and every time I take it in for maintenance they tell me we don’t have parts,” said Ramirez.Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
Sotheby's medieval management practices (e.g., 9-month lockout of its 42 Teamster art handlers) were scrutinized today by the auction house's shareholders. A lot didn't like what they saw. Thirty-nine percent voted with Teamsters to oppose automatic looting by bonuses to executives if the company is taken over.
Reports Bloomberg,
Sotheby’s General Counsel Gilbert Klemann announced that a Teamsters proposal opposing automatic executive payouts in a takeover got 39 percent of votes. The Teamsters had said immediately vesting some stock-payment plans amounts to a “golden parachute” that disregards executive performance.Read the source story here.
Crooks and Liars
In the wake of President Barack Obama's announced public support for marriage equality, a number of major labor unions have come out in support of the president's position and equality for the LGBT community. This is a great development for a number of reasons. One, it's a clear statement from unions that they recognize that LGBT families are working families, too. Two, it gives Obama strong public support on an issue that he is certain to be attacked on. Third, it is a good way to attract new people to the labor movement who might have otherwise not paid much attention to unions because they had other issues that were more important to them. If it is clear that unions support LGBT families -- which it is -- there is more reason for people to move out of issue silos, recognizing that they have allies they can work together with to improve everybody's situation.
Read the source story here.
The Washington Post
One of Scott Walker’s primary arguments in the recall battle against Dem opponent Tom Barrett is that as Mayor of Milwaukee, Barrett presided over job losses there that prove he would drag down the economy of the whole state of Wisconsin. He and his national Republican allies have amplified this attack line in ads, and will continue to do so.
But it turns out that back in 2011, when Milwaukee was adding jobs along with the rest of the state, the Walker adminstration took credit for it and chalked it up to his gubernatorial leadership.
Walker is currently up on the air with a spot that shows footage of newscasts proclaming Milwaukee’s economy in dire straights — and blaming it on tax hikes. “Tom Barrett has failed in Milwaukee for eight years,” the ad says. “Don’t let him take Wisconsin backwards.” A recent ad from the Republican Governors Association made a similar point.
But in the first half of 2011, just after Walker took office, Milwaukee was adding jobs, along with the rest of the state — and the Walker administration rushed to take full credit for it.
“With four straight months of job growth in 2011, metro Milwaukee is reaping the economic benefits of Governor Walker’s successful efforts to improve Wisconsin’s business climate, and make job creation a top priority,” blared a Walker administration press release in May of 2011.
In other words, when Milwaukee was adding jobs early in Walker’s term, his policies deserved all the credit. When it began to lose jobs, it was the fault only of his opponent’s policies — even though the rest of the state lost jobs, too.Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
If you think "big government" or "government regulation" is strangling small business, well, it probably is. That's because the corporations are writing the regulations that are killing small businesses.
And small businesses are getting killed. Economic Populist noted that U.S. start-up companies are at record lows of 8 percent.
The nation's business startup rate fell below 8 percent for the first time in 2010, marking the lowest point on record for new firm births. New firms as a percentage of all firms continued a steady downward trend in 2010 – going from a high of 13 percent (as a percentage of all firms) in the 1980s to just under 11 percent in 2006 before making a steep decline to the 8 percent in 2010 – the most current year of data available.The Republic Report offers some insight into why that is. In a word: ALEC.
In Where Have All the Young Firms Gone (pdf), we have some god awful statistics on businesses starting up.
In the 1980's start-ups were 12-13% of all firms. Now they make up 7-8% of businesses and also individually employ less people.
Read the source story here.
Talking Points Memo
At a public event in Albany, N.Y., Tuesday, President Obama went counterintuitive. Bloated government is a phenomenon of Republican leadership, he noted, and it’s helped them weather economic downturns in a way he hasn’t been able to.
“[A]fter there was a recession under Ronald Reagan, government employment went way up. It went up after the recessions under the first George Bush and the second George Bush,” he said. “So each time there was a recession with a Republican president, compensated — we compensated by making sure that government didn’t see a drastic reduction in employment. The only time government employment has gone down during a recession has been under me. So I make that point just so you don’t buy into this whole bloated government argument that you hear. And frankly, if Congress had said yes to helping states put teachers back to work and put the economy before our politics, then tens of thousands more teachers in New York would have a job right now. That is a fact. And that would mean not only a lower unemployment rate, but also more customers for business.”
As we’ve noted before, the numbers back this up completely.Read the source story here.
We Party Patriots
Yesterday’s Wisconsin Recall Election primaries went largely as polls predicted with Tom Barrett clobbering Kathleen Falk in the Governor’s race despite the lion’s share of union support. Labor’s other favorite candidate, though, firefighter Mahlon Mitchell, cruised to a victory in the Lieutenant Governor’s primary with 51 percent of the vote.
Labor will have to shift their support to Barrett after giving him a pretty good dinging during the recall (this is especially true of AFSCME), but Mitchell provides a pathway to honest enthusiasm as a member of the International Association of Firefighters, Local 311.
Read the source story here.
In These Times
“You’re a rotten animal, that’s what you are. You are a piece of a road kill. Stay off my picket line scab!” shouted Caterpillar worker Gareth Beeson, through his “Scablaster 3000” megaphone on Sunday.
Since last Tuesday, May 1, 780 members of Beeson’s union, International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 851, have been walking the picket line against their employer at Caterpillar's hydraulics plant in northern Illinois. Local 851 went on strike to protest what they see as an extraordinarily concessionary contract.
“Put it this way: Under their proposed contract, I wouldn’t be able to afford to take my kid to the doctor,“ says Beeson. “Basically, this contract wouldn’t make this job worth working anymore. I would still pay union dues under this contract, but I wouldn’t have a good union job anymore. ”
Workers say the six-year contract proposed by Caterpillar would nearly double their healthcare costs. In addition, according to IAM Local 851 President Tim O'Brien, it would effectively freeze their wages for six years. The contract would lower pay for certain groups of workers resulting in pay cuts by as much as $8 an hour, O'Brien says. Under the contract, new hires in the second wage tier of the contract, who currently start out at $13 an hour, would instead have their starting wages determined by the “market based” formula set by Caterpillar. That could potentially allow the company to pay workers even less, O'Brien says.
The contract also would eliminate language ensuring that healthcare for current retirees would continue. It would also eliminate key seniority provisions and eliminate language that allows workers to have a regular shift, as opposed to shifts that change every week and leave workers with unpredictable schedules.Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
Teamsters' staff at headquarters was not fooled recently when Fox News called and asked to bring cameras to the inside of the building. They were told "gotcha" journalist John Stossel was doing a story on beautiful buildings in Washington, D.C.
Riiiiight. Funny how the other beautiful buildings were all occupied by unions, including the AFL-CIO. Here's what they had to say:
Imagine our surprise last week when Fox Business correspondent John Stossel made an unexpected visit to the AFL-CIO building. Stossel’s previous coverage of the labor movement include a special on public education that blames teachers’ unions for the failings of public schools, an interview with Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100 President John Samuelsen, in which Stossel claims unions impede job growth and several entries on his FoxBusiness.com blog where he argues against the minimum wage and against regulations on unpaid internships.Read the source story here.
Stossel is well-known for his “gotcha” journalism, so when he claimed he was in our lobby because our building was one of the most beautiful in D.C., we weren’t buying it—neither did the other unions where he showed up unannounced, also to film their "beautiful buildings.” (Think James O'Keefe.)
Talking Union
Sotheby’s New York auction house made international headlines last week, selling Edvard Much’s painting “The Scream” for a record $119.9 million. But few stories mentioned what was happening outside the auction: picketing by 150 artists, activists, and locked-out art handlers.
“Tonight, the irony persists,” said Sotheby’s worker Julian Tysh. “Sotheby’s is selling a copy of the scream – an artful interpretation of human anguish and suffering – and they’re going to profit tremendously tonight, while at the same time they continue to create anguish and suffering among their own workforce.”
Tysh and 41 of his co-workers have been locked out since August 1, a month before Occupy Wall Street first occupied Zuccotti Park. Among labor stuggles, the lockout has drawn some of the earliest, and longest-running, Occupy support. Occupy’s involvement has inspired workers, upped the pressure on Sotheby’s, and amplified media attention – though it hasn’t yet yielded a victory.Read the source story here.
- Teamster Nation:
Another bad trade deal coming our way - Bloomberg:
Sotheby's Addresses Labor, Governance at Annual Meeting - Crooks and Liars:
WSJ Columnist: Government Layoffs Making Unemployment Rate Much Worse - Teamster Nation:
Teamster loses IN rep race - AP:
Postal Service: Will keep rural post offices open - The Madow Blog:
Gov. Walker thanks public employees for their 'sacrifice,' would like not to be recalled, please - The Progressive:
Tom Barrett vs. Scott Walker - We Party Patriots:
DNC Returns $50,000 of Wal-Mart Gift Cards to Maintain Convention's Anti-Corporate Donation Pledge - Yakima Herald-Republic:
Yakima school unions press for public support in talks - Daily Kos:
Tom Barrett receives immediate support from Wisconsin unions and Kathleen Falk in recall effort - Think Progress:
Touting Oil And Coal, Romney Calls Obama's Clean Energy Policies 'Out Of Date' - Crooks and Liars:
Jon Stewart on the Right's Cognitive Dissonance With Refusing to Give President Obama Credit for Anything - AFL-CIO Now:
House Dems, Senate agree on Export-Import bank bill - The Daily News:
Longshore Union replaces Longview 'Welcome' billboard - We Party Patriots:
Fox News "Expert" Says Giving Women the Right to Vote Was "One of the Greatest Mistakes America Made" - The Stranger:
"Go Get a Job!" The Movie! - Talking Union:
California Faculty Union takes contract fight to the Trustees - FireDog Lake:
Wall Street Stunned by Vanishing Investors