Teamsters Local Union #174 -- Views

Teamsters News Release:
FIGHTING FOR THE EFCA
LABOR UNIONS KNOW THERE IS SAFETY IN NUMBERS

As IBT General President Jim Hoffa and many others have pointed out, the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are currently mounting a huge campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act before it even gets off the ground.

“Every day in the United States, dozens of workers who legally try to join a union are spied on, harassed, intimidated, and fired. Union-busting is a thriving industry for corporate thugs and lawyers throughout this country.

“It didn't used to be this way. In the 1950’s, only a handful of workers were illegally disciplined or fired for union activity, resulting in back-pay awards. In 2006, 32,000 workers were awarded back-pay by the National Labor Relations Board because employers illegally punished them for trying to join a union.

“The Employee Free Choice Act would give back to workers a fair shot at joining a union. It is our No. 1 priority to see that Congress enacts it.

“Now, I don't like to call people liars. But the multimillion-dollar corporate campaign to kill the legislation is making a lot of people say things that aren't true. One falsehood is that the act would eliminate the secret ballot in union elections. It would not. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to choose a secret ballot or majority sign-up when deciding whether to join a union. Under majority sign-up, workers could join a union if most of them sign cards saying that they want to join a union.

“I think that's fair. If you can sign a card to join the Republican Party, you should be able to sign a card to join a union.
“The way it works now, it's the employer, not the worker, who holds all the power and chooses how workers will make the decision to join a union.

“Employers almost always choose secret elections. These elections are fair in the way secret elections in East Germany were fair. Employers hire union-busters to determine workers' preferences. Workers who support unions are threatened, intimidated, and fired.

“Melinda Burns, for example, worked as a reporter for the News-Press in Santa Barbara, Calif., for 21 years. Burns led the fight to join a union. She and 80 percent of News-Press staffers signed cards stating they wanted to join a union. But her employer wouldn't recognize the cards. The workers were forced by the employer to hold a secret election.
“In the fall of 2006, the News-Press workers cast secret ballots in favor of joining a union. But the employer challenged the vote. Eight workers, including Burns, were fired for their union activity.

“A year ago, an administrative law judge ruled that the News-Press firings broke the law. The judge ordered the employer to reinstate the workers immediately and give them back-pay.

“The News-Press appealed the ruling, as management usually does. Melinda Burns is still waiting to get her back-pay and her job back.

“Remember, she was illegally fired nearly three years ago.

“Unfortunately, there are thousands of Melinda Burnses in America today. I talk to pro-union workers who are illegally videotaped by their employer. I talk to pro-union workers who get fired just to send a message to other workers that they'd better not try to join a union.

“Americans want their workplaces to be fair. That's why they support the Employee Free Choice Act by overwhelming margins. A January 8 Hart Research Associates poll showed 73 percent of American adults want the legislation to become law.
“There's another false argument against the legislation — that strengthening unions will damage the economy. The fact is that America experienced its greatest economic growth when unions were strong. Union membership stood at 35 percent of the workforce in the 1950s, a time when America enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Now, only 12 percent of the workforce belongs to unions, and we're in the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

“In fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce in a 2007 speech: ‘Whatever the precise mechanism through which lower rates of unionization affected the wage structure, the available research suggests that it can explain between 10 percent and 20 percent of the rise in wage inequality among men during the 1970s and 1980s.’
“Enacting the Employee Free Choice Act would strengthen unions and improve our economy. I urge Congress to pass it soon.”

Teamsters News Link:
OBAMA LIKELY TO TAP LOCKE FOR COMMERCE SECRETARY

Wall Street Journal

Gary Locke was elected Washington State’s 21st Governor on November 5, 1996, making him the first Chinese-American Governor in United States History.

(February 24, 2009) President Barack Obama is likely to nominate former Washington state Gov. Gary Locke to be secretary of the Commerce Department, according to a senior administration official, putting a business-friendly, pro-trade Democrat in his cabinet at a time of growing worries about the shaky U.S. economy.

Mr. Locke is Mr. Obama's third choice for the job. The first, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, withdrew his name amid reports of a grand-jury investigation into state contracts with one of his political donors, although he has denied wrongdoing. The second, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, pulled out after concluding he couldn't reconcile his views with the president from another party.

Mr. Locke didn't respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Mr. Obama has one other major cabinet vacancy to fill, Health and Human Services, following the withdrawal of former Sen. Tom Daschle. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is believed to be a leading candidate, although it isn't clear whether she is interested in the job.

Mr. Locke, 59 years old, became the first Chinese-American to be elected governor in the U.S. Mr. Locke has touted his record of strengthening the state's economy and improving transportation, health care and education during his two terms between 1997 and 2005.

He emerged as a fiscal conservative during the downturn that followed the dot-com bust and the terrorist attacks of 2001, opposing efforts to raise taxes to make up for state budget shortfalls and seeking instead to cut spending. At the same time, he made a high priority of infrastructure investment and worked to maintain a strong business climate and open markets for Washington's exports.

"As governor he was acutely sensitive to issues that related to the health and business climate in the state," said Al Ralston, president of the Washington Research Council, a pro-business think tank.

Mr. Locke decided not to seek a third term, amid stirrings of political opposition within his own party. But associates said his desire to pursue a new chapter in his life and devote more time to his young family appeared to be the major factors.

A lawyer by training, Mr. Locke moved to an international law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, focusing on Chinese trade.

Mr. Locke long has been an advocate of free trade, supporting former President Bill Clinton's effort to make China a member of the World Trade Organization, and supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement. While he was governor, Mr. Locke paid two visits to China to promote trade, once touring an ancestral village. Mr. Locke is likely to be grilled on his views on trade during his confirmation process.

Rick Bender, head of the Washington state chapter of the AFL-CIO, said Mr. Locke worked more closely with the business community during his second term, as the state faced economic challenges. Those efforts included some legislation that labor opposed, such as tightening unemployment benefits. He also sought aerospace-industry incentives to keep Boeing Co. production in the state. He worked closely with Microsoft Corp. and Starbucks Corp., and with agricultural exporters such as the state apple industry.

Teamsters News Link:
NEWSPAPER DIVISION WELCOMES 1,500 NMDU MEMBERS TO THE IBT

Editor & Publisher
(February 19, 2009) The independent Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union (NMDU) -- which represents some 1,500 employees at papers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut -- have voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, according to a union announcement.

The NMDU members, who deliver bulk newspapers to retail outlets, will become part of the new Teamsters Local 1901 in Long Island City, New York, the announcement stated. They also join 14,000 Teamsters as part of the union's Newspaper Division.

"We welcome our new members from the NMDU," said Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President. "The NMDU has a long history as a dynamic, independent union in the New York City area, and they will be a valuable addition to our Newspaper Division."

"Founded in 1901, NMDU members deliver bulk newspapers for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark, New York Post, El Diario, America Oggi, The Jersey Journal of Jersey City, and other papers," the release stated.

"Our members wanted to affiliate with the strongest union in America, and that's the Teamsters," Doug Panattieri Jr., president of NMDU/Teamsters Local 1901, said in the release. "There has been so much contraction in the newspaper industry in general that the wise choice was to affiliate with a union that is growing -- the Teamsters Union."

Teamsters News Link:
EX-LABOR SECRETARY: STAGNANT WAGES ARE BIGGEST ECONOMIC PROBLEM

Miami Herald
(February 12, 2009) To hear former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich tell it, huge as the current recession is, there's a bigger problem facing America's middle class: Wages that have seen little real growth for decades.

Robert Reich

Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton and a popular intellectual and speaker, will talk about both problems today at a private fundraiser for the Jewish Federation of Greater Miami.

“I wish I could be upbeat,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “You try to look for every silver lining you can find. This is going to be a very deep recession.”

Reich, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the stimulus package now making its way through Congress will help turn things around, but it may prove insufficient.

“My concern is that the stimulus is not large enough” to make up for the size of the shrinkage the economy has been undergoing, especially in consumer spending. “Consumers are going on strike,” he said. “That's why government has to step up to the plate. Government is a purchaser of last resort when consumers have stopped buying.”

Reich said reduced consumer spending is a symptom of a broader problem: The relative stagnation of middle-class wages. Globalization and technological advances have destroyed a host of jobs, from gas-station attendants to bank tellers, Reich said. But the jobs that have seen growth don't pay so well.

“What all this means is median wages have not increased very much, adjusting for inflation, for many decades.”

In part to make up for this, more women entered the workforce. Then everyone started working longer hours. Then people increased borrowing.

“But when the housing bubble burst, many middle-class people had to cut spending,” he said. “The problem is if the middle class stops spending — we have a problem.”'

Reich said he will talk about possible ways to reverse this trend in his speech.

One move he supports: the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form unions by collecting signed union cards instead of holding an election.

But while this provision is the most talked-about in the proposed law, Reich said the more important feature is increased penalties for employers who break existing labor laws — for instance, by harassing or firing union supporters.

“The current penalty is the equivalent of a slap on the wrist,”' he said. “Surveys show a lot of workers would like to have a union if they could have one, but most workers are fearful of trying to form one for fear of harassment.”

IBT News Release

HOFFA VOWS TO FIGHT FOR GOOD UNION GREEN JOBS
‘WE MUST DEFINE THE RULES OF THE NEW GREEN ECONOMY,’ HOFFA DECLARES

IBT General President Jim Hoffa

(February 9, 2009) Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa vowed to step up with Labor and Environmental allies [last week] in the fight to create more green jobs in the United States — and to ensure that they are Good Union Jobs.

“We must define the rules of the new Green Economy,” Hoffa said, addressing 2,500 attendees of the Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference [February 5] in Washington, D.C. “We want job creation that won’t harm workers or our planet.

The more than 1.4 million members of the Teamsters Union work across the entire global supply chain in ports, warehouses, rail, trucking, airlines, package delivery, and waste and recycling. The Teamsters Union has been at the forefront of the Green Economy, strengthening ties to environmental allies and building coalitions to bring about important change.

“It’s about taking care of the Environment, our Economy and the workers in America who depend on both, not one or the other,” Hoffa said. “Green and Blue in fact do go together. We have been forced to make a false choice in the past — Good Jobs or Clean Environment. But today is a new day.”

For example, the Teamsters and its Environmental Partners got the Port of Los Angeles to make trucking companies responsible for replacing old, dirty diesel trucks. It’s a model for the rest of America’s ports.

“If we’re going to go solar, the panels must be union-made in America,” Hoffa said. “If we’re going to capture hydroelectric power, then the generators must be union-made in America. And if we are going to capture wind power, then the turbines must be union-made in America. It doesn’t do us any good to buy the hardware from China.”

Hoffa was part of a keynote panel that included Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Jared Bernstein, chief economist and economic policy adviser to Vice President Biden. The Teamsters Union is a major sponsor of the National Conference and has a prominent role in workshops and panels.

“We have an opportunity to fix some of the damage from the past eight years,” Hoffa said.

“We were told, no pollution meant no jobs. The pundits said that if we wanted clean air, the economy would suffer and jobs would be sent overseas. Well look what happened. We let the big corporations pollute and the jobs went overseas anyway. We didn’t enforce environmental regulations and the economy still went in the toilet. The Middle Class got destroyed and the Environment is on the brink of disaster. Now is the time for change.”

IBT News Release
ENTITLEMENT AMONG THE TITANS
IBT PRESIDENT JIM HOFFA RESPONDS TO BUSINESS COLUMNIST

(February 6, 2009) Business columnist Steven Pearlstein usually gets it right, but he got one thing very wrong in his [February 4] column, “Stumbling on Their Sense of Entitlement.”

IBT General President Jim Hoffa

He equated construction workers who want fair wages with chief executives such as John Thain, who spent $87,000 on an office rug after his company, Merrill Lynch, lost billions of dollars.

Mr. Pearlstein asked, "What would be so terrible about temporarily suspending the rule requiring that union wages be paid" on road, bridge and transit projects?

What's so terrible is that cutting workers' wages wouldn't create more jobs, as he claimed. It would cost jobs.

The fact is that unemployment goes down when wages go up. Why? Fewer people quit when pay improves.

Jobs were created when the national minimum wage was raised in the 1990’s.

During the Bill Clinton Presidency, wages went up, and 23 million jobs were created. During the George W. Bush years, wages fell, and only 3 million jobs were created.

Mr. Pearlstein was right that Americans are angry. They're poorer than they've been in years, and they're worried about the future. Meanwhile, entitled insiders are looting the very system that is letting down the middle class.

Dragging down the wages of construction workers would only stoke Americans' anger and frustration.

[Below is the column by Pearlstein that Hoffa was writing about. It appeared in many newspapers and on the Internet.]

Stumbling on Their Sense of Entitlement

By Steven Pearlstein, February 4, 2009
Tom Daschle still doesn't get it. John Thain never did. Barack Obama gets it sometimes, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner not so much. Corporate executives think they get it but aren't even close.
College presidents, governors and union leaders, for the most part, don't have a clue.

"It" is an understanding of how fundamentally the political and economic environment has been transformed with the bursting of the bubble economy and how that has jeopardized basic assumptions and expectations and the way we do what we do.

Tom Daschle's problem wasn't that he didn't pay his taxes. It was that he — along with those who vetted his nomination as health and human services secretary and many of his colleagues in the Senate — found it perfectly ordinary and acceptable that he would be able to cash in on his time in the Senate by earning more than $5 million over two years as a law-firm rainmaker, equity fundraiser, corporate director and luncheon speaker, all the while being driven around town in a chauffeured town car. Not exactly Cincinnatus returning to the plow.

For the American public, Daschle became the latest symbol of everything that is wrong with Washington — the influence-peddling and corner-cutting and sacrifice of the public good to private interest. Now that this system has let them down, and left them poorer and anxious about the future, people are angry about it and no longer willing to accept the corruption of the public process and the whole notion of public service.

The irony, of course, is that Barack Obama understood all this and tapped into Americans' frustration as the central message of his "change" campaign. But even he, with only four years in Washington, failed to see the depth of the problem or anticipate the ferocity of the backlash.

Obama's first mistake was to hand the keys of the transition office over to a crew made up almost exclusively of Washington insiders who — surprise! — have largely succeeded in restoring to power their friends from the Clinton administration. Worse still, he has fallen for the tired old Washington "wisdom" that the only way to get anything done is to concentrate even more power in an ever larger White House full of czars and councils and chiefs of staff who ostensibly are there to "coordinate" policy but invariably wind up making it, sapping the departments and agencies of whatever importance and energy and creativity they have left.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, congressional leaders, while nodding in the direction of bipartisan cooperation, have also stuck largely to business as usual. It's hard to know who is to blame more for the party-line vote in the House on a desperately needed economic stimulus bill — the Republicans who cling to stale ideology and spout economic nonsense or the Democrats who shut them out of the drafting process, never bothered to articulate a compelling rationale and lost a golden opportunity to reform the programs as they were expanding them.

Not that the private sector has done any better.

For most of us, it seems inexplicable that a man as smart and sophisticated as John Thain, having been recruited to Merrill Lynch to clean up tens of billions of dollars in losses, could spend $1.2 million to redecorate his office or demand that the board of directors give him a $30 million bonus at the end of the year. Nor, when escalating losses threatened to scuttle the sale of the firm to Bank of America, did it occur to Thain that he might want to set aside his plans to fly off to the annual celebrity gabfest in Davos, Switzerland, until the Bank of America chairman finally ordered him to do so.

This goes beyond mere greed. As with Daschle, it springs from a deeply felt but rarely articulated sense of entitlement that now warps the judgment not just of those on Wall Street — from top executives to hotshots on the trading desks — but of those throughout the upper reaches of corporate America. And over time, it has filtered out to law firms and consulting firms, where freshly minted MBAs and legal associates came to expect starting salaries of $150,000 and partners thought it their God-given right to draw $1 million a year.

All that is history. It turns out that those inflated pay stubs weren't really a measure of genuine economic worth but manifestations of the mirage that was the bubble economy. Economically, they are no longer sustainable; socially and politically, they are no longer acceptable.
But it's not only the rich and powerful who are still in denial and need a bit of mental retooling.

Is it too much to ask those college presidents who are about to be the beneficiaries of big increases in student aid and tuition tax credits to use this crisis to finally embrace the productivity revolution and find a way to use technology and new teaching techniques to lower the cost of education?

And if we're going to spend billions to upgrades roads, bridges and public transit and create jobs for unemployed construction workers, what would be so terrible about temporarily suspending the rule requiring that union wages be paid? That way, more jobs would be created and taxpayers would get a better return on their infrastructure investment.

It's also a good thing that Congress is preparing to ship billions of dollars to state and local governments to maintain vital services and forestall layoffs of teachers, police officers, firefighters and social service providers.

But in return, shouldn't the governors receiving this temporary relief be required to come up with plans to make the necessary adjustments to balance their budgets over the long term, much as we've already done with aid to struggling automakers? And would it be so terrible if state employees would pitch in by accepting a two-year freeze on wages and a reduction in pension contributions?

It would be lovely if we could get out of this economic mess simply by having the government bail out the banks and spend a trillion more dollars in borrowed money. Unfortunately, it won't be that easy. As Tom Daschle and John Thain have demonstrated, it is going to require fundamental changes in what we do, how we do it, and how the costs and benefits are allocated. It will also require a commitment to shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility that we are only beginning to understand.

Teamsters News Clip
TWINKIE-MAKER INTERSTATE BAKERIES EXITS BANKRUPTCY

BusinessWeek
(February 4, 2009) The maker of Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread has emerged from more than four years of bankruptcy.

Kansas City-based Interstate Bakeries Corp. said Tuesday that it has begun implementing its court-approved reorganization plan, which provides almost $600 million in post-bankruptcy financing.

Under the plan, a group of lenders and investment firm Ripplewood Holdings are splitting ownership of the company and taking it private. Current shareholders got nothing for their shares, which were canceled in a series of securities filings earlier Tuesday.

"Today marks a new beginning for Interstate Bakeries," Chief Executive Craig Jung said in a statement.

Interstate Bakeries filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in September 2004, blaming low sales and high fixed costs. Since then, it has closed about a dozen bakeries, eliminated 7,000 jobs and shuttered numerous distribution depots and thrift stores.

Richard Volpe, director of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' Bakery and Laundry Conference, welcomed the news. The Teamsters represent about 10,000 of the company's employees and brought Ripplewood into the process after the union helped scuttle an earlier reorganization plan.

"The Teamsters union fought hard to save good-paying jobs at the company," Volpe said. "I am proud of the battle we waged for 4 1/2 years to see this company survive."

The company still faces an uphill climb after it lost $143.7 million last year as revenue fell 3.4 percent to $2.8 billion. It has lost another $78.3 million in the first half of fiscal year 2009, with sales declining 2 percent to $1.3 billion.

But Jung, a food industry veteran brought in to run the company a little more than a year ago, has outlined changes to the company's sales and distribution models, as well as increased focus on developing new products, which he says will make the company more efficient.

Also, the company, with 22,000 employees, has taken steps to leave markets it said were less profitable.

"We are now a stronger and more competitive company," Jung said.

The reorganization plan provides $354 million in financing from Silver Point Finance and Monarch Master Funding Ltd., as well as a revolving loan of $105 million from General Electric Capital Corp.

Ripplewood is investing $44.2 million in cash and $85.8 million in convertible debt in exchange for a 50 percent stake in the new company and an opportunity to later acquire an additional 15 percent.

Teamsters News Clip
SEATTLE’S GARBAGE TRUCKS TO RUN ON NATURAL GAS

Seattle Times
(February 2, 2009) For years, Seattle has operated an aggressive curbside recycling program to reduce the need for expensive landfill space.

Now the city seeks to despoil less of the atmosphere by converting its garbage-truck fleet from diesel to compressed natural gas (CNG) under new hauling contracts starting March 30.

One contractor, Seattle-based CleanScapes, is buying 40 CNG trucks and building a fueling stop in Georgetown. The other, transcontinental giant Waste Management, is buying 106 trucks to be fueled in South Park.

Waste Management's territory will be South and Northwest Seattle, while CleanScapes will cover the northeast and central areas of the city.

This is the second municipal-waste contract for CleanScapes, which runs diesel-powered trucks in Shoreline. President Chris Martin founded his cleaning company in 1997, inspired by the debris in his Pioneer Square neighborhood.

A 2008 city ordinance requires the two firms to use either biodiesel or CNG.

Martin said the new engines make less noise than diesel engines, especially in the hilly central city. "CNG allows us to operate more quietly at night in those dense, mixed-use areas."

Waste Management has more than 600 natural-gas trucks in California, and the Seattle program is part of its national environmental initiative, said Susan Robinson, regional director for public-sector services. "We have a goal of reducing emissions associated with our fleet by 15 percent," she said.

CNG trucks are likely to reduce air-polluting particulates at least 90 percent compared with older diesel trucks. New diesel trucks are so clean that they roughly match CNG, said Dennis McLerran, executive director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.

But the CNG trucks still have an advantage in greenhouse gases, releasing 20 percent less than even the best diesel engines, he said.

Natural gas, once thought to be running out, is making a comeback because of better extraction technologies and the discovery of new reserves, McLerran said.

Waste Management showed off a new truck last week at a city-owned fueling depot beneath Interstate 90. "It's like filling up a big propane tank," said a supervisor, Steve Aiton. It took less than 20 minutes to fill four tanks atop the green truck to 3,600 pounds per square inch.

The company says it will spend $29 million for trucks and $7.5 million to build the fueling yard at South Park — a "slow fill" station where gas is pumped for several hours or overnight. Slower pumping causes less friction and therefore less heat, allowing more gas to reach the tanks.

Meanwhile, garbage costs for the public are going up because of a combination of inflation and a mandatory food-recycling program.

Monthly rates will increase from $23 now to $29.65 in April, a 29 percent boost, for a typical single-family home using a 32-gallon trash can and a 96-gallon yard-waste container. City leaders urge people to save by recycling, but a 20-gallon can will be costlier too, going from $13.55 now to $17.55.

It's unclear how much of a role the fuel switch played in the increase.

Because the firms made competitive bids, there was no city analysis of their internal costs, said Hans Van Dusen, a contracts manager for Seattle Public Utilities. A phone survey found residents were willing to pay more for quieter, cleaner trucks, he said.

Both haulers predict that over the entire 10-year contract, their costs for CNG versus diesel will even out. Waste Management's trucks in Seattle are due for replacement anyway, Robinson said.

CleanScapes is predicting the fuel will be cheaper than diesel. Pierce Transit burned the equivalent of $1.21 a gallon to run its all-CNG bus fleet last spring, while other bus agencies paid $4 for diesel.

Teamsters News Clip
PREVENT ‘ECONOMIC DISASTER’

Asiaone.com
(January 31, 2009) Washington, D.C., United States — President Barack Obama warned on Friday that grim data showing a deepening recession revealed a “continuing disaster” for US workers and meant Congress must act immediately on his economic stimulus plan.

Disappearing jobs, home foreclosures and evaporating college and retirement savings were adding up to “the American dream in reverse,” the president warned. “This isn't just an economic concept, this is a continuing disaster for America's working families,” Mr Obama said before signing measures reversing several Bush administration policies curtailing trade union rights.

The president spoke after the release of government data showing that the US economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2008 at the fastest pace since 1982, with a 3.8 per cent rate of decline. “The recession is deepening, and the urgency of our economic crisis is growing,” Mr Obama said at an event also highlighting the launch of a “Middle Class Task Force” under Vice President Joe Biden. “I'm pleased that the House has acted with the urgency necessary in passing this plan. I hope we can strengthen it further in the Senate. What we can't do is drag our feet or delay much longer. The American people expect us to act, and that's exactly what I intend to do as president of the United States.”

The House of Representatives passed an $819 billion (S - $1.2 trillion) version of the stimulus plan this week, but without hoped-for Republican support. The Senate is expected to start debating the measure next week.

At his daily briefing, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked whether Mr Obama's plain spoken rhetoric at the state of the economy risked further depressing confidence and hopes of recovery. “I think it's kind of hard to sugarcoat and spin an economy that shrank at a faster rate in any quarter except — or since 1982,” he said. “I think what the American people also want to see is somebody who will level with them about the challenges that we face, and will give them a sense of where he hopes to take them. But I don't think he can do that if he is continually telling people that things are different than what they know to be true in their everyday daily lives.”

Biden said his task force would work across government agencies to quickly frame policies to improve the lot of the hurting middle classes which he portrayed as the backbone of US prosperity. “America's middle class is hurting. Trillions of dollars in home equity and retirement savings and college savings are gone,” Mr Biden said. “Every day, more and more Americans are losing their jobs. President Obama and I are determined to change this. Quite simply, a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can't have one without the other.”

Mr Obama signed a series of executive orders giving new rights to union members and people who work for government contractors.

The measures will make federal contractors offer jobs to current workers when contracts end and reverse a Bush-era order forcing contractors to post a notice telling workers they can limit financial support to unions.

The third order prevents government contractors from being reimbursed for expenses incurred in activities intended to influence workers against forming a union or taking part in collective bargaining.

On Thursday, Mr Obama signed a new law making it easier for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination.

The president said he believed “we have to reverse many of the policies towards organised labour that we have seen these last eight years. I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution.” Mr Obama's moves won strong support from the labour movement, a key constituency in the Democratic Party's power base.

“It is a new day for workers,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa who attended the ceremony in the East Room of the presidential mansion. “We finally have a White House that is dedicated to working with us to rebuild our middle class. Hope for the American Dream is being restored.” The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has more than 1.4 million members in the transportation, freight and related industries in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Teamsters News Clip
PRESIDENT OBAMA OFFERS OPEN CHANNELS
TO PAKISTAN, IRAN, NORTH KOREA

Wall Street Journal
(January 28, 2009) The broad outlines of President Barack Obama's national-security policy are coming into clearer focus, as the new administration signals it will try a carrot-and-stick approach toward nations such as Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.

Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered conciliatory language to some of Washington's adversaries. They said they will seek greater diplomatic engagement with Iran, and Mrs. Clinton, in her first meeting with reporters since taking office, indicated she would favor more direct talks with North Korea, a move long resisted by the Bush adminstration.

Mr. Obama, in his first formal interview as president, told the Arabic-language news channel al-Arabiya that he will seek to open talks with Iran. "It is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress," Mr. Obama said in the interview that was broadcast Tuesday. "If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us." Mrs. Clinton echoed that language.

At the same time, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Tuesday the U.S. will continue to fire missiles at militants in Pakistan. And in a sign the U.S. will maintain financial pressure on Iran, Treasury Department officials have been notified that Mr. Obama will reappoint Stuart Levey, the chief architect of U.S. sanctions efforts against Tehran.

The moves suggest Mr. Obama is presenting Iranian, Pakistani and North Korean leaders with a choice: respond positively to diplomatic outreach and potentially receive American aid and recognition in return, or maintain current policies and face sanctions or military force.

Mr. Gates, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the most senior U.S. official to formally acknowledge the strikes on militants in Pakistan, which are carried out by Central Intelligence Agency aerial drones.

"Let me just say both President Bush and President Obama have made clear that we will go after al Qaeda wherever al Qaeda is and we will continue to pursue them," the defense chief said.

Mr. Gates said Mr. Obama's decision to continue the missile strikes had been communicated to the Pakistani government, but Mr. Gates also praised Pakistan as "a friend and partner" and promised the U.S. will help the shaky civilian government in Islamabad.

Some U.S. efforts to contain Iran haven't stopped under the new president, as exemplified by an incident that straddled the Bush and Obama administrations.

In early January, U.S. military and intelligence officials began tracking the Monchegorsk, a Cypriot-flagged vessel chartered by Iran. The U.S. suspected the boat was ferrying weapons bound for Palestinian militants in Gaza, according to a defense official.

The vessel further aroused American suspicion by taking "deceptive maneuvers" after leaving Iran, the official said.

On Jan. 19, the U.S.S. San Antonio approached the Monchegorsk in the Red Sea and asked its captain for permission to search the ship, which was granted. The following day, an armed group of Navy personnel boarded the vessel and found artillery shells, according to two defense officials.

The Navy personnel searched the vessel again Jan. 21 and found machine-gun rounds, fuses and other armaments, the officials said. The ship's paperwork showed the weapons were bound for Syria.

The defense officials said the shipments appeared to violate a United Nations resolution barring Iran from exporting many kinds of weaponry. The resolution doesn't allow for the seizure of banned Iranian armaments, however, so the U.S. allowed the ship to continue its voyage, the officials said. A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the U.N. declined to comment.

The first search of the vessel took place hours before Mr. Obama was sworn in as president, and he would almost certainly have been briefed about the pending operation. The second search took place after Mr. Obama's inaugural, and he could have stopped the operation if he had chosen to. The State Department declined to comment on the naval operation.

Teamsters News Clip
OBAMA’S EPA MOVE LIKELY TO SPUR FIGHT

Wall Street Journal
(January 27, 2009) President Barack Obama opened the door to state-level regulation of greenhouse gases, kicking off the first round of what promises to be a lengthy fight between major industries and his administration over how to combat global warming.

In ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to consider allowing states such as California to regulate automobile emissions of greenhouse gases, Mr. Obama served notice that his administration doesn't intend to let the worst year of U.S. auto sales in more than a decade deter him from his goals of reducing emissions and U.S. dependence on Mideast oil.

The announcement drew cheers from California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and many environmental groups. It drew condemnation from congressional Republicans, who said it would allow the Golden State effectively to set fuel-efficiency standards for much of the country. Some Rust Belt Democrats said California's law would fall hardest on domestic auto makers, who sales mix skews toward pickup trucks, sport-utility vehicles and minivans.

How much California's regulations would cost consumers has been a point of contention. In 2007, when the industry sought to persuade a federal judge to block Vermont's adoption of the California rules, its lawyers presented estimates by an industry consultant that the rules would add several thousand dollars to the cost of some models; a witness for the state put the cost at closer to $1,500. California regulators have estimated that the rules would save low-income families about $300 a year in lower gas prices.

Mr. Obama directed the EPA to consider granting California a waiver from the federal Clean Air Act that would let the state enforce a law requiring a 30% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from new cars by 2016. Auto makers have unsuccessfully challenged the law in court. The waiver request reaches beyond California. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted California's standards;others are considering following.

At a White House event Monday, Mr. Obama said, "Our goal is not to further burden an already-struggling industry. It is to help America's auto makers prepare for the future."

The new president's twin goals of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and U.S. oil imports have been complicated by shifting consumer tastes and volatile gas prices. The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is now $1.84, less than half what it was in July. The decline in gas prices has, in turn, revived demand for vehicles whose emissions and gas consumption tend to be much greater than cars. Last month, light trucks accounted for nearly half of all automobiles sold in the U.S., compared with 40.5% in May, according to Edmunds.com, a Web site that tracks auto sales.

"This is another example of 'the federal government knows best,'" said Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. He called Mr. Obama's move a "further dagger in the heart of the auto industry," and predicted the effect would be "higher car prices and bigger bailouts."

General Motors Corp. said in a statement that it hopes to engage the Obama administration and Congress in a broader discussion of "meaningful and workable solutions and targets that benefit consumers from coast to coast." Several other large auto makers declined to comment. The subdued reaction partly reflects the political weakness of the domestic car makers, which had to ask Congress and the Bush administration late last year for a sweeping rescue package.

A final decision by the EPA isn't expected for several months. If the agency grants California's request, it would set in motion a process that could ultimately require auto makers to produce cleaner-burning vehicles to sell in states that adopt the tougher standards. Under a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Mr. Obama's administration must also determine whether greenhouse-gas emissions "endanger" public health or welfare, the legal trigger for regulating them under the federal Clean Air Act.

Business groups, led by the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are already gearing up to fight such a move, fearing it would lead to costly new mandates across a range of industries.

Some industry lobbyists also fear that a decision in favor of California's request would lead the EPA to impose its own regulations on greenhouse gases.

Teamsters News Clip
FAIR-WAGE BILL CLEARS THE SENATE

Washington Post
(January 23, 2009) A wage-discrimination bill that narrowly failed less than a year ago moved closer to becoming law last night, when the Senate passed the legislation and sent it back to the House for final consideration.

The measure, approved 61 to 36, would overturn a Supreme Court decision to make it easier for women to sue employers for pay inequity, regardless of when the discrepancies took place. It may become the first legislation signed by President Obama, who campaigned in favor of it.

The bill, dubbed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, was introduced after a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 rejected a $360,000 award in back pay to Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama woman who worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber. Ledbetter had discovered a large gap between her salary and that of her male colleagues, stretching back years.

The discrepancy cost her lost wages and also lowered her retirement earnings because her Social Security and 401(k) contributions were based on her salary. But the court ruled that Ledbetter's case was not allowed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act because the statute of limitations on claims was 180 days after the alleged discrimination took place.

The bill would greatly ease the statute-of-limitations requirements — too much so, said Republican opponents, who warned that civil courts would be clogged with frivolous lawsuits.

Ledbetter's case became a cause celebre for women's groups and for Democrats, who pointed to the bill as the type of measure that would move briskly if the party won the White House and a larger Senate margin. When similar legislation came before the Senate last April 23, it failed by two votes.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), a main sponsor, noted that all 16 female senators voted in favor of the measure last night. "We've had an enormous victory," she declared.

Ledbetter, who appeared alongside Mikulski after the vote, said that she spoke to Obama and that "he has assured me that he will see me in the White House, hopefully in just a few days."

IBT Press Release
KANSAS FIRST STUDENT WORKERS CHOOSE TEAMSTERS UNION

SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS, ATTENDANTS AND MECHANICS UNITE FOR FAIRNESS AND RESPECT

(January 22, 2009) School bus drivers, attendants and mechanics who work at First Student in Blue Valley, Kansas, took the first major step to a better workplace by voting 71-14 to join Teamsters Local 838 in Kansas City, Missouri. The workers united in order to secure fairness, respect and improved working conditions.

“It’s all kind of surreal that we did this; we’re very happy right now,” said Teresa Christensen, a First Student driver in Blue Valley. “We need to be better appreciated, by having fair pay, guaranteed hours and affordable health care. We need fair treatment and are looking forward to getting these things.”

The workers formed a strong committee to organize at their location. They also had the support of workers at the First Student school bus yard in Olathe, Kansas, a few of which came to talk with the Blue Valley workers about what it’s like to be Teamster members. The 228 workers in Olathe became Teamsters with Local 838 in October. There are 135 workers at the Blue Valley First Student location.

“This is a great group and we’re proud they chose us to represent them,” said Joe Sutton, Vice President of Local 838. “Our President, Billy Thompson, and I appreciate the work of the Teamsters International Union organizers and the Olathe workers to help the Blue Valley workers reach their goal. This was a fast process because of all the good work of everyone involved.”

This victory is the latest in an effort to organize private school bus and transit workers across the country. Drive Up Standards is a national campaign to improve safety, service and work standards in the private school bus and transit industry.

Since the campaign began in 2006, more than 14,200 workers have become Teamsters.

IBT Press Release
FEDEX EXPOSES INVESTORS TO NEW RISKS: BUSINESS MODEL FOR GROUND OPERATIONS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE LATEST IN COSTLY GAMBLES

(January 16, 2009, Washington, D.C.) The new FedEx (NYSE:FDX) business model for New Hampshire Ground operations represents the company's latest strategy to skirt laws meant to reign in the misclassification of independent contractors and introduces new concerns for investors.

“Fedex has exposed investors to exorbitant legal and tax liabilities by misclassifying drivers as independent contractors across the country for years,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “This new scheme to evade their responsibilities to the men and women who deliver for the company's most profitable business segment will continue to expose investors to costly problems.”

According to company documents, New Hampshire contractors will individually negotiate their own service contract with the company rather than sign the FedEx-provided Operating Agreement suggesting that the company will give up important controls that ensure customer service and operational efficiency.

The company claims that these contractors will not be required to use FedEx-approved drivers, trucks, scanners, or uniforms; they will be individually responsible for managing all of the logistics of their service areas including meeting the complex demands of seasonal volume fluctuations; and they will have the right to refuse pick-ups and deliveries under certain circumstances.

If implemented as proposed, the FedEx New Hampshire plan is similar to the chaotic Independent Cartage Carriers (ICC) model DHL Express used for half of its U.S. network. That model, which DHL inherited from Airborne Express, relied on more than 600 different ICC's (employing approximately 12,000 drivers) at a given time. The tight margins dictated by this type of relationship made for high turnover among the ICC's as well as the drivers. This past fall DHL Express announced it was leaving the domestic US market after sustaining losses of $1 billion in each year since the Airborne purchase.

“Fedex investors cannot afford to gamble on another scheme that will either add to the company's legal and regulatory problems or undermine customer service in this competitive industry,” Hoffa said.

Teamsters News Clip
James P. Hoffa: Chao's Distortions of Epic Proportions

The Huffington Post
(January 15, 2009) Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's Jan. 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed ranks among the most preposterous distortions of reality ever to appear on that newspaper's editorial pages — and that's tough to do.

In it, Chao claimed the Bush Administration wanted to protect workers and their jobs. "Our record speaks for itself," she wrote.

It sure does.

Elaine Chao didn't close the Crandall Canyon Mine despite serious safety violations. It caved in twice. Six miners and three rescue workers died.

She rewrote federal regulations to take away overtime pay from millions of workers. She gutted OSHA. When low-income workers complained their employers were stiffing them, she didn't bother to conduct adequate investigations.

She did manage to hand out Elaine-themed gold-colored coins at public events.

You have to give her credit for chutzpah. Though she spent eight years sticking a shiv into the ribcage of the American workforce, she still says she cares about workers with a straight face.

In her op-ed, Chao expressed concern that the Employee Free Choice Act would deprive workers of secret union elections. She called the secret ballot a "vital worker protection."

That was kind of like Jesse James explaining how he wanted to help trains by robbing them of all that heavy cash.

It's a flat-out lie that the Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate the secret ballot. The legislation, as passed by the House of Representatives, would simply allow workers to choose majority sign-up or secret ballot to join a union.

Right now, it's management that gets to choose whether workers can join a union by majority sign-up or secret ballot. Management almost always chooses secret ballot. What Chao is really concerned about is taking away management's ability to bust unions during long-drawn out election campaigns — where companies overwhelm workers through fear and intimidation.

Now it's possible that Elaine Chao honestly thinks the way to promote economic growth is to attack workers. She claims in her op-ed that she ran the Labor Department according to a well-thought-out strategy to improve America's economy.

She shouldn't have gone there.

The Bush administration has the worst job-creation record since Hoover. Millions of workers will postpone their retirement because stock market losses wiped out their 401 (k) plans. We are in the worst housing downturn on record.

We may even be entering a depression, as U.S. consumer prices in October fell more in one month than at any time since before World War II.

Like Ms. Chao said, "Our record speaks for itself."

Teamsters News Clip
From Arizona Governor to Homeland Security Chief

U.S. News & World Report

(January 14, 2009) In her last major speech as Arizona governor, Janet Napolitano described her impending departure to become President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of homeland security as “bittersweet.”

“I have been called by our president-elect to serve in a new way during extraordinary times,” Napolitano said in what was likely her final state of the state address. “This is a day of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am very sad that this is very likely the final time I will address Arizonans in this manner. On the other hand, I am confident about the future of this state and proud of the work we have done together.”

Later this week, Napolitano will be traveling to Washington for her confirmation hearing. If confirmed as expected, she will head a department that includes responsibilities for border security and immigration policy.

Napolitano, 51, has become one of the nation’s pre-eminent voices on both issues during her two terms as a border-state governor. While she has been hailed locally for her efforts to balance Arizona’s budget and improve teacher pay, she also won national attention for her decisive action during the recent battles over immigration reform. In 2005, she declared a state of emergency along the Arizona-Mexico border, and a few months later, became the first governor to call up National Guard troops to help the state secure the border, chiding the federal government for not doing more to help.

Napolitano, a onetime U.S. attorney and Arizona attorney general, has been a vocal opponent of the “fence” now being constructed along the border, saying, “You show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.”

But she has not shied away from other enforcement measures. Two years ago, Napolitano signed a trend-setting bill that strips companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants of their licenses. She has expressed frustration with Congress for failing to pass comprehensive national immigration legislation, and experts are eager to see how a governor widely considered to be a pragmatic centrist will shape immigration policy in the Obama administration.

If Napolitano is confirmed, which she seemed to expect during her address today, she will be replaced as governor by Arizona’s secretary of state, Jan Brewer, a Republican. Both houses of the Arizona state legislature are also controlled by Republicans, with whom Napolitano has butted heads on everything from abortion to gun control. She has issued more vetoes — nearly 200 during her six years in office — than any governor in Arizona history.

Though some Republicans in the state called for her to recuse herself from legislative business after her nomination, Napolitano has said she will stay in office until she is confirmed.

U.S. News spoke with Napolitano this fall about immigration reform and the fiscal crisis sweeping the states.

Teamsters News Clip
ILLINOIS CONGRESSMAN SURPRISE CHOICE TO HEAD DOT

Shipping Digest

U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood

(January 13, 2009) There was little on Ray LaHood’s schedule on Dec. 16 to indicate he might be the next U.S. transportation secretary. The soon-to-be-ex-congressman and former social studies teacher spent the morning with seventh-grade students at Dunlap Valley Middle School near Peoria, Ill. Local reporters quizzed him on whether he would seek President-elect Obama’s Senate seat, or run to replace scandal-ridden Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Instead, he was headed for Obama’s cabinet.

When news broke two days ahead of the formal announcement that the Republican from Peoria was Obama’s choice to head the Department of Transportation, it stunned the Washington transportation community. LaHood’s selection was one of the best-kept secrets of a transition that began springing leaks almost daily on Nov. 5, the day after the election.

LaHood, 63, was picked over several potential Democratic nominees with decades of combined transportation experience, including Mortimer L. Downey, a former deputy secretary of transportation, and former Federal Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey. He also edged out Californian Steve Heminger, who runs the San Francisco area’s metropolitan planning commission, and former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, whom Obama tapped as the next U.S. Trade Representative.

Publicly, members of Congress, transportation association officials and union leaders praised the choice of a well-respected moderate Republican with bipartisan credentials to head the transportation department at a critical point in its 42-year history. Privately, many looked with concern at LaHood’s scant record in transportation.

“This makes who gets picked for the modal administrators even more important,” one transportation lobbyist said. Others said LaHood is likely to lean heavily on nonpartisan career staff at DOT to keep the agency on course, and rely on the White House and senior figures in Congress for policy leadership.

He will also be near the center of the country’s economic storm, taking on a department with more than 50,000 employees and a large role in managing Obama’s planned $850 billion infrastructure spending and economic stimulus package, a bill that will be bigger than the federal banking bailout or the Pentagon’s annual budget.

“Few understand our infrastructure challenge better than the outstanding public servant I am asking to lead the Department of Transportation — Ray LaHood,” Obama said in introducing LaHood as his intended nominee at a Dec. 19 news conference in Chicago. “Throughout his career, Ray has fought to improve mass transit and invest in our highways.”

With the stimulus package likely to come up quickly and debate over the next highway bill coming soon after — the current plan expires in September — the choice suggests the ability to work with Congress will be central to LaHood’s role at DOT.

His most important ally in Congress will undoubtedly be House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James L. Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who already has his own vision for the next highway bill. At a Dec. 18 press conference, Oberstar made it clear he expects policy decisions to come from the White House, not DOT headquarters. Oberstar may play an even larger role in crafting that policy.

“He is the consummate insider,” Oberstar said of LaHood. “He knows what it takes and who the people are to make things move. I think his designation more than anything else is an indication that this administration is serious about moving legislation through this Congress early on.”

Still, LaHood hasn’t been a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee since 2001. His name isn’t on any major transportation legislation. And he is an unknown quantity to many in the transportation industry.

Rod Nofziger, director of government affairs at the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, is one of the few who says he knows LaHood’s roots in transportation.

“I had the personal privilege of working with him when I was on the T&I staff and he was on the committee,” Nofziger said. “He always knew his stuff and was even-handed with his comments and opinions.”

He notes LaHood hasn’t been “heavily involved in leading initiatives on transportation policy” but stresses the congressman has long been a proponent of infrastructure investment. “We’re excited about working with him and with someone who has shown that he is very supportive of transportation infrastructure investment.”

LaHood’s congressional Web site cited his interest in infrastructure, especially Illinois infrastructure. He claims to have worked to secure funds to improve local highways, including Interstate 74 in Peoria, U.S. Route 67 and Route 336. He mentions his support for improving local airports through securing funds for new construction and expansion, while also working with officials to increase air service.

And although Peoria is not on most transportation trunk routes, he’s said to be a strong supporter of public transit and passenger rail service. Passenger rail advocates point to an interview with the Peoria Journal Star in 2005 in which he called subsidies “the real lifeblood of Amtrak” and said Congress shouldn’t “destroy” the system “by talking about privatization.”

After the economic stimulus, LaHood will carry the administration’s banner in the battle over the next highway bill — which could top $500 billion — as Washington debates how best to rebuild the ailing Highway Trust Fund. And he’ll push for reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, which needs funding to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control systems, as well as a labor agreement with controllers.

LaHood probably will face several contentious regulatory issues that bedeviled the Bush administration, including hours of service for truck drivers. A final rule on the issue released last month may face a court challenge this year or be amended by the new Congress. A coalition led by Public Citizen and the Teamsters filed a petition for reconsideration of the driver-hours rule with the DOT in mid-December.

Many believe a major task LaHood is uniquely suited to will be repairing DOT’s tattered relationship with Congress. Under Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, the department has clashed with Democrats in Congress over issues such as the U.S.-Mexican crossborder trucking pilot project — a project LaHood voted to kill — and the scope of public-private partnerships and rail and truck safety.

LaHood could quickly improve relations between DOT and Capitol Hill.

“As a former member of Congress — as opposed to a governor or state DOT head — LaHood knows the game, the traditions how to get things done on Capitol Hill,” said Robert W. Poole Jr., director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation. “That’s a plus for Obama, and it will probably make for smoother relationships.”

LaHood’s relationship with his own party, at least its more ideological wing, hasn’t always been smooth, which may be why he was picked. He did not sign the “Contract with America” in 1994, making him one of only three Republicans to reject the campaign statement. He started on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee before moving in 2001 to the Appropriations Committee.

He also presided over the House impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 and voted for all four impeachment counts.

Although LaHood voted with his party 84.5 percent of the time during the 110th Congress, he bucked the Republican line on several occasions, voting for the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act last month, for example, and the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act and Passenger Rail Improvement and Investment Act in 2007. He also voted with Democrats to repeal oil company tax breaks and fund renewable energy programs.

That helped earn him a relatively low ranking from conservative groups such as the Club for Growth, which graded him 36 out of 100 on its congressional scorecard. But LaHood’s voting record has earned praise from a source that rarely has anything good to say about Republicans — labor unions.

“LaHood sought to bring civility and bipartisanship to the House of Representatives and earned a well-deserved reputation as a leader who worked with both sides of the aisle,” said Ed Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department at the AFL-CIO. “It was this approach that led LaHood to break from his own leadership and stand with transportation workers on a number of important issues.”

Teamsters union President James P. Hoffa was equally enthusiastic. “Ray LaHood has been a longtime, strong ally in the Teamsters’ unwavering fight to stop unsafe Mexican trucks from traveling freely throughout the United States,” Hoffa said. “As a moderate Republican, he has been a friend to the Teamsters union on a number of important issues, including funding for Amtrak.”

LaHood also has the support of some of his party’s top leaders, including Arizona Sen. John McCain (LaHood’s son worked for McCain’s presidential campaign) and House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

But LaHood’s most important friend in Congress may have been Rahm Emanuel, the former Clinton adviser and Democratic congressman from Illinois who is now Obama’s chief of staff. Together, they organized several bipartisan retreats to diffuse hostility across the political divide. After 2004, Emanuel, LaHood and Obama worked together on common issues benefiting their home-state constituents.

“This very much seems like a Rahm Emanuel recommendation, not a transition team recommendation,” one source said of LaHood’s selection.

TEAMSTERS NEWS CLIP
Chao Defends Her Labor Department Tenure
January 6, 2009
Washington Post

Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao is the only Cabinet member to serve during President Bush's entire presidency, through nearly eight years marked by terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and long-running wars, including ideological battles.

But as the soft-spoken Chao's tenure winds down, she finds herself defending her legacy amid criticism from labor groups and government watchdogs who say the department has backed off of its vital regulatory functions during the Bush years.

The Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has promulgated many fewer safety rules than in the past. The Government Accountability Office issued two reports last summer criticizing Labor for its enforcement of wage and hour laws. The agency has also been skewered for its enforcement of mine safety laws, and for imposing lower fines on firms found in violation of them.

Chao brushes such critiques aside as so much political rhetoric. "This department is probably the most partisan of all the departments," she said. "I think people have very different world views about this department and about what is best for the workforce."

She said that much of the criticism of her stewardship somehow misses the big picture: that workers have become safer under her tenure. "Our workers today [are] safer and healthier than they were eight years ago. The facts speak for themselves," she said in a recent interview.

Rather than focusing solely on enforcement, Chao said her agency has taken a "strategic approach" to workers' welfare that relies heavily on employer outreach and education. The approach is often at odds with what many labor advocates promote, she said, but the results have been record-low injury and illness rates for employees. The agency also boasts record recoveries of pay and pensions unfairly denied workers, she said.

"Together with our enforcement strategy has been a strategy of educational outreach," Chao said. "We want to make sure that workers know their rights and that employers know their obligations. That is the best way to protect workers."

Many labor advocates say the results could be even better if the agency had taken a tougher approach toward employers. They also accuse Chao of using the agency's regulatory power to hamstring organized labor with new financial reporting requirements that unions call onerous. Chao defends those new rules as a protection for dues-paying union members.

In any case, the approach to regulating the nation's workplaces is sure to change once President-elect Barack Obama takes office next month. Many labor advocates expect Obama's choice for labor secretary, Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), to be more aggressive in using the agency's enforcement powers. They also hope she will be an unabashed advocate for workers and shift the balance to the interests of organized labor.

"We're confident that she will return to the Labor Department one of its core missions -- to defend workers' basic rights in our nation's workplaces," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said after Solis was tapped by Obama. "She's proven to be a passionate leader and advocate for all working families."

Unlike Chao, Solis is a supporter of legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize, something opposed by Bush's Labor Department, which took the position that such measures would dampen economic growth.

"Unions are vital to the health and strength of our communities, and our workers are the bedrock of our economy," Solis said last year about the Employee Free Choice Act. "In this day and age when the number of women and new immigrants is increasing in the workforce, it is important that they become a part of the American fabric, and one of the ways is to be a member of a union."

Chao, who formerly led United Way of America, worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation and served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said that her approach to her job was framed not by ideology but by her experience as an immigrant who came to this country from Taiwan.

She endured a month-long freighter ride across the Pacific Ocean with her mother and two sisters to rejoin her father, who had come to the United States three years earlier. She arrived as an 8-year-old who spoke no English, but within a decade she was attending Mt. Holyoke College and later Harvard Business School.

"I knew so little about mainstream America and what services were available," she said. "I know what it is like to feel vulnerable and fearful during a difficult time. That's why I am always exhorting my colleagues that whatever we do, it has a real impact. We are not just dealing with programs or pieces of paper."

To be sure, Chao is now part of the establishment. Married to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Chao says she plans to return to the nonprofit realm once her long tenure as Labor secretary ends.

Asked about the perils of serving in an administration that has been so unpopular, Chao turned philosophical.

"We're a robust democracy here," she said. "That's the wonderful thing about this country. People can voice their different points of view. We are also a country where there will be criticism."

TEAMSTERS NEWS CLIP
Fierce Bush Critic Picked for Justice Post
January 6, 2009
Wall Street Journal

President-elect Barack Obama picked an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush over terrorist interrogations for a top Justice Department job, part of a liberal lineup at the department that is likely to overhaul national-security policy.

Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen was nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, a once-anonymous corner of the department that was thrust into the spotlight after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It issued legal opinions that approved of harsh interrogation methods on terror detainees and a classified surveillance program operated by the National Security Agency without court oversight.

In addition to Ms. Johnsen, Mr. Obama's picks for the senior leadership posts under Eric Holder, his nominee for attorney general, are: David Ogden, deputy attorney general; Elena Kagan, solicitor general; and Tom Perelli, associate attorney general.

Ms. Johnsen, who served in the office during the Clinton administration, has said she was "appalled" by memorandums that allowed what critics call torture of terror detainees. In comments in 2007 at a legal conference, she said: "The president of course is not above the law. Clearly what we need to do is restore OLC's tradition of independence and integrity."

During the Bush years, the Justice Department came under attack for buttressing Mr. Bush's expansive view of presidential powers. Mr. Obama and others in Congress have criticized top Justice officials for acting too much as the president's lawyers.

On Monday, Mr. Obama said of his picks: "I have the fullest confidence that they will ensure that the Department of Justice once again fulfills its highest purpose: to uphold the Constitution and protect the American people."

Congressional Republicans raised concerns that the Obama nominees lacked national-security experience and took aim at Ms. Johnsen in particular. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, of Texas, said her nomination "raises significant concerns considering her position on the intelligence community's ability to conduct interrogations and gather critical, time-sensitive intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks."

The best-known name is Ms. Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School, who was nominated for solicitor general, the job that includes arguing the government's positions before the Supreme Court. Ms. Kagan was a law clerk to retired U.S. Circuit Judge Abner Mikva, himself a mentor of Mr. Obama's, and to the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Ms. Kagan and Ms. Johnsen will immediately find themselves involved in debates on the most controversial Bush administration policies on national security.

As solicitor general, Ms. Kagan will have to oversee pursuit of the Bush administration's contentious legal positions -- and may modify them, if the president-elect fulfills campaign expectations. The new administration won't drop all Bush arguments, particularly on routine matters, "but where the direction of the country is at stake," change is likely, said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who taught both Mr. Obama and Ms. Kagan.

Ms. Johnsen, as a professor outside the administration, worked with several former Office of Legal Counsel lawyers to promulgate a series of principles to overhaul the office. One of them was a strong preference in favor of publishing legal opinions. In recent years, the Bush administration has refused to release some of the office's opinions, calling them private advice to the president.

John Eastman, dean of the Chapman University School of Law, predicted that Ms. Johnsen and other Obama appointees will soon find it is sometimes difficult to adhere to their ideological views opposing Bush administration policies. Mr. Eastman said the Obama nominees are "also pragmatic; they'll understand where they can push their agenda and where circumstances won't let them."

TEAMSTERS NEWS CLIP
Panetta Chosen As CIA Director
January 6, 2009
Washington Post

President-elect Barack Obama stunned the national intelligence community by selecting Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta, a longtime Washington insider with little intelligence experience, to serve as the next head of the CIA.

The decision -- which was also met with wariness on Capitol Hill -- reflects a desire to change the intelligence power structure, officials close to the selection said yesterday. Obama has chosen retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair as the director of national intelligence, a job he intends to reinforce as the "lead horse" on intelligence issues, an official close to the selection process said.

Panetta, 70, is widely regarded as a good manager who knows the government bureaucracy well. Panetta, a former eight-term member of Congress who has run a think tank in California for the past decade, has no significant ties to the agency that Obama has criticized for using harsh interrogation methods.

Panetta has openly objected to the use of such methods, writing in an essay last year that the United States "must not use torture under any circumstances." Obama had trouble filling the CIA slot in part because other candidates were perceived as tainted for having supported aspects of the Bush administration's interrogation and intelligence programs.

Yet Panetta, who also served as director of President Bill Clinton's Office of Management and Budget, has no institutional memory of the intelligence agency and no hands-on experience with its thorniest challenges, including the collection of human intelligence overseas. His lack of experience drew immediate questions, most notably from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who said she was not briefed on his selection and learned about it from news accounts.

"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," Feinstein, who in her new post will oversee his confirmation hearings, said in a statement. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.), the top-ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, voiced similar concerns about Panetta's credentials. "In a post-9/11 world, intelligence experience would seem to be a prerequisite for the job of CIA director," he said. "I will be looking hard at Panetta's intelligence expertise and qualifications."

An official close to the selection process said Obama sought an independent outside figure to lead the CIA in the hopes of restoring morale there. Although he was a Democratic congressman from California for many years -- and, like other Obama Cabinet appointees, a Clinton administration official -- Democratic aides repeatedly emphasized his more recent credentials as head of a nonpartisan public policy center, the Leon and Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, at California State University at Monterey Bay

The president-elect has also said he hopes to include more civilians in the national security apparatus. In March, in answering questions posed by The Washington Post, Obama said he favored new leadership for the intelligence community that "would seek a greater balance between military and civilian officials."

In choosing Panetta, he is placing a civilian at the head of the key agency for foreign intelligence, while substituting one former Navy admiral with another at the helm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Blair and the current intelligence director, Mike McConnell, are retired from the Navy.

The new intelligence team will be formally announced within a few days, Democratic aides said.

Some lawmakers questioned not only Panetta's experience but also his partisan background. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), the last member of Congress to hold the CIA director's job, caused upheaval when he hired several former Republican staff members to key CIA positions.

"The need for the CIA director to be completely apolitical and Panetta's lack of experience in intelligence concerns me," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the outgoing chairman of the intelligence panel, said through a Senate aide. In an interview in March, Obama himself said he had been "troubled by both the politicization of intelligence in this administration and the turnover at the top of our intelligence agencies."

Yet other lawmakers responded with cautious optimism. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, had urged Obama to select a civilian to signal a sharp break with the agency's troubled past; he expressed an openness to Panetta if he would bring about a "change in culture at CIA."

"Whether it's Mr. Panetta or someone else, it's critical that the agency move in a new direction," Hoekstra said.

And John McLaughlin, the CIA's No. 2 official under former director George J. Tenet, said the Panetta selection was "a very good choice."

"What Leon Panetta lacks in direct intelligence experience, he more than makes up in sound judgment, broad governmental experience and savvy about how all the pieces fit together -- perhaps the most important qualities for a CIA director," McLaughlin said. "He also could establish an effective relationship with congressional overseers, a key part of the intelligence equation."

The issue of Panetta's experience will be much more important if Deputy CIA Director Stephen R. Kappes decides to leave or is pushed out. A longtime CIA operations officer with experience in the Middle East, Kappes has been instrumental -- along with Director Michael V. Hayden -- in rebuilding morale within the agency and particularly within the clandestine service.

Under the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, the CIA director also heads the National Clandestine Service, giving him authority over all human intelligence collection and operations abroad, including those carried out by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the individual military services and the FBI.

Part of the delay in naming the intelligence team has stemmed from Obama's need to feel comfortable with his choices and, at the same time, meet concerns among Democrats on Capitol Hill that those picked were not directly involved in harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that were used against detainees, officials said.