Sunday, August 17, 2014

Today's Teamster News 08.17.14

Trade
Why Germany Is Backing Away From a Trade Deal That Lets Corporations Sue the Government  truthout   ...Germany might reject a new trade agreement between Canada and the European Union. The deal is called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA. It's part of a new wave of large, aggressive trade deals that also includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 12 countries of the Pacific Rim...
State Battles
Get pumped for a Moral Week of Action!  NC State AFL-CIO   ...Join us for seven consecutive days of action at the North Carolina State Capitol to expose and challenge the destructive laws coming out of Raleigh...
How Zephyr Teachout Became a Contender  The Nation   ...Andrew Cuomo’s unlikely challenger for Governor of New York is gaining endorsements and giving him a headache...they have managed to tap into some of the profound frustration that people feel with a governor who has come to symbolize the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic party...
On Wall Street, ‘Right-to-Work’ Means a Wider Gap Between Rich & Poor (opinion)  CT News Junkie   ...As part of “Employee Freedom Week,” a nationally coordinated effort to convince workers to drop out of their unions, ads are running in Connecticut urging home healthcare workers to opt out. This is a thinly veiled attempt to convince these workers to act against their own self-interest, and could have lethal repercussions in an industry where collective bargaining rights have not only alleviated home health aides’ difficult working conditions, but also have helped prolong their patients’ lives...
War on Workers
Sandwich Artists Unionize  In These Times   ...On July 18, after a three-month campaign, employees of a Subway franchise in Bloomsbury, N.J. voted 8-5 to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) Local 108...
More Jobs Are Open, but They’re Filling Slowly  New York Times   ...In a report this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that employers reported in June that they had 4.5 million available jobs that they were unable to fill. That is the highest number since 2007, and more than twice as high as the figure in October 2009, when the economy was officially beginning to recover but there were no signs of that in the labor market...
Cry for Argentina: Fiscal Mismanagement or Pillage?  truthout   ...Paul Singer’s Elliott Management has spent over a decade aggressively trying to force Argentina to pay down nearly $1.3 billion in sovereign debt. Elliott would get about $300 million for bonds that Argentina claims it picked up for $48 million. Where most creditors have accepted payment at a 70% loss, Elliott Management would thus get a 600% return...
Miscellaneous
How High Up Did the Madoff Fraud Go at JPMorgan?  Wall Street on Parade   ...It is universally agreed among these authors, the prosecutors and the trustee for the Madoff victims’ fund that JPMorgan Chase (or its predecessor banks) stood at the center of the fraud as Madoff’s commercial bank for more than 20 years. It’s the lack of criminal prosecutions against the JPMorgan wrongdoers that has incensed these attorneys to launch the book and web site...
You Can Get Hacked Just By Watching This Cat Video on YouTube  The Intercept   ...The only thing you need to do to render your computer’s secrets—your private conversations, banking information, photographs—transparent to prying eyes is watch a cute cat video on YouTube, and catch the interest of a nation-state or law enforcement agency that has $1 million or so to spare...