Saturday, February 21, 2015

Today's Teamster News 02.21.15

Teamsters
Swissport Canada And Teamsters Reach Collective Agreement  AviationPros   ...Today, the Honourable Dr. K. Kellie Leitch, Minister of Labour and Minister of Status of Women, congratulated Swissport Canada Handling Inc. and the Canada Council of Teamsters on the renewal of their collective agreement. The agreement covers the Swissport Canada Handling Inc. unit, who work at Dorval and Mirabel airports in Montreal...
Rail Strike Ends With Binding Arbitration  Free Press   ...The rails were only empty for a day at Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) as the company and its union put a halt to the 24-hour strike after agreeing to binding arbitration, mere hours before back-to-work legislation could be put into place...
Legislature Ratifies Agreement In Unanimous Vote  Daily Mail   ...After months of deliberation, an agreement was reached between Greene County and Greene County Public Employees, Teamsters Local 294 affiliated with International Brotherhood of Teamsters...
FTC Files Lawsuit Challenging Sysco-US Foods Merger  Wall Street Journal   ...A divided Federal Trade Commission sued Thursday to block Sysco Corp. ’s acquisition of rival US Foods Inc., a long-awaited move that sets the stage for a major court battle over a plan to combine the nation’s two largest food distributors...
Trade
Obama begins sales pitch on trade to wary United States public   Reuters   ...President Barack Obama on Saturday began a broad sales pitch to the US public about the merits of free trade deals, an area in which he faces stiff resistance from many in his own Democratic party...
Sally Hempy: Stop this TPP deal (LTE)  Daily Camera   …The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is similar to NAFTA and a dozen other so called free-trade deals that have turned out poorly for America but very well for transnational corporations...
State Battles
Wisconsin Senate To Vote Next Week On Right-To-Work Bill  La Crosse Tribune   ...The Wisconsin Legislature will take up a right-to-work bill next week in a surprise move that runs contrary to the wishes of likely 2016 presidential candidate Gov. Scott Walker who had urged lawmakers to delay any debate until later in the year...
Scott Walker says he'll sign fast-tracked right-to-work bill  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   …After saying in his re-election bid that he wouldn't push so-called right-to-work legislation, Gov. Scott Walker committed Friday to signing it, acting after GOP leaders fast-tracked the proposal for a Senate vote next week...
Cole Says He Won’t Push Right To Work If House Doesn’t Have Time  West Virginia Metro News   ...It’s possible the issue won’t make it through this legislative session. State Senate President Bill Cole (R-Mercer) said Thursday on MetroNews Talkline he wants the Senate to take up Right To Work, but they’re not going to do it if the House doesn’t have time to address it before the end of the regular session...
U. Of I., Other Universities Brace For Rauner Funding Cuts  Chicago Tribune   ...Gov. Bruce Rauner drew big applause three weeks ago when he rolled out his vision of making the University of Illinois the best college in the country, but those cheers turned to jeers the other day when he proposed cutting public university spending by nearly $400 million...
War on Workers
Trucks Bound For Mexico Choke Traffic Flow  Brownsville Herald   ...One trucker, standing on a fellow trucker’s ride stopped in the middle of International Boulevard, said most of the Mexico-bound semis were coming from the Port of Brownsville...
Shipping lines and dockworkers reach deal; port shutdown averted  Los Angeles Times   …Shipping companies and dockworkers reached a tentative deal late Friday on a new labor contract, avoiding a shutdown of 29 ports that would have choked off trade through the West Coast...
Awarded Stolen Wages, Workers Struggle to Collect  New York Times   …Mr. Lino, like Ms. Jimenez, Mr. Cao and their several dozen co-workers, has not collected anything close to the money that various agencies, boards and courts have found was due him. State and federal laws intended to protect people from being cheated out of their earnings often yield only pieces of paper declaring what they are owed, not actual cash...
The Death of American Unions Is Killing American Marriage  New Republic   … Poverty itself, it seems, is the chief agent of marital decline among the poor. This is especially true of falling wages among working class men, who have borne the brunt of the right-wing war on labor unions…] [M]en in the bottom quartile of earnings have had a wage cut of 60 percent, and a contemporaneous drop in marriage rates to about 50 percent, from 86 percent…
Cranking Up For 2016 (opinion)  New York Times   ...Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is said to be a rising contender for the Republican presidential nomination. So, on Wednesday, he did what, these days, any ambitious Republican must, and pledged allegiance to charlatans and cranks...Obama begins sales pitch on trade to wary United States public...
Worker killed in Madison construction site accident  Associated Press   …Officials say the worker was injured when the masonry at the site collapsed just after 7:30 a.m. Friday. Fire Department spokeswoman Lori Wirth said the man had been working near a stairwell at the rear of the building...