Monday, February 16, 2015

Today's Teamster News 02.16.15

Teamsters
Striking Teamsters picket CP Rail offices in Thunder Bay  CBC News   …Striking Canadian Pacific Railway employees braved the bitter cold in Thunder Bay Sunday to picket the CP offices on Syndicate Avenue in what is expected to be a short-lived labour action. The federal government is expected to introduce legislation on Monday to end the strike by more than 3,000 unionized CP workers…
Canadian Pacific Railway blasted for intimidating employees  Spyghana   …Dennis Pierce, National President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and President of the Teamsters Rail Conference (U.S.), blasted Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) today for its growing culture of threats and intimidation toward its employees in the U.S. and Canada...
Teamsters: State Reps. To Host Community Forum On School Bus Transportation  istockanalyst   …On Monday, Feb. 16, at 3:30 p.m., State Reps. Wendell Gilliard, David Mack and Seth Whipper will be joined by Charleston NAACP President Dot Scott, Members of the British Parliament, Charleston school bus drivers, parents and concerned community members at a press conference and public forum on school bus transportation. The forum will cover the ongoing serious safety, service and working condition concerns with Durham School Services, the transportation contractor for Charleston City Schools...
Trade
Trading US Democracy for Corporate Profits with TPP  Counterpunch   …The key point to notice about TPP, as with earlier trade deals, is that it is being negotiated in secret. The reason for this is that there are so many outrages in it which undermine US sovereignty and democratic control, and so many things in the deal that benefit multinational corporations at the expense of the American worker and the broader American public that there would be almost universal outrage if they were known…
Opinion: Progressives and Tea Party find common ground as they oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership  NJ.com   ...So, you think the idea of progressives and the Tea Party working together or achieving a common purpose is some woolly-headed, academic fantasy without the proverbial snowball's chance -- that it cannot happen because the gulf separating these two factions is unbridgeable? Well, think again...
War on Workers
Tax Cuts Didn’t Lead to Faster Growth  Economic Policy Institute   …The figure below shows average top tax rates and average productivity growth (how much output is produced in the average hour of work in the economy) for two periods: 1948-1979 and 1979-2007. The earlier period saw significantly higher average top tax rates and significantly faster productivity growth...
Latino workers dying at higher rates in job accidents, report shows  Reflejos   …of the 4,405 U.S. workers killed on the job in 2013, 797 were Latinos. That equates to 3.8 of every 100,000 full-time Latino employees in the U.S. dying in workplace accidents during the year...
Miscellaneous
Feds unveil commercial drone rules  The Hill   …The Federal Aviation Administration is moving to allow commercial drones that weigh less than 55 pounds to be flown in the U.S. under new regulations that were released on Sunday morning...
The Richest Cities for Young People: 1980 vs. Today  The Atlantic   …Five of the ten richest cities for young Boomers have since seen median wages for young people fall by at least 15 percent...