Teamsters Local 174 Labor News Feed

Smucker's in a Jam: Teamsters May Strike

17 May 2012 02:26:53 GMT

More than 270 Teamsters who work at the J.M. Smucker Company announced today that they may strike the Orrville, Ohio jelly maker.

The workers, represented by Teamsters Local 436 in Cleveland, have been trying to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement for months, but Smucker’s is insisting on eliminating senior workers’ rights, which the company claims is necessary to operate their new plant.

“We have union members with 30 years of service and experience at Smucker’s and all of a sudden this company wants to strip them of their seniority in a layoff – that is simply unfair and wrong,” said Gary M. Tiboni, President of Teamsters Local 436.

He added that the company is building a $150 million, state-of-the art facility to make its jellies and jams. “There is no reason that a successful company like this should put the jobs of its most loyal, long-service employees at risk,” Tiboni said.

Teamsters Fight Back at Republic

17 May 2012 02:26:37 GMT

RAH mechanic Tom Popernack and Craig Moffatt, a Republic pilot who is President of Local 357, spoke at the recent Teamsters Unity Conference about the company’s anti-worker actions. The Teamsters adopted a hard hitting resolution calling for a worker fight-back effort at Republic.

Slain Corrections Officer Jayme Biendl Honored During Police Week

17 May 2012 02:26:20 GMT

Hundreds of law enforcement officers and their families gathered for a ceremony in Washington, D.C. to honor fallen officers during this year’s National Police Week. Among them were the loved ones and colleagues of slain corrections officer Jayme Lee Biendl, a member of Local 117 whose name was added to the National Law Enforcement Memorial.

“It was a huge honor to be invited to come to Police Week,” said Paul Crosby, Biendl’s brother-in-law. Crosby was in D.C. with Biendl’s father, brother and sister, along with Sgt. Paul McDermott who worked with Biendl at the Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC) near Tukwila, Wash.

Biendl, an eight-year veteran of the Washington State Department of Corrections, was strangled and killed on January 29, 2011, by an inmate while monitoring the prison chapel at MCC.

Allied Waste Services Workers not retiring the picket line

17 May 2012 02:26:02 GMT

Instead of reporting to work, nearly 80 members of Teamsters Local 215 are spending their days picketing in front of their employer.

On Tuesday, May 8, Allied Waste Services of Evansville locked out all of its union employees after contract negotiations broke down and the union didn’t accept the company’s “last, best and final offer.”

The two sides differed on a retirement plan for the employees. Since 1969, the Teamsters have had a pension. Allied wants to pull out of the pension fund and start 401(k) plans for the employees, saying that the Central States Pension Plan that the union was utilizing was unstable.

[...]Chuck Whobrey, spokesperson for the Teamsters Local 215, said his goal in any contract negotiation is to get the best wages, terms and conditions of employment. During the most recent negotiations, he said the union never threatened a strike. In fact, he contacted Evansville officials saying that though the union was currently working without a contract, any stoppage in work would be on the part of the company and not the union.

“(It’s) about two main things, the largest being their insistence to pull out of our pension plan, which had been in since 1969, and replace it with a 401(k) that they would contribute nothing to unless the employees contributed something,” Whobrey said. “The other one is saying that we would not be able to honor picket lines in terms of any sympathy strike, which is a prohibition of our rights that we have had as long as we’ve had a contract there.”

Implementation of Colombia Trade Deal a New Low for Workers and the Environment

17 May 2012 02:25:45 GMT

It is oddly fitting that U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk would celebrate today’s implementation of the U.S.-Colombia trade deal at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After all, even as the U.S. government’s own projections showed that this pact and a similar one with Korea would increase the U.S. trade deficit, both USTR and the Chamber worked overtime to misrepresent this and other likely impacts.

At a time when nearly four out of ten Americans are unemployed or simply not participating in the labor force, it is unconscionable to implement a trade deal with Colombia – the unionist murder capital of the world. At a time when multinational mining and other extractive industries are displacing poor Colombians, it is unthinkable for this pact to privilege these same corporations with special rights to challenge Colombia’s social and environmental mitigation policies in supranational tribunals. The Colombian government’s own pre-pact assessment anticipated the likely consequence of this deal: rural Colombians “would have no more than three options: migration to the cities or to other countries (especially the United States), working in drug cultivation zones, or affiliating with illegal armed groups.''

The failed North American Free Trade Agreement has virtually identical rules as the Colombia pact, and we know how that worked out: increased job insecurity and more corporate attacks on public interest policies outside of national judicial systems. These rules weren’t a good idea when it came to Mexico: they’re even worse when it comes to Colombia.

Republicans Pledge New Standoff on Debt Limit

17 May 2012 02:25:29 GMT

Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday set the stage for a bruising election-year showdown on fiscal policy, vowing to hold up another increase in the federal debt ceiling unless it was offset by larger spending cuts.

His combative comments came on the same day the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, hit President Obama hard on his fiscal stewardship in a speech in Des Moines, suggesting that Mr. Romney and Congressional Republicans see an opening to attack the president on the mounting federal debt and the size of the government.

Romney's vampire capitalism

17 May 2012 02:25:07 GMT

Kansas City's GST Steel had been making steel rods for 105 years when Romney and his partners took control in 1993. They cut corners and extracted profit from the business at every turn, placing it deeply in debt. When the company eventually declared bankruptcy, workers not only lost their jobs but were denied their full pensions and health insurance, and the government was forced to step in and provide a bailout.

Teamsters know all about vampire capitalists like Mitt Romney. The executives who drove Hostess into the ground, for example, don't care about managing a healthy, profitable company. They just want to yank as much money as they can out of it before they drive it into the ground and kick the workers to the curb.

Scott Walker, dogged by Wisconsin jobs losses, finds new numbers he likes and releases them early

17 May 2012 02:24:47 GMT

What do you do if you're a governor just weeks away from a close election and widely reported government jobs numbers show that your state lost jobs last year, amounting to the worst jobs record in the country? If you're Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, you find some new numbers.

Walker is releasing Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages numbers for December 2010 to December 2011 six weeks ahead of time because by this measure, Wisconsin gained 23,321 jobs rather than having lost 33,900 jobs as the Current Employment Survey showed. While the Quarterly Census is generally considered more accurate than the Current Employment Survey, "states nearly always wait for the national release—or at least until the federal authorities review and revise the state data, a process meant to weed out mistakes that usually involve small changes."

More significantly, since Wisconsin alone is releasing its Quarterly Census numbers now, its results can't be compared to those of other states. Even with the turnaround from having lost jobs by one measure to having gained them by another, Wisconsin could still lag behind other states.

This about sums it up:

"It is, I think, stunning that Scott Walker has suddenly found 57,000 jobs and gone from negative to positive three weeks before an election," said Barrett campaign spokesman Phil Walzak. "The timing is enormously suspicious. . . . Clearly the governor is losing the argument on jobs with the people of Wisconsin, and he's now trotting out these new figures in an extremely unusual way."

Walker's Billionaire "Divide and Conquer" Backer, Diane Hendricks, Isn't Paying State Corporate Taxes

17 May 2012 02:24:24 GMT

It seems the billionaire Scott Walker-backer with whom the Governor shared his “divide and conquer” strategy toward unions can give $500,000 to her favorite anti-worker puppet despite not paying a cent in state corporate income tax between the years of 2005 and 2008, the most recent years with records to show.

Diane Hendricks, the owner of the Rock County ABC Supply, has outspent fellow billionaires Sheldon Adelson (Las Vegas casinos) and Richard DeVos (Amway) in the anti-recall cause to support Walker. Her main concern? Turning Wisconsin permanently into a “Red State” that adopts “Right-to-Work” philosophies.

According to the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, who recently investigated Hendricks, her large company employs limitless lawyers and uses tax loopholes to show zero profit. From their findings:

Hendricks, whom Forbes magazine says is worth $2.8 billion, heads Beloit-based ABC Supply Company, which the magazine calls “the nation’s largest roofing, window and siding wholesale distributor” with annual sales approaching $5 billion.
ABC Supply may be a huge money-maker for Hendricks, but the Wisconsin corporate income tax returns she files claim the company makes not a penny in taxable profit.
ABC Supply paid exactly $0.00 in state corporate income tax in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, according to the state Department of Revenue. Tax data for more recent years were not available when the information was requested from the department.

NLRB mulls reviving speedy union-vote rule

17 May 2012 02:22:16 GMT

The National Labor Relations Board said it is studying its options on how to “move forward” after a court struck down the agency’s controversial rule to speed up union-representation elections earlier this week, because of what unions are calling a technicality.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s ruling invalidating the rule clearing the way for what critics call “quickie” union votes was the latest in a string of setbacks for the agency, but the fight might not be over.

“We continue to believe that the amendments represent a significant improvement in our process and serve the public interest by eliminating unnecessary litigation,” NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce said in a statement Tuesday. “We are determined to move forward.”

Union Rights Are Civil Rights

17 May 2012 02:22:06 GMT

The right of U.S. workers to organize and bargain collectively with their employers unhindered by employer or government interference has been a legal right since the 1930s. Yet there are workers who are unaware of that, and employers who aim to keep them unaware, meanwhile doing their utmost to keep them from exercising what is a basic civil right.

Many employers often claim working people are in any case not much interested in unionization, noting that less than 15 percent of workers currently belong to unions.

But as anyone who has looked beneath the employer claims has discovered, it's the illegal opposition of employers and the failure of government regulatory agencies to curtail the opposition that's the basic cause of the low rate of unionization.

If most workers do indeed oppose unionization, then what of the recent polls decisively showing otherwise? And why do so many employers go to the considerable trouble and expense of waging major campaigns against unionization? Why do they take such illegal actions as firing or otherwise penalizing union supporters?

Could it be that union campaigners might be able to persuade workers to vote for unionization, despite what their employers might have to say? Or despite employer threats to punish them for voting union?

Union to highway bill conferees: Steer clear of government workers' pensions

17 May 2012 02:21:59 GMT

A union that represents federal workers is urging members of the committee of lawmakers who are attempting to negotiate a new federal transportation bill to not take money from government pensions to help facilitate a deal.

The Washington-based National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said Monday that 47-member conference committee that started negotiations on a new multi-year transportation should look other for revenue to fund road and transit projects than the retirement plans of federal employees.

"Further cuts to federal compensation will seriously impair the government’s ability to attract or retain talented employees and should not even be under consideration in this conference committee,” NTEU President Colleen Kelley wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

IN Toll Road Privatization Backfiring as Daniels Departs, but OH Still Considering the Same Path

17 May 2012 02:21:45 GMT

With Governor Mitch Daniels’ term ending in January, Indianans are looking to a fresh crop of candidates — Republican Mike Pence, Democrat John Gregg and Libertarian Rupert Boneham — to provide innovative answers for how to fund highway construction projects. Daniels’ privatization bug resulted in the lease of Indiana’s toll road to a foreign consortium for $3.5 billion. The 75-year deal netted the funds needed for Daniels’ 10-year construction plan but, as is often the case with toll road privatization, the situation is now a bit bungled with funds already low and options tapped out. Many are realizing that Indiana has a major problem that forthcoming Governors are going to deal with for decades.

Romney Flips Back To Claim That Bain Capital Created 100,000 Jobs

17 May 2012 02:21:30 GMT

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is back to claiming that his former private equity firm, Bain Capital, helped create at least 100,000 jobs, telling conservative radio host Ed Morrisey that “we were able to help create over 100,000 jobs.” The Romney campaign used the 100,000 number at the outset of the campaign, then admitted it was bogus, started using it again, couldn’t answer challenges from reporters, and finally gave the number a massive downgrade to a mere “thousands” earlier this week. There’s still no evidence backing up the claim, other than a right-wing editorial endorsing Romney. An ad from Romney’s 1994 Senate campaign, meanwhile, claimed that the firm created 10,000 jobs — though there’s little evidence to support that either.

House Republicans threaten nuclear workers' safety

17 May 2012 02:21:19 GMT

Some of the most hazardous job sites for workers in the nation are the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons facilities. But House Republicans are pushing extreme proposals in the Defense Authorization bill to deregulate worker safety and allow employers self–regulation and self-oversight — even at the most hazardous facilities.

The House is expected to begin debate on the bill today (May 16) and vote by the end of the week.