teamsters health insurance

LaborNews
News and information about workers and their search for better working conditions, salaries, benefits, and a better lifestyle.

• Farmworkers war over wages
  Tomato farming is tough work for the pickers and the growers. A University of Florida study showed that neither the workers' wages nor the wholesale price of tomatoes has risen for 30 years when adjusted for inflation.
• American workers: cheap, disposable, and powerless.
  If workers go on strike, Delphi can hire new employees and then fire them before their 90-day probation period is up, about the time Chiaravalli expects Delphi to need to reach an agreement with unions.
• Struggle for the rights to a voice at work
  Perhaps not by chance, on May 1st, when the world had it's eyes on the fate of workers in the US, an agreement was signed giving 450 poverty-wage janitors the right to form a union and raise living standards for their families.
• It felt like a democratic country again
  May 1st 2006 felt like I was living in a democratic country again. Small restaurants, mom and pop stores like panaderias and mercados, body shops and garages, nail parlors and beauty salones were all closed.
• May 1st: Workers raise their voices
  Some of those with the most to lose economically are staunchly dedicated to the work boycott. At the Home Depot in Mission Valley this week, day laborers waiting for work in the parking lot said they didn't plan to be there May 1.
• May Day: To work or not to work
  Like a train without brakes, plans for an immigrant work and school boycott on May 1 continue to build steam across the nation. But some prominent pro-immigrant leaders and groups, including the Archdiocese of Denver, are urging immigrants to go to work and school on May 1.
• Coalition of clergy embraces strikers
  Nearly two months into a strike by janitors at the University of Miami, a determined band of South Florida clergy has rallied religious support for workers that crosses traditional faith boundaries.
• Where will the teachers live?
  If passed, the legislation could usher in a new era of segregated housing. A throwback in many ways to the early 20th century model of company towns, these new communities would cluster young teachers into living arrangements governed by etiquette and laws not yet established.
• Job security, French style
  In the UK there is no "right to strike", only immunity against legal recourse providing a lengthy balloting process is followed. In France they have the right to take immediate industrial action and solidarity action to challenge company decisions. In France the right to strike is included in the constitutional rights of all workers.
• Top best jobs
  "People were really looking for more flexibility and less stress," he said. "That just got pounded into our heads." The top three complaints of stress were too much work at 28 percent, no room for advancement at 20 percent and deadlines, also at 20 percent.
• Bargaining in good faith
  With an overwhelming strike authorization vote in hand, and a bankruptcy judge's decision pending, Delta Comair flight attendants represented by Teamsters Local 513 today called on the airline to return to the bargaining table and negotiate a good-faith settlement.
• Target stores: Wal-Mart lite
  In contrast to this image, critics say that in terms of wages and benefits, working conditions, sweatshop-style foreign suppliers, and effects on local retail communities, big box Target stores are very much like Wal-Mart, just in a prettier package.
• Killer Cola
  A recent independent investigation into the alleged human rights abuses at Coke's bottling plants in Colombia, led by New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate, verified 179 separate human rights abuses at Coke bottling plants in Colombia.
• Taxes and death, two sure things
  Obviously those who have something to say about our regressive tax system are outnumbered, and discouraged. Unfortunately, tax and wealth distribution fairness is another victim of the week. A deadly victim, such as so many hardworking men and woman around the country.
• Peoples' ideas for tax reform - 2
  To fix the problems with our tax system, the participants of ''Since Sliced Bread'' proposed many idea, some of which we presented yesterday. Today, we bring you a few more of a sampling that represents some of them.
• Peoples' ideas for tax reform - 1
  There is strong consensus that our present tax system is unfair to those who work hardest in America and robs average citizens of a voice; that it rewards bad behavior and doesn't do enough to encourage what is right.
• Guest workers get improved contract
  ''This is the first national agreement that we're aware of, that's ever dealt with workers or guest workers in this country,'' Arturo Rodriguez, UFW president
• School Lunches: Unsafe at Any Eating
  Once again we see how with the government in the hands of corporation, not only workers loose their rights and their livelihood. Our children loose too.
• Myths about outsourcing
  Cheaper labor is not the real cost problem. Other costs are. These costs are driven by management and egos of management. The first place to streamline and downsize is in administration, management and corporate expenses.
• Why Kansas votes republican
  Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. The newspaper's tax cut analysis showed that more than 70 percent of the tax savings on investment income went to the top 2 percent of the population, about 2.6 million taxpayers; that is, the same number of Kansas residents, as reported by the U.S. Sensus Bureau in 2000.
• Guest workers and immigration bill: Labor speaks out
  The AFL-CIO announced yesterday that it finds itself in a different possition from the Change-to-Win coalition regarding the issues. The AFL-CIO has rejected the inclusion of a guest worker program in the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill that "by their very nature harm the interests of foreign -- and U.S.-born workers alike," but the Change-to-Win coalition supports the guest-worker program in the bill, although it says it will strive to add a series of needed protections for temporary immigrant workers.
• Higher salaries are better for businesses, dah!
  ''FPI's new evidence shows that a higher minimum wage not only benefits workers but can spur economic growth that benefits small business owners,'' said KRC labor economist Mark Price. ''Increases in labor costs are offset by savings from lower recruitment and training costs and by greater revenue from increased sales.''
• The role of free trade in immigration and labor
  Protecting the rural sector from cheap, highly subsidized, US agricultural products would help reestablish livelihoods on small farms, allow people to stay on the land and preclude the need to migrate to survive.
• A call for responsible immigration legislation
  The Teamsters Union supports measures passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee that include smart border security measures, as well as earned legalization for the 12 million undocumented workers in the country who are essential to our economy and communities.
• NY wages are up: Not such a good news
  "The study points out that wages in the region have not kept up with inflation," said Michael L. Dolfman, regional commissioner of the bureau. Annual inflation in the region, reached 4.4 percent in March 2005.
• Whistleblower Must Be Reinstated
  The U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit Boston, upheld findings made by the Labor Department in which it found Vieques Air Link Inc. (VAL) violated the whistleblower provisions Act when the pilot was suspended and later fired after he brought up safety concerns to his employer and the Federal Aviation Administration in March 2002.
• Nonprofit Hospitals: Healthcare the way it should be
  Michigan's nonprofit community hospitals provided more than $1 billion in uncompensated care and in the unreimbursed costs of government programs (such as Medicaid and Medicare) and more than $327 million in free or reduced-fee community-based programs in fiscal year 2004 (the most recent year for which data is available),
• Food for childr