Austin Alonzo Kansas City Business Journal May 06, 2013 View the original piece If YRC Worldwide Inc.’s stock price is any indicator, Wall Street is pleased with the company’s recent performance. Bloomberg named the Overland Park less-than-truckload carrier (Nasdaq: YRCW) as one of its top 10 stocks to watch after it announced a positive operating income of $9.9 million in their first quarter earnings report on Friday. It's the first time the company posted a...

Raw Story May 02, 2013 View the original piece Hundreds of thousands of garment workers walked out of their factories in Bangladesh Thursday, police said, to protest the deaths of 200 people in a building collapse, in the latest tragedy to hit the sector. Grief turned to anger as the workers, some carrying sticks, blockaded key highways in at least three industrial areas just outside the capital Dhaka, forcing factory owners to declare a day’s...

Jane Slaughter Labor Notes May 01, 2013 View the original piece Since 2006, May Day in the United States has come to mean immigrants’ rights. That was the year millions of people marched to stop a bill that would have made undocumented immigrants (and anyone who helped them) felons. Many took the day off work to march—making that May Day the largest political strike in U.S. history. Those immigrant marchers from Latin America undoubtedly knew...

Making Change at Walmart April 30, 2013 View the original piece Last week on April 24th, hundreds of Walmart workers in 200 stores stood up to demand that Walmart honor its public commitment to be more consistent, transparent, and fair in scheduling shifts and hours for workers. They were joined by over 10,000 people taking action online. Walmart heard their calls. On the same day, Walmart posted an explanation of why workers have yet to...

Mark Solomon DC Velocity May 01, 2013 View the original piece Teamster union workers at UPS Inc. will receive wage increases totaling $3.80 an hour over the next five years, under a tentative contract agreement made late last week between union leaders and the Atlanta-based company, according to a communiqué issued over the weekend by Teamster dissident group Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). The wage increases will be spread over seven separate payments starting...

David Bacon The Progressive April 29, 2013 View the original piece Seven hundred workers have died in factory fires in Bangladesh since 2005, including the 112 who burned to death or jumped to their deaths at the Tazreen factory on November 24th. Now hundreds more bodies are being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building, in an industrial district 18 miles from Dhaka. At Tazreen the owners didn’t build fire escapes. They’d locked...

Mark Solomon DC Velocity April 26, 2013 View the original piece UPS Inc. and leaders of the Teamsters Union late last night reached tentative five-year labor contracts covering nearly 250,000 unionized employees at UPS and the company's less-than-truckload (LTL) unit, UPS Freight. The tentative agreements, which still must be ratified by the rank-and-file, covers about 240,000 Teamster members working in Atlanta-based UPS' small-package operations and another 10,000 to 12,000 union workers at UPS Freight. Combined,...

Jeff Berman Logistics Management April 25, 2013 View the original piece Less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation services provider YRC Worldwide (YRCW) said this week that the network optimization—or change of operations—plan, which was submitted in March to the company’s union leadership, has been formally approved. YRCW officials said that that the network optimization is a key component of YRC Freight’s strategy to continuously improve customer service by reducing the handling of shipments and excess time in transit. ...

Bloomberg News April 25, 2013 View the original piece United Parcel Service, the world’s largest package-delivery company, posted higher first- quarter earnings than analysts estimated as deliveries of online purchases increased. Adjusted profit of $1.04 a share topped the average $1.01 estimated by analysts, and the Atlanta-based company reiterated its full-year forecast of $4.80 to $5.06. Analysts had projected $4.99 for the year, the average of 30 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. UPS is benefiting...

Steve Annear Boston Daily April 22, 2013 View the original piece So far, the Westboro Baptist Church hasn't followed through with their threats to picket memorial services and ceremonies held for the victims and families impacted by the Boston Marathon bombings. But another group of locals showed up in Medford on Monday—just in case—and formed a human shield to block them. According to a press release distributed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the...