Steven Ashby Chicago Tribune 27, 2012 View the original piece Teachers go on strike in Chicago and Lake Forest. Chicago symphony musicians walk out. Machinists walk picket lines in Joliet, and Wal-Mart warehouse workers stop working in Elwood. Gov. Pat Quinn gets chased from the state fair by angry government workers, and talk of a state workers strike is rumbling. "There's something happening here. What it is, ain't exactly clear," wrote Stephen Stills in a...

BNA Daily Labor Report 27, 2012 View the original piece Members of a proposed bargaining unit covering some 400 workers at a Coca-Cola Co. bottling plant in Fort Worth, Texas, voted against representation by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the National Labor Relations Board has announced. In an NLRB-supervised election conducted Sept. 19, a bargaining unit of all production workers, voted 215-191 against representation by IBT, an NLRB representative told BNA Sept. 20. The election...

David Ashenfelter: Detroit Free Press 27, 2012 View the original piece Police will be taking soil core samples at a home in Roseville on Friday in search of the remains of missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, whose 1975 disappearance sparked one of the 20th century’s biggest mysteries. “We received information from an individual who saw something,” Roseville Police Chief James Berlin told the Free Press. “The information seemed credible, so we decided to follow up...

Laurel J. Sweet Boston Herald 25, 2012 View the original piece A construction worker prosecutors characterized as a leg-breaker for a rogue crew of Teamsters will remain jailed while U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein decides whether releasing him imperils the victims he’s accused of pummeling to a pulp and frightening out of pressing charges. With his eight-months pregnant wife looking on at his 90-minute detention hearing yesterday, a fidgety Joseph “Jo Jo”...

Lynn Thompson The Seattle Times 25, 2012 View the original piece Some Seattle residents and businesses will see a refund on their garbage bill, their share of a $1.24 million settlement the city reached over the recent strike against Waste Management. Mayor Mike McGinn Tuesday announced the settlement with the trash giant over missed collections including recycling and yard waste during an eight-day strike last month by Teamster union drivers. Residential accounts will be credited...

Theresa Moran Labor Notes 20, 2012 View the original piece The Chicago Teachers Union has done the seemingly impossible. At a time when teachers are pilloried in the press and attacked by Democrats and Republicans alike, Chicago teachers walked out for seven days in a strike that challenged every tenet of the corporate agenda for overhauling education. Though on paper the strike was about teacher evaluations, in fact the battle was waged over conflicting visions...

Laurel J. Sweet And Dave Wedge Boston Herald 19, 2012 View the original piece Four former members of the Teamsters union are expected to appear in federal court today to answer charges they behaved like common thugs, committing multiple acts of extortion and racketeering while beating up and bullying their own brotherhood who tried to question their methods and leadership, authorities said. John Perry, 60, of Woburn, Joseph "Jo Jo" Burhoe, 44, of Braintree, James...

NBC News Staff and News Services NBC News 18, 2012 View the original piece A Wisconsin judge on Friday struck down the state law championed by Gov. Scott Walker that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers. Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas ruled Friday that the law violates the state and U.S. constitutions and is null and void. The law took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most workers and has been...

Barry Shlachter Fort Worth Star-Telegram 18, 2012 View the original piece The Coca-Cola Co. is opening all the spigots to keep the corporate-owned Fort Worth bottling plant from becoming its only unionized facility in the South.If a majority of voting employees cast ballots to join Teamsters Local 997 on Wednesday, it could flag an important victory by organized labor over the soft drinks giant. Some 427 workers would be covered."It would be earth-shattering," said Ben...

Steven Greenhouse The New York Times 13, 2012 View the original piece John Greene worked for 30 years at an Oscar Mayer plant in Madison, Wis., deboning hams and loading boxes of hot dogs. His 401(k) plan grew to $60,000, and soon after retiring he began withdrawing $3,600 a year from it, money that allowed him and his wife to take what he called a wondrous two-week trip to Scotland, his ancestral homeland. But when...