For the first time, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is asking a federal judge to end 25 years of strict oversight intended to root out corruption and alleged Mafia influence in the union's highest ranks.

"The union's rank-and-file members and duly elected officers should be allowed to reclaim control of their union's affairs," Teamsters lawyer Viet Dinh wrote in a June 4 letter to Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Federal prosecutors indicated in their response that they would support scaling back government control over the union but not eliminating the measures.

"Corrupt and undemocratic practices persist at all levels of the union," Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara La Morte wrote in a June 12 letter to the judge.

A union spokesman disagreed with that assertion.

The 1.3 million-member Teamsters entered into a consent decree in 1989 to settle a racketeering lawsuit brought a year earlier by the Justice Department.

In the suit, then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani alleged the union had made a "devil's pact" with the Mafia by allowing it to control officer elections. The suit named as defendants 18 members of the union's executive board and 26 alleged organized-crime members, 25 of whom had been convicted of crimes such as extortion, embezzlement and illegal union payoffs.

The union agreed to oversight, including a court-appointed supervisor who oversees the election of top Teamster officers and an independent review board to investigate allegations of corruption.

There is no clear timeline for the case. The union and prosecutors still have to file motions that would precede a hearing.

In addition, a rank-and-file group called the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a frequent critic of current union President James P. Hoffa, is fighting the effort. The union "has made progress, but it is not yet a stable and reliable democracy," the group wrote on June 9 to the judge.

Teamster officials have lobbied unsuccessfully in the past for an end to the decree, including through negotiations with the Clinton administration.

The current effort grew out of talks with the U.S. attorney's office that didn't result in an agreement, Teamsters spokesman Bret Caldwell said. "The effort to rid the union of organized crime has been successful, and it's time to move on," he said.

The union retained two legal heavyweights who served under President George W. Bush: Paul Clement, former U.S. Solicitor General, and Mr. Dinh, former assistant attorney general.

Mr. Dinh wrote that charges investigated by the review board, which doesn't have prosecutorial power and refers cases back to the Teamsters for disciplinary action, have plummeted. Cases that involved alleged racketeering or other activity that prompted the consent decree fell to 33 in the past decade, from 144 in the first five years of the consent decree, he wrote.

Prosecutors said that misconduct by Teamsters was far from sporadic in recent years and alleged that it involved high-ranking officers. They cited several examples, including a Teamster local president and his son who were found by the review board's investigator to allegedly have looted the local from 2007 to 2012 and was disciplined by the union for embezzlement, among other things.

The local president was also a vice president of the international union for part of the time in which the misconduct occurred, prosecutors said.

"We vehemently disagree with the U.S. attorney's assertions that corruption remains in the teamsters union," Mr. Caldwell said. He said the cases the U.S. attorney points to aren't related to organized crime or its influence, the reason for entering into the consent decree.

President Barack Obama supported ending the consent decree in 2008 when he was a candidate for president. At the time, a spokesman for the then-candidate said organized-crime influence had drastically declined. On Tuesday, a White House spokesman declined to comment on the case and referred questions to the Justice Department.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York said the office had no comment beyond the letter it has filed with the judge.

The Teamsters rank-and-file group, the TDU, has backed candidates who unsuccessfully have challenged Mr. Hoffa, who became president in 1999 and is serving his fourth term.

Most recently, Mr. Hoffa won re-election in 2011 with 60% of the vote against two candidates, including one backed by the TDU.

Ken Paff, national organizer with the group, said the consent decree is still important to ensure fair elections for top officers.

"Hoffa claims the union has improved, and we agree," Mr. Paff said. "But it's improved precisely because the consent order guarantees those elections."

Leslie Orear, a lifelong labor activist, died in Chicago on May 30 at the age of 103. After entering the Chicago stockyards at a time when the idea of unions for blue-collar workers was spreading like wildfire, Orear quickly emerged as a voice for stockyard workers.

Leslie Orear started in the giant packing house’s sweet-pickle shipping department in 1932, tying string onto hunks of bacon. It was often hot and stunk, and the pay was a measly 32.5-cents an hour.

Click here to read more at In These Times.

May 29, 2014: Other than endorsing mom or apple pie, rarely does a proposed law pass both legislative houses and get signed by the governor in less than one hour. But that happened two days ago in Michigan: the law raised the minimum wage in four steps to $9.25 by January 1, 2018.

But that isn’t the news here. The news is, the governor and the bill’s sponsors are totally against raising the minimum wage! One legislator who voted for it told the press he is opposed to any minimum wage at all, because we need our wages competitive with China’s.

How did it happen?

The very day this passed, an organization called Raise Michigan was about to submit 300,000 signatures to put a raise to $10.10 on the November ballot. Polls show it passing handily, despite the opposition of the governor, corporations, and big money.

So the Republican legislative leaders and governor came up with a trick: they repealed the minimum wage law which the ballot initiative would amend, thus aiming to block the people’s right to vote on the initiative. Then they quickly passed their watered down version in this election year.

The lesson: these minimum wage initiatives are so powerful, even corporate-bought politicians may have to get half-way on board, when faced with a grassroots campaign. We need more such campaigns, all across the country, backed by unions and community groups. And we need to aim higher than $10.10. 

Schneider Logistics will pay $21 million to settle a class-action civil lawsuit brought by about 1,800 Southern California dockworkers who claimed they were not paid properly.

A “notice of proposed settlement” was filed May 13 in the U.S. District Court of Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles, and was signed by lawyers for Schneider, Wal-Mart Stores and the plaintiffs. Terms of the settlement were worked out after two days of nonbinding mediation between the parties in San Francisco.

A final arrangement still must be certified by Snyder and probably will take effect at the end of this year or in early 2015, said Theresa Traber, lead attorney for Everado Carrillo and other members of the litigation class.

Schneider Logistics, a division of trucking and logistics company Schneider of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has run Wal-Mart’s Mira Loma distribution center in Riverside County since 2006. Schneider also hired two smaller logistics companies, who in turn hired the dockworkers, or lumpers, who eventually started the legal action.

The case was filed in 2011 based on actions dating to 2001.

Schneider ranks No. 10 on the Transport Topics Top 50 list of logistics companies in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

It’s 6 a.m. in Chicago, and the bitingly cold, drizzly weather seems oblivious to the fact that it’s May 15th. And yet, a crowd of more than 100 people wearing red ponchos has formed outside of a McDonald’s restaurant downtown, where they’re dancing to mariachi music. 

“Fifteen and a union!” cries someone over a bullhorn.

Today, these protesters have joined fast-food employees in an estimated 150 American cities who walked off the job, according to organizers from the two-year-old Fight for 15 campaign. They're demanding a $15-an-hour minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. And such momentum isn’t limited to the United States. Workers have staged strikes or other actions to demonstrate global solidarity in cities on six continents.

In Chicago, workers striking at McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s traveled downtown to the Rock N Roll McDonald’s—a colossal restaurant-museum that was once one of the busiest McDonald’s restaurants in the country—accompanied by many fellow fast-food workers who were not on strike, but were still demonstrating for the same demands. 

“I’m out here because we're sick and tired of the poverty wages that they’re giving us,” says Adriana Alvarez, who works at a McDonald’s on the South Side of Chicago. “We’ve got people who’ve worked there 10, 15 years and they’re still getting $8.50 an hour. It's unfair.”

Alvarez heard about the Fight for 15 campaign this year after an organizer spoke with her in the parking lot of her workplace. “Ever since then ... I got really involved,” she says, noting that this is her first time on strike. 

The campaign to win $15 an hour for fast-food workers has no official history. The first major demonstration, though, took place in November 2012, when workers in New York City walked off the job on a one-day, non-union strike—the now-signature move of the Fight for 15 campaign, which is backed by the Service Employees International Union. TheNew York Times called it “the biggest wave of job actions in the history of America’s fast-food industry.”

On August 29, 2013, the first nationally coordinated strikes took place in 60 cities; a few months later in December, fast-food employees walked off the job in 100 cities. As for today’s events, though no official count has been made, organizers say they planned walkouts in 150 American cities along with solidarity actions in more than 30 other countries—making it the largest event to date of the fast-food worker campaign.

As the movement has gained more media attention, debate around raising the minimum wage has surfaced on a policy level, too. The Vermont legislature voted this week to hike the state minimum wage up to $10.50 an hour, so far the highest in the country. In Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray is backing a $15 municipal minimum wage, more than $5 more than the current minimum. And President Obama himself recently went so far as to push—but fail to pass—an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10.

Activists credit the national Fight for 15 campaign for many of these initiatives, citing the fact, for example, that Obama announced his minimum wage agenda on the eve of the December strikes. They also point out that Murray came out with his plan for Seattle's increase “quite late in the game.”

According to Jess Spear of Seattle’s 15 Now campaign, “There was a number of factors that led to [Murray’s plan], one of which, of course, is the brave fast-food workers who went out on strike in May 2013 here in Seattle, and then they did that again in August.” Spear notes that both actions took place “during an election year for the City Council seats in Seattle as well as the mayoral election.”

Seattle fast-food workers went out on strike again today, in conjunction with workers in New York, Miami, Orlando, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Boston and Phoenix, among other cities. 

Meanwhile, the global strikes and actions, which included protests in Switzerland, the Philippines, Japan and New Zealand, were coordinated earlier this month at an international conference in New York City called by the federation of unions known as IUF (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations). 

One of the conference’s attendees, Joe Carolan, who helped organize demonstrations in Auckland, New Zealand, said in a statement, “New Zealand is one of very few countries that have union agreements covering fast food workers. Many of the conditions workers in other countries are struggling to win—we have already achieved here. We are taking action today to support Fast Food workers in the [United States] and other countries who are fighting for these same conditions.”

In response to the protests, McDonald’s spokesperson Heidi Barker Sa Shekhem contends that the hamburger chain offers “competitive pay based on the local marketplace and job level”.

She continues, “McDonald’s and our owner-operators are committed to providing our respective employees with opportunities to succeed, and we have a long, proven history of providing advancement opportunities for those who want [them].” She also notes that “approximately 80 percent of our global restaurants are independently owned and operated by small business owners, who are independent employers that comply with local and federal laws.”

Although one of the demands of today’s international action is for the right to form a union without retaliation from the company, Barker Sa Shekhem maintains that McDonald’s workers already have that: “We respect the right of employees to choose whether or not they want to unionize.” Organizers with the Chicago Fight for 15 say that this is not the reality, at least when it comes to many franchises around the country.

Barker Sa Shekhem adds that “to right-size the headlines, the events taking place [today] are not strikes. Outside groups have traveled to McDonald’s and other outlets to stage rallies.”

While it is true, however, that in Chicago workers who walked off their job this morning were joined by community supporters at a central McDonald’s, several workers confirmed that they were scheduled to work at either McDonald’s or Burger King today but had not gone to work in order to strike. 

One of these strikers, Regis Harris, was a no-show at his Burger King job at 78th Street and Columbus Drive, where he hasn’t had a raise in a year. Harris “decided to come on out” because “you can’t live off [minimum wage]. You can’t even pay the heat in the wintertime in the house ... for $8.50 an hour.” 

He says this uncertainty requires him to keep up several jobs at a time: lawn care, snow removal, painting, dry-walling and electrical work, to name just a few. He believes $15 an hour would help him feel more secure and independent.  

 “I could pay my bills. I could make my own bills,” he jokes. “It would help everybody out.”

The first real test of how the Convention Center will operate under its new work rules will come Thursday afternoon, when the 2014 BIO World Congress of Industrial Biotechnology wraps up its three-day conference.

That's when, instead of having the usual full array of six Convention Center unions to dismantle the show, the work will be done by members of the four unions that met a May 5 deadline to sign a new Customer Satisfaction Agreement.

Click here to read more at Philly.com
 

AB InBev is a giant transnational food company which claims to support human rights in the workplace.  In fact, it's a member of the United Nations Global Compact which calls on companies to guarantee freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

But in Mexico, those rights are being violated at Industria Vidriera del Potosí, a subsidiary of Grupo Modelo-AB InBev where in 2008  220 workers were dismissed for forming an independent trade union.  Since 2008, the company has unfairly dismissed a further 600 workers for supporting their independent union and consistently pressured workers to join an alternative organization. In addition, the dismissed workers and their families have been blacklisted because of efforts to defend their employment and human rights. 

Two global union federations -- the IUF and IndustriALL -- are calling on AB InBev to reinstate the sacked workers, respect their union rights, recognize their union and end harassment of union members.  Please take a minute to support their campaign:

Click here to read more and sign a petition in support of this campaign.

May 12, 2014: New video shows how Local 804 members teamed up with community allies, customers, elected officials, and other public supporters to stand up to UPS.

It was noisy and, at times, nasty as laborers, electrical workers, and stagehands walked into the heavily guarded employees-only entrance of the Pennsylvania Convention Center this morning, led by their union representatives.  Members of Teamsters’ Local 107 –- one of the two unions locked out -– shouted at their union brothers for crossing their picket line.

The teamsters and Carpenters’ Union Local 8 are locked out for failing to meet the convention center management’s deadline to sign new work rules (see previous story).

IBEW president John Dougherty marched a group of electricians and stagehands into the labor entrance at the convention center along 11th Street, near Race Street. The electrical workers and three other unions signed on to work rule changes (see related story) before the management-imposed deadline.

The carpenters and teamsters claim they turned in a signed copy of the deal last week as their contract extension was about to expire.  Management, however, said that failed to meet their deadline of last Monday and that the other unions would pick up the work formerly done by the two unions.