FEATURED
Cuomo
to Create $15 Minimum Wage for New York State Workers - See more at:
http://www.portside.org/2015-11-10/cuomo-create-15-minimum-wage-new-york-state-workers-2#sthash.mFP5LEwn.dpuf
Walmart to Close 269 Stores - Over 10,000 U.S. workers affected
154 stores will close in the United States, including their entire 102 Walmart Express small-format stores.
Read more here and more in depth at Supermarket News.
Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
WHAT'S NEWS THIS WEEK:
In court
documents filed this week, A&P said Acme had offered $1.3 million
for the leases of closed A&P stores located in Patterson, N.Y., and Boonton, N.J., as well as a wine and liquor store in Old Greenwich, Conn.
Welcome our newest brothers and sisters, @HuffPost, the largest digital media outlet to unionize. What's better? Management's
response: "Assuming a majority, we will recognize the union," she
continued. "We look forward to a great relationship with our union as we
work together to take The Huffington Post to new heights across the world."
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Scheduling has become the number 1 issue in our new economy. |
The
family-owned and operated chain of convenience stores and gas stations
announced plans to devote upwards of $15 million to increase employee
wages across the board. The company states in a press release that it’s doing so without cutting back on employee hours.
“We believe that paying wages at the upper end of the retail scale is necessary to achieve that goal.”
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This week President Perrone announced the UFCW's endorsement for President of the United States. “We
announce this endorsement with the full belief that the frustrations
felt by the American people are real, and that they deserve an America
where better wages and better benefits are enjoyed by all who help make
this nation great."
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This week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
The case pits the right of public employees to band together and form
effective unions to pursue the common interests of workers against the
free speech rights of dissenting public employees to abstain from
funding collective bargaining efforts with which they disagree.
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This major case will change the landscape for unions in our country forever; all union members must pay close attention.
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This month in 1914, Henry Ford doubled the wages of his production workers to $5 a day.
Adjusted for inflation, that would come out to $118.67 in 2015 dollars, almost $15 an hour for an eight-hour day (in 1926, Ford Motor
became one of the first major corporations to adopt a five-day, 40-hour
workweek). This applied to male workers and was extended to women in
1916.
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New calculations quantify how much the decline of unions contributes to economic inequality.
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Three
mergers between enormous grocery chains will change our entire
industry. They've created three new super chains that now employ over 1
million people in America. Mergers and the emergence of technology are
having a dramatic effect on workers lives. President Both sums up how
our union and industry needs to react.
Elsewhere & Out there:
Environment: If you haven't heard, Flint Michigan has an enormous water problem and now people are dying due to a 'cost-saving' measure. A federal probe has just been announced to investigate.
via Washington Post: The city of Flint, Mich., is in the midst of a water crisis several years in the making. The city opted out of Detroit's water supply and began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014,
part of a cost-saving move. Eighteen months later, in the fall of 2015,
researchers discovered that the proportion of children with
above-average lead levels in their blood had doubled.
Republican Debate: The NY Daily News responds to Ted Cruz's thoughts on New Yorkers.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
“Everyone has a
hard on for the union. They think we’re lazy or this or that, or maybe
that there’s mafia influence, but honestly I just think they don’t like the
little man having a voice. More and more construction sites are
non-union these days. Nobody wants to pay $30 an hour plus benefits if
an immigrant will do the same job for $14 an hour. And if everything
goes non-union, I might as well go work at McDonald’s because I’ll be
making the same amount of money. If the union collapses, I’m going to
lose my pension. The way pensions work-- each generation pays for the
previous generation. So without a new generation of union workers,
there’s not going to be any money left for me. And I’ll have to work
until I die.”
Thank You:
It's often a thankless job, so we'd like to say, thank you. And thank you for being a subscriber.
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