Top 12 Stories This Week: Walmart to Close, MLK, Gutting Unions

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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: 1. A&P Sells 3 Sites to Acme...Greenway brand to Allegiance 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. 2. The Huffington Post has Unionized 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." Related: Look inside Gawker's Negotiations for first Union Contract

3. What it Means to Have Work 'Anytime, Any day of the Week' Scheduling has become the number 1 issue in our new economy.

4. Chain of Convenience Stores invests $15 million to Raises Wages without Cutting Hours 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. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/workplace/article47761650.html#storylink=cpy “We believe that paying wages at the upper end of the retail scale is necessary to achieve that goal.”

5. UFCW Endorses Hillary Clinton for President 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."

6. Immigrants or Executives: Who is to blame for Wage Stagnation?

7. How Defunding Public Unions will Diminish Our Democracy 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.

8. Will the Supreme Court Defund & Gut Public Unions? This major case will change the landscape for unions in our country forever; all union members must pay close attention. Related: Economist: Supreme Court Poised to Strike Unions

9. Workers & Wages...What Henry Ford Understood 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.

10. With Public Sector Unions On The Rocks, Middle Class May Take Another Hit New calculations quantify how much the decline of unions contributes to economic inequality.

11. Income Inequality Shows No Signs of Slowing Down in the U.S. Related: How can companies better care for 'low-wage' workers? What does a changing grocery industry mean to our union? 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 Humans of New York “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.