By Doug Cunningham
[Rich Trumka]: “Any candidate who wants to appeal to workers has to put forth a bold and comprehensive raising wages agenda.
We’ve created an agenda for shared prosperity that calls for raising wages. ..we can become a high-wage society, a society in which the people who do the work share the wealth that we create.”
In a major address Tuesday, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka laid out the standard working people will use to evaluate 2016 presidential candidates. Trumka says worker wages have stagnated for nearly two generations and it’s caused by the growing power of the wealthiest Americans to re-write our laws to serve them and not us. He says the economy – by design – is driving down wages to increase corporate profits.
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More than five thousand RN’s struck eight California hospitals for two days this week. The nurses’ strike was focused on calling for safe staffing levels as well as implementing steps to retain experienced RN’s.The nurses say management demands for cuts in health coverage for RN’s and their families is also a major concern of the striking nurses. Chicago nurses joined in the strike.
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Short haul port truck drivers struck the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach this week. WIN’s Monica Lopez reports from Long Beach.
Port truckers in Southern California entered their 3rd day of picketing on Wednesday. They’re striking to be recognized as employees by the companies they drive for.
Right now, drivers like Humberto Canales are classified as independent contractors. That means Canales rents the truck he drives from Pacer Cartage, and pays for it through deductions from his paycheck.
[Humberto Canales]: “Hice mil, tres ciento dólares para la compañía para el troque y todo, maintenance for the truck, mantenimiento para el troque, y gaso del troque. y mi cheque salió zero. (“I made one thousand, three hundred dollars for the company, for the truck and everything— maintenance for the truck and gas for the truck. And my check came out to zero.”
Canales’ paycheck stub from early March shows that he worked 48 hours for the week. It also shows a total of $710 and 96 cents in company deductions for truck fuel, license fee, liability, and rental of the truck itself.
Requests for an interview with Pacer’s parent company XPO Logistics were declined. Instead a written statement provided by a Pacer spokesman says their company “believes the vast majority of [drivers] value the significant benefits of operating independently” and the company is “ committed to helping them succeed.”-
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Labor negotiations will start soon at General Electric. UE 201 Business Agent Ric Casilli says it looks like GE will press for more concessions even though the company made $16 billion in profits in 2014. Casilli says there’s a big worker mobilization underway at the shop level to get the rank and file engaged in the talks. Casilli says there have to be improvements and no takeaways as workers look for a fair new labor contract at GE.
[Ric Casilli]: “GE has shut 24 plants since 1994. They’ve taken away our medical benefits – not taken them away totally – they’ve reduced the value of the benefit packages. And our pensions are suffering. And we’re just lookin’ for a fair and decent contract in those areas – medical, pension and job security.”