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Local and National News
Tribune offering buyouts after hedge fund becomes largest shareholder
Jan. 15, 2020 | Tribune Publishing, the parent company of the Chicago Tribune, [the Baltimore Sun] and the struggling New York Daily News, is offering voluntary buyouts to [non-union] employees with eight or more years of service, it announced on Monday. “Although our digital successes provide good momentum, we continue to face industry-wide revenue challenges,” Tim Knight, president and CEO of Tribune Publishing, said in an email to employees at all nine Tribune newspapers. “Further, to reduce expenses and avoid turning to company-wide reductions of the workforce as a last resort, the company is offering this voluntary separation incentive plan to all eligible employees with eight or more years of company service.” NY PostLocal 992 UPS driver created wildly popular ‘UPS Dogs’ social media pages
Jan. 7, 2020 | When Sean McCarren, 44, started having little four-legged “fans” follow him around on his UPS route, he decided to start taking their photos. After collecting more than 60 pictures of dogs on his phone, he posted one on his personal Facebook page in 2013 just for fun. “Everybody got all excited about it, so I just went ahead and made a little Facebook page to share them all,” said McCarren, who lives in Martinsburg, W.Va., and works out of the Hagerstown UPS center. After he established the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages, other UPS drivers started posting dogs that they see on their travels delivering packages. There were steady posts for several years, then in 2017, the pages took off. “It just went viral,” McCarren said… Herald Media [McCarren, right, has been a member of Teamsters Local 992 in Hagerstown, MD since 2002.] Hoffa: New year brings big responsibility for voters
Jan. 3, 2020 | Today, America begins a very important year in its existence. Over the next 11 months, voters will decide who they want to lead this country and what they want its future to look like. The process will be tumultuous. But it is a critical decision that will have long-lasting implications for all who call this great nation home. The Teamsters are taking its role in helping to shape this country’s path forward seriously… Detroit NewsOlder news items can be viewed at 888 News.
Elsewhere in The News
Jan. 27, 2020 | HEALTHCARE | […] In interviews with NBC News, many national union leaders say there is one big issue possibly standing in the way of their members’ full-throated support for some of those candidates: proposed "Medicare for All" plans that would eliminate private insurance. Among the biggest concerns is the potential elimination of private insurance…Unions typically negotiate better health care for their members than what non-unionized workers receive. They will sometimes forgo pay increases in exchange for better benefits, including strong health care coverage, low-cost medical plans, and pensions… NBC News
• Podcast: Educating Teamster kids
• 2019 was the year tech workers organized
• MLK’s thoughts on the labor movement, unions
• Why do so many US workers fall to their deaths?
• The sitcom that gets America’s working class
• Rising temperatures put more US workers at risk
• Teamsters applaud passage of NJ legislation combatting worker misclassification
• Don’t let the government sell off the postal service
Jan. 22, 2020 | LEGISLATION | House Democrats are preparing to turn the focus back to their policy agenda now that impeachment has moved over to the Senate… Democratic leaders are aiming for a vote before President’s Day on Feb. 17 on major legislation to strengthen union bargaining and to enact tougher penalties on employers that retaliate against workers seeking to unionize. The bill, called the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, would prohibit employers from making workers attend meetings meant to dissuade them… The Hill
Jan. 22, 2020 | ACTIVISM | A decade that started with the worst recession in 75 years ended with a booming economy and record low unemployment rate. The “too big to fail” era also ushered in a new generation of workers far more progressive and activist than in the past. That’s a great thing for the labor movement. Certainly, young workers are concerned with the same issues that were the focus of those who came before them — fair wages for fair work, access to quality health care, and a stable pension that will enable a dignified retirement. But we are also more expansive in our approach fighting for workplace protections against harassment and discrimination, demanding LGBTQ+ rights, advocating for clean building practices and green investments that protect our environment and address climate change; and ensuring a healthy work-life balance for all employees… CommonWealth
Jan. 20, 2020 | ACTIVISM | In what would have been his 91st birthday, we celebrate the towering legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—his moral force as a faith leader, his devotion to nonviolent resistance and, of course, the sacrifices he made to end legalized segregation in the South. But there is an often-overlooked aspect of his work: Dr. King was one of his era’s most fearsome champions of working people coming together to organize, build power and improve their lives. Here is how he put it in a speech to the Illinois AFL-CIO convention in October 1965: “The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life…” The Root
