Tag Archives: Worker’s Rights

With Walkout and Rally Planned for Monday, Teachers’ Anger Over Low Pay and Lack of Funding Spreads to Colorado

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“Educators are fed up…Colorado has, year over year over year, significantly underfunded our public schools.

By Julia Conley, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 4-15-2018

Teachers in Arizona last week wore red during a “walk-in,” preceding a possible walkout, to demand school funding. Colorado teachers plan to do the same on Monday. (Photo: @SenQuezada29/Twitter)

Colorado’s teachers’ union expects more than 400 teachers at a rally that’s planned for Monday at the state’s Capitol in Denver.

Continue reading →

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Here We Go Again: Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Won’t Fix Anything

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Current trade agreements are great at creating more billionaires, not so much at protecting the interests of workers.

By David Korten. Published 4-13-2018 by YES! Magazine

 

On Thursday, President Trump flipped his position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, suggesting the U.S. might want to rejoin the pact. His announcement sent Wall Street indices shooting upward in jubilation and angered labor leaders. It left China—which has been sorting out how to respond to Trump’s announced steel and aluminum tariffs—even more bewildered as criticism grows of its “Made in China 2025” initiative to dominate the high-technology sector.

Trump’s about-face is especially striking given that exiting the TPP was a crucial plank in his economic agenda on the campaign trail and one of his first acts as president. That pledge played well to the frustrations of people who know the global economy is ripping them off and are understandably angry. Continue reading →

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Republicans Unveil Proposal to Push One Million Off Food Stamps

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“Rich people who don’t need it get lavish billion-dollar handouts from this president…The struggling poor, on the other hand, are going to see new work requirements attached to their $1.40-a-meal food stamp.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 4-13-2018

Social welfare advocates on Friday denounced a proposal included in a draft of the 2018 Farm Bill which would impose work requirements on most adults who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. The proposal represents the first concrete attempt by Republicans to erode the social safety net since President Donald Trump took office.

Critics said the plan showed blatant hostility toward the 42 million Americans who rely on the program, and that it would do nothing to “break the poverty cycle” as House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) claimed on Thursday. Continue reading →

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Confirming He ‘Does Not Give a Crap About Working People,’ Trump Proposes Rejoining TPP

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“In a series of broken promises Trump made to the working people of this country, rejoining the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership would be the biggest yet,” warned Sen. Bernie Sanders

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 4-12-2018

Photo: End the Illusion

As if his enormous tax cuts for the rich, attacks on the safety net, and efforts to help bosses steal their employees’ tips weren’t proof enough, President Donald Trump further demonstrated that he “does not give a crap about working people” on Thursday by telling lawmakers he is considering rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact he withdrew from last year and repeatedly derided as “terrible.”

In a statement responding to the news that Trump has directed his top economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to examine options for reentering the 11-nation accord, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen argued that the president’s move “could bring short term joy to Democratic campaign operatives” but would be yet another signal that Trump “cannot be trusted on anything.” Continue reading →

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On Equal Pay Day, New Study Shows Wage Gap Actually Growing for Women Under 40

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Advocates are demanding equitable policies such as paid parental leave and affordable childcare while also declaring “we must address harassment and discrimination!”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 4-10-2018

Several women’s advocacy groups marked Equal Pay Day by delivering a petition to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to demand the agency collect American employers’ pay data to accurately monitor the nation’s gender wage gap. (Photo: @AAUW/Twitter)

A new report released on Equal Pay Day shows that the gender wage gap has actually worsened for women under 40 in recent years, despite increased media attention on the issue alongside mounting demands that businesses and politicians crack down on workplace sexual harassment, which researchers have tied to pay inequality.

Pay ratio

“Despite the great awareness of the gender equity issue, there is evidence that we have lost ground on this important measure of equality,” said John Schwarz, chief executive of Visier, the workforce analytics firm that conducted the study. “These findings should be a wake-up call to business leaders.” Continue reading →

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Internal Memo Shows Sinclair Threatening Employees to Keep Mouths Shut About ‘Must-Read’ Scripts

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“Everything Sinclair gives us or forces upon us is met with uproar, but we have no choice,” one employee said

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 4-4-2018

“The new scripted ‘fake news’ segment caused a lot of anguish where I work,” one Sinclair journalist told the Huffington Post. (Screenshot: Deadspin.com)

Sinclair Broadcast Group really doesn’t want its employees talking to the press about the Trumpian “fake news” script it has recently been forcing local news anchors to recite.

This was made clear by a memo warning staff at the Sinclair-owned station KATU in Portland, Oregon that “giving statements to the media or sharing negative information about the company can have huge implications.” Continue reading →

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Uproar After Congress Sneaks Attack on Digital Privacy Rights Into Omnibus Spending Bill

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Attaching it to massive spending deal, lawmakers rush through controversial bill that allows law enforcement to hand over personal data without a warrant

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 3-22-2018

Critics of the CLOUD Act ” are rightfully pointing out that it jettisons current human rights protections in favor of vague standards that could gut individual rights.” (Photo: Electoric Frontier Foundation)

Buried in the 2,232-page omnibus spending bill that the U.S. House passed Thursday is a piece of legislation that digital privacy advocates warn “expands American and foreign law enforcement’s ability to target and access people’s data across international borders.”

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data or CLOUD Act (S. 2383 and H.R. 4943) would add an official provision for U.S. law enforcement to access “the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information” for people all across the globe, regardless of where they live and what that nation’s privacy laws dictate. It would also create a “backdoor” into Americans’ data, enabling the U.S. government to bypass its citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights to access and even use their data. Continue reading →

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‘Insidious’ and ‘Dangerous’: Digital Privacy Groups Issue Urgent Warning Over CLOUD Act

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Critics say the bill, which could be pushed through Congress this week, would enable U.S. authorities to skirt Fourth Amendment rights to collect Americans’ data and use it against them

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 3-19-2018

Critics warns that proposed federal legislation “would let police access our data without having to comply with the Fourth Amendment.” (Photo: Fight for the Future/Twitter)

Civil libertarians and digital rights advocates are alarmed about an “insidious” and “dangerous” piece of federal legislation that the ACLU warns “threatens activists abroad, individuals here in the U.S., and would empower Attorney General Sessions in new disturbing ways.”

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data or CLOUD Act (S. 2383 and H.R. 4943), as David Ruiz at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explains, would establish a “new backdoor for cross-border data [that] mirrors another backdoor under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, an invasive NSA surveillance authority for foreign intelligence gathering” recently reauthorized by Congress. Continue reading →

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What We Found in Trump’s Drained Swamp: Hundreds of Ex-Lobbyists and D.C. Insiders

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By Derek Kravitz, Al Shaw and Isaac Arnsdorf. Published 3-7-2018 by ProPublica

When the Trump administration took office early last year, hundreds of staffers from lobbying firms, conservative think tanks and Trump campaign groups began pouring into the very agencies they once lobbied or whose work they once opposed.

Today we’re making available, for the first time, an authoritative searchable database of 2,475 political appointees, including Trump’s Cabinet, staffers in the White House and senior officials within the government, along with their federal lobbying and financial records. Trump Town is the result of a year spent filing hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests; collecting and organizing staffing lists; and compiling, sifting through and publishing thousands of financial disclosure reports. Continue reading →

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‘We Will Stay!’ West Virginia Teachers Vote to Occupy State Capitol Until Demands Met

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While some have called the West Virginia teachers’ strike “the most important story in the country right now,” MSNBC and other outlets have almost completely ignored it.

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 3-2-2018

As the demonstrations raged on in the state capitol, West Virginia lawmakers voted against bringing a teacher pay raise bill to the Senate floor for immediate consideration, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported on Friday. (Photo: Jacobin/Twitter)

Though you may not know it from the corporate media’s coverage—or lack thereof—West Virginia teachers are still striking in an effort to win both a pay raise and a permanent fix to their soaring health insurance premiums, and on Friday they voted to occupy the state capitol until their demands are met.

Watch teachers chant “We will stay!” shortly following the vote: Continue reading →

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