Labor Related Articles
Despite allegations of corruption against James Hoffa Jr., the Teamsters union elected president since 1998, Democratic presidential hopefuls Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar attended a Teamsters forum hosted by the labor leader on Saturday in the hope of earning his endorsement.
To receive an invitation to the forum, candidates had to sign the union’s three-point pledge which includes promises to “protect the rights and strengthen the ability of workers to join a union” and “advance legislation to protect pensions and solve the multiemployer pension funding crisis” among other things.
Read more about it at the Free Beacon here.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU),
which handles every shipping container that crosses West Coast ports, had about 15,000 dockworkers as members when it took on the goal of wresting two jobs from a rival union. The chaos that followed their four-year campaign of staging slowdowns at the Port of Portland and flouting federal court orders resulted in the end of Oregon-based cargo service for exporters as far inland as Idaho’s Snake River.
The union’s tactics were so severe that the National Labor Relations Board called the conduct unlawful and a jury later awarded ICTSI Oregon, Portland’s former terminal operator, $94m in damages during a civil suit against ILWU and Local 8. 55% (or roughly $55m) of those damages would be paid by ILWU, which has $20m in assets, and the ramainder would come from Local 8, which has $150,000 in assets. The award, if not reversed in appeals, would bankrupt the union.
Read more about the court case and potential bankruptcy here.
RWP Labor Vice President Rusty Brown has been appointed by the President of the United States of America to the Department of Labor as a Policy Advisor.
Please join RWP in congratulating Rusty on his well-deserved new role.
| The Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (Center of Workers United in Struggle), a worker center that forced Target and other retailers to hire unionized janitors, has been declared a labor organization by the Labor Department, and as such, is bound by federal rules for unions. This is the first such determination under the Trump administration. |
| “We view this as a positive development and, hopefully, an indication that this Department of Labor is ending the longstanding DOL practice of turning a blind eye to this area of the law,” said Patrick Semmens, vice president for public information at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. |
Read the full article at Bloomberg Government.
A jury in Portland has awarded former container ship terminal operator ICTSI Oregon Inc. $93.6 Million in damages from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Local 8, the Portland chapter. The jury found that the union had been engaged in unlawful labor practices that ultimately resulted in Portland ending the city’s terminal operations and canceling its contract with ICTSI Oregon.
Read more about the court decision here.
A group of airline and railroad unions filed a complaint in D.C. federal court this week against the National Mediation Board over their two-year ban against workers in those industries voting to join a union after decertifying a previous union. The Transportation-Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the American Train Dispatchers Association, and the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen were among those unions.
Read more about the lawsuit at Law360 (please note, a log-in is required to access this article).
Articles by the RWP Team
