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California’s largest public-employee union announced Saturday that it had reached a contract agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration. If workers ratify the deal, it would bring to a close contentious negotiations that led to a strike threat and allegations of bad-faith bargaining. Service Employees International Union Local 1000 didn’t immediately release the terms of the deal, but union President Yvonne Walker said in a statement that it achieves improvements in compensation, professional development, working conditions, and health and safety. …

Scores of demonstrators were arrested on Tuesday as U.S. workers from fast-food chains staged nationwide protests for higher pay, union rights and immigration reform in their first major action since Donald Trump was elected president.McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) restaurants in 340 cities were prime rally targets, while baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and sky caps at Chicago's O'Hare and Boston's Logan international airports planned to demonstrate in support of workers demanding starting pay of $15 per hour, organizers of the "Fight for $15" campaign said. More than 200 protesters gathered before dawn at Zuccotti Park in New York City's Financial District, the...

Mary Kay Henry on CNBCSEIU President Mary Kay Henry

Mary Kay Henry: Together we will keep fighting

A Texas district judge recently ruled the Service Employees International Union has no grounds to request a retrial following a court order directing the Chicago-based union to pay Professional Janitorial Services Houston $7.8 million. . . . Harris County District Judge Erin Lunceford also instructed the SEIU to turn over nearly 10 years of financial records and other information before the court determines whether PJS can seize the union’s assets.

I'd like to crowdsource this with some FR sleuths / weaponized autism / centipedes.... With whom did Robert Creamer meet at the White House aside from Obama? He met with both POTUS and FLOTUS according to the visitor’s log: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/visitor-records Others he visited: Kristin Sheehy. Sheehy , Kristin J. Employee $55,000.00 Per Annum EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR OPERATIONS http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/RCPWHSalaries09.pdf James Messina is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations ****** Miti Sathe Miti Sathe is a Democratic Party activist who works for Blue Engine Message & Media, a political consulting firm, and serves as the...

Bullying and intimidation tactics -- that's what we've come to expect of Big Labor today. Two weeks ago in Texas, a jury awarded $5.3 million in damages to Texas-based Professional Janitorial Services of Houston (PJS) after a local Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was found to have waged a campaign of misinformation and defamation against them. SEIU Local 5 had been trying to unionize Houston's large janitorial companies through its "justice for janitors" campaign for years, and but for the Professional Janitorial Services (PJS), it was successful. PJS remained the final holdout -- causing Local 5 to resort to nefarious...

Justice: Three recent court victories got little in the way of headlines, but should be required reading for every corporate executive in the country. In each, companies refused to do what so many have done before -- tuck their tails in and settle out of court. Exhibit A is a case involving Texas-based Professional Janitorial Service and its yearslong battle with the Service Employees International Union. As it has done countless times before, the SEIU targeted the company with a vicious, all out "corporate campaign," designed to ruin the company's reputation and starve it of business, until it submitted to...

Move over, humans. A robot-operated restaurant is heading to the Bay Area. Momentum Machines, a San Francisco-based startup, plans to launch a burger joint where fare is cooked, seasoned and wrapped by robots, Tech Insider reported. The still unnamed restaurant will utilize what Momentum Machines built in 2012 — a machine that could churn out 400 burgers in an hour. The innovative appliance includes a stamper that grinds and stamps custom blends of meat, a vegetable slicer, an oven to toast the meat and bun, and a bagger to wrap the complete product. Images released by the company show the...

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has turned over her duties to Brandon Davis, National Political Coordinator for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who was installed by the Clinton campaign. Wasserman Schultz will retain her title as DNC Chair until the Democratic Party votes on a successor. While Democratic presidential nominees traditionally appoint election managers after the primaries end—as Barack Obama did in 2008—the alleged removal of Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair was nothing more than a publicity stunt. In effect, the move allows Clinton to tout an image of responding to Wasserman Schultz’s poor favorability without actually having to...

When Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a minimum wage bill into law in March, it was the highest statewide wage floor in the U.S. It was also the most convoluted, setting three different wages and raise schedules depending on the area's population. ‎ Wages will rise to $12.50 in rural Oregon, $13.50 in mid-size regions and $14.75 in greater Portland, all by the year 2022. But before the ink was even dry, Democrats, who control the state House, Senate and governor's office, announced they wanted to change the bill that was rammed through in a five-week legislative session despite fierce...

One of Hillary Clinton’s most influential labor supporters has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single payer healthcare plan. Members from Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 2 million healthcare and government workers, passed a resolution declaring medical care a human right at its national convention in May. Obamacare, which the SEIU lobbied for and endorsed, failed to address inequality in the healthcare marketplace and insurance systems remain “confusing and inefficient.” The union pledged to work to improve upon Obamacare with the goal of expanding into a government-run system. “The American healthcare system allows the profit motives of providers, pharmaceutical companies,...

During a rally with SEIU today in California, Clinton said "America needs a raise", directing her comment at Trump who once said "wages are too high"..

Beware the $15 minimum wage for menial labor — it’ll eventually come back to bite you in the hindquarters. As wages for fast-food workers continue to spiral upwards, hamburger chain Wendy’s is fast-replacing human workers with automation. The company announced this week that by the second half of the year, ordering will be available through the use of self-service kiosks throughout its entire 6,000 locations, according to Investors Business Daily. It will be up to each franchisee whether to use the new technology or to stick with the old system. Wendy’s President Todd Penegor observed that some locations have already...

Every May, governors revise their state budget plans and send a final proposal to the Legislature, a process that's designed to ensure that lawmakers use the most current information on the economy and tax revenues. And it's the economy that will likely take center stage in Friday morning's unveiling of Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget. Revenues collected from personal income taxes missed their target in April by about $1 billion, according to one preliminary analysis. At the same time, Democrats in the Legislature have urged Brown to do more to fund programs for struggling California families . How the governor...

California union workers will continue to be in the dark about how their dues are spent after a bill that would’ve forced unions to post this information online was killed along a party-line vote. California’s public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to...

A study published by the University of Michigan claims that the state's decision to hire a nonunion contractor to run prison cafeterias led to gangs. But the report’s methodology allowed a labor union critical of privatization to hand-pick which prison guards participated in focus groups that the author used as a foundation for his report. According to the report, "The Michigan Corrections Officers recruited participants, arranged interview locations, and reimbursed participants for travel." Roland Zullo wrote the publication for the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy at the University of Michigan. It concluded that the contractor's employees...

Governor Andrew Cuomo and state legislative leaders reached a tentative deal on Thursday to raise New York state's minimum wage towards $15 per hour but fell short of a uniform state-wide increase, lawmakers said. The deal outlines a faster rise in New York City, but carves out a slow lane for small businesses and its surrounding counties. In less prosperous areas north of the city it rises to $12.50 per hour before a state review of the law's impact. The minimum wage has been a sticking point in difficult budget negotiations that threaten to delay a spending plan past the...

What does it say when in two days a teacher exhausts the ink in his red pen? Since a nation cannot be “ignorant and free," as Thomas Jefferson put it, it perhaps means we face a threat graver than the Red Menace. Apathetic or even hostile students, dumbed-down tests, often incompetent and ideologically driven teachers, Cracker Jack-box degrees, morally toxic curricula, revisionist history, the new math — education has collapsed in America. And one of the sincere educators, wandering amidst the rubble, recently provided a window into this academic apocalypse.

California lawmakers and union leaders have reached a tentative deal to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is expected to make the formal announcement as early as Monday. According to the L.A. Times, the minimum wage will jump from $10 to $10.50 an hour in 2017 and will increase by $1 every year after that until reaching $15 an hour in 2022. Business with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to comply. "The governor and stakeholders have all been negotiating...