Are you ready for sharing the road driverless freight trucks? A new report from the International Transport Forum says the technology is coming and it could cost 4.4 million trucking jobs by 2030.
The report says driverless trucks will cut the demand for drivers by 50-70% in the U.S. and Europe.
The Economic Policy Institute says California low-wage workers lose $2 billion a year to employer wage theft. That's how much it costs minimum wage workers when employers violate minimum wage and overtime laws. On average, EPI says, workers who should be getting the minimum wage are losing $64 a week - roughly $3300 a year.
Menard's - the midwest home improvement chain owned by billionaire Scott Walker supporter John Menard - is on trial for breaking federal labor law. The National Labor Relations Board trial starts Wednesday in Minneapolis. Menard's is accused of mis-classifying truckers as independent contractors rather than employees to avoid granting the workers labor law protections and rights. OPEIU's Seth Goldstein brought the case.
Connecticut public workers are facing demands from Democrat Governor Dan Malloy for $700 million in concessions. At the same time public worker unions there are contending with dozens of anti-union bills from Republicans in the state legislature. Here's Lori Pelletier, President of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, speaking at a legislative hearing about the attack on collective bargaining and unions in one of America's richest states.
The Youngstown Education Association (YEA) is mobilizing to defend public education in the face of an Ohio law putting a CEO is charge of public schools.
The law takes away the power of elected school boards to run the schools when the schools are labeled failing. Teachers can be fired, union contracts thrown out and schools can be closed and replaced with charter schools.
Enormous power over local public education in the hands of one executive.
YEA President Larry Ellis.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders pulled no punches in a recent hearing blasting Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney for a budget that takes massive amounts of money from programs serving the poor in order to give to the rich. This exchange focused on Trump wanting to repeal the estate tax to deliver huge tax breaks to the top one percent.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined five other Democratic U.S. Senators Tuesday to warn that repealing the Affordable Care Act would hurt the effort to fight America's opioid addiction epidemic.
It would effectively cut available treatment for opioid addiction.
Manchin's state is being hit hard by opioid abuse - a huge public health issue across America.
The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) says if the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act (S. 1094) is passed in the U.S. Senate it will open VA workers to political with-hunts.
The union says it weakens "systematic protections for employees who speak up against unsafe practices and political coercion."
NFFE union President Randy Erwin says says if this bill passes "honest VA employees will be open to intimidation and will be deterred from coming forward as whistleblowers."
A Trump backed VA bill making it easier to fire VA workers is being spun by the GOP as real accountability for the Veterans Administration.
Already passed by the House, the VA Accountability First Act of 2017 undermines and weakens collective bargaining for VA workers, stripping them of real due process grievance procedures.
Jacque Simon is Policy Director for the American Federation of Government Employees.
"Let's be smart on crime, because just being tough on crime isn't always the right decision."
Former Utah U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman says new orders from from Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions telling federal prosecutors to seek the harshest possible charges ignores decades of criminal justice learning in the U.S.
Among the lessons learned that apparently have escaped Sessions is that warehousing huge numbers of people for long, harsh sentences isn't the most effective way of fighting crime.