Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

Turning up the heat in Orange County IBT Local 952
http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/10/turning-up-the-heat
Turning up the heat in Local 952
Edgar Esquivel, a UPS worker in Orange County, Calif., reports on the progress of the new reform movement in his Teamster local.
May 10, 2010

Teamsters Local 952 members on strike against the Orange Country Transportation Authority in 2007

FIVE MONTHS after it was born, the grassroots movement Reform Teamsters 952 has gained significant momentum through rank-and-file workers' efforts to change the direction of their union.

In recent weeks, the group, made up of pragmatic rank-and-file workers from Teamsters Local 952 in Orange County, Calif., has campaigned at numerous worksites, including UPS, CVS, Coca-Cola, Straub (the local Budweiser distributor), UPS Freight and Yellow Freight--and has been well-received by workers at each of these companies.

But perhaps the biggest shock to the Local 952 system came at the UPS hub in Laguna, Calif., where the reform movement was launched. In late April, UPSers from the Coast Center at the Laguna hub organized several votes of "no confidence" against their shop stewards, who were controlled by the union old guard.

San Diego cabbie strike likely to grow
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/20/about-150-cabbies-go-on-strike/

San Diego cabbie strike likely to grow
BY DEBBI BAKER, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
LESLIE BERESTEIN, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 20, 2009 AT 2:21 P.M., UPDATED DECEMBER 21, 2009 AT 7:43 A.M.

Taxi cabs line up at Lindbergh Airport.

More San Diego taxi drivers are expected to go on strike Monday, joining striking Yellow Cab drivers who say they took at least 150 cabs out of circulation over the weekend.

Although drivers say it’s possible that 350 taxis could be out of service during the busy holiday week, the president of Yellow Radio Service put the number of cabs out of service this weekend at 30 or fewer.

“We have not missed a call or a customer,” said Anthony Palmeri, whose company handles dispatching and management services for the Yellow Cab owners.

Nearly 1,000 taxis have permits to operate in San Diego, and harbor police said yesterday that the strike by Yellow Cab drivers had not appeared to affect Lindbergh Field.

At a meeting of Yellow Cab drivers in City Heights Sunday night, a spokesman for the local taxi drivers association said about 400 drivers from other companies were expected to join the strike Monday. That could take about 200 cabs out of service because taxis that are not driver-owned are typically shared by two contracted drivers, each working a 12-hour shift.

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the TWSC. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Matt Smith - San Francisco Weekly, February 6, 2008

Imploding U.S. mortgage markets leave behind trillions of dollars in economic damage. The dollar's slide against the euro and the yuan raises fears of a currency collapse. January job losses portend recession.

To these threats to U.S. economic stability, add a new and severe one that is brewing in the conference rooms of the Cathedral Hill Hotel, a blue-collar establishment on Van Ness. There, West Coast dockworkers' representatives are devising a strategy to renegotiate a unified ports agreement with shipping companies that is scheduled to expire July 1. If the renegotiation is as fractious as it was in 2002 — when shippers attempted to break the union by shutting down 29 West Coast ports for 10 days — an extended dispute could paralyze U.S. economic activity and send financial markets tumbling.

A shutdown like the last one "carries the very real risk of triggering a sudden crisis in international financial markets," U.C. Berkeley professor Stephen Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, wrote in a 2002 paper. When I spoke with him last week, he said he'd be watching the situation this time, too: "I don't think the significance is any different. At some point, you start running out of parts, and the factory stops, and the factory that relies on that factory for components stops, and you have a chain reaction that's really rather a nightmare."