DAILY NEWS
Cultivating dignity, 8.29 strike, giving labor a wedgie…
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
TODAY’S MUST-READ
LOCAL
► In today’s (Everett) Herald — Sometimes, less means less (editorial) — Today’s employment scene would be unrecognizable to the leaders who crafted the current minimum-wage law in the mid-60s. It has been mangled by out-sourcing and off-shoring, burgeoning immigration, and a great recession (which was triggered by big banks but cruelest to the lowest paid and least secure workers). Who worked for minimum wage during the recession? Often it was employees capable of doing more, but desperate for paychecks of any kind. Now, with the country stirring from the recession, battle lines are forming over the minimum wage.
► In today’s (Ellensburg) Daily Record — Labor pact OK’s with Kittitas County deputies — Kittitas County commissioners recently ratified a new, four-year collective bargaining labor contract with Teamsters Local 760, which represents 28 county sheriff’s deputies.
STATE GOVERNMENT
► In today’s Olympian — Letter explains why state won’t contract out interoffice mail — The state “determined through requests for proposals issued by DES that mail delivery services… cannot be delivered at a reduced cost and with greater efficiency than the private sector.”
NATIONAL
MORE INFO at the “Low Pay Is Not OK” Facebook page.
► At Huffington Post — Head Start cuts services for more than 57,000 children due to sequestration — Head Start, the federal pre-K education service for low-income families, has eliminated services for more than 57,000 children in the coming school year as a result of the federal budget reductions known as sequestration.
► From Reuters — Bus drivers reject deal that averted San Francisco-area strike — Bus drivers who threatened to strike a key San Francisco-area transit system earlier this month have voted to reject a tentative contract deal and to send labor negotiators back to the bargaining table, their union said.
► At AFL-CIO Now — SF Chronicle op-ed scapegoats BART workers, ignores real problem — This infuriating opinion column asserts that workers like those at BART are not deserving of the middle-class wage their unions negotiate. To make their point, they use an argument that’s all too common today — private sector workers are suffering so public sector workers should too.
► In The Hill — Rep. Issa tops list of Hill’s wealthiest — House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chief inquisitor of President Obama’s White House, is now Congress’s richest man.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.