LABOR, ECONOMY & THE CLIMATE - page 23

President Obama will not have a chance to finalize the approval of his signature trade initiative, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that he will not bring up the controversial agreement for consideration this year. “But it will still be around. It can be massaged, changed, worked on during the next administration. So, I hope America will stay in the trade business,” McConnell said, according to Reuters. At a breakfast event in Kentucky, McConnell mentioned his staunch… Keep Reading

Mylan, the maker of the EpiPen, announced on Thursday that it would offer 50 percent-discounts to some patients who depend on the life-saving allergy shot. The move comes after the company received attention for jacking up the price of the device by 500-percent since 2009. Mylan executives have been met with widespread public ridicule as a result–criticism that has reverberated around Congressional offices amid the summer recess. “As a mother, I can assure you, the last thing that we would ever want is no one to have… Keep Reading

Federal appellate judges in Boston affirmed a lower court’s ruling striking down a tax in Puerto Rico that targeted the crisis-stricken island’s largest businesses—one that would have exclusively impacted Walmart. The First Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday that a Federal District Judge in Puerto Rico was correct earlier this year, when he declared the levy to be unconstitutionally discriminatory. The tax at the heart of dispute was passed by the Puerto Rican government in 2015, as part of efforts to raise money amid a… Keep Reading

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a law boosting the minimum wage for some hotel workers in the City of Los Angeles. A three-judge panel on the circuit said on Monday that a District Court had been correct last year, when dismissing the challenge to the initiative. The suit was brought by two industry groups: the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. Passed in October 2014, the measure raised the minimum wage in L.A. this year to… Keep Reading

Companies seeking to do business with the federal government will now have to verify their workplace safety track record, according to new regulations finalized on Wednesday. The rule could block firms that flout labor regulations from securing lucrative government contracts in the future. Under the new regulations, businesses working to procure contracts over $500,000 will have to inform the government of any labor violations they have incurred over the previous three years. Those include any non-compliance of the department’s 14 basic workplace protections, such as… Keep Reading

The Environmental Protection Agency has told Texas to improve its regulation of fracking, saying the energy extraction method has been linked to seismic activity in the state. An annual agency report to the Texas Railroad Commission, the state body that oversees fracking, concluded that “there is a significant possibility that North Texas earthquake activity is associated with disposal wells.” EPA said the study was based on “findings from several researchers, its own analysis of some cases and the fact that earthquakes diminished in some areas… Keep Reading

A controversial government corporation that relies on cheap prison labor was caught producing faulty military equipment that could have endangered the lives of US soldiers. The Department of Justice Inspector General released a damning report on Wednesday, which found that military contractor ArmorSource and it’s subcontractor, Federal Prison Industries, produced tens of thousands of flawed combat helmets that cost the US government more than $19 million. Federal Prison Industries (FPI), also known as UNICOR, is a government-run enterprise that relies on a labor force of roughly… Keep Reading

A federal judge in California allowed class action wage theft litigation to proceed against McDonald’s, on the grounds that a jury could find it guilty of negligence. Judge Richard Seeborg said Tuesday that the lawsuit against the corporation may continue under the “ostensible agency theory.” The doctrine holds an actor responsible for the fault of another, if victims reasonably believe that the perpetrator committed wrongdoing in the employ of said actor. The case involves McDonald’s franchise co-owners, Bobby and Carol Haynes, who operate eight restaurants… Keep Reading

New Mexico’s senate delegation came out on Tuesday in support of a Navajo Nation lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, both Democrats, backed the tribe’s litigation, which was filed earlier in the week. The pair said the EPA has failed to adequately compensate the Navajo for last year’s Gold King Mine catastrophe—the heart of the legal dispute. “The spill was an accident, but the EPA made several serious mistakes, and the Navajo Nation has every right to pursue its… Keep Reading

The number of Americans who believe that “racism against whites is widespread” has jumped this year, according to the results of a Gallup survey released Wednesday. Forty-one percent of respondents to the poll told the research firm that they think White Americans suffer from “widespread” discrimination, up from 33 percent in 2015. The uptick comes after the same survey showed Americans increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that whites in the US are victims of systemic bigotry. Between 2009 and 2015, the percentage of Americans who… Keep Reading

An Australian Member of Parliament is still receiving messages from the Donald Trump presidential campaign asking for money, more than a month after the illegal solicitations were first reported to the Department of Justice and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). MP Terri Butler informed The Hill that she received a Trump fundraising email on August 14. It was the latest in a series of automated fundraising messages from the GOP nominee’s campaign that Butler and other foreign lawmakers have received, dating back to June. It… Keep Reading