Free Republic

UPS Canada drivers and inside workers, including about 180 of the company's 200 Calgary-area employees, are set to strike as early as Monday. UPS Canada halted all customer pickups and suspended delivery guarantees yesterday on shipments within, to and from Canada as the threat of the strike loomed. The Canadian unit of the global parcel courier received 72-hour strike notice from the Canadian Council of Teamsters Thursday. Packages that were picked up Thursday will be delivered "but may experience some delays," UPS said in a notice on its website. "Starting this morning (yesterday), we suspended all customer pickups," said UPS...

WATERBURY — Police said the husband of Sgt. Betsy Valentin of Waterbury confessed to falsely reporting her death in Iraq. Late Saturday night, police had a warrant for his arrest. The husband, Edward Valentin, lied and will face felony charges, said Neil O'Leary, the city's acting police chief. Valentin lied to his friends, family and authorities when he said he received a telephone call that Betsy Valentin had been killed in an explosion, O'Leary said. An arrest was expected overnight and O'Leary said a news conference will be held at 1 p.m. today at the police station. Valentin gained national...

HARTFORD — Gov. John G. Rowland, 10 days after saying he paid for improvements at his Bantam Lake cottage, admitted Friday to accepting thousands of dollars in free work from a state contractor under federal investigation. He also received freebies from employees and friends. The work ranged from free gutter and drainage repair, a new ceiling, a free water heater and hot tub. Altogether, the work came from a company owned by the Tomasso family, whose firms have caught the eye of federal prosecutors, as well as from PJ Delahunty, a then-deputy commissioner of the state Department of Public Works....

A federal judge Thursday upheld the constitutionality of Oklahoma's new right-to-work law, but the legal battle isn't over. Jimmy Curry, president of the Oklahoma State AFL-CIO, said he's fairly certain U.S. District Judge Frank Seay's ruling validating right to work in Oklahoma will be appealed. "We think he's wrong, and we'll be talking to different plaintiffs about a possible appeal," Curry said. Gov. Frank Keating on Thursday said Seay's ruling is great news for the people of Oklahoma who went to the polls Sept. 25 and voted for the proposal. "The will of the people has spoken and right to...

The UCU has now learned that the two last unaccounted for defendants in the Teamsters money-laundering scandal were sentenced in Mar. 2002, at two hush hush court hearings, which that have gone unreported by major daily newspapers. When the UCU previously reported that scandal figure Jere Nash was sentenced on Apr. 9, it incorrectly reported that the two other defendants who pled guilty with Nash, had not yet been sentenced. Both were sentenced some 54 months after they pled guilty on Sept. 18, 1997. The three engaged in a series of schemes which led to the embezzlement of some $885,000...

John P. Morris, the fiery union leader who came here from the coalfields of northern Pennsylvania 56 years ago and built with his Teamsters Local 115 in Northeast Philadelphia what became a labor powerhouse, died last night. Morris, who was 76, had been ill with heart trouble in recent months. But he was still pressing ahead with a legal fight against national Teamsters leaders who ousted him from Local 115 in late 1999 amid bitter political feuding and misconduct allegations that Morris said were false. "It broke his heart," said his daughter, Nancy Morris, who had worked alongside her father...

It has been nearly 10 years since the leadership at Teamsters Local 705 was tossed out amid charges of embezzlement, mob ties and even a murder in the local's basement. But a ruling last month by a federal judge threatens to reopen some ugly Teamsters history, and the big guns at Teamster City on Ashland Avenue aren't happy. This time, it's not the feds or self-appointed reformers threatening to smear the nation's second-largest Teamsters local. It's the 70-year-old Rev. James Jackson, a former business representative for the Teamsters. He says leaders at the local regularly sprinkled racial epithets in their...

It's not hard to figure out why the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership are wooing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They want the union to lobby for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. And they really want support and endorsements in states like Michigan and Ohio, where the union's members may hold the balance of power in key House and Senate races—and even in the 2004 presidential election. Less well understood is why Teamster President James P. Hoffa—who endorsed Al Gore and agrees with the Democrats on most issues—is courting the Republicans right back....

  Big Labor’s Top Ten Special Privileges      Labor union officials enjoy many extraordinary powers and immunities that were created by legislatures and the courts. Union officials claim to rely on the support of rank-and-file workers. Yet, they clamor in the political arena to secure and expand their government-granted powers, including the powers to shake down workers for financial support and even to wage campaigns of violent retaliation against non-union employees.      The following list of special privileges reveals the extent to which union bosses have rigged our nation’s labor laws in their favor. Privilege #1: Exemption from prosecution for union violence. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The AFL-CIO traditionally has asked member unions for voluntary contributions to pay for political campaign activities. Now a move is building in the federation to make assessments permanent and mandatory. The AFL-CIO is far short of the $35 million it wants to spend in this two-year cycle, and union officials decide next week how to make up the difference in an election year with control of Congress at stake. "The bottom line is there's going to be a political program at the same level as I'm sure we've had other years," said Steve Rosenthal, the AFL-CIO's political ...

TULSA - The state labor commissioner accused the Teamsters union today of trying to skirt the right-to-work law. The law approved by Oklahoma voters last year bans companies from requiring employees to pay union dues. Commissioner Brenda Reneau Wynn has ordered Baldwin Steel Co. to stop collecting union dues from employees who aren't members of that company's union, Teamsters' Local 523. At least 19 employees of the Tulsa-based company have had union dues deducted from their paychecks even though they do not want to pay them, she said. Wynn said this was the first time since the right-to-work law passed ...

HAMDEN -- U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is scheduled to visit the Quinnipiac University School of Law Center to accept the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Black Law Student Association at Quinnipiac. The invitation-only event is scheduled to begin promptly at 4 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 30, in the Grand Courtroom of the School of Law Center. Recipients of the award are chosen because of their commitment to justice, pursuit of equality and service to the community. Past recipients have included Bill Cosby and Johnnie Cochran. Clinton was scheduled to accept the award from the law school last April, but ...

When the clock hits 8 a.m. Thursday, Mike Burr of Thomaston will start running, an American flag in hand, to send a message to the nation and the world. Burr, an American Airlines pilot, will be in Boston to begin the Americans United Flag Run, a cross-country run of the Stars and Stripes. The flag run, scheduled to end in Los Angeles, is intended to symbolically finish the paths of the three planes hijacked by terrorists Sept. 11. It will be a show of support for the victims and their families and also demonstrate the patriotism and resolve of the ...

POTEAU -- The topic of conversation at the weekly Rotary Club luncheon is how Le Flore County and Oklahoma fall short. But Gov. Frank Keating didn't come to talk about Cavanal Hill, a point of pride north of town that qualifies as the world's tallest hill because it is two feet short of being a mountain. Instead, he's looking a few miles east to the Arkansas border and the Ozarks, where he says economic development is thriving at Oklahoma's expense. He says a lot of it is because of Oklahoma's failure to pass a right-to-work law as Arkansas and 20 ...

Are the unions softening their opposition to George W.? WASHINGTON -- Despite an unintentional slip by his secretary of Labor, George W. Bush made progress Labor Day in splitting unions from an iron alliance with the Democratic Party. His biggest target is the Teamsters, and he moved closer to advocating what the big union wants most: freedom from government control. Teamsters officials were astounded by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao's comment over the weekend that reported "continuous violence" in the Teamsters might delay the end of 12 years of federal supervision. Not only did Chao quickly make amends, but President ...

Labor Day trouble The Washington Times www.washtimes.com Labor Day trouble Stefan Gleason THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published 9/3/01      Imagine your reaction if a federal law said that there could only be one supermarket chain in your state. Under this hypothetical law, once a supermarket chain had been chosen, no competition would be allowed.       Then imagine that you had to pay a monthly fee to this supermarket chain even if you didn't like their products or never bought anything there. Would that be unjust?       Of course it would. But many workers around the nation suffer a similar injustice this ...

Flow of history drowns WaterburyCity's financial crisis rooted in ascent of welfare stateBy Vincent Rosa      The deepening fiscal disaster confronting the taxpayers and managers of the former Brass City is the inevitable and highly predictable result of sociopolitical implosion decades in the making. While its contributing causes seem numerous and complex, the heart of the crisis, commonly confronting cities across America, is plainly comprehensible. It is an untenable situation grimly prophesized in mid-19th century by Southern statesman John C. Calhoun: We are rapidly approaching the insoluble circumstance of taxpayers being outnumbered by tax-eaters.      Waterbury is a victim of the welfare ...

Please pardon my potential ignorance on this subject, I'm a rookie here, but does the Free Republic have it's own flag? If it doesn't, should one be adopted?