Free Republic

Backers of the movement for higher pay point to studies saying that the average age of fast-food workers is 29 and that more than one-fourth are parents raising children. Simon Rojas, who earns $8.07 an hour working at a McDonald’s in South Central Los Angeles, said he would join Thursday’s one-day strike. “It’s very difficult to live off $8.07 an hour,” said Mr. Rojas, 23, noting that he is often assigned just 20 or 25 hours of work a week. “I have to live with my parents. I would like to be able to afford a car and an apartment.”...

Union Verdi is preparing more strikes to step up pressure on Amazon in Germany, its biggest market outside the United States, in a dispute over pay and conditions, German media reported. Workers at Amazon centers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig will walk out for at least one day on Monday, Heiner Reimann of Verdi told daily Stuttgarter Nachrichten. The union has organized several short strikes this year in a bid to force the world's biggest Internet retailer to accept a collective agreement on employment conditions similar to deals for the mail order and retail sector, which are more generous than...

Survey indicates backing drops even further if US opposed to move; second poll reveals majority of Americans favor deal with Tehran Slightly fewer than half of Israelis back the use of a military option against Iran’s nuclear program, with the number dropping even further should the US not lend support for such an action, a poll released Thursday night showed. At the same time, a separate poll among US citizens showed growing support for a diplomatic deal with Tehran. The Israeli poll, commissioned by Channel 2 political anchor Nissim Mishal, showed 49.1 percent of Israelis backing a last-resort military strike...

The trouble with proclaiming 'victory' over the crisis in Spain (read the whole of Europe) and the ECB enabling governments profligacy with the ghost of OMT future is that it merely emboldens. As Al Jazeera reports, Madrid's garbage collectors have been on strike since November 5 to protest layoffs and pay cuts. With garbage piling up on the streets of Madrid, the mayor issued private trash-collecting companies an ultimatum on Wednesday: end the street cleaners' strike or lose their contracts. More than 30,000 residents have signed a petition to the defense minister asking for the streets to be cleaned....

Israel does not have much time to make a “fateful decision” about whether to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Sunday in a radio interview. “Israel, I think, now faces the fateful decision whether it will allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, thus constituting a true existential threat to Israel,” he said. “Or whether they will strike as the Israelis have done twice before against nuclear programs in the hands of hostile states,” Bolton told WABC Radio’s Aaron Klein. “I don’t think Israel has much time,” Bolton continued. “Frankly, they should have done this years ago...

f you haven't done your grocery shopping yet, now might be the time to stock up. On Monday at roughly 7:30 p.m., workers of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 authorized a strike of Stop & Shop supermarket, which employs 5,500 workers represented by the union. The strike would shut down stores on Long Island, New York City, Westchester, Putnam, and Duchess counties. ... At issue is the negotiation over what health benefits will look like with the arrival of the Affordable Care Act, legislation that was sold to some lawmakers as making it easier for some...

(CNN) -- Israeli warplanes struck a military base near the Syrian port city of Latakia on Thursday, an Obama administration official told CNN. An explosion at a missile storage site in the area was widely reported in the Israeli press, but an attack has not been confirmed by the Israeli government. The target, according to the Obama administration official, was missiles and related equipment the Israelis felt might be transferred to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. The official declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. When asked for comment, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman told...

An air strike in southern Somalia has killed two senior commanders of the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, residents have told the BBC. The strike destroyed the vehicle the militants were travelling in between the towns of Jilib and Barawe, seen as a major base of al-Shabab, they said. The US launched a failed raid in Barawe earlier this month to capture an al-Shabab commander. Al-Shabab is the main al-Qaeda-linked group in East Africa. A Kenyan military source told the BBC their troops had raided Jilib, and that there might have been some casualties. However, correspondents say it is unlikely that...

At least one BART union agreed Saturday to put the transit agency's contract proposal to a vote, but commuters looking for a quick end to the 2-day-old strike should hold off on the celebrations. Speaking from the entrance of the shuttered Pittsburg BART Station, Antonette Bryant, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, said she expects that vote to result in a "resounding no." ... A spokeswoman from Service Employees International Union Local 1021, BART's largest union, declined to say whether that union also would allow a vote on the contract. ... With no negotiations scheduled, both sides said Saturday...

<p>The two workers, whose names weren't immediately released, died at the scene after they were hit by an eastbound train, sources close to the investigation said.</p>

(Reuters) - Commuter rail workers in the San Francisco Bay Area went on strike on Friday after talks with management over a new contract broke down, throwing the morning commute into chaos in the traffic-clogged region. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) management and employee unions have been at loggerheads for months over pay and benefits for more than 2,000 train drivers and other union workers who are demanding large pay raises in part to offset being asked to contribute to their pensions and other benefits. On Thursday, union officials said both sides had finally agreed on pay and benefits,...

OAKLAND -- Exasperated BART union leaders announced they would shut down trains Friday morning after a breakdown at the bargaining table Thursday, setting the stage for the second Bay Area commute nightmare in three months. A wild round of back-and-forth press conferences at 4 p.m. brought to a live TV audience an outpouring of emotion from sleep-deprived negotiators and the departure of the nation's top mediator. Although union leaders have been threatening strikes for the past week, they sounded much angrier and more direct this time, and talks ended altogether. "Unfortunately, yes -- we are on strike as of midnight,"...

Truck drivers protesting government corruption in today's "Ride for the Constitution" may have been intimidated by government officials and law enforcement, according to Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, and former Department of Justice prosecutor. Klayman revealed to MRCTV in an exclusive interview that the truckers were allegedly threatened with arrest and advised to stay out of D.C.

This week, Carnegie Hall stagehands who make on average $419,000 a year went on strike, forcing the cancellation of a gala that would have benefited nonprofit artistic and education programs. The dispute between the 122-year hall and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Union, reportedly the first ever strike at Carnegie Hall, was resolved on Friday.

Tens of thousands of Boston schoolchildren were left stranded this morning by what the school district called an “illegal work action” by hundreds of bus drivers who refused to drive their routes today, forcing T bus drivers and even Boston police to jump in and ferry kids to school.“I hope this is all worth it,” Roxbury mom Corvette Rankins — who ferried her 8-year-old to the Blackstone Elementary School — said in response to the drivers. “Were your children stranded or did you take them on strike with you?”Only 30 of 650 buses are on the road today, the district...

Via Charles Cooke. Imagine it. Imagine a movement so selfish that it would sabotage the operations of a venture on which vast numbers of people depend simply to gain leverage for its own agenda. Then imagine that that movement grew in numbers to the point where it could elect its own bought-and-paid-for politicians to do its bidding. Who knows how much havoc it could wreak? When you think about it, Democrats are right: It really is a sort of terrorism. Am I awake? Youtube

On Thursday, President Obama launched into yet another broadside against Republicans over the government shutdown while in campaign mode in Rockville, Maryland speaking to a construction company. Oddly, after veering off teleprompter, he likened Republicans shutting down the government to striking workers shutting down a business: “Everybody here does their job, right? If you’re working here and in the middle of the day you just stopped and said, ‘You know what, I want to get something, but I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna get, but I’m just gonna stop working until I get something, I’m gonna shut down the...

Protesters rallied in Michigan and nationwide recently to claim that wages at fast food restaurants are too low. Here’s an alternative compensation schedule. These workers should be paid as much as doctors and lawyers and executives. Those in turn should all get the same salary. Every member of their staffs should make that amount too. The same principle should prevail in government: A receptionist at a state agency would make the same as the governor; a custodian cleaning a public university’s toilets would be paid exactly what the university’s president gets. Everybody gets equal pay. All across the board, throughout...

Last year the American Truckers Association prepared a report for Congress highlighting the susceptibility of the nation’s just-in-time delivery system, the majority of which is made possible by the transport and delivery of freight. In the event of a catastrophic disaster such as a war that drives fuel prices through the roof or even a natural disaster such as a solar flare that renders electronic trucks inoperable, there would be a “a swift and devastating impact on the food, healthcare, transportation, waste removal, retail, manufacturing, and financial sectors,” according to the report. The backbone of commerce in the United States...

WASHINGTON -- In an interview Monday, President Obama responded to a surprising late proposal that could head off a military strike against Syria. The Syrians agreed to a Russian proposal to put their chemical weapons under international control and destroy them. I talked to President Obama about that, and about a threat Syrian dictator Bashar Assad made during an interview with Charlie Rose. SCOTT PELLEY: Can you accept the Russian/Syrian proposal? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we don´t know the details of it yet. But I think that it is a potentially positive development. I don´t think that we would´ve gotten to...