On Wednesday, a judge issued a sweeping decision against Starbucks, finding that the company violated federal labor laws hundreds of times in its anti-union campaign in Buffalo, New York, where the workers’ union movement originated — a judgment that the union has hailed as historic. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge Michael A. Rosas found that Starbucks had violated a number of federal…
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Rep. Mark Takano is planning to introduce a proposal that would shorten the standard work week in the U.S. to four days as the idea gains traction in Washington. Takano, a Democrat from California, is planning to reintroduce a bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to establish a standard work week that is 32 hours rather than 40, amounting to four eight-hour workdays.
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Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced on Wednesday that he is setting up a vote on subpoenaing Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz after Schultz refused Sanders’s request to testify about the company’s rampant union busting last month. Sanders said that Schultz’s avoidance of the request has “given us no choice but to subpoena him” and…
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On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Representatives Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pennsylvania) put forth a sweeping pro-labor bill that has been hailed as one of the most crucial pieces of legislation for the labor movement in the modern era of union busting. With the support of nearly 200 cosponsors in the House and Senate, the lawmakers reintroduced the Richard L.
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Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) delivered fiery speeches in favor of student debt cancellation on the steps of the Supreme Court on Tuesday as justices heard oral arguments challenging President Joe Biden’s groundbreaking debt forgiveness plan. Joining over 500 students, debtors and advocates in a rally organized by the Student Borrower Protection Center…
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A group of Republican senators, plus one independent who caucuses with Democrats, is working on a plan to slash Social Security benefits by potentially raising the age at which people receive full benefits by several years — which would essentially force millions of workers to work even longer than into typical retirement age. As first reported by Semafor, the group is led by Senators Bill Cassidy…
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The Biden administration is slated to unveil a rule this week that would grant access to child care to a small slice of the U.S. workforce in an effort to advance the administration’s goal of expanding and supporting the “care economy.” On Tuesday, the Commerce Department is expected to announce a rule that will essentially require computer chip manufacturers seeking to access federal funding from…
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Railroad workers are warning that, if policymakers don’t act soon to rein in the rail industry with better regulations and protections for workers, there will be far more crashes like this month’s disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. In a statement on Friday, rail reform group Railroad Workers United (RWU) pointed out that the government has determined that the Ohio crash was “100 percent preventable.
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A huge new poll of people in every state and Washington, D.C., finds that making abortion illegal in all cases is extremely unpopular across the U.S. According to the results of a 2022 survey of nearly 23,000 adults by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released Thursday, there isn’t a single state in the U.S. in which a majority of people think that abortion should be totally outlawed…
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A House Republican has introduced a bill that would make the AR-15, which has been used in many of the nation’s most horrific mass shootings, the “National Gun of the United States,” positioning it alongside official symbols like the bald eagle and Francis Scott Key’s “Star Spangled Banner” in representing the U.S. The bill was unveiled this week by gun store owner Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have raised concerns that pharmaceutical giant Merck’s request to extend the patent for a top cancer drug could represent another move from Big Pharma to abuse the patent system and maintain a monopoly on a life-saving drug. The lawmakers are urging the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to scrutinize Merck’s application for new…
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Democrats in Congress have condemned the Biden administration for proposing a restrictive new asylum rule that immigration advocates have likened to a Donald Trump-era ban, saying that it will further endanger countless asylum seekers south of the U.S. border. This week, the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice proposed a rule that would bar people from accessing asylum in the…
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In an attempt to score political points on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump jetted to Ohio to visit the site of a disastrous Norfolk Southern train derailment that experts say was likely worsened — or caused — by his administration’s sweeping safety deregulation. During his visit, Trump touted his donation of “Trump water” to the residents of East Palestine, as well as his donation of…
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As the Israeli government, run by far right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, advances even further in its violence and inhumanity against Palestinians, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for the U.S. to attach strings to its aid to Israel in order to combat the country’s suppression of Palestine. Speaking with CBS News this week, Sanders said that it is unacceptable for the U.S.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for the standard work week to be shortened from five to four days. On Twitter on Tuesday, Sanders said that technological advancements allow for less labor from workers, but are currently only used to pad the pockets of corporate executives. “With exploding technology and increased worker productivity, it’s time to move toward a four-day work week with no…
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ordered Norfolk Southern to conduct and pay for the cleanup of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, as the railroad company faces widespread criticism for releasing and burning toxic chemicals in recent weeks. The EPA announced on Tuesday that Norfolk Southern must identify contaminated soil and water in East Palestine and clean it up…
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The rate of deaths in U.S. prisons during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic increased dramatically, as lawmakers largely ignored the effect of the pandemic on imprisoned people, a grim new analysis found. According to data from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, deaths in state and federal prisons rose by nearly 50 percent during the first year of the pandemic…
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Credit scores are far lower on average in the South than they are in northern parts of the contiguous U.S. — and medical debt and state lawmakers’ refusal to expand Medicaid could be to blame, a new analysis by the Washington Post has revealed. The analysis found a gap of roughly 100 points between the lowest average credit scores in the North and South, with the lowest seen most commonly in parts…
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Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) are demanding that Kroger, the U.S.’s largest supermarket brand, address reports of and lawsuits over “systemic and widespread errors” in the company’s payroll system that labor advocates say have opened the door for the company to commit wage theft. The lawmakers say that Kroger’s latest failure to pay workers is part of a…
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is demanding answers from the U.S.’s top egg producers as egg prices have soared in recent months, raising questions about whether the industry is participating in anti-competitive behaviors and price gouging. In letters sent to the top five egg producers in the U.S. on Thursday, Warren and Sen. Katie Porter (D-California) called on corporations to elucidate…
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Dozens of Tesla workers in Buffalo, New York, were fired the day after workers announced their unionization campaign, a move that the union says amounts to illegal union busting. According to Tesla Workers United, over 30 workers at the Buffalo “Gigafactory” were fired on Wednesday after workers went public with their union effort the day before, sending a letter to right-wing billionaire CEO Elon…
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Pharmaceutical giant Moderna appears to have suddenly reversed course on its plan to multiply the price of its COVID-19 vaccine, declaring that the vaccine will remain free for all Americans just hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced that he will be grilling the company’s CEO in a hearing before Congress next month. Last month, Moderna’s CEO, pandemic billionaire Stephane Bancel…
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Starbucks CEO and notorious union buster Howard Schultz is facing criticism after he turned down Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) request that he appear before Congress in a hearing next month. In a scathing statement, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Sanders said that it is “disappointing, but not surprising” that Schultz would turn down the request from…
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The U.S.’s gun violence crisis is shattering records as the number of school shootings hit a record high in 2022, according to a grim new analysis released on the fifth anniversary of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Tuesday. According to The Washington Post, there were 46 shootings at K-12 schools in 2022, surpassing 2021’s record of 42 school shootings.
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A group of Democratic and progressive lawmakers is urging the U.S. Department of Commerce to ban corporations that are receiving money from a recent congressional subsidy bill from conducting stock buybacks for at least a decade, as companies are increasingly using stock buybacks to enrich shareholders and executives amid high inflation. In a letter sent to the Commerce CHIPS program office…
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Tesla workers in Buffalo, New York, are seeking to form the company’s first union, the workers announced on Tuesday, with help from leaders of the Starbucks union effort that has seen prodigious success over the past two years. “We want Tesla to be the company we know it can be. Our union will further Tesla’s principles and objectives, including by helping to serve as the conscience of the…
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), now in charge of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is pledging to go after executives for Starbucks, Big Pharma and railroads over their rampant greed — and he’s not afraid to use his subpoena power to do so. The pharmaceutical industry is one of his top targets, Sanders is saying, for working for decades to fleece the American…
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During the Super Bowl on Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) criticized advertisements by a Christian organization with deep conservative ties, saying that the ads normalize fascism. As part of a $100 million media campaign, a group called He Gets Us ran two ads during the Super Bowl on Sunday. As Lever News revealed earlier this month, He Gets Us is a subsidiary of the Servant…
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