Clinton repeats anti-TPP stand, pledges to appoint trade prosecutor to pursue violators. Adding another specific to her economic platform, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Aug. 11 told a crowd in Warren, Mich., that she would appoint a “chief trade prosecutor” to pursue foreign violators of trade pacts.

She also reiterated her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the controversial “free trade” pact backed by business, the right wing, Republicans and President Barack Obama.

Pending in Congress, TPP would take advantage of U.S. workers and don’t live up to their advocates’ promises, said Clinton, who added, “I oppose it now, I will oppose it after the election, and I’ll oppose it as president.”

Newsroom staffers at the Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger on vote 22-3 to unionize with The News Guild-CWA. The key issue in the campaign was a voice at work, as the staff hand-signed and posted an open letter saying they want to work for a quality newspaper and that layoffs and unfilled positions mandated by the Ledger’s corporate parent, GateHouse Media, make that difficult.

The Ledger on Aug. 11 became the only Florida newspaper, and the first in modern memory, to have a unionized newsroom, the Guild said. The paper has 45,000 daily subscribers and more than 60,000 on Sunday.

“Not only is Thursday’s action a historic moment for journalism in Florida, I’m confident it is a positive step for The Ledger,” said Gary White, a Ledger reporter for 14 years and a leader in the organizing drive.

GateHouse also owns daily newspapers in Peoria, Pekin, Canton, Galesburg, Lincoln and Springfield. Springfield, Pekin and Peoria workers also are represented by the Guild and haven’t had raises for about eight years.

Disregarding workers, Trump VP running mate addresses, hails, right-wing lobby ALEC.  Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, business mogul Donald Trump’s Republican running mate, this summer addressed and praised the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, disregarding worker protests out front of the secretive group’s meeting in Indianapolis.

“I think everyone should be very weary and very leery, watching carefully to see where ALEC gets its resources and how it connects those resources to legislators,” said Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, at a July 27 rally. Meredith led more than 100 teachers in front of the hotel where the corporate-funded front group hosted lobbyists and state lawmakers from around the country, plus Pence.

ALEC is known for its anti-worker “model legislation” that its corporate lobbyists draft for right-wing politicians, such as so-called Right To Work bills, Project Labor Agreements bans, prohibitions on public employee unions, abolition of teacher tenure, and “voter ID” laws disenfranchising workers, students, women and minorities.

Pence endorsed all of that and promised ALEC’s audience Trump would be “empowering states with resources and flexibility,” right-wing code for cuts in regulations and elimination of programs for low-income and minority people. “You are the model for Washington, D.C., after this election,” he said.

AFSCME, Service Employees create ‘unity partnership.’ Two of the nation’s largest unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees, will create “unity partnerships” for joint planning, bargaining, legislation, politics and organizing. And down the road, their plan adds, they may merge.

The move builds on a three-way, politics-only alliance between those two unions and the American Federation of Teachers in the 2012 national election campaign, and it could make both powerhouse unions even more influential.  The enacting resolution points out both must “come together and work collaboratively to unite workers and communities to challenge the rapidly growing inequity in wealth and power” that threatens society in general and workers and unions, private and public, in particular.

AFSCME and SEIU have almost four million members combined and have differences in structure and style – AFSCME is the largest AFL-CIO union and SEIU is the largest in the Change To Win coalition, for example. But the resolution declares “the times demand we build on our common purpose.”

Steelworkers achieve historic win by unionizing Minnesota doctors. In an historic organizing victory, medical professionals including physicians at the Lake Superior Community Health Center in Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., have ratified their first contract and are now members of Steelworkers. The 11-member unit, whose members provide comprehensive primary care and dental services for low-income communities, also includes physician assistants, nurse practitioners, Registered Nurses and therapists.

The victory makes the staffers the first such bargaining unit in the Steelworkers, and the first in Minnesota, to include physicians and mid-level health care providers as union members.

House Republicans cut funds for workers, consumers. A House Appropriations subcommittee this summer approved on a party-line vote of 8 to 4 a Fiscal Year 2017 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) funding bill that’s supposed to fund programs within the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and other agencies. The bill includes is $569 million below the current funding level and $2.8 billion below the President’s budget request.

The bill contains several harmful provisions intended to block Obama administration regulations and other actions, reversing worker and consumer protections such as the rule expanding overtime pay, new National Labor Relations Board rules, and a new investment standard for financial advisers.

News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper