Unions, progressive groups ask Congress to restore bank controls. Organized labor and allied groups have demanded congressional leaders control the nation’s banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that for decades separated financial finagling and regular consumer banking.

The petition presented by the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, Jobs With Justice, Americans for Financial Reform and other progressive organizations, says, “Wall Street greed and risky behavior is out of control and needs to be reined in. There is a simple solution: Pass the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act.”

A Republican-controlled Congress passed and Democratic President Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999. Combined with lax regulations under the GOP Bush administration to follow, big banks treated depositors’ money like gambling stakes and contributed to the Great Recession.

The petition notes that restoring Glass-Steagall is one of the few issues the 2016 Republican and Democratic platforms agree upon. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., have introduced legislation to restore the law.

Rolando positive at Letter Carriers convention. Unlike prior years, when the U.S. Postal Service faced losses and workers faced hostility from Washington, Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando recently offered a positive outlook in a speech to the union’s convention in Los Angeles.

Warning that struggles persist – including anti-union Republican nominee Donald Trump and a pending postal “reform” bill with harmful provisions – Rolando said the Postal Service is turning a profit on operations; new Postmaster General Megan Brennan is more open to working with workers than previous management; ongoing bargaining on a pact replacing the contract that expired in May is good; and the number of carriers NALC represents is growing for the first time in a decade.

AFL-CIO starts direct mail drive opposing Trump. The AFL-CIO opened another front on its 2016 electioneering with a mailing of 150,000 flyers exposing the business record of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to union households in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“Forget the crazy things he says,” one flyer quotes Matt Schanbacher of Bricklayers Local 1. “If Donald Trump runs the country like he runs his businesses, then we’re in big trouble.”

The flyers will go to union homes in other battleground states – Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina – weekly until Election Day. They highlight Trump’s business bankruptcies and his anti-worker business practices.

Labor laws threatened in Trans-Pacific pact: top law professor. U.S. local, state and federal labor laws “are subject to being tossed out” by a secret trade court that negotiators wrote into the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership “free trade” pact, according to Alan Morrison, associate dean for public interest law at George Washington University.

The TPP’s secret court, the Investor-State Dispute System (ISDS), could kill any law – or even pro-worker presidential decisions – unilaterally, he said, and only investors and corporations can bring cases to the ISDS. If they win by showing “harm” to present or future profits, the measures are dead and affected governments cannot appeal. For example, Morrison said, “If a city raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, an investor could challenge that as a threat to its profits.”

ISDS “is a unique threat,” added U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “It allows companies to challenge laws they don’t like, and win millions or even billions of dollars from taxpayers. And it shifts the power from U.S. courts to unaccountable international tribunals of corporate attorneys.”

Miners march to demand pension legislation. Backed by fellow unionists and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, several thousand unionists – most of them Mine Workers from Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania – last month marched on and lobbied Capitol Hill to demand legislation to save their pensions. However, whether they’ll prevail is uncertain despite one pension fund about to run out of money this year and another facing a similar crisis next August. Some lawmakers fear that federal aid for miners’ pensions (which would back a 1946 law establishing federally-run pensions for underground coal miners) could open the door for similar assistance to other industries.

“I firmly believe that if you spent your life keeping the lights on for our country, we can’t leave you in the dark,” Clinton said. “For more than a century, America’s coal miners have put their own health and safety at risk to provide affordable and reliable energy for the nation. They are entitled to the benefits they have earned and the respect they deserve.”

Nabisco union standoff leads to wave of retirements. A union stalemate at Nabisco is dragging out and experienced workers are retiring in significant numbers. Nabisco’s union contract with Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) expired Feb. 29, creating uncertainty for 2,000 workers in five states. The two sides haven’t met to negotiate since April 8, when Nabisco parent company Mondelez proposed to cut health insurance and withdraw from the union pension plan.

BCTGM called the company’s proposal unacceptable, union members authorized a strike, and the company advertised for scabs, but BCTGM’s Ron Baker says many Nabisco workers aren’t waiting to see how it turns out. Almost 100 workers have retired from the Chicago plant, and about 45 from the Portland plant.

“There are skills going out the door that they can never replace,” Baker said.

News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper