Voter Registration Deadlines Approaching

The Pennsylvania voter registration deadline for this year’s general election is October 6. That’s less than a week away.

If you or someone you know isn’t registered to vote in this year’s election, please make sure you do so before next Monday. Wherever you are, you can jumpstart the registration process by clicking here.

Is UPS Living Up to Its End of the Deal?

Make UPS Deliver shares some disturbing news out of Washington state:

UPS has eliminated dozens of full-time Article 22.3 jobs in Washington State. In many cases, long-time full-timers are being forced to go back to part time.

The company eliminated nearly 40 Article 22.3 full-time jobs in Seattle Local 174 in the Boeing Field, Redmond and Seattle buildings. Six more full-time Article 22.3 positions have been eliminated in Spokane.

Under the contract, UPS is required to maintain 20,000 Article 22.3 full-time jobs. The company is not allowed to lay off any combo employees if the layoffs bring the total number of Article 22.3 jobs nationally below 20,000. There is no exception for “loss of volume.”

UPS is thousands of positions short of the 20,000 jobs required by the contract. The deadline for creating all of these jobs was Aug. 1.

Article 22.3 of our new contract obligates the company to provide a list of the 20,000 jobs that had to be maintained pursuant to the contract. With jobs shifting from place to place (in our local, some of the combo job vacancies have been shipped elsewhere), the only way to ensure that UPS is keeping its word is to see the details. I have asked for this information, but as of yet I haven’t seen it. Still, I encourage other UPS Teamsters to request some kind of verification on the required job creation and maintenance.

Read the full story and find out more about holding UPS to its word at Make UPS Deliver

Andy Stern Meets the Bloggers on Employee Free Choice

SEIU President Andy Stern was recently on Meet the Bloggers, where he spoke about the Employee Free Choice Act:

(via CtW Connect)

Special Report:
John McCain Wants to Raise Your Taxes

A “pattern of deceit” is being used by the McCain campaign — not only to lie about the Obama tax plan, but also to keep voters from noticing how McCain plans to raise taxes on millions of regular Americans.
Read more…

Joe Biden: The Silence Was Deafening

Joe Biden, speaking last Friday at Maple Point Middle School (about a quarter mile from the house where I grew up), sums up last week’s Republican pep rally in Minnesota:

It’s only three and a half minutes, but it pretty much tells the tale.

NEXT UP: On Wednesday I’ll be writing about McCain’s middle class tax increase that very few seem to know about. Stay tuned…