The Hudak Report 11/16/24
News Featured On Social Media
1800 nurses strike University Health in Chicago (Fight Back! News)
Māori protesters march on NZ capital over disputed bill (National Indigenous Times)
Canada Post workers go on strike Friday morning, disrupting deliveries (Winnipeg Free Press)
Missouri Republican Considers Overriding Voters’ Decision on Abortion Rights (Truthout)
11/15/2024: NLRB Rules Captive-Audience Meetings Are Illegal (NLRB Edge)
How COVID Helped Trump Win (The Gauntlet)
Other News
Abkhazia: Protesters in the breakaway Georgia region of Abkhazia have stormed parliament and the presidential complex after the government planned to approve a controversial pro-Russia bill.
The bill, which would have legalised Russian investment and land ownership, is being withdrawn after protesters took control of the government quarter in the capital Sukhumi.
Both the president and prime minister have reportedly fled the presidential compound. (Read more at BBC)
Croatia: Croatia's prime minister sacked Health Minister Vili Beros early on Friday, as the minister was arrested during a police search of his home.
"The prime minister dismissed Vili Beros from his ministerial post," a spokesman for PM Andrej Plenkovic's government said in a statement. (Read more at DW)
Disabled workers: When the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law in 1938, first establishing a national minimum wage, it came with an exemption: employers could pay some disabled workers less than minimum wage. The federal exemption still stands, even as many states roll back their versions—and that wage can still be as little as 25 cents an hour.
25 states have since introduced or enacted legislation to phase out this outdated practice. Defenders of the 14(c) certificate program often argue that the disabled workers it covers, most of whom have intellectual and developmental disabilities, just wouldn’t get a job elsewhere.
A study published today in JAMA Health Forum by University of Pennsylvania researchers refutes that argument. Its authors found that in two states—New Hampshire and Maryland—that banned the practice, employment rates for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as people who are autistic, either increased or didn’t change when employers had to pay them an equal wage. (Read more at Mother Jones)
New York: Some New York state retailers are already following the spirit of a new union-pushed state law mandating they protect their workers against violent customers and dangerous confrontations, even though the measure has yet to be implemented.
So says the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a semi-independent UFCW sector. RWDSU was the prime mover of the measure this year in the state legislature, and Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it.
…
The New York law mandates retailers large and small craft plans and train employees in how to defuse confrontations with customers and how to summon security personnel fast. Large retailers must install alert buttons below the counter at point-of-sale registers which workers can push to activate help. A prior California law, the nation’s first, is slightly weaker: It only recommends retailers install the alert buttons, but includes the other New York provisions. Both have state enforcement. (Read more at People’s World)
Scotland: A mass march in Scotland this month will demand that the British government stops all arms sales to Israel.
The national demonstration, called by Stop The War Coalition Scotland, the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the STUC union federation, will take place in Glasgow on Saturday 23 November. (Read more at Socialist Worker)
South Korea: South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was convicted of violating election law and sentenced to a suspended prison term Friday by a court that ruled he made false statements while denying corruption allegations during a presidential campaign.
If it stands, the ruling could significantly shake up the country’s politics by potentially unseating Lee as a lawmaker and denying him a shot at running for president in the next election. But Lee, who faces three other trials over corruption and other criminal charges, is expected to challenge any guilty verdict and it remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will decide on any of the cases before the presidential vote in March 2027. (Read more at Associated Press)
Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's leftist coalition won a landslide victory in snap legislative elections, results showed Friday, as voters repudiated establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis.
Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept September presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation.
His decision to immediately call polls and secure parliamentary backing for his agenda was vindicated on Friday, with his National People's Power (NPP) coalition taking at least 123 seats in the 225-member assembly and on track to win many more. (Read more at France 24)
Vancouver Island: Luschiim is a member of Quw’utsun Tribes, a Coast Salish First Nation and one of the five member nations of the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group. Bonded by their common Hul’qumi’num language, overlapping territories, and a shared history and many cultural beliefs and traditions, the nations came together in 1994 to negotiate a modern treaty with B.C. and Canada.
Yet, after three decades, the parties are essentially at a stalemate. The Hul’qumi’num nations want a fair settlement for the nearly 270,000 hectares of their territory that was appropriated nearly a century and a half ago. But the provincial and federal governments, who originally placed those lands in corporate hands, have a strict policy to leave private property off the negotiating table. (Read more at The Narwhal)
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