Social security workers call new Trump administration contract ‘union-busting’

New contract will reduce the time allotted to employees for union activity from 250,000 hours annually to 50,000

Michael Sainato
Wed 3 Jul 2019 07.00 BST Last modified on Wed 3 Jul 2019 07.03 BST

Workers at the Social Security Administration (SSA) say that the Trump administration has imposed a new contract on their 45,000 workers that could effectively shut down their union and are warning that the same thing could be tried elsewhere in the federal government as part of a crackdown on the labor movement.

A federal panel, consisting mainly of Trump-appointed members, issued a decision in May to impose a new union contract for the 45,000 federal employees at the SSA. The move came despite a federal judge’s decision last year to strike down most provisions in similarly issued orders for violating collective bargaining rights for federal employees.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), says the new contract the panel decided to impose chronically hampers its work at the agency, which mainly pays out retirement and disability benefits. The SSA is the first major federal agency up for a union contract renewal since Donald Trump’s executive orders were issued last year, and it is the AFGE’s second-largest bargaining unit.

“If the agency is successful in implementing this panel order, it will decimate our ability to represent workers all over the country,” said Rich Couture, an agency employee for more than 30 years and the union’s chief negotiator.

The provisions in the new contract will reduce the time allotted to SSA employees for union activity from 250,000 hours annually to 50,000 hours and ban all workers from using government property to conduct union activities, such as office spaces and government emails and holding files on government computers or in offices. It will also grant management the discretion to eliminate remote work.

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Ocasio-Cortez says dispute with Border Patrol agents started after one tried to take a ‘stealth selfie’

By Katie Mettler July 2 at 10:42 AM

After a day spent tweeting about the behavior of Border Patrol agents and the facilities they manage, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took to the platform again late Monday night to respond to accusations in a news report that she “screamed” at officers in a “threatening manner” while touring one Texas site with other members of Congress.

The report in the Washington Examiner quoted two unnamed witnesses who claimed that they, along with 40 other people, saw Ocasio-Cortez “crying and screaming and yelling” at a Border Patrol facility in El Paso. The report claimed that agents wanted to respond but were held back because she is a lawmaker.

“To these CBP officers saying they felt ‘threatened by me,’ ” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response. “ . . . They confiscated my phone, and they were all armed. I’m 5’4”. They’re just upset I exposed their inhumane behavior.”

In a statement Tuesday, the congresswoman’s communications office called the Examiner’s report an “inaccurate depiction of events.”

“The Congresswoman spoke sternly to a CBP agent that tried to take a stealth selfie with the Congresswoman in a mocking manner, despite the gravity of the situation,” the statement said.

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Ocasio-Cortez leads critics of video showing Ivanka Trump G20 chat

• First daughter attempts to talk with May, Macron and more
• New York Democrat laments damage to ‘diplomatic standing’

Martin Pengelly
Sun 30 Jun 2019 17.03 BST Last modified on Sun 30 Jun 2019 19.20 BST

The French government on Saturday released a brief clip of a discussion at the G20 summit in Osaka involving four world leaders – and Ivanka Trump.

In the 19 seconds of footage, Donald Trump’s daughter appears to attempt to join a conversation between French president Emmanuel Macron, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde and British prime minister Theresa May.

Among widespread reaction on social media, most of it critical of the first daughter, the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said such behaviour “hurts our diplomatic standing”.

Trump has been criticised before for appearing to stand in for her father at international summits, for example during a discussion on health and migration in Africa at the 2017 G20 in Hamburg.

In the video released by the Elysée Palace, Macron can be heard to make a point about “social justice”, to which Trump, standing to his right, says either “it’s on” or “it’s all”.

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Despite new law, Trump administration has not given Puerto Rico emergency food stamp aid

By Jeff Stein and Arelis R. Hernández June 24 at 12:32 PM

The Trump administration has not yet given Puerto Rico $600 million in food stamp aid more than two weeks after the president signed the emergency funding into law, according to federal and territory officials.

Puerto Rico does not expect to be able to spend the emergency food stamp funding until September, most likely, six months after food stamp cuts began for the more than 1 million island residents who rely on the program, said Glorimar Andújar Matos, executive director of the Departamento de la Familia, the Puerto Rico government agency that administers the program.

While the reason for it was not immediately clear, the unexpected delay to Puerto Rico’s food stamp aid reflects the ongoing dysfunction in securing the release of federal funding for the U.S. territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria in fall 2017.

Emergency food stamp money for Puerto Rico ran out in March, starting widespread reductions in benefits, and funding renewal was delayed by several months amid an impasse among federal lawmakers and opposition to additional funding for Puerto Rico from the Trump administration.

Puerto Rican officials said they have unsuccessfully sought clarity from the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service for how to swiftly secure the food stamp funding.

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WORLD NEWS JUNE 20, 2019 / 5:35 AM / UPDATED 12 HOURS AGO

Britain broke law in allowing arms exports to Saudis: court

Paul Sandle, Guy Faulconbridge
6 MIN READ

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain broke the law by allowing arms sales to Saudi Arabia that might have been deployed in the war in Yemen, an English court ruled on Thursday after activists said there was evidence the weapons had been used in violation of human rights statutes.

While the court’s decision does not mean Britain must immediately halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia, it does mean that there is a stay on the granting of new export licenses to sell arms to the kingdom - Britain’s biggest weapons purchaser.

The United Nations has described the conflict in Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people including thousands of civilians, as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“The Court of Appeal has concluded that the process of decision-making by the government was wrong in law in one significant respect,” said Terence Etherton, England’s second most senior judge.

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