News & Commentary

March 11, 2014

The Washington Post reports that the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), the organization that hires referees for Major League Soccer games, filed unfair labor practice charges against the Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA) on Monday. The charges come three days after the PRO began a lockout of PSRA workers, and after the PSRA filed its own unfair labor charges against the PRO.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a Connecticut bill, currently pending before the Public Safety and Security Committee, expands Connecticut’s workers’ compensation law to cover state or local government employees diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after witnessing a traumatic event or the aftermath of one. A similar bill was proposed after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year.

Unionized truck drivers at Port Metro Vancouver, Canada’s largest port, joined a nearly two-week old strike by hundreds of non-union drivers on Monday, Reuters reports. The workers are demanding a change to the current pay structure, under which drivers are paid by the load, and are not paid for time spent waiting in the increasingly long lines at terminals.

In international news, the Washington Post reports that factory safety inspectors in Bangladesh are on track to complete 1,500 factory safety inspections by the end of August, in accord with the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. The legally binding agreement, signed by many European companies and a handful of American companies (including Abercrombie & Fitch and PVH Inc., owner of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein) requires signatories to pay for the administration of the program, as well as the cost of any necessary renovations or improvements to factories.

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