Latest news with #labor
CTV News
2 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
What happens if Canada Post workers reject final offer
Video Canada Post spokesperson Jon Hamilton on what happens next if workers reject the Crown corporation's final offer.
New York Times
6 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Rob Manfred recruited a star-studded group of retired players. The union sees trouble
The Major League Baseball Players Association believes commissioner Rob Manfred is trying to use the clout of highly respected, retired big leaguers to undermine the union and convince today's players to accept a salary cap. In 2023, Manfred formed a group called the Commissioner's Ambassador Program, or CAP. Participants travel to significant league and community events, and also serve as liaisons to current and future players. MLB has quickly built up a robust roster of 19 players, highlighted by CC Sabathia, who will be inducted into the sport's Hall of Fame on Sunday. Two other recent greats, Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, are in CAP's leadership as well. Advertisement But CAP's founding has also created tension and an awkwardness with the group that has historically served as the liaison between the players and the commissioner's office: the union. Tony Clark, the head of the MLBPA and a playing contemporary of virtually all of the ambassadors, last week told The Athletic that he has advised players in CAP 'to stay away from the conversations about labor.' Earlier in July, MLBPA's second-in-command, deputy Bruce Meyer, was critical of the program on the television show Foul Territory. 'I obviously wasn't a player,' Meyer, a lawyer, said during that appearance. 'All due respect to anybody who played the game, and in terms of what guys choose to do in their post-careers, I'm not going to question that. I will say, there are players who are being paid by MLB and who are going with Rob to the locker rooms and trying to sell players on a system that this union has historically thought was bad for players, and that they themselves didn't have to live under when they played.' Manfred has been touring clubhouses this season, suggesting players have lost billions over the years because they have been unwilling to change the game's economics.. At times, he has been accompanied by CAP members. 'Players know when they see those guys in the locker room, with Rob pitching a system that the league wants — players know those guys are getting paid,' Meyer continued on Foul Territory. 'It may be great players. It may be former teammates, it may be guys they respect. But I think players take it for what it is. Players understand what's going on.' When approached by The Athletic at baseball's All-Star Game in Atlanta last week, Manfred countered that, 'They're not out there carrying my water on what I think on any topic, forget labor.' CAP participant Dexter Fowler said on Foul Territory recently that players in the program just want to grow the game. Fowler and two other CAP members declined interview requests for this story. Efforts by The Athletic to reach a fourth CAP participant were unsuccessful. The group did not come out of the blue. When baseball's lockout ended in 2022, Manfred publicly committed to doing more to build relationships with his workforce, an area he admitted he had fallen short. CAP is part of that effort. 'They do a wide variety of things for us,' Manfred said before the All-Star Game. 'They're here, provide a presence at special events. They have worked with us on our international (efforts). They have been a source of content creation. They've helped me in terms of on-field issues. They've helped us in terms of dialogue with players.' Advertisement The commissioner also began to meet annually with virtually every team as part of his reconciliatory effort. But those visits have become controversial because the MLBPA believes Manfred is using those settings — and the CAP players who are sometimes in tow — to launder his bargaining positions. At least one CAP player, Sabathia, holds an additional role with the commissioner's office beyond his position as an ambassador. 'I will tell you, 100 percent, in most player meetings, I do all the talking,' Manfred said. '(Ambassadors) may be with me. They may listen afterwards. … I don't say this, but, you know, some players would rather not ask a question of me, OK? Whatever's said in there comes from me. Afterwards, if they want to talk, if they have a question that they want to ask (the ambassadors), they ask them.' Manfred has said that his message to players is not centered on a particular solution, a cap or otherwise. Much of his message, as he has publicly described it, however, is suggestive of a cap. 'I never use the word salary within one of cap,' he said last week. Ultimately, Manfred believes he has heard the criticism and done what he promised: built a bridge to the current players. He thinks the union now does not want to reap what it sowed. CAP carries a more star-studded roster than the union's own cadre of former players, issuing what appears almost a quiet challenge to the MLBPA to keep up. Besides Howard, Rollins and Sabathia, CAP includes Dellin Betances, Michael Bourn, Prince Fielder, Dexter Fowler, Jeremy Guthrie, LaTroy Hawkins, Adam Jones, Andruw Jones, Jason Kendall, Kenny Lofton, Jed Lowrie, Gary Sheffield, Denard Span, Nick Swisher, Justin Upton, Shane Victorino and Chris Young (the outfielder). The public dust-up over CAP began at the start of July when two former players had a tense discussion on TV. Former big leaguer A.J. Pierzynski, one of the hosts of Foul Territory, asked pointed questions of Fowler during a long back-and-forth. Advertisement 'My question as a former player: What side are you on?' Pierzynski asked at one point. 'Because you work for the commissioner, and then so Rob's giving you his side, but then Tony and the union has a different side.' 'We're on baseball's side,' Fowler replied twice. 'I understand that, but there's two sides to it,' Pierzynski said. 'I don't think you have to pick a side,' Fowler said. A short while later, Pierzynski asked Fowler why he didn't work for the union instead. 'We are,' Fowler said. 'Us going to talk to players is working with the union, right? … We're forming basically our own opinions on what is going on, and giving honest feedback to Rob about the player side, even the management side.' About a week after Fowler's interview, Meyer, the players' lead negotiator during collective bargaining, appeared on Foul Territory and was asked about a wide range of labor-related topics, including CAP. At the All-Star Game, The Athletic asked Pierzynski what prompted the line of questioning about the program. 'As a former player, I only know the player's side,' Pierzynski said. 'When you see players go work for the commissioner — I have no problem with Rob — but when you see that, I want to hear their side. And Dex was great. He was perfect with his answer, and I have no problem with it. I see where he's coming from, I see what he's doing: 'We're about growing the game, and that's it.'' But conversations about player relationships with management are always going to be touchy. 'Players try to unite, and then the owners want to unite,' Pierzynski continued. 'So I think it just gets complicated, it gets ugly because it's a negotiation like anything else. It shouldn't be that complicated, but it always ends up complicated.' Said Clark in Atlanta: 'Once you're a part of the fraternity, you'll always be a part of the fraternity. There are challenges that we have to navigate.' (Top photo of Rob Manfred and CC Sabathia talking before Game 1 of the 2023 World Series: Cooper Neill / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Washington Post
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
In 1965, the government tried replacing migrant workers with high-schoolers. It was a disaster.
Roy McNutt was 17 when he spent a summer picking pickles for America. 'It was lousy,' he said. McNutt, now 77, joined thousands of high school teens harvesting cucumbers, melons, strawberries and carrots during the summer of 1965. That was after Congress cut off the pathway for millions of migrant workers from Mexico to cross the border and bring that food to the nation's tables. The Mexican Farm Labor program had been created in 1942 to address the World War II labor shortage. Known as the bracero program. it allowed generations of manual laborers to work in the United States and was set to expire in 1964. A revival of the program, the Bracero 2.0 Act, was introduced in Congress last week. 'It was a time of both heightened xenophobia and heightened critique of foreign guest workers,' said Lori Flores, associate history professor at Columbia University. The migrant workers were 'either taking jobs away from citizens in various spheres or draining public aid and resources.' So U.S. officials let the program die. They were convinced that unemployed, domestic workers would fill those jobs. They did not. The fields of unpicked produce began rotting. 'Farm Work Builds Men!' read one of the fliers that the Labor Department began sending to schools, with the image of Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte urging high school jocks to spend the summer saving the 1965 crop. The government plan was for thousands of athletes to sign up for 'Join A-TEAM' (Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower). The Labor Department urged the coaches to become field supervisors and bond with the players, who would surely get stronger and more disciplined toiling in the hot sun. As the school year ended, hometown papers ran glowing stories about the boys, capturing their toothpaste smiles as they prepared to set off on a noble adventure. 'We were getting away from our parents for the summer,' said Randy Carter, who was 17 when he got on a bus with his Catholic school pals in San Diego and headed to Blythe, California, to pick cantaloupes. 'We thought, maybe there would be some girls! Maybe we could get beer!' Carter wanted to earn money for a surfboard. One of the guys had a guitar. It would be fun, they hoped. But the entire program was a disaster. The article in McNutt's hometown paper, the Springfield, Ohio, News-Sun, said his group would be in the Heinz cucumber fields. The group left the farm in Michigan after only a week. The labor was slow, and growers quickly complained that the cucumbers grew faster than the boys could pick them and got too big to pickle. 'That's a truckload of garbage I've got,' Hank Keytylo told the Detroit Free Press that August, pointing to a load from his 20-acre cucumber patch. 'I'll get $50 for the whole truckload,' Keytylo said. 'Any other years, I'd get $150 for a truckload.' Meanwhile the boys, stunned at the living conditions and the backbreaking work in fields from Michigan to Texas to California, complained. 'They were fed food that was unfit for human consumption,' Rep. Teno Roncalio (D-Wyoming) said of his state's A-TEAM members who were sent to Salinas, California. In a speech on the House floor on June 29, 1965, he said that they 'lived in beds filthy with bedbugs; they had to associate with switchblade knife carriers.' At least one of his colleagues was thrilled with this testimony. 'I am delighted to hear the gentleman from Wyoming give this report to the House, because the conditions he described are the conditions I and others have been describing and deploring over many years as they applied to other workers,' said Rep. Jeffery Cohelan (D-California). The 37 boys all paid their own way back to Wyoming, and Roncalio wanted the growers or the government to pay them back. Most of the program went like this. And because America's corn-fed boys complained about working conditions, the nation finally listened to the grim reality about the way food gets to the table. 'In denouncing these conditions as unacceptable for U.S. workers, Roncalio failed to acknowledge that braceros had endured these exact conditions since 1942,' Flores wrote in 'Grounds for Dreaming,' her book about Mexican workers and immigrants in the California farmworker movement. 'It had taken young citizen athletes complaining of similar sufferings to alert him and others to the mistreatment of farmworkers,' she said. That was just as Cesar Chavez was beginning to organize farmworkers to protest the low pay and deplorable working conditions they faced. The influx, then rejection of migrant labor forces is a familiar cycle in the United States. During the late 1900s, most farmworkers in the U.S. came from China, Japan and the Philippines. Xenophobic hysteria spawned the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the U.S. turned to Mexico and South America to replace the banned Chinese workers. During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of nearly 2 million migrant workers who had come from Mexico. The creation of a border patrol in 1924 tightened the U.S.-Mexico border. Then, during World War II, the government changed its mind. Farm labor was desperately needed to harvest the crops, which is what spawned the bracero program to bring Mexican laborers to the U.S. on short-term contracts. It lasted until 1964, when America again became averse to migrant labor. So, Congress let the program die. And growers again pleaded for help, saying the domestic workforce was uninterested in their minimum-wage jobs. Extensions of the visa programs for non-U.S. workers would be the only things that would save the American produce aisle. 'Crops are rotting, and they are rotting because of a genuine labor shortage in spite of all the efforts by responsible growers to recruit and maintain a domestic labor force,' O.W. Fillerup, executive vice president of the Council of California Growers, said to the Associated Press for an article published May 5, 1965. W. Willard Wirtz, the U.S. secretary of labor, said the growers weren't trying hard enough to hire domestic labor and announced his A-TEAM program. Carter was among the 3,300 boys who were all in. Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson — 'big athletes did these press conferences,' he said. So he got on the bus to Blythe, a stretch of agricultural nowhere far from the ocean and closer to the Colorado River. The program promised good pay, good food, good housing conditions. But the first meal they were served was boiled tongue, which many weren't used to eating. The bunks were made of hard metal. 'You're wearing an overcoat before dawn, since it's chilly,' said Carter, who went on to work in Hollywood and has written a screenplay about his time as a melon picker. 'And by 9 o'clock, it's 120 degrees.' More than half the kids quit. And only one high school team — the guys from Cresco, Iowa — finished with all 31 boys who started, the AP reported in the autumn of 1965. The boys were horrified by the food and living conditions. Some got milk after making demands for more nutrition. One boy from Utah, Ed Carlson, said his cafeteria had a riot after they all threw down their trays filled with slop. In some cases, the growers ended up having to foot the bill at local cafes, which served the only palatable food for miles. Growers complained of flying melons and strawberries — food fights in the fields. They were teens, after all. Many of the boys said they were never paid. 'Not a dime,' said McNutt, the pickle picker. After most of the crew of boys from Wichita quit, one of the bosses was circumspect about the program. He said that part of the failure was undervaluing the work of the braceros. 'It takes skill,' Bill Pihl told the Beacon. 'It's cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon. It's rough work. 'And for kids who never did it, it's impossible.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A birthday they'll never forget: Mom gives birth to all 4 kids on the same day
This mom of four was picking up guinea pigs and a lizard when labor started—again—on July 7. And yes, her three older kids were all born that same day. When Nauzhae Drake walked into the pet store on July 7, she was on a mission. Her three kids—Kewan, Na'Zaiyla, and Khalan—were turning 6, 4, and 3, and she had planned a circus-carnival-themed birthday bash to match their high energy and love of animals. 'I was shopping for their birthday gifts…because I got them live animals,' she explained in an interview with Good Morning America. 'They got two guinea pigs and a lizard.' But the party prep didn't end with balloons and reptiles. As she loaded up on gifts, Nauzhae—who was 38 weeks pregnant—started having contractions. Consistent ones. Related: 'No plastic, no noise, no color': Mom's viral birthday party rules spark backlash online Enough to know it was time to drop everything and head to the hospital. Hours later, her fourth child, baby Kailowa, was born—on July 7. Four kids. One birthday. No, really. What makes Nauzhae's story so extraordinary isn't just the chaos of labor hitting mid-birthday prep. It's that all four of her children were born on July 7, in different years—and none of them were due that day. Her firstborn, Kewan, was due July 20. Her second and third, Na'Zaiyla and Khalan, were due July 22 and July 17, respectively. Baby Kailowa? Also due later. But every time, her babies decided to arrive early—and on the exact same day. 'It was not planned,' she told GMA. 'They all had different due dates…it seemed like every time, it was a greater shock.' Even more remarkable? Everyone was born at or before 38 weeks. In families with four children, the odds that at least two share a birthday are about 6.3%. But for all four to land on the same date naturally? That's the kind of cosmic coincidence that defies math. For her kids, it's their favorite thing You might expect some sibling rivalry or wish for a little birthday independence—but not in Nauzhae's house. Her kids were eagerly waiting for their new sibling's arrival, and they were absolutely sure it would happen on their birthday again. 'They actually were saying that [Kailowa] was going to be born on that day,' Nauzhae recalled. The result? A sibling bond that began even before birth. Related: Big brother's overwhelming joy for his sister's birthday gifts will melt your heart A mom making it all happen Between nursing school, parenting four young children, and managing birthday parties that double as milestone markers, Nauzhae is no stranger to chaos. But this year's celebration—complete with a delivery room and pet shop animals—takes the cake. She hasn't decided what next year's party will look like, but whatever they do, one thing's for sure: July 7 is going to be a big day. Solve the daily Crossword
NHK
3 days ago
- Business
- NHK
Food prices push up Japan CPI ahead of Upper House election
Inflation stays above 3% in June. An expert says the nation's workers need to take the initiative to demand pay hikes if they want to escape the pain of rising prices.
