Sherman A1
Sherman A1's JournalCourt Orders State Of Missouri To Recognize Same-Sex Marriages
A Kansas City judge ruled Friday that the state of Missouri had to recognize marriages of same-sex couples that were legally married in other states.
The decision came eight days after hearing arguments in a case involving 10 same-sex couples, including five from St. Louis, who had valid marriage licenses from other states. Jackson County Circuit Court Judge J. Dale Youngs determined that not recognizing same-sex marriages that are legally performed in other states is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of the 10 couples. In a press release, Jeffrey A. Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri said, “This is a personal win for our 10 courageous couples who stepped up to represent the LGBT community. Even better — this is a win for the whole state because a discriminatory law has been struck down.”
Mittman also told St. Louis Public Radio that the ruling means complete equality for all same-sex couples who live in Missouri.
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/court-orders-state-missouri-recognize-same-sex-marriages
S-W shoplifting ends in death of convenience store owner
SEDRO-WOOLLEY — The James Market has a steady client base. Customers come in day after day, week after week to pick up a few quick items or talk to the shop’s owners, who, by all accounts, have been good to their customers.
On Friday morning, a small paper taped to the shop’s front window and a growing memorial of flowers, balloons and cards were signs that something was amiss. Today, the shop at 217 W. State St. was closed.
Some customers were confused about why and were saddened to learn that co-owner Yongmin Pak died after confronting a suspected shoplifter Thursday night.
“They were always so nice, that’s why I came here,” said
http://www.goskagit.com/all_access/s-w-shoplifting-ends-in-death-of-convenience-store-owner/article_dcd2473e-4b2b-11e4-8d4e-f38d2d6c046a.html
This is why anyone who works in Retail, needs to remember that you simply do not chase shoplifters...... 
October 4: Looks to be a busy one.....
National Taco Day 
Fall Astronomy Day,
Cinnamon Roll Day 
Ten-Four Day, 
Vodka Day, 
World Animal Day,
Lena Dunham Decides People Should Be Paid for Their Work
Lena Dunham is the creator of GIRLS, and her character on the show, Hannah, considers herself the voice of a generation—a generation which, its spokesperson surely already knows, is underemployed, overeducated, crushed with debt, and generally in need of some work. Work that pays, in particular.
So it was a bit strange that a recent New York Times piece revealed that Dunham was about to hire several performers to work for her, and she wasn't going to pay them.
The article mentioned in passing that for Dunham's upcoming tour for her new book, Not That Kind of Girl (for which she was paid an advance of $3.7 million), she opened up auditions for the tour. Dunham received over 600 submissions, from a wide cast of characters that included a "sand artist, a ukulele player, a cappella singers, gymnasts, performance artists and stand-up comics, even some exceptionally charismatic babies."
The Times described the event as "more like a roving Burning Man festival than a sober, meet-the-author literary event." Which is a pretty apt description, since no money exchanges hands at Burning Man, and Lena Dunham was not planning on exchanging any money with her performers.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17208/lena_dunham_decides_people_should_be_paid_for_their_work
New ‘Yelp’ for Guest Workers in U.S. Challenges the Employer Power Dynamic
A flawed U.S. immigration system means workers are losing. Employers and recruiters of guest workers almost always hold all the power while workers themselves have very little information about future employment and living situations. But now there is a new online tool for migrant workers that will allow them to challenge this dynamic and make more informed decisions about migrating for work.
A new initiative called Contratados, which refers to being contracted under a temporary work program, aims to give workers more power in the recruitment process and makes sure employers and recruiters are held accountable for their actions. Spearheaded by Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), a trans-national migrant worker center with offices in Mexico and the United States, Contratados features an interactive website, a hotline, pocket-sized know-your-rights comics, audio novelas and a transnational radio campaign designed to provide workers with resources to more securely navigate the recruitment and employment process.
Migrant workers recruited to work in the United States on guest worker visas routinely face well-documented forms of abuse and exploitation. This exploitation often begins at home, as workers take on enormous debt to pay high fees to recruitment firms for the privilege of securing a job, and many times the terms and condition of employment are misrepresented by such firms. The recruitment of workers takes place in an unregulated, lawless space that leaves workers vulnerable to mistreatment once in the United States, including fraud, abuse and intimidated by recruiters and employers and employer confiscation of travel documents. Further, guest workers are unable to change employers if they find themselves in an abusive situation, and those who do complain or attempt to organize face threats, blacklisting and physical coercion.
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/New-Yelp-for-Guest-Workers-in-U.S.-Challenges-the-Employer-Power-Dynamic
More Hurdles for Home Care Unions
In an attempt to build on a recent antiunion victory in the Supreme Court, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed another antiunion lawsuit in federal court in Minnesota. The suit seeks to weaken a new union of 27,000 home care workers there and, in the process, to undermine union rights more broadly.
At issue in the case is “exclusive representation” — the legal right of a duly-elected union to represent all the workers in a unionized workplace or occupation. Exclusive representation is what gives a union bargaining clout and ensures that the majority of workers that voted to unionize have a shot at forming a strong union. However, it does not force workers who voted against the union to join or pay dues. Nonmembers receive the same pay raises and other benefits negotiated by the union that members do; in Minnesota, nonmembers of the home care union do not even have to pay “fair share” fees to defray the cost of collective bargaining that benefits them directly.
Even so, the right-to-work foundation, on behalf of some of the nonmembers of the Minnesota union, has filed suit challenging the union’s right to represent them. The suit claims that nonmembers’ constitutional right to free association is violated when a union they do not support calls itself their representative. This a specious and ideologically driven argument, akin to saying that a United States senator should not be deemed to represent all of the people in a state because some residents voted for an opponent. It is also, unfortunately, the sort of argument that conservative Supreme Court justices have used in recent years to justify antiunion rulings. In June, for example, a 5-to-4 majority on the court held that nonmembers in a home care union did not have to pay a fee to cover collective-bargaining costs because a required payment violated their right not to associate with the union. The ruling basically invited free riders to take the benefits of collective bargaining without paying for them.
The Minnesota case faces a long road to the Supreme Court, but that is the destination the plaintiffs seek. Having weakened protections against free riders, they now want to weaken or overturn the union right of exclusive representation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/opinion/more-hurdles-for-home-care-unions.html?emc=edit_tnt_20141001&nlid=1647429&tntemail0=y&_r=0
Australia's Stateswoman
As a 21-year-old law student at the University of Melbourne, Julia Gillard was elected president of Australia’s student union; by age 29, she had made partner at her law firm in Melbourne, Australia; not long after, she won a seat on Parliament for the Labor Party. When Labor leader Kevin Rudd was elected prime minister in 2007, putting an end to 11 years of center-right rule, Gillard was named to several positions in the new government, including minister for education. But in 2010, with Rudd’s ratings having slipped, she successfully challenged him for leader, becoming Australia’s first female prime minister. Sitting atop a shaky minority government, Gillard managed to get a carbon-pricing scheme enacted and a health-care funding bill passed. But in June 2013, Rudd challenged and unseated her as leader, and later that year, Labor itself lost its hold on the government to the Liberal Party. Gillard now chairs the Global Partnership for Education, a fund that has allocated $3.9 billion for schooling in developing countries over the past decade. She spoke with Foreign Affairs deputy managing editor Stuart Reid in New York in September.
Do you miss politics?
It's mixed. Coming out of being prime minister, it's the end of the best thing you'll ever do and the end of the hardest thing you'll ever do, all wrapped up into one. You certainly miss the best of it and, for me, the best of it was having the opportunity to make change in my nation. But you don't miss some of the day-to-day stresses of it. But having the opportunity to chair the Global Partnership for Education is very precious to me, because the things that really drove me as prime minister were about education and opportunity, and I'd like to pursue that still.
Donors have lots of choices when it comes to where to put their scarce resources -- public health, infrastructure, the environment, and so on. Why should they focus on education?
Because it's the single biggest change agent for the future. If we want poorer countries to develop, take their place in the global community, and have an economy that provides jobs and opportunity and prosperity, then we have to be educating the children of that nation. When you look at development outcomes, if we could make sure that people could read and write -- basic education -- the spinoff from that is something like 170 million people being lifted out of poverty. Huge gains are to be had through educating children. Particularly huge gains are to be had by educating girls, because all the evidence shows that if you educate a girl, then not only will she go on to make an economic contribution for her family, but her children will also be more likely to survive infanthood, more likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to be educated themselves. You set up a very virtuous cycle.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/australias-stateswoman?cid=nlc-foreign_affairs_this_week-100214-australias_stateswoman_5-100214&sp_mid=47109184&sp_rid=ay1maXR6cGF0cmlja0BzYmNnbG9iYWwubmV0S0
St. Louis Metro workers declare victory, secure agreement preserving retirement security
After Metro workers waged an aggressive campaign that included leafleting passengers and the general public at garages, bus stops and MetroLink stops, the Bi-State Development Agency (Metro) and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 788 have reached an agreement on a fair contract that preserves workers’ retirement security in the form of a defined benefit pension plan, increases wages, and improves health care coverage.
“This is an historic day and a big victory for all of St. Louis. Working people in this city have been under attack for years, but today, Metro workers and their allies reversed the momentum,” said Local 788 President Mike Breihan. “We drew a line in the sand and said, ‘No, you can’t take what little we have left.’”
Breihan announced the agreement Sept. 17 at the Missouri AFL-CIO’s 27th Biennial Convention in St. Louis and was greeted with a standing ovation from the roughly 200 union delegates in attendance.
METRO’S RACE BAITING
Metro management attempted, on numerous occasions, to racially divide workers during the negotiations.
http://labortribune.com/st-louis-metro-workers-declare-victory-secure-agreement-preserving-retirement-security/
Ameren plans to replace 2 coal plants with gas, renewables
Ameren Missouri predicts big additions of wind and natural gas to replace two coal plants it will retire during the next 20 years, and it expects to add another 10 megawatts of utility-scale solar by 2016.
The utility’s energy plans are part of a comprehensive generation plan it is required to prepare for regulators every three years. Its 2014 plan lays out the beginnings of a move away from its traditional reliance on coal power as the fuel faces ever stricter environmental regulations.
“We’re looking at retiring about a third of our coal power fleet as they reach end of life,” said Ameren spokesman Warren Wood.
The utility had already revealed it had planned to retire its Meramec power plant in south St. Louis County by 2022. Now, the utility says it will retire its Sioux plant in St. Charles County by 2033. Together, they produce about 1,800 megawatts of power.
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ameren-plans-to-replace-coal-plants-with-gas-renewables/article_f5fb7218-899c-5275-8b31-75b2cc5e566f.html
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