Content about Labor
As I write this column on Thursday (yesterday), the sports office of The Daily Texan, as I’ve known it for the last four years, has remained relatively unchanged. The red couch with pillows bursting at the seams still festers with the stench of sweaty writers who plop on the couch regularly after coming back from some availability or another to furiously file a story. The small tube TV sitting on top of a ruddy filing cabinet is still missing the power button and the remote only functions when you hold it at just the right angle from just the right distance.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy’s recovery looks enduring. It’s just not very strong.
Hiring, housing, consumer spending and manufacturing all appear to be improving, yet remain less than healthy. Economists surveyed by The Associated Press expect growth to pick up this year, though not enough to lower unemployment much.
A clearer picture of the nation’s economic health will emerge Friday, when the government reveals how many jobs employers added in April.
HAVANA (AP) — After controlling the comings and goings of its people for five decades, communist Cuba appears on the verge of a momentous decision to lift many travel restrictions. One senior official says a “radical and profound” change is weeks away.
As more people and businesses move to Austin, the city will encounter challenges and opportunities that come with an increasingly dense urban environment, say business leaders and academics.
Forbes magazine recently ranked the Austin metro area as the fastest growing city in the United States for the second year in a row. The publication rated cities using economic and population growth projections from Moody’s, an economic analysis agency.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s border control union has set a strike date for May 10 as part of its dispute with the government over retirement ages.
Lucy Moreton, the deputy general secretary of the Immigration Service Union, says workers at major airports such as London’s Heathrow as well as seaports will be affected by the 24-hour strike.
Border controls in Paris and Brussels connected to the Eurostar train service will also be affected.
“It is with deep regret,” Moreton said of the strike.
SAN DIEGO — A college student picked up in a federal drug sweep in California was never arrested, never charged and should have been released. Instead, authorities say, he was forgotten in a holding cell for four days.
Without food, water or access to a toilet, Daniel Chong had to drink his own urine to survive and began hallucinating after three days because of a lack of nourishment, his lawyer said.
After two semesters and a summer of planning, a new online African-American UT publication will launch in the fall.
Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman, editor-in-chief of the publication and a journalism sophomore, said the student organization Black Ink Association is attempting to launch a publication similar to the “The Griot,” which was an African-American print publication at UT in the ’80s and the ’90s.
The Facilities Services division of the J.J. Pickle Research Campus is undergoing restructuring affecting 52 employees. This restructuring will allow the department to “improve efficiency” and fund a “contingency reserve” that could pay for merit-based pay increases.
A federal judge on Monday stopped Texas from preventing Planned Parenthood from getting funds through the state’s Women’s Health Program — a decision the state immediately appealed.
A federal judge on Monday stopped Texas from preventing Planned Parenthood from getting funds through the state’s Women’s Health Program — a decision the state immediately appealed.
LONDON — A committee of British lawmakers called Rupert Murdoch unfit to run his global media empire — a finding that reflects just how deeply the phone hacking scandal born of his defunct News of the World has shaken the relationship between the press and politics.
The divisive ruling Tuesday against Murdoch, his son James and three of their executives also exposed the waning influence of the media tycoon, and could jeopardize his control of a major broadcaster.
SAN FRANCISCO — May Day protests may disrupt the morning commute in major U.S. cities Tuesday as labor, immigration and Occupy activists rally support on the international workers’ holiday. Demonstrations, strikes and acts of civil disobedience are being planned around the country, including the most visible organizing effort by anti-Wall Street groups since Occupy encampments came down in the fall.
A program created to educate and keep youth out of jail is aiming to improve job prospects in East Austin and is relying on local feedback to expand educational services for adults.
I am writing to respond to the editorial board’s endorsement of Bill Spelman for City Council. I don’t take issue with your support of my opponent. I do take issue with the failure to accurately describe my agenda and platform. The notion that I am “firmly opposed to any progressive change on council” demonstrates a failure to actually follow this election and listen to my positions at nearly two dozen forums and meetings.
Editor’s note: On behalf of the Center for Asian American Studies, Eric Chen, a 2009 UT alumnus, describes some Asian-American perspectives on the case of Fisher v. UT.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of conduct “beneath the dignity of the White House.” The top House Democrat said Boehner considers the health of women “a luxury.”
In a measure of the sharp elbows both parties are throwing this election year, note that those words were exchanged over legislation whose basic purpose they say they agree on: preventing interest rates on millions of federal student loans from doubling to 6.8 percent this summer.
Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a three-part series about the legislative student organizations at UT and their transition to new leadership over the next few weeks.
Michael Redding describes being the new president of Graduate Student Assembly as kind of like going on a first date. When he started, Redding said, he had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Editor’s note: Last week, 18 members of the Make UT Sweatshop-Free Coalition protested the University’s affiliation with the Fair Labor Association, a group that monitors working conditions. The protesters demanded that the University switch membership to the Worker Rights Consortium. After protesting outside of President William Powers Jr.’s office in the Main Building for hours, they were arrested for trespassing by UT Police Department.
Point: Putting the demands into perspective
On Sunday, the Austin American-Statesman reported that the Seton Family of Hospitals pledged up to $250 million for a new Austin hospital to replace the University Medical Center at Brackenridge. Brackenridge is operated by Seton under a lease from its publicly-funded owner, Central Health. This new hospital could serve as a teaching hospital and offer support for an Austin-based medical school operated by the UT System.
BRUSSELS — For more than a year, European Union officials have called for austerity, austerity and more austerity as a means to solve Europe’s debt crisis. Now people who don’t want to pay the price are taking their fight from the streets to the ballot box.
Governments have fallen, more are at risk and in some places, a stark streak of nationalism is on the rise that could swing Europe ever deeper into a fortress mentality.
NEW ORLEANS — Federal prosecutors brought the first criminal charges Tuesday in the Gulf oil spill, accusing a former BP engineer of deleting more than 300 text messages that indicated the blown-out well was spewing far more crude than the company was telling the public at the time.
Kurt Mix of Katy, Texas, was arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence.
Last week’s arrest of 18 activists connected to the Make UT Sweatshop-Free Coalition has inspired both disillusionment and support within the UT community.
Sabina Hinz-Foley, a Plan II junior and one of the students arrested, said the protest and the ensuing jail time generated wide support.
“We have hundreds of people contacting us and asking how they can get involved,” Hinz-Foley said.
The Seton Healthcare Family, which operates 15 hospitals and clinics in Texas including University Medical Center Brackenridge, plans to spend $250 million on a new hospital that will include Austin’s first medical school.
Seton negotiated a 100-year lease with Austin’s Central Health to build the modernized facility, which will potentially improve health care in Austin and replace the teaching hospital UMCB with a local medical school, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
The Seton Healthcare Family pledged $250 million Sunday to build a new hospital that would replace University Medical Center Brackenridge and move UT one step closer to establishing a medical school in Austin.
By age 17, Richie Gill, Plan II and economics junior, knew he did not want to work under a boss for the rest of his life.
So while still in high school, Gill earned his real estate license and started an online advertising business. After successfully running the business for two years, he sold it to improve his college GPA, but could not resist the urge to run his own business and earn money once again.
Gill started Mr. West Campus, a real estate agency for students looking to live close to campus in late 2010.
