Dockworkers caucus urges rank-and-file to OK contract

A dockworkers caucus recommended that union members approve a tentative labor agreement with shipping companies that ended months of labor strife at West Coast ports.

Seventy-eight percent of caucus delegates voted Friday for approval of the five-year proposal, the International Longshore & Warehouse Union said.

Reached in late February, the contract for about 20,000 dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports will now go before union members for ratification. Those votes will be tallied May 22.

Tesla’s new vehicle deliveries up 55% from 1st quarter 2014

Tesla’s first-quarter new vehicle deliveries climbed 55 percent from a year earlier to more than 10,000 cars.

The electric vehicle maker said Friday that it has decided to report the number of new car deliveries within three days of quarter’s end going forward to pre-empt “inaccurate sources of information.” Tesla Motors Inc. said that the delivery figure is only one measure of its financial performance and shouldn’t be relied on as an indicator of its quarterly financial results.

France bans vegetable imports from region in southern Italy

Italian farm associations accused France on Friday of starting a trade war by announcing a ban on imports of vegetables from the southern Puglia region because of a bacterial outbreak that has infected hundreds of thousands of olive trees.

Already, European Commission officials have said Italy should consider cutting down the infected olive trees and creating a buffer zone to save the estimated 90 percent of trees that aren’t infected.

– From news service reports