Working Life

    Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan…make your own list of the people who are viciously anti-union. We know the threat they pose: attacking the labor movement, and undermining the right to strike, is a death blow to the middle class and justice in America. The problem is that we are also undermined […]

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    Do not get distracted by the claims by people who want your vote. Nothing has changed. The robbery of the wealth of the country continues. And the rhetoric aiding and abetting the robbery is going to get ramped up around corporate tax cuts.     Let’s start with the hardship sweeping the country…It’s been a […]

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    I think we make a mistake describing the unrelenting class warfare underway as a campaign undertaken by evil, crazed or demented very rich people. Sure, there are a few of them and it is certainly a part of an ideological belief ("we rich people are just better and more skilled and tough luck"). But, […]

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    It’s a great time in America–if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Not so much if you are a regular American. The profit gains of the Fortune 500 registered the third largest gain in history in 2010. By contrast, the people continue to struggle. Even the editors of Fortune recognize the […]

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   Guarantee you this won’t merit front-page news: Progress on a free trade deal with Colombia has cleared the way for the White House to seek Congressional approval of a package of trade agreements that includes pacts with South Korea and Panama, as Republicans have demanded. Obama administration officials said Wednesday that they expected technical […]

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   This was a bit of a surprise to me, though I have not been watching that closely: Faye Moore, the up-and-coming president of Local 371, who was seen as a possible contender to lead DC 37, was ousted as president of her union by a decisive margin on Friday. Moore lost a hotly contested […]

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   I have a small amount of sympathy for Kent Conrad, even though he is one of the leading obsessed people about the phony deficit crisis. He is one of the so-called "Gang of Six" in the Senate working to come up with a "bi-partisan" solution to the phony crisis. But, things are tough: Kent […]

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    Earlier today I wrote about the plan by the European Commission to launch an anti-trust investigation into the credit default swaps market. I thought I was done for the day but now comes word that our own government appears to be going the other way: weakening important rules for derivatives that were part of […]

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    Via the Financial Times today: The European Commission has opened sweeping antitrust investigations into a collection of the biggest players in the credit default swaps market, including ICE, the industry’s leading clearing house. The investigations, launched by Joaquín Almunia, the competition commissioner, open a new chapter in the commission’s attempts to regulate a group […]

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   Interesting to see different takes on the deal reached in Los Angeles for city workers’ contracts. First, the LATimes: Unions representing 6,300 L.A. workers reject Villaraigosa’s labor deal Four out of 18 labor groups at Los Angeles City Hall have rejected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposal for reducing the city’s budget shortfall by scaling back […]

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