Working Life

     Forget the criminals on Wall Street. What is more telling, troubling and almost bizarre is how quickly the chattering classes and political power brokers have shaken off the stain of the financial crisis, inviting back to center stage some of the very people responsible for destroying trillions of dollars in wealth and costing millions […]

Read the full story

   The "economy is recovering" voices are clearly their throats again: The nation’s employers added 192,000 jobs in February, up from a gain of 63,000 the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. While February’s number represented the fastest growth in nearly a year, it was partly the result of a bounce back from […]

Read the full story

   I’ve been following this from a far–not because I like the sport (I don’t)–but it is a fight that is a tough one for the workers. At the brink of an all-out labor war Thursday, the NFL players union weighed an 11th hour-proposal by National Football League owners designed to keep the two sides […]

Read the full story

   This may not seem like an earth-shaking moment but it is a telling truth about where money flows, who controls it and how little ability we have to oversee the shadow banking done at the margins of our economy.     From the Financial Times: The top 10 hedge funds made $28bn for clients […]

Read the full story

    We have a real problem in the debate about pensions that is very closely connected to the financial implosion we’re still trying to dig our way out of: the criminals and fools on Wall Street are hiding and avoiding prosecution, or at the very least, they are managing to keep their jobs despite their […]

Read the full story

  I think the hardest part of being immersed in a battle–even one that is energizing and inspiring–is to see where we stand in the overall war (with apologies to those who don’t like the military imagery). No doubt, the people in Wisconsin–and hundreds of thousands of supporters nationwide–have given the anti-union forces something to […]

Read the full story

   The tide is with us: As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest […]

Read the full story

    Corporate welfare and the scam on the American people is a daily scandal. And it gets obscured sometimes in the rah-rah competition in the marketplace that we get sucked into by the traditional media. So, here’s something to think about: you, the taxpayer, are about to shell our billions of dollars to a corporation […]

Read the full story

   I happened to catch a fairly dumb, back-patting panel run by the Democratic Governors Association (DGA)–ok, sure, it was to be expected to be of low level. Why? Here is a dumb question that unfortunately reflects the on-going rhetoric in the country: John Podesta, uber-lobbyist/insider/head of the Center for American Progress, asked: how important […]

Read the full story

   Let me be quite clear again about one fact that gets lost: we have plenty of money in the country. There is no debt or deficit "crisis" even if people across the political spectrum, including former labor leaders, are regurgitating complete nonsense about the "crisis". This is simple: it’s class warfare and the rich […]

Read the full story