Working Life

   This caught my eye this morning: Some of the largest shareholders in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have urged the Wall Street firm to reduce the size of its bonus pool, arguing that it should pass along more of its blockbuster earnings to investors, according to people familiar with the situation. The investors hold tens […]

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    Let’s go back in history briefly to the 1990s. In 1993, Bill Clinton pushed through NAFTA, over the objection of a large number of Democrats, with a large number of Republicans joining with the Democratic president to get NAFTA through the House (The Senate has always been far more receptive to so-called "free trade"). […]

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   I do not think it was a coincidence that Goldman Sachs announced its drop-in-the-bucket $500 million fund to help small businesses yesterday. Because the most important news is a report issued by the government bailout inspector that says Goldman got a huge gift from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, led at the […]

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   It is not surprising, given an astonishing level of underemployment, that we learn this: The number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million, the highest since the government began tracking what it calls “food insecurity” 14 years ago, the Department of Agriculture […]

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The Health Care vote in the house was close. And it still needs to pass the Senate. Poor branding, such as the term Public Option, didn’t help the cause.  But it’s not too late to win the support of  Republican enemies and the Teabaggers who control them.  I submit  a list of re-branding alternatives that […]

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   What does it mean when corporate profits are up–but people aren’t buying enough to sustain those profits? As in this report today via The Wall Street Journal: A record number of U.S. companies beat earnings expectations in the third quarter, but a big portion of their profits came from cost-cutting, disappointing investors who were […]

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   When NAFTA was passed in 1993, I, and others, argued that the labor movement should mount primary challenges to every Democrat who voted for the legislation. After all, labor correctly saw NAFTA as the underpinning for a trade policy that would hasten the evolution of a global economy based on one thing: the search […]

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   This should not surprise anyone who is actually out there trying to organize workers: Over the last quarter century, the unionized workforce has changed dramatically, according to this new CEPR report. In 2008, union workers reflected trends in the workforce as a whole toward a greater share of women, Latinos, Asian Pacific Americans, older, […]

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   Today, The Wall Street Journal had a story entitled "Unions Push Issues in State Capitals". The story told a tale of unions trying to move legislation that advances "card check" protections and similar measures that would make union organizing more fair.    What struck me were the last two paragraphs of the story: The […]

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   Yes, we have to rethink how the financial system is set up. Most of the thinking is along these lines: Democrats are advancing proposals in Congress designed to limit the size and complexity of financial companies so that any collapse wouldn’t damage the broader economy, a sign that lawmakers are responding to anti-Wall Street […]

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