Working Life

Oh, this is left over from Tax Day–not that 15 companies would even know what Tax Day means. Cuz, even if they rake it in, they don’t pay taxes. How special.

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This Friday will mark the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza mass murder of 1,138 garment workers. I use the word “murder” because the collapse of the eight-story building that housed sweatshop garment factories wasn’t some astonishing surprise. It happened because international garment companies–like Benetton, Primark, Matalan, and Mango –exploited people for huge profits, not caring a whit about their conditions in slave-like conditions half way around the globe; those companies happily pocketed billions of dollars in profits and signed deals year after year with sleazy contractors who operated unsafe, dangerous factories.

After a huge outcry following the collapse, an accord was signed between labor rights advocates, international union representatives and NGOs, on the one hand, and garment companies, on the other hand, calling for payments by the companies to upgrade safety and set up a monitoring scheme to try to prevent future Rana Plaza-like mass murders.

But, even just paying a pittance apparently seems beyond the moral compass of these companies who are stiffing the accord’s budget.

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It is not enough to simply say the deal on “fast track” is a bad one. We need to understand, in the details, why what is being sold as a new “improved” fast track is just utter nonsense.

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There are a ton of bad ideas out there in the world of economic policy–mostly, those are dumb ideas having to do with the complete comfort with class warfare, from “trickle down” to “CEOs are job creators” to so-called “Free trade.” It is one of the great astonishing things that, despite the fact that all […]

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The Trans Pacific Partnership is no laughing matter. It’s a fast track to lower wages, environmental disasters and the undermining of democracy. But, hell, I think maybe the president has a sense of humor on all this. Or, on a serious note, he’s unintentionally showing how weak support is for TPP and the odious “fast […]

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Pearls of wisdom. Not the economics–because it is absurd, the reality not of “free market” competition but the reality of cronyism, corruption and greed. But, Dan Price saw the immorality of paying people shit and did something about it: he cut his pay and is raising everyone’s wages.

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Leave it to the managers and executives trying to squeeze the life out of workers to come up with the newest twist in brutal behavior, using the wondrous world of technology (you know, the thing that will save us all and make work even happier…not!) to make it all happen. Essentially, it goes like this: forget a work schedule you know in advance…the Great Wizard behind the work curtain may only decide to bestow upon you, the servant worker, the luck of some work just a few hours before you have to show up for the job.

Except it might be illegal. At least in New York.

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This is just a repeated point–repeated because it’s just so obvious, though it seems to escape the grey cells of transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) and other analysts.

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I’ve been irritated by this before but was moved to write and send–probably pointlessly to the tower of silence on 8th Avenue–the following to the Times’ Public Editor:

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Thirteen days away, tick tock, tick tock…everyone is getting ready to write those checks to the IRS for the money they owe on income earned–you know, the ones that fund highways, education, health care and, grumble, war.

Except for corporations, of course. It’s the same old story–dodge, dodge, dodge a fair share of taxes. $600 billion.

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