Working Life

Health care is in the air–and there are somewhat dueling camps here in Denver, which reflect what’s happening day-to-day in labor. Last night, I attended a lively reception hosted by a variety of groups–the California Nurses Association and Progressive Democrats of America–who support HR676, the bill that would enact essentially a single-payer system. The bill’s […]

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   No, I have not just been sleeping in bed. Yes, it was a long night–again…the hot party of the night was at The Samba Room, courtesy of Planned Parenthood, where a darn good DJ kept the place hopping (I, of course, participated in the close-contact sport of dancing). It’s just hard to blog here […]

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   So, friends, here in Denver, I’ve finally gotten strapped to my chair after a very busy morning (okay, it was a groggy one given the…eh…number of margaritas that I was forced to consume last night–only in the service of talking to people to bring you the best info).   Yesterday, I attended two briefings […]

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   Yesterday, I wrote about whether Joe Biden was good for labor. Relatively speaking, the answer is yes. Relative speaking because Paul Wellstone is not alive and, compared to the other people being considered, Biden was a decent choice.    In the analysis, I used a quick-and-dirty look at 12 years of the AFL-CIO’s legislative […]

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   As a whole, Joe Biden is considered a friend of labor. But, he doesn’t have a perfect voting record as far as labor is concerned. Lifetime, he has an 85 percent voting record on votes the AFL-CIO considers crucial over the past 12 years (that is the time period available on-line…and that’s the best […]

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  It’s not a hard intellectual or political lift to say that a President Obama would be leaps and bounds much better for working people than John "Third Bush Term" McCain–partly because the bar has been set so low in the past eight years. But, it’s worth being clear-eyed about what we can expect.   […]

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   I’m working on Denver time now and, after being out drinking a lot of wine, I’m strapped back into the saddle. Now, this is really good news and a lot of kudos go out to the leadership of the New York State AFL-CIO: at its most recent statewide convention this past week, the State […]

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   On Monday, Reuters had this piece: Tensions Mount Inside Actors Union Over Contract By REUTERS Filed at 9:28 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Tensions within the Screen Actors Guild mounted on Monday as the union’s Hollywood-based leaders rejected a call by SAG’s New York branch to bring in a federal mediator to break […]

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   I’m always in favor of a little street theater and humor in this oh, so, serious business. So, there’s been a bus tour underwritten by the Consumer Electronics Association called "America Wins With Trade", drummed up to try to generate a pulse for the quickly dying so-called "free trade" agenda. Some clever folks in […]

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   Well, Wal-Mart has a union…but not in the U.S…across the border, and only because a judge imposed the union on the Beast. Shows you what a slightly better legal system can do for union organizing. Here’s what The Wall Street Journal has today: An arbitrator has imposed a contract on a Wal-Mart Canada auto […]

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