Working Life

A reader sent this along. Turns out that Rep. Ed Towns (NY-11) has caught religion when it comes to trade. Well, sort of. He has called for the cutting off of trade to India to protest discrimination against Sikhs. Apparently, Towns thinks trade should be conditioned on a country abiding by certain minimum standards. Rep. […]

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Not surprisingly, the minimum wage passed the House yesterday with an overwhelming vote: 315-116. Joining all Democrats were 82 Republicans who were smart enough, even if they detest the idea of giving the working poor even a smidgen more money, to understand that voting against the hike would probably mean losing more House seats in […]

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It just snowed in New York. Seriously. Wild flurries. Nothing will stick but, hey, it was amazing–first time this winter and it’s January 10th. I thought Mark McGwire would be in the Hall of Fame before it snowed. I gather this will be the reaction of future generations unless we get this global warming thing […]

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Or so says Fortune magazine in its current issue. The tidbit that is probably of interest to readers here is in the section where the magazine puts forth recommendations on what the Beast of Bentonville needs to do in 2007: Extend an olive branch to the haters. HSBC retail analyst Mark Husson’s suggestion was the […]

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I can’t tell whether there is a rift here but Democrats seem to be giving mixed messages–shocking!–on what the party’s plans are regarding the immoral Bush tax cuts. In today’s New York Times, Charlie Rangel, the new chair of the House Ways and Means Committee (and, as an aside, my congressperson) seems to say that […]

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From time to time, as readers know, I’ve tended to praise Ben Stein, a columnist for The New York Times (among his endeavors), because he is one of those market-loving capitalists who is appalled by the absolute greed exhibited by the captains of industry. Today, he has another lament about the disgusting self-enrichment of people […]

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So, another failed CEO takes a fall over excessive pay. It was pretty amusing to watch the press frenzy over his crash and burn because of his refusal to even take a modest cut in his pay package. Robert the Hog, who took home $64 million over six years and was in line to pocket […]

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I’ve always thought that there is no issue in our society that labor should not be involved in. Global warming? Obviously. The war? Think of the economic damage, not to mention the number of working class people who are spilling their blood in Iraq. I’d be interested in hearing if you think there is a […]

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I took part in one of the many vigils that took place around the country to mark the awful arrival of the number 3,000–actually, it’s now 3,004 American men and women who have been killed in the illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Along with Cindy Sheehan and others, I read a portion of the […]

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The people in Bentonville, Arkansas always have enough time on their hands to figure out how to make their workers even more miserable. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front-page article that reports on the Beast’s plan to use computers to figure out when to schedule workers, even if that means workers can never count […]

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