Working Life

It keeps popping up since the election: one thing that Republicans are going to push in the lame-duck session of Congress is the so-called “free trade” agreement with Peru. It’s astonishing that the Democrats would let such a deal sail through given the results of the elections. As I pointed out, candidates opposed to so-called […]

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This makes life a little easier for someone like John Edwards. From Russ Feingold: On Sunday, November 12th in Racine, I will hold my 1000th Listening Session with the people of Wisconsin. Before reaching that milestone, I want you to know that I’ve decided to continue my role as Wisconsin’s Junior Senator in the U.S. […]

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It will be interesting to see the analysis of labor’s political operation in the 2006 election. A flurry of emails has been making the rounds, highlighting the mobilization of union members in the key races. A press release from the AFL-CIO asserted that, “High turnout among union members turned a win into a sweep with […]

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The Beast from Bentonville has done its best to enter the New York City market–but so far labor and community groups have kept it at bay. Wal-Mart has been turned back in its attempts to build a store in Queens and on Staten Island. Interestingly, there has also been a move to stop it from […]

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The people spoke clearly Tuesday–about the rights of people to make a living. At least, if you’re making minimum wage. Across the nation, in case you missed it, every ballot initiative passed that called for raising the minimum wage above the pathetic federal level of $5.15 per hour: Arizona: 66 percent-34 percentColorado: 53-47Missouri: 76-24 (and […]

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Yes, it was the Iraq War, stupid. But, one of the other issues I kept hearing voters talk about repeatedly for the past several months was the idiocy of so-called “free trade.” And, thankfully, perhaps we can finally declare so-called “free trade” dead. The first thing to say is that what we really would be […]

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Not that it matters…Democrats will win 238 seats and the Senate will end up 50-50 (I count the two independents on the Dem side–Bernie Sanders and, yes, Joe Lieberman). I was probably more generous on the House side as I looked at individual races–though maybe it will turn out much better. On the House side, […]

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There been a steady drumbeat underway now about the precarious situation facing public pensions (we’ve talked alot here about private pensions, too…but that’s not the topic today). What I have noticed regarding the drumbeat on public pensions is its eerie similarity to the drumbeat around Social Security: benefits are too high and there just isn’t […]

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Yesterday, I reported on the crazy line in Times Square for a handfull of jobs that are not what you would call middle-class building work. Here’s a companion bit of info courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute. Called “Postcards From An Ailing Economy,” the first one says it all: What’s happened to family income? Despite […]

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Why did several thousand people line up in Times Square yesterday for only 65 full-time jobs? Paying a “princely” $10.75? Which by my calculations gives someone an annual salary of a bit over $20,000 (if the job was truly full-time. Although the New York Times account of the line-up says that the jobs offereed “medical […]

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