Working Life

It’s bad enough to see Exxon’s profits rise 36 percent in the past quarter (net income of a nice cool $10.36 billion) and Chevron’s profits hit record highs (though apparently the net income of $4.35 billion wasn’t good enough for the speculators because the company’s share price dropped on this “bad” news)–all happening at the […]

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So, yesterday, the city of Chicago passed an ordinance requiring “big box” stores to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, and an additional $3 an hour in benefits. Obviously, the main target of the ordinance is Wal-Mart. I think these bills are fine. But, it does show the playing field we’re […]

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Good piece today by Steve Greenhouse in The New York Times on the drive to organize security guards. For Michael Johnson, a security guard for 16 years, unionization cannot happen soon enough. Mr. Johnson says the $10 an hour he earns guarding an office tower on Wilshire Boulevard is too little to support his family, […]

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Looks like the Democrats are once again helping Wal-Mart with its troubles. The press has reported today in a number of places, including The New York Times, the hiring of Leslie Dach, “a prominent Democratic operative who advised President Bill Clinton during the impeachment process, would join the company in August.” Last Fall, I raised […]

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Recently, I wrote about the Kentucky River NRLB cases that are likely to be a bad development for people trying to get a union–the cases, if decided in favor of employers, would take a whole lot of people out of potential or existing bargaining units by classifying them as “supervisors.” Today, The Wall Street Journal […]

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From the Economic Policy Institute: Real hourly wages rose 0.2% in June, reversing a three month slide from March through May. Over the first two quarters of this year, both real hourly wage and weekly earnings have been flat, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite growing more quickly in recent […]

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Things always seem to get more interesting for Rep. Bill “I Stashed $90,000 In My Freezer” Jefferson. Our man Bill, a member of the dishonored CAFTA 15 and now the Oman 22, was allegedly a bagman for a bribe to a Nigerian politician named Atiku Abubakar, the vice president of Nigeria. As The Washington Post […]

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To our previous dishonorable list of the CAFTA 15 we can now add the Oman 22–the 22 so-called Democrats who just voted for the so-called “free trade” agreement with Oman. Not surprisingly, there is a cross-over between the CAFTA 15 and the Oman 22, and I’ve noted the repeat traitors to the working people of […]

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I asked this a bit ago: why doesn’t some Democrat in Louisiana step forward to challenge CAFTA 15 Rep. William “I Store $90,000 in My Freezer” Jefferson? According to The Washington Post, “The biggest threat to Jefferson is an indictment before Aug. 11, the deadline for other Democrats to enter the race in a district […]

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It’s been the regular refrain that we hear from the Administration, pro-war Democrats and the talking heads in the press: just wait, the occupation of Iraq is turning the corner, just give it six more months, don’t worry… Yesterday, the United Nations released a report that concluded, according to The New York Times’ article: An […]

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