Working Life

I’ve remarked a number of times on the obstacles facing the global agreements on so-called “free trade.” Today, there are two very related articles in the elite press. The first is a front-page article in the Financial Times entitled “U.S. Warns Over Trade Summit.” The U.S. is warning that “Failure to reach an ambitious agreement […]

Read the full story

I’m not a deficit hawk. The real question is: what are the things you do to move the country forward which justify running a deficit? Giving more tax breaks to the top one percent of the people is not what I would call wise economic planning. The House just passed a bill that cuts taxes […]

Read the full story

So, the president apparently is getting a little lift in his popularity from the “improving” economy. If I was him, I wouldn’t be breaking out in celebration quite yet. This is just a very small snapshot in time and does not reflect the economic dangers facing many people. I gather part of the slight change […]

Read the full story

We’ve been talking a lot here about the demise of the private defined benefit pension system–the system that actually gives a worker, who has labored away for 20 plus years at a company, a regular amount of money she or he can count each month, as opposed to worrying about making it in the casino…that […]

Read the full story

You remember the old refrain that had been adapted over time that goes roughly like this: you didn’t speak up when they came after so-and-so and, then, when they came after you, there was no one to speak up for you. Well, today, it’s the Verizon managers. The data transmission company (Memo to New York […]

Read the full story

My dear readers: some of you will have heard by now, or will soon hear, that I have decided to enter the Democratic primary for the Senate seat from New York. The main reason for my decision to enter this race is the war in Iraq. I didn’t make this decision quickly nor lightly but […]

Read the full story

For obvious reasons, the president is trying to shift attention away from the war, which is a disaster. The Administration’s approach is to get people talking about the economy, which it thinks it can claim goods news: energy prices have come down a bit and about 215,000 jobs were added in November. Well, I suppose […]

Read the full story

By catching up, I mean both that the piece below was in the recent Daily Labor Report (by its always-on-the-case reporter Michelle Amber) and that, whew, CWA is definitely racking up the numbers. And it shows what we’ve known all along: when companies agree to be neutral in organizing campaigns and pledge not to beat […]

Read the full story

As I pointed out yesterday, the president’s empty “Strategy For Victory” speech has one unintended consequence: it pushed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a bit further in the direction of sanity, as she declared that she would follow John Murtha’s lead. In today’s Washington Post, Jonathan Weisman writes under the headline, “Democratic Lawmakers Splinter on […]

Read the full story

My first reaction in looking at the front-page New York Times photo of the president standing above a slogan “Plan For Victory” was, haven’t we seen this before? You all remember how he stood on the aircraft carrier emblazoned with the banner “Mission Accomplished.” The new slogan, clearly a result of some p.r. shop trying […]

Read the full story