Working Life

Sometimes, jobs disappear in a headline-grabbing plant closure. But, here’s one that is far more subtle and has grave implications for thousands of jobs and for the Teamsters. The Financial Times has a front-page story today describing a new trend: U.S maunfacturers and retailers are shifting their “domestic warehouses and distribution facilities to China as […]

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Another piece today–this one coming in The Washington Post–sees the Schwarzenegger-backed propositions going down to defeat (registration required). This seems to be now a trend over the past week or so, as we’ve been discussing here. The propositions would, the piece says, give the governor far more power. “But three recent polls, by the Public […]

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Mar Del Plata may be the place where so-called “free trade” was stopped. I never underestimate the ability of the big corporate powers to get up off the mat. But, the big-scale ambition–far bigger than the Central American Free Trade Agreement–to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas is pretty much dead–at least for […]

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I happened to catch on C-SPAN last night (yes, I’m a C-SPAN junkie) a briefing about House Joint Resolution 55, which calls for the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq by October 1, 2006. For myself, I believe the troops should be withdrawn immediately–the death and destruction will continue as long as the U.S. remains […]

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Well, it looks like the propositions in California are going down to defeat–though something could shift between now and Election Day. According to a new Field Poll, all four of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot initiatives appear to be headed for defeat, including Prop 75 which was directly aimed at crippling the labor movement’s political operations. Making […]

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My colleague David Sirota (who writes a terrific blog) passed on a couple of useful background pieces from the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill explaining why so many members of the Congressional Black Caucus seem to be cozy with Wal-Mart. First, the first piece recounts the furor caused by a letter sent by Anna Burger, […]

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I’m going to spend a second day here on the Beast of Bentonville. If you want to know why the Democratic Party will continue to be the minority party in the country, look no further than the raft of Democratic operatives and elected representatives who do the bidding of Wal-Mart. At the end of this […]

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Whew. Today, it’s all about the Beast of Bentonville. Hard to decide where to start but…how about today’s world premiere of Robert Greenwald’s film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” Yours truly will be at the advance screening tonight here in NYC and I’ll report back with a movie review tomorrow. But, in the […]

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Over the past couple of months, the corporate money has been flowing into the hands of the CAFTA 15. Besides the fundraiser that business associations held for the CAFTA 15 in September, each of these so-called Democrats–who really need to be challenged and defeated in primaries–has been receiving corporate donations. I’m going to start letting […]

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There is an ideological drum beat underway that, to me, mirrors the relentless mantra we have endured about so-called “free trade” for the past three decades. This one goes like this: pensions are a thing of the past, and certainly no one should expect to get a real pension anymore–“real” being, in my humble opinion, […]

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