Working Life

Since yesterday’s post about the grim situation facing labor in California over the vote on Proposition 75–which would require public employee unions to notify their members about the use of dues for political efforts–I’ve gotten a couple of notes that say that there is a fair amount of mobilizing now underway. The L.A. County Fed […]

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Yours truly is out here in Los Angeles and the big, bad news here is that labor is quite worried about the prospects for defeating Proposition 75. This is an Arnold Schwarzenegger-backed initiative that would require government employee unions to give prior notice to members before using dues on political activity. This is an issue […]

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And this Delphi mess is just going to get worse, as the Wall Street Journal article below reports (subscription required so I’ve given you a snippet). I know I have a particular interest in this as a UAW member. But, this is yet another example of (a) the insanity of the lack of a national […]

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Day laborers are people who scratch out a living, always trying to pick up a day’s work but never knowing if they will get chosen for a job. During my time in Los Angeles back in the 1980s I remember watching the laborers gather on street corners, waiting for the contractors or individual to cruise […]

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It’s not a CAFTA 15 Democrat but an incumbent Republican, who voted for CAFTA, now has a challenger. The incumbent, Charlie Dent, is definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer and this is one of those swing districts with a lot of what we used to call “Reagan Democrats.” And the challenger is making […]

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So, what good is an “expanding” economy and a growing Gross Domestic Product when workers are going to see their pay cut from $27 an hour to $10 an hour? Or, at least that’s what the Delphi Corporation is demanding from UAW workers to avoid bankruptcy. I saw one quote from a worker that makes […]

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One of my pet peeves has been the Gross Domestic Product. I’m not against measuring GDP but I think it’s been completely abused, for political reasons, as a measure of what is happening to real people. This isn’t an attack just on Republicans because Democrats misuse the GDP number, too. The best thing you can […]

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This is near and dear to my heart: how the heck do hundreds of thousands of creators (writers, artists, actors, theater people) take on an information industry that has become the most powerful single industry in human history? Understand, that this vertically-integrated industry spans telecommunications (voice, wireless, Internet), cable, software, and all things you can […]

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Just got this exchange between John Sweeney and Anna Burger, chair of the Change To Win federation. As I’ve already reported, both sides are making efforts at extending olive branches to each other in an effort to come to some meeting of the minds on the AFL-CIO’s proposed Solidarity Charters. On September 28th, Burger sent […]

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Seems to me this headline in today’s New York Times should have been on the front page, not buried in the business section: “At The Very Top, A Surge in Income in ’03”, followed by a subhead that is even more revealing–“I.R.S. Data Show Thin Slice of Richest 1% Got Outsize Gains.” Now, we here […]

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