Working Life

With all the hoo-hah inside the labor movement, I’ve left my favorite Beast of Bentonville alone for a couple of weeks. Well, praise be, it never ceases to feed the machine…The Beast has now made a motion in court to throw out the huge class action discrimination case filed against it–that case could cover more […]

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Back in May, I argued that neither side in the internal debate over the future of labor had the answers for key questions, chief among them: what to do about China? We need a strategy that, on the one hand, recognizes that we’re dealing with an authoritarian regime that still waves the banner of communism […]

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Really good story in today’s New York Times’ Sunday Business Section called “How Wall Street Wrecked United’s Pension” (registration required). Written by Mary Williams Walsh (who, I think, has done really good reporting on the attack on pensions), the piece shows how United’s pension fund money managers collected about $125 million in fees over the […]

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And here from the political newsletter Hotline….note the Republicans who voted No. CAFTA: I’ll Take That De-CAFTAnated A “sharply divided” House early 7/28 “passed a hard-fought Central American trade agreement that had become one of the year’s biggest political fights.” The victory was “a huge one” for Pres. Bush and GOPers, “whose legislative agenda could […]

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A friend, deeply involved in the issue of CAFTA (who can’t be named because of the very senior position this person holds in the labor movement), writes: “just so you have some perspective here: about 100 Dems voted for NAFTA, about 70 on PNTR [Permanent Normal Trading Relations, for China], about 23 on fast track […]

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Still trying to catch up the brain from a week of not enough sleep so this weekend my ramblings might come a little later in the a.m.–and, if that isn’t enough, I have to crank out a little opus on the convention for New Labor Forum…by Monday… First, a welcome to Reece–I’m always encouraging new […]

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The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has just voted to leave the AFL-CIO. That’s no surprise–I had written earlier in the week that they would leave the Federation. That mean’s the Federation will lose another $7.35 million in per capita taxes. If you add that to the already lost per capita with the disaffiliation […]

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Yesterday, I was advocating big-time punishment. Now, I’m getting more specific–spanking is the road to take with the CAFTA 15–the so-called Democrats who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement. I’m still flogging the notion that labor has got to exact a price from the CAFTA 15, and I take up the cause again […]

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Here I was going about my usual business this morning, flipping through the paper of record, only to find that The New York Times has decided to pick on little ‘ole me–and many of you’all who weighed in with your interesting comments in yesterday’s debate over the CAFTA 15. I’m pasting the editorial below–see bold. […]

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On the last day of the convention, John Sweeney has issued a three-page letter to all principal officers of state federation and Central Labor Councils. It’s darn tough and gives a sense that the Federation and the disaffiliated unions (SEIU and Teamsters) are headed for confrontations all across the country. In introducing the letter, Sweeney […]

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