Working Life

So, I’m checking in on the Campaign for America’s Future conference in the nation’s capitol. We’re at the Washington Hilton, also known in popular lore as the Hinkley Hilton (for those who need the reminder, John Hinkley took his best shot at Ronald Reagan here). The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank weighs in today (registration required) […]

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…why muck around somewhere else? That’s what I thought when reading Matt Richtel’s piece today in The New York Times about the struggles of the Communications Workers Union to organize in the telecommunications industry. It’s possible that Richtel has his facts wrong–I never doubt that possibility when reading the Times (for example, it cannot be […]

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For some time, I’ve known about the secret film about Wal-Mart that the video warrior Robert Greenwald is putting together. He asked that people keep it under wraps so that he could try to rustle up some Wal-Mart workers to talk on camera before the company disappeared them…okay, Wal-Mart hasn’t, as far I know, gone […]

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So, why are progressives relatively silent about the blistering corporate attack against the traditional defined-benefit pension plan? Why is the movement not organizing mass street demonstrations? I ask these questions and look at the crisis in today’s “Working in America” column for TomPaine.com. Now it’s your chance: what do you think should be done?

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If you’re looking for the next possible key turn-of-the-screw development in the labor movement’s saga, keep your eye on a few days in June. On June 10-12th, the executive board of the Service Employees meets in San Francisco. At that meeting, it’s expected that the board will give Andy Stern the authority to pull SEIU […]

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The blind men on the editorial board of The New York Times are at least consistent when it comes to pontificating about trade. This a.m., we’re treated to an editorial “A New Battle Over Free Trade,“(registration required) which gives us the view from the establishment press on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Right […]

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When a Starbucks opened up in my neighborhood, a number of us saw this as a bad thing and a sign of decline. Of course, since the place seems busy all day with people hanging out (what DO these people do for a living?), it seems like a losing battle to whine about yet another […]

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Here I was on Sunday thinking, it’s finally gotten warm, I’m going to get on my bike (as opposed to doing the inside-the-gym thing) and I’m going to ignore the blog today. And, then, I had to read Nicholas Kristof’s column in today’s NYTimes. What a dope. He repeats the usual blind points about China’s […]

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It was on my pile to do but…the insurgents got there first. They put together a comparison of their proposal (entitled “Restoring the American Dream”) versus the proposal released by the AFL-CIO officers (entitled “Winning For Working Families”). You can judge for yourself whether the comparison is accurate. I’ll try to get my own comparison […]

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Next to Yogi, I always like to harken back to Deep Throat when I’m looking for an appropriate analogy. Not Linda Lovelace but the mysterious figure from Watergate who, apparently, said, when asked how to unravel the political scandal, “follow the money.” Well, to twist this slightly, if you want to know if a union […]

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