Working Life

Hmmmm…so, the United Auto Workers today endorsed John Sweeney for re-election. Before I go further, I remind people that I was a UAW local president and am still a proud UAW member so figure that into anything I say (or don’t say). The statement from UAW prez Ron Gettelfinger says that, “As AFL-CIO president, John […]

Read the full story

A quick break from our on-going soap opera inside the AFL-CIO to talk about, uh, organizing–you know, that thing that all this hoo-hah is about. I’m all for beating the crap out of Wal-Mart and the Walton family until it starts behaving. But, there’s another Wal-Mart looming: Whole Foods. And, if we want to control […]

Read the full story

The last couple of weeks, a lot of people have wanted to know what Ed McElroy is up to. As president of the American Federation of Teachers and, so far, a John Sweeney supporter, he carries 1.3 million votes. I did not believe one rumor that he was angling to run and instead, I believe, […]

Read the full story

A relevant point to raise in the current debate over the future of the labor movement: listen up, sometimes old white guys can do the right thing (this being a bit of the bone of contention in the back and forth between Anonymous AFL-er and Union Maid over my post on seniority). Take Sol Stetin, […]

Read the full story

Last week, I asked whether there was any international union president willing to say publicly that the seniority is a sacred union principle and that the way in which the AFL-CIO layoffs were structured potentially threatens that principle. I haven’t heard from any international president. But, I just got this letter that was written by […]

Read the full story

My occassional clean-up of left-over stuff, just the antidote for Sunday easy reading– On the Wal-Mart Front–Good News, Bad News: The Beast has thrown in the towel, pretty quickly I might add, on the on-line DVD rental biz. Netflix’s head start in the business tailor-made for couch potatoes and parents with no baby sitters was […]

Read the full story

Stretch…ah, Saturday and Sunday it just takes a little longer to turn that computer on. It seems like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have discovered an amazing fact, almost at the same time: there is such a thing as class. Both of the papers of the elite have been running stories […]

Read the full story

I’ve talked alot about China and specifically about the hand-wringing over the question of China’s currency. Paul Krugman addresses this today—quite well, I think. He tells, in fairly accessible language for an economist, how the U.S.-China relationship works: China is keeping its currency lower than it should be for a country where investment is flowing […]

Read the full story

Well, actually, I’m not sure…my previous post about the issue emanated from what I think now is a bad rumor. There is too much information flying around and sometimes (as Newsweek discovered) it may be wrong, I’d say forget it—and I’ve also taken the step of deleting this information from this post. Ah, the beauty […]

Read the full story

A few tidbits today from 16th Street. A good friend, deep inside 16th Street, says that based on a draft job description of the new job categories decreed by Chairman Welsh, “there is no way the AFL-CIO is going to win any arbitration because they are so similar.” My friend knows the details of the […]

Read the full story