Working Life

Wal-Mart distracted me from taking note of the gargantuan trade deficit numbers that came out: last year, the U.S. had a $666 billion trade deficit, an all-time record. Most people have been shrugging off the trade deficit, or maybe they basically don’t care what with the housing bubble making a lot of people feel like […]

Read the full story

They must be popping the corks off the champagne bottles in Bentonville. Wal-Mart makes a ton of money illegally. Once again, the Beast gets to break the law and get away with a slap on the wrist—no jail time for executives and a fine that, by its standards, is puny: it agreed to pay $11 […]

Read the full story

When you think the Mob is moving in on you, it often is a smart thing to do to just pack up and leave, at least that was true in the old days. Wal-Mart apparently has the same effect. Check out what happens to a local store when the Beast from Bentonville is about to […]

Read the full story

Well, baseball is on my mind today, as I pack up to journey south for spring training (which may put a crimp in my minds attention to the blog Beast). I don’t know whether Mark Mcwire did the juice but at least he did the stand up thing, refusing to pull an Elia Kazan and […]

Read the full story

There is no crisis in Social Security but the president is doing everything possible to create a financial catastrophe to gin one up. This whole game reminds me of the hustlers in Times Square playing the Three Card Monte or find the pea under the cup (actually, because Times Square now resembles a mall that […]

Read the full story

I’m wondering…is there a budget at the AFL-CIO and is someone watching the bottom line? Cuz the Federation’s audit firm, “Calibre,” had some pretty worrisome information for the Finance Committee, don’t you think? To wit: the Federation’s assets grew pretty nicely between 1995 and today, around 40 percent—but the reserves are down from over $71 […]

Read the full story

Dear John: Since the AFL-CIO meeting in Vegas, I had a chance to look over your statement of March 2nd. I was thrilled to see you say that the AFL-CIO has a plan to INCREASE the labor movement’s investment in helping workers organize. Actually, you made this point twice in four paragraphs. But, why does […]

Read the full story

Just before heading out to a D.C. meeting on organizing professional workers (I’ll post some thoughts about that also), I can’t help but digress from my usual topics to take note of a laugher in The New York Times. In Sunday’s Week In Review, David Kirkpatrick wrote a story about a spit at the neocons […]

Read the full story

You gotta give the boys in Bentonville their due: they try to figure out every way possible to wriggle off the hook. In the current issue of Business Week (requires subscription), senior writer and long-time labor reporter Aaron Bernstein describes how Wal-Mart lawyers are trying to completely eviscerate the framework of class action lawsuits for […]

Read the full story

I’m all behind the fight to keep Wall Street’s hands of Social Security but there’s a more silent attack on retirement: the destruction of the private pension system. Though I’ve written about this before, I was reminded of the problem today after reading Mary Williams Walsh’s piece in The New York Times on the government’s […]

Read the full story