Working Life

It’s catching fire…though not as high as some of us would like, Montgomery Country tonight passed a hike in its minimum wage to 11.50 by 2017. Do I hear $15-an-hour please at the federal level, on the way to $20-an-hour?

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There is now little doubt: within a few hours, election officials will certify the passage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the city of SeaTac.

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Forgotten in the rubble of Rana Plaza is a horrific that took place at Tazreen Fashions Ltd in Bangladesh. The fire killed 112 human beings whose families have been trying to get a bit of compensation for the loss of their loves ones. And some of that is happening…of course, not with the help of Wal-Mart.

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Over the years, I’ve consistently referred to Wal-Mart as The Beast of Bentonville because of its conduct at every level. Beastly. And, now, it’s topping even the despicable low standards it set to date. To the families of more than 1,200 people killed, and many more injured, who are seeking a bit of compensation money, the Beast of Bentonville is raising its corporate middle finger and saying “get fucked”.

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Scott Walker is a really bad guy. I mean, awful. So, there will be chance to dump this scar next year. And here’s the route.

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There has been this back and forth about how to improve conditions between the companies who make a profit on the backs of dead people…well, truly, that’s the reality of profits in the garment industry — you either die standing up at work, die later because your body is broken down from slaving away for pennies or you die quickly, or perhaps slowly, when places like the Rana Plaza collapse. Now, there is a new turn in the story — and I remain skeptical still that much will change.

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If you were Jamie Dimon, or a sleazy banker of the same stripe, and you got the following deal, would you take it: make billions of dollars for your bank, which, in turn, rewards you personally making you a very, very wealthy man BUT, in the process, because of combination of incompetence, criminality and greed, you help destroy an entire economy and put millions of people out of work, for which your bank pays billions of dollars in fines BUT you get to keep your job and, despite all the crimes, you don’t spend a single night in jail nor do you take out a single dime from your own pocket because the system will protect you and instead hand the bill to essentially the very people you hurt, and you are dealing with a government with no spine or inclination to punish the responsible people at the top so don’t worry for a second…well, would you take that deal?

Of course you would.

And that, in a nutshell, is the upshot of the $13 billion sham fine Jamie Dimon cut with the Obama Administration.

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The biggest threat to the Wal-Mart profit-through-poverty-wages model continues to hold on to a lead in the ballot count. That would be the initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15-an-hour in the city of SeaTac. It’s almost a done deal — though the fight won’t end once the vote is certified.

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How Boeing can run around and say with a straight face that it needs concessions from its workers when it is making large profits AND screwing tax payers at the same time is just a beautiful example of how corporations are fleecing the public — and, if you want to think about it in a bigger picture way, why the economy continues to be so bad for so many people.

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I certainly plead guilty to being in the large group of people who bang the traditional media for irresponsibility, ignorance, bad reporting and just plain laziness. So, it’s nice to point out outstanding work in the traditional media — and there is a piece in The New York Times magazine posted now that is really […]

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