Working Life

Here’s a little riddle: What has 157 million daily delivery points, 35,000 offices and 500,000 workers? It’s your U.S. Postal Service, that would be the service that really is a democratic, small “d”, institution—it’s there for everyone at a reasonable cost, no matter where you live or who you are. Putting it mildly, postal workers […]

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The dinner plates of millions of people are soon going to be an interesting place to focus the mind on the balance between the desire to fill bellies with protein—poultry and pork, mainly—versus the worthiness of peoples’ lives, specifically the lives of the workers who process the chickens and hogs in plants across the country. […]

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Last week I asked everyone to consider the coronavirus pandemic as a pretty clarifying picture of class warfare—who are the people who get hurt most when millions of jobs go away or at best are in limbo because of a nationwide shutdown? It’s working people, minimum wage workers, service workers—almost none of whom have enough […]

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Most people, when they walk out the door to go to work, don’t think, “damn, I’m going to get killed today or seriously ill with a chronic disease”. Yes, if you work in a mine or on a construction site, you are more aware of the dangers. But, most people just assume work is a […]

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I like the ring of The Stop Wall Street Looting Act, don’t you? True, it’s part of the business model of the joint, especially the private equity pirates. The Act is, in fact, aimed squarely at the private equity industry, who have stripped and destroyed hundreds of companies. I’ll talk about the Act with the […]

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I just returned from the great city of San Francisco which hosted the state Democratic Party Convention. And in my audio bag are most of the speeches of the Democratic presidential candidates who gave their pitches to the delegates—California, with a much earlier primary than usual, will potentially have a decisive say about who will […]

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I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently on the very bad deal made by New York and Virginia with Amazon to lure the company to build its new headquarters in those two states. Amazon is an important story because of the power it exercises over our economy—a power that grows every day. This week, […]

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Thousands of drivers in the app-driven ride service business, principally those who work for Uber and Lyft, just can’t make ends meet—and the whole scramble has created a race-to-the-bottom in which companies impoverish the very people who bring in the cash (sound familiar?). To get an insight into the plight of such drivers, I speak […]

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Even Paul Ryan, the odious Speaker of the House, is in the electoral crosshairs and has a good shot at losing in the 2018 midterm elections. The man who is up to the task is Randy Bryce, better known in the Twitterverse as @ironstache. Randy joins me for a talk about politics, his campaign and […]

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Massive people activism dealt the Grim Reaper of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, a giant middle finger…from his own caucus. But, it ain’t over. I use this moment to talk to health care expert Dean Baker about a couple of critical work-related Obamacare benefits that not many people talk about. I also take a harrowing […]

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