Working Life

   We keep avoiding the elephant in the room. It’s fine for the president to do this: President Obama on Monday called for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks to collect billions of dollars more from multinational companies and wealthy individuals. The move would appeal to growing populist anger among taxpayers but is […]

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Run into first friend, Mercedes, whose mother is in the New York City Labor Chorus. Mercedes tells me her mother Rona says "Joan Baez is a doll." On escalator I run into a friend from Camp Kinderland #1. In seating area I run into two more friends from Kinderland (#2,#3). Wonder if I will run […]

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   You can decide for yourself why you think David Paterson did this (for true love of unions or a brazenly political move…or both) but it is still a good thing: Gov. David A. Paterson has issued an order making it easier for labor unions to organize thousands of workers at some of New York’s […]

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The bankruptcy of Chrysler crystallized a pretty straightforward choice about which side you are on in our society: do you care about what happens to workers and their communities or are you more interested in making a few more dollars? The Administration made its choice. A few hedge funds made their choice and, along with […]

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It is a pretty extraordinary scenario: in a blazingly short amount of time, the Administration has forged a deal that could save thousands of jobs at Chrysler–the major banks are on board, the UAW has made more significant concessions. But all that may come crashing to a halt because of a few hedge funds who […]

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   I imagine that I risk the ire of at least the most die-hard fringe Northern Ireland para-military forces or perhaps people who still revel in the Revolutionary War-era spanking of the redcoats but I’ve been carrying around this article from about a week ago that got a little attention and, then, floated out of […]

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   There are really two things that jump out of the details about the Chrysler deal, via The Wall Street Journal: The United Auto Workers union would eventually own 55% of the stock in a restructured Chrysler LLC under the deal reached by the union and the auto maker, according to a summary of the […]

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   You probably have heard that a deal was reach between the UAW and Chrysler. Like last week, though, it’s really had to tell from reading the traditional media what exactly the deal will be–other than workers are going to get the shaft. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t say much about enhanced pension protection (meaning, […]

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   Confusing signals are coming out about what the apparent inevitable bankruptcy of Chrysler will mean. But, I do think this will be another stake driven into the idea of having real pensions anymore–which is kind of shocking given how many people just lost much of their retirement in the greed-is-good collapse of economy. I’ll […]

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   Though not surprising, this is still a fairly damning revelation, in this morning’s Wall Street Journal: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. — a deal that later triggered a government bailout […]

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