Working Life

From time to time, I get anonymous notes from workers at Wal-Mart and other employers. I write about some of them or try to track down info. Here’s one that came in yesterday: Today, Walmart announced some new “changes”. They have done away with merit raises, and also put “wage caps” on certain individuals. Depending […]

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Good for the AFL-CIO. It has decided to link up with the significant movement trying to organize day laborers, who are predominately immigrant workers. It’s a great move not simply because day laborers are exploited–it puts the AFL-CIO directly on the side of workers who are being targeted by the hysteria over “illegal immigration.” Here’s […]

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Did anyone see the picture in The New York Times of the dead baby with the hand of her mother, with her wedding band on, sticking out from the rubble in Lebanon? It made me weep.

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I’ve been generally very positive about the quality of Mary Williams Walsh’s reporting about pensions for The New York Times. I think she typically understands the issue better than most reporters. Today, she launched the first in a series of articles reporting on the public pension plan system (as distinguished from the private sector pension […]

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There is a growing split within the business community over China–but I think there is something for the forces of good to work on here that might drive a deeper wedge between small business and big business. Business Week reports in its August 14th issue about a growing split among members of the National Maunfactures […]

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We know something is wrong in this country. The facts are all around us. Most of the time I find the progressive/left rants about class war and inequality completely predictable and boring–even if I agree with the substance. So, I keep finding the comments by Ben Stein quite worth reading. Stein writes a regular column […]

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This amazed me in terms of the numbers of deserters from the military: By Ana Radelat Gannett News Service July 05, 2006 Swept up by a wave of patriotism after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chris Magaoay joined the Marine Corps in November 2004. The newly married Magaoay thought a military career would allow him […]

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One of the unreported stories, I thought, in the debate over the minimum wage bill hike was the flipflopping of Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott. He was for the hike–before he was against it. WalMartWatch documents this quite well.

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Must have been the heat…or the pile of work…or both…but the daily post slipped by until now. But, as someone who spent a couple of years back…well, a while ago…waiting on tables, this caught my eye. WASHINGTON (AP) — Tip money earned by waitresses in Las Vegas, manicurists in Hollywood and bartenders in Seattle is […]

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Here’s what the war will create: TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) — A U.S. soldier testified Wednesday that four of his colleagues accused of murdering three Iraqis during a raid threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the shooting deaths. Pfc. Bradley Mason, speaking at a hearing to determine whether the four must stand trial, […]

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