Working Life

As Wal-Mart announces it is hiring more p.r. help, WakeUpWalMart is starting a tour throughout the country. Check out the dates and places. Here’s a story about the tour.

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A couple of days ago, I wrote about the immoral bill that the House passed, linking the estate tax to the hike in the minimum wage. As Harry Reid is pointing out, in threatening to launch a filibuster in the Senate, the estate tax cut will cost taxpayers $300 billion. The truth is that if […]

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I had heard this rumor a couple of days ago and, yes, indeed, UNITEHERE has successfully wrestled Hilton Hotels to the ground: the chain agreed to card check recognition at its properties. For the uninitiated, that means that the union doesn’t have to go down the road of the messy, unfair elections held under the […]

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I’ve got something to say about the attempt to link the minimum wage hike and the estate tax cut…and will do so later, if you want to check back, probably, egads, tonight! Running wild this a.m. UPDATE: this was really the height of Republican gall–linking the passage of the hike in the minimum wage cut […]

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It’s bad enough to see Exxon’s profits rise 36 percent in the past quarter (net income of a nice cool $10.36 billion) and Chevron’s profits hit record highs (though apparently the net income of $4.35 billion wasn’t good enough for the speculators because the company’s share price dropped on this “bad” news)–all happening at the […]

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So, yesterday, the city of Chicago passed an ordinance requiring “big box” stores to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, and an additional $3 an hour in benefits. Obviously, the main target of the ordinance is Wal-Mart. I think these bills are fine. But, it does show the playing field we’re […]

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Good piece today by Steve Greenhouse in The New York Times on the drive to organize security guards. For Michael Johnson, a security guard for 16 years, unionization cannot happen soon enough. Mr. Johnson says the $10 an hour he earns guarding an office tower on Wilshire Boulevard is too little to support his family, […]

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Looks like the Democrats are once again helping Wal-Mart with its troubles. The press has reported today in a number of places, including The New York Times, the hiring of Leslie Dach, “a prominent Democratic operative who advised President Bill Clinton during the impeachment process, would join the company in August.” Last Fall, I raised […]

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Recently, I wrote about the Kentucky River NRLB cases that are likely to be a bad development for people trying to get a union–the cases, if decided in favor of employers, would take a whole lot of people out of potential or existing bargaining units by classifying them as “supervisors.” Today, The Wall Street Journal […]

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From the Economic Policy Institute: Real hourly wages rose 0.2% in June, reversing a three month slide from March through May. Over the first two quarters of this year, both real hourly wage and weekly earnings have been flat, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite growing more quickly in recent […]

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