Working Life

Not a shocking revelation… Study finds Wal-Mart contributes to poverty St. Louis Business Journal – A study focused on the effects of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates found that an estimated 20,000 families nationwide have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain’s expansion. ppp Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, […]

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Melissa Bean, one of our CAFTA 15, held a fundraiser the other night. Some committed souls were on hand to greet her in the appropriate fashion. The picture says it all–that’s Melissa, drink in hand, chatting up some fatcat donor. Kudos to the person who managed to sneak the sign inside–and I most appreciate the […]

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We are all pretty familiar with the idea that the rich get most of the money in our society. Check out this fact from Lee Price at the Economic Policy Institute: When those families are ranked by the size of their wealth, however, the top 1%2 alone held $16.8 trillion in wealth, more than a […]

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Here’s a controversy to toss out. I’ve pondered this for some time but the transit workers strike and the penalty it got hit with makes me wonder about this again: what if unions didn’t have automatic dues check-off and instead were obligated to collect dues one-on-one from members? You’ll see below in the article in […]

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Not unexpected… Auto Union Leaders Are Authorized to Call a Strike By JEREMY W. PETERS DETROIT, May 16 — Members of the United Automobile Workers union have voted to give their leaders the ultimate bargaining chip: the authorization to call a strike against Delphi, the auto parts supplier. While not unexpected, the vote to approve […]

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Here I was thinking that so-called “free trade” was reeling…fat chance. There’s a deal that’s now surfacing with Oman. It’s bad and here’s just a little taste from the Citizen’s Trade Campaign: Despite commitments by the Omani Sultan dating back to the mid-1990s to labor law to make it consistent with core ILO labor standards, […]

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Frank Rich often calls it right when he calls out the hypocrits in the Administration. In case you didn’t catch his column today in The New York Times–which is for subscribers only–I’m printing it here because it’s really worth reading: Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up? WHEN America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. […]

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Don’t get your hopes up about the trade decifit, according to EPI Economist Robert Scott. There was a minor improvement in the trade deficit in March–but it’s headed to go over $800 billion this year. Wow. Says Scott: “The slight improvement in the trade deficit in March was largely explained by seasonally adjusted growth in […]

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I’m never one to praise corporate behavior–heck, companies have enough money to do their own p.r. and backslapping–but at least one phone company had some lawyer with the guts to say no to the National Security Agency: Qwest Explains Why It Refused N.S.A. Query By JOHN O’NEIL and ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON, May 12 — The […]

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Here’s a fun little political game. Rep. Melissa Bean, one of the so-called Democrats who voted for CAFTA, is a key target for those who want the CAFTA 15 to pay a political price. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has a PAC which she uses to help members of Congress in their re-election campaigns. She decides […]

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