Working Life

It’s been an interesting development to watch: John Edwards has decided that his potential path to the White House can be paved by embracing the notion that workers deserve and need unions–unlike most of the other possible contenders out there who look at union organizing as almost a permanent affliction that needs to be tolerated […]

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To this day, Neil Young is part of my music listening probably every week. Lots of reasons. But, as you may have read, he’s got a new album about to come out that is strongly anti-war and anti-Bush. Check out initial lyrics.

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That will get your attention. The MSM are all in a twist today that world trade talks may be dead for the rest of the Bush Administration. It certainly wasn’t the intention of this miserable Administration to give working people around the world a breather from the relentless assault of so-called “free trade.” But, we’ll […]

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All the major New York City news outlets are reporting a judge’s decision to hit Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union with a $2.5 million fine for the three-day strike last December. Worse, the judge has ordered a suspension of the union’s ability to automatically collect union dues through payroll deductions. As any union […]

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I’ve been on a kick, for many weeks, about the evils of the bankruptcy code–how can it be that companies are allowed to use the bankruptcy laws to destroy pensions (money that workers put away for future years) and attack union contracts…at the same time, by the way, that corporate CEOs continue to receive generous […]

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Worth reading. For the past year, the Global Policy Network (GPN) has been working closely with the Hemispheric Labour Organization (ORIT) to create Labour’s Platform for the Americas. The Platform was presented to presidents of the Americas when they met in Mar del Plata, Argentina in November 2005. It has been produced in four languages […]

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The Administration is trying to blame rising health care costs for the stagnation of wages. Hmmmm…well, yes, in some case, companies are socked with higher heath care costs and, therefore, aren’t raising wages…okay, this point is very narrow because it avoids the debate, just for the moment, on the huge hauls that CEOs are making […]

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This was rumored for some time–yesterday, Assemblyman Roger Green tossed his hat into the ring, declaring that he would challenge Rep. Ed Towns, one of the two CAFTA 15 members who hail from New York City (yes, this is quite sad that 2 of the 15 come from one of the more progressive cities in […]

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Earlier in the week, I reported that a number of unions, including SEIU, were helping an independent candidate, Bill Scheurer, who is running against Melissa Bean, one of the CAFTA 15. The Government Affairs folks at SEIU say the union isn’t doing anything to assist Scheurer but because of my post, the union was getting […]

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I have been optimistic since last summer that the two federations would find some way to work with each other. And when John Sweeney rolled out the general concept of Solidarity Charters, even though the initial proposal had some serious weaknesses that needed to be fought over, it looked like they would provide a good […]

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