Working Life

One of my pet peeves has been the Gross Domestic Product. I’m not against measuring GDP but I think it’s been completely abused, for political reasons, as a measure of what is happening to real people. This isn’t an attack just on Republicans because Democrats misuse the GDP number, too. The best thing you can […]

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This is near and dear to my heart: how the heck do hundreds of thousands of creators (writers, artists, actors, theater people) take on an information industry that has become the most powerful single industry in human history? Understand, that this vertically-integrated industry spans telecommunications (voice, wireless, Internet), cable, software, and all things you can […]

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Just got this exchange between John Sweeney and Anna Burger, chair of the Change To Win federation. As I’ve already reported, both sides are making efforts at extending olive branches to each other in an effort to come to some meeting of the minds on the AFL-CIO’s proposed Solidarity Charters. On September 28th, Burger sent […]

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Seems to me this headline in today’s New York Times should have been on the front page, not buried in the business section: “At The Very Top, A Surge in Income in ’03”, followed by a subhead that is even more revealing–“I.R.S. Data Show Thin Slice of Richest 1% Got Outsize Gains.” Now, we here […]

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It feels like this arrived via the Pony Express but…here’s the Change To Win constitution for the truly obsessed. There will be a test…

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Keep an eye on where the money goes, I always says–and, if I was one of the Central Labor Council leaders, I’d keep my eye on the recent special 4 cents per capita hike like I’d watch the pea being shuffled by the hustlers in Times Square. Which is a way of saying: tomorrow the […]

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I was scratching my head a bit about all the praises being sung by some of you’all for Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg in response to yesterday’s post about the teachers’ contract in NY. And, then, this a.m. The New York Times helps the discussion a bit with the headline: “Mayor May Not Shout G.O.P. But […]

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It doesn’t seem to me that teachers in New York City got a huge boost from the deal announced yesterday between the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the city–but the mayor probably came close to assuring, if not guaranteeing, his re-election. And this whole chapter has been just another sorry reminder of the state […]

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I like this: threaten the companies that want to dance with Schwarzennegger and his dangerous initiative to crippled unions. From the Los Angeles Times today (a snippet is below): Unions Working a New Tactic Against Governor Labor leaders contact firms to stem donations to Schwarzenegger’s initiative campaigns.By Michael Finnegan Times Staff WriterOctober 3, 2005Escalating its […]

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One of the strategies in trying to topple the Beast of Bentonville is setting up a non-union workers association as the first outreach vehicle to Wal-Mart workers; not a single Wal-Mart store in unionized. Today’s USA Today carries an AP story on the first big effort in central Florida (a bit of it is below). […]

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