Working Life

I’ve sort of left the Beast of Bentonville alone for the past few weeks. Not that I haven’t thought about the boys from Arkansas. Today, Steven Greenhouse has a piece on the organization (registration required) started in Tampa, Florida which is trying to recruit Wal-Mart workers pre-union status. That is, bring people in so they […]

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I haven’t decided how much to post in the next couple of days since most normal people will be away from their computers–I hope. But, here are two impressions for those going to your Labor Day parades. Thought Number One: What about carrying “Remember the CAFTA 15” signs? And if you happen to be lucky […]

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So, things get a bit clearer about the payoff business is going to give to the CAFTA 15. I was just told this: sponsors of the fundraiser I reported on yesterday are John Engler, the head of the National Association of Manufacturers (but he’s doing so as a private individual, I’m told); Dave McCurdy head […]

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Over the last few days, a few people have sent me the message reprinted below and I meant to post it earlier…earth to AFL-CIO, can we try to stay on some sort of coherent message? As you’ll see below, recipients of one of these automated messages you get from being part of the AFL-CIO e-activist […]

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Not much more can be said about Katrina–the human disaster, the Administration’s complicity in the disaster by cutting funds for precisely the kind of preparation that might have saved New Orleans and the insufficient response by the feds once the hurricane was hurtling towards the area (can’t interrupt the president’s vacation now, can we?). I […]

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I just heard this rumor from a well-placed source in the Washington political operative world that should send your blood aboiling: the National Association of Manufacturing has agreed to hold a fundraiser for the CAFTA 15. There it is, the payoff for a vote that hurt workers here and abroad. Completely by coincidence, an hour […]

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Edolphus Towns probably hates the official Congressional Record. Cuz, there is the Congressman from New York’s 10th District, nine months before the vote on CAFTA, telling people why the so-called “free trade” agreement was a bad deal. As they say, let’s go to the source. He said that the “underlying principle is the aggressive protection […]

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Chazer, for anyone not steeped in Yiddish, is a pig; the “CH” is pronounced as if you were gathering up a load of spit, which is appropriate for this discussion. In Congress, we now have a chazer caucus–a group of elected representatives that seem unable to stop dipping into the public trough to give rich […]

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I’m really perplexed, though not entirely surprised, at the press coverage of the Northwest strike–on many levels. The main one that I find fascinating is the failure to probe deeply into the motivations and background of O.V. Delle-Femine. Today, for example, we get The New York Times story of the labor leader going out to […]

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It’s not been a quiet August over at 16th Street. Somehow, somewhere, the officers and their top staff are going to have to find upwards of $25 million in cuts out of the budget (which assumes $126 million in income in 2006-2006) to make up for the disaffiliations of the UFCW, Teamsters and SEIU. And […]

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