Working Life

So, yes, the wedding was lovely up here in the mountains—but too much to eat and drink. And, now, from the beautiful mountains over to the Lehigh Valley… To which I have my own special connection, having hauled my sorry ass there during the election to knock on doors for Kerry (okay, I can hear […]

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[PUBLICATION ALERT: I’m at a wedding this weekend (pretty sure it’s not mine) so may not post but maybe will…you’ll live. But, if i’m not back here ’til Monday, by all means, keep debating the current hot topics] Here are couple of more things that are worth thinking about. First, I meant to say something […]

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The post-AFl-CIO convention political skirmishing continues–except this time it happened on the international stage…not a good thing. This week, an important meeting of Union Network International (UNI) has been taking place in Chicago; UNI is a global network of about 900 service sector unions in 150 countries (wow, are there that many countries?). I’ll report […]

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Well, unfortunately, no–not yet. There was a bit of a rumor that the head of the Virginia AFL-CIO, Dan LeBlanc, might take him on. But, alas, no such luck. I asked Dan directly and he said, “I live outside the District in the Richmond area and plan on retiring next August, not many folks retire […]

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Okay, so fair enough, the CAFTA 15 and their Republican “brothers” are not yet feeling tremendous fallout from their votes. Or so says the piece below from Congressional Quarterly. Though it does make me wonder why they have to “shore up” their messages for 2006–me thinks that they protesteth too much…and if people like Robin […]

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I don’t know why everyone seems so surprised and outraged about what Pat Robertson said about “taking out” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Sure, it’s crazy, foolish, possibly illegal and certainly not what Jesus would have said (but Robertson is way far from Jesus’ life). And it certainly makes sense to try to hold Robertson accountable […]

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At the risk of really sitting this place ablaze, throughout the day yesterday I had a number of conversations with people who argued that the Northwest strike is more like the P-9-Hormel strike of the 1980s then PATCO, which I had argued. Hmmmm…I think it might be a little of both–but the bottom line question […]

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So, in the ten months this blog has operated, this is my first post on behavior on the site. My general rule of thumb has been: let anyone say whatever they want. And that’s been the case–there have been a wide-range of views here, many of them disagreeing with my positions, sometimes fiercely and even […]

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It’s never easy to do crystal-ball stuff, but, heck, they can’t sue you, can they? Looking at this Northwest strike, all I can think is: it’s the 1981 air-traffic controllers strike all over again. But, it’s even uglier and potentially more far-reaching, if that’s possible. And there are a few lessons here about the whole […]

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Back in December 2003, when Melissa Bean would do anything to get labor support (or, anyone’s support for that matter), she filled out a questionnaire for the Illinois State AFL-CIO. Every candidate has to fill out one of these documents before being considered worthy of endorsement, particularly, in her case because she was a first-time […]

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