Working Life

I’m shocked, shocked that the White House would be trying to sell the new version of their Social Security as a plan to protect the poor and, get this, slash benefits for the “wealthy.” Which journalist do they have on the payroll now to help them sell that load of bull? Actually, the usual lambs […]

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The world currency markets were abuzz on Friday when China’s currency, the renminbi (“the peoples’ money,” also known as the yuan), traded for 20 minutes above the mark it has held for almost a decade. Was it a mistake, quickly corrected, or a little test by the the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, […]

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A bit of easy activism for you on a weekend—if you needed more evidence of the corruption of corporate America, just check out United Airlines. Here’s an airline in bankruptcy, it reaches a deal to jettison its pension plans and dumps those liabilities on the government, which means a lot of workers will not get […]

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I’m troubled after the teleconference John Sweeney held yesterday with the press. It’s not that the whole affair lasted just 30 minutes (and we had to provide our own coffee, doughnuts and Scotch), which included John’s opening statement and, then, a rush to squeeze in questions before, poof, he had to run before anyone really […]

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Right after my previous report on the AFL-CIO’s finances, I got a call from Joe Hill (uh, yeah, a pseudonym), an AFL-CIO insider who told me “it’s quite worse than what you wrote.” Hill pointed out that when John Sweeney took over, the AFL-CIO had no debt; now the debt stands at $28.5 million dollars. […]

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I was going to write about the fragility of the global economy but I’ll leave that to tomorrow (I don’t think it’s going to collapse in 24 hours so I should be able to squeeze my thoughts in before it does) because my colleague Andy Levin of the AFL-CIO passed along the article below from […]

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A review of AFL-CIO audited statements for 1996 and 2004 by the coalition pushing for changes inside the labor movement shows some fairly interesting trends. I offer them as they are, with some comment: Under John Sweeney: AFL-CIO Income has grown dramatically, and AFL-CIO Expenses have grown far more dramatically. AFL-CIO income has increased by […]

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has the not-surprising piece “WTO Urges CautionOn Textile Restraints.” (requires subscription). The head of the WTO, says the article, “says it would be a mistake for countries struggling with a surge in Chinese textile exports to throw up protectionist walls right away, just as Europe and the U.S. take steps in […]

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As I prepare to leave Israel Monday (so this space may have a one-day break for the long flight home), can’t help but relate last night’s/early morning today’s episode. Headed back to my place here at 11:45 p.m. to run right into a massive shutdown of the entire highway system of the central part of […]

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Ketih Bradesher writes in The New York Times today that deals being made by China foreshadow “what now seems to be shaping up as a broad assault on global automotive markets by Chinese companies and the Chinese divisions of multinational companies.” Obviously, this has grave implications for the already weak auto industry in the U.S.—and […]

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