Working Life

Just a couple of days ago, I was musing about the disconnect between wages and productivity. That is, productivity was racing ahead yet wages were pretty dismal. That’s not the way the deal is supposed to work—if workers are laboring their little tushes off in the workplace so that every hour worked is a more […]

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I’ve opened up this thread to get thoughts and comments about my column today entitled “Wal-Mart’s Free Market Fallacy.” I’m curious: can anyone give any real example of a free market? I think it’s a bogus concept, used for propoganda purposes to disarm and confuse people into believing that corporations should be able to operate […]

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I see the Consumer Price Index and the reality of workers wages are giving out more signs of the increased pressure on the average worker. My friends at the Economic Policy Institute point out that prices are rising faster than wages. For the 11th consecutive month, prices have risen faster than wages (click the image […]

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Glad to see the splashy public launch of the Center for Community and Corporate Ethics. Check out today’s full-page ad in The New York Times and put its website into your favorite links—and spread the word (www.walmartwatch.com). The Center’s job is to try to link the various efforts underway to changing the way the Beast […]

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Yesterday afternoon, I met with about a dozen Arab Israeli journalists in Nazareth to get a feel for what they face as part of an effort to create a more solid union presence in the area for all journalists. First, a definition: these journalists are Israeli citizens and do not, as a rule, work in […]

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I’ve been in the Middle East for the past week meeting with Israeli journalists (today I’ll be sitting down with Arab journalists in Nazareth). The wonders of the free market have infected labor relations here, too. It used to be that Israeli journalists were paid via a collective agreement that was set through the semi-government […]

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It would take a post that no one would have patience to read to tick off the reasons that the Department of Labor has been irrelevant in the workplace. For many years, it’s been clear that the DOL is sort of a scam: it pretends to be the agency that looks after workers’ rights on […]

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I should have connected my recent blog about worker pay going down with the AFL-CIO’s updated site on CEO pay. My favorite entry, in keeping with my own obsession, was the one on Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott: When it comes to CEO pay, Wal-Mart definitely does not have always low prices. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott […]

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Alright, I guess I’ll do the obvious—a short rumination on taxes. I’ve always believed in taxes, though I certainly would rather my contribution to the federal treasury go to building schools or funding alternative energy than paying Halliburton to fleece us or some new, nutty version of Star Wars (isn’t it amazing how scientifically-discredited weapons […]

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Are consumers running out of steam–either because they are running out of room on their plastic or perhaps they’ve used up most of the cash pulled out of home equity? Maybe. I’ve felt for some time that there had to be a big wall along the way into which people would slam very heard. Well, […]

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