Working Life

I was just rereading the AFL-CIO’s petition, filed almost a year ago, with the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office that sought to force the U.S. to hold China accountable for its repressive labor practices. It’s a startling story of the challenge Chinese workers face—and, by extension, what labor faces in the U.S. in trying to grapple […]

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If you want to know why Democrats are losers, the perfect example is the party’s inability—either through lack of imagination or stupidity—to change the debate from the manufactured “crisis” in Social Security to the real crisis in health care. It’s enough to make a normal person, which I am not, scream. You can see that […]

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Nice piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal on the AFL-CIO’s Bill Patterson and the continuing efforts to pressure Wall Street firms to get out of the pro-privatization movement: Social Security Change Faces Labor Muscle AFL-CIO Investment Official Uses Heft of Pension Assets To Influence Wall Street’s Views By JEANNE CUMMINGS Staff Reporter of THE WALL […]

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As I wrote last year, I was glad to see the Red Sox win—at least it would end the sorry whining each year from their fans. But, as I documented, then, the image of the poor downtrodden team that appealed to progressives seemed odd compared to their large payroll, all-white fan base (compared to the […]

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Wal-Mart distracted me from taking note of the gargantuan trade deficit numbers that came out: last year, the U.S. had a $666 billion trade deficit, an all-time record. Most people have been shrugging off the trade deficit, or maybe they basically don’t care what with the housing bubble making a lot of people feel like […]

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They must be popping the corks off the champagne bottles in Bentonville. Wal-Mart makes a ton of money illegally. Once again, the Beast gets to break the law and get away with a slap on the wrist—no jail time for executives and a fine that, by its standards, is puny: it agreed to pay $11 […]

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When you think the Mob is moving in on you, it often is a smart thing to do to just pack up and leave, at least that was true in the old days. Wal-Mart apparently has the same effect. Check out what happens to a local store when the Beast from Bentonville is about to […]

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Well, baseball is on my mind today, as I pack up to journey south for spring training (which may put a crimp in my minds attention to the blog Beast). I don’t know whether Mark Mcwire did the juice but at least he did the stand up thing, refusing to pull an Elia Kazan and […]

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There is no crisis in Social Security but the president is doing everything possible to create a financial catastrophe to gin one up. This whole game reminds me of the hustlers in Times Square playing the Three Card Monte or find the pea under the cup (actually, because Times Square now resembles a mall that […]

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I’m wondering…is there a budget at the AFL-CIO and is someone watching the bottom line? Cuz the Federation’s audit firm, “Calibre,” had some pretty worrisome information for the Finance Committee, don’t you think? To wit: the Federation’s assets grew pretty nicely between 1995 and today, around 40 percent—but the reserves are down from over $71 […]

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