Working Life

In the horror of the collapse of the garment factory building in Bangladesh, I’m left to thinking how many people have died over many years of exploitation in garment factories and others factories in places like Bangladesh — and the unfortunate reality that the people most responsible for those deaths will never be held accountable: CEOs of U.S. corporations.

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When I first read about the horrendous fire in Bangladesh, I immediately thought of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York in 1911 — more than 100 years ago. In many ways, nothing has changed. In some ways, somethings have changed.

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   I recently wrote about the revolt against poverty wages around the world. Some good news–which is so rare in international labor work–via our friends from the National Labor Committee: Mr. Montu Ghosh, an important progressive trade union leader and lawyer in Bangladesh was released an hour ago on bail, after having spent 73 days […]

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Yesterday, I wrote about how the decline of U.S. wages has made workers here cheaper to hire than workers in India, at least in the call center industry. Today, the news hails from Asia where workers are rising up against poverty-level wages.   From the Financial Times (and, as a side observation, the FT gives […]

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   I don’t have much to add on the extremely disappointing and inadequate health care bill that passed the Senate yesterday–it’s been said by others–so I turned my attention to a couple of international developments.    Every so often, when I discuss trade, here or in debates elsewhere, people say: well, we live in a […]

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