Working Life

   It’s nice to write about something positive: Thousands of public employees and supporters converged at a hearing at the capitol here that ran into the wee hours of Wednesday morning to voice their objection to a proposal to cut their benefits and remove most of their unions’ ability to bargain. The show of anger […]

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   Well, who said you can’t count on stability anymore? That things are changing too rapidly. Not to worry:    It was a tough year for Bank of America what with the foreclosure mess and a sagging stock price. Its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, nonetheless received $10 million in his first year on the […]

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When you cut through the chase about the economic debate of the future, it really boils down to this: What is the standard we should use in setting the  standard for a decent living? Apparently, The New York Times has decided: don’t count on decent pensions, don’t count on health care, and forget decent wages. […]

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The political adage is correct: elections have consequences. We know about the takeover of the House by Republicans and the hit Democrats will take in the reapportionment process. But, the greatest threat to the American Dream is going to come from a determined assault on the labor movement.   The New York Times has this […]

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   This is an example of what we will see in louder tones in the coming year (this in today’s Wall St. Journal): Cities across the nation are raising property taxes, largely citing rising pension and health-care costs for their employees and retirees. In Pennsylvania, the township of Upper Moreland is bumping up property taxes […]

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   We have a huge crisis in the country. The private pension system is collapsing. The public pension system is on the brink of collapse, and people are being pitted one against the other. But, what we often fail to do is connect the dots: between the collapse of the public pensions system and the […]

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Here we are living at a time of the greatest class warfare in at least half a century. It is almost impossible to form a union legally in the U.S.–corporations have all power in the workplace. We have the greatest divide between rich and poor in 100 years. And now comes some clear evidence of […]

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Jay Gould, the 19th Century dastardly Robber Baron, once said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." He’d be smiling right now. We see people being pitted against each other every day–whether its private sector workers complaining about public sector workers’ pensions, or parents and teachers tussling over […]

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So-called "free trade" is part of the relentless class warfare under way in America. And the so-called "free trade" deal with South Korea is no exception. That said, a lot of the shallow criticism of the UAW’s support for the deal is–well, shallow. Here’s my view about how we should engage the UAW–my union–via an […]

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I have written recently that the debate over CEO pay obscured the true source of executive over-the-top compensation: the astronomical levels of money hidden in the pensions of CEOs and top executives. Today, we have more confirmation about the draining of corporate money into the hands of CEOS via their retirement parting gifts.   The […]

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