Working Life

Murder, violence and robbery—it sounds like a list for a plot of The Wire. But, no, it’s just another standard operating procedure for the free market system—in which people are murdered in Colombia thanks to so-called “free trade”, workers are beat up and sometimes killed at McDonald’s because the company doesn’t care about its workers […]

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The economic and political system kills people, in big numbers and, sometimes, one at a time. This week, I look at the killing, big and small, with my guests. In Colombia, a union leader is murdered, and we discuss with Gimena Sanchez how his death is a microcosm of bad trade deals. We also look […]

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   It’s a full-time job–actually, five full-time jobs–to keep track of how the economic elites screw working people. Just when everyone is excited–rightly so–about the demonstrations breaking out all over the country, in the back door slides more horror: Congress prepared Wednesday to pass free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, showing unusual bipartisan […]

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    Dear Ms. Warren: congratulations for jumping into the U.S. Senate race in your state. And good luck and be well–you will find that being a "candidate" offers challenges quite different from having to answer to discourteous, uninformed Republicans. Respectfully, I’d like to ask your position on a number of issues.    Quick context. There […]

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   I hate to ruin a good party–or at least the world of the liberal bloviators who want everyone to stand in line and praise the president’s speech last night. Heck, I am glad he was there to push for something–ANYTHING–to be done to try to respond to the great crisis we have.    But, […]

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    Not a day goes by when we don’t hear from the mouth of some talking head or read the words of a transcriber of press releases (formerly known as a "journalist") about the awful "partisanship" or bi-partisan "paralysis" and failure to "compromise". It’s now a macro embedded in the minds and computers of virtually […]

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   Those bills are also called the so-called "free trade" deals with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The president is making a concerted push to get these bills rammed through Congress by August. Which just boggles the mind.    Let’s focus today mostly on Colombia, a place that is a dangerous place for trade unionists, […]

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   Reaching back all the way to NAFTA (oh, so ancient history…1993), there has been a complete lie and sham underlying virtually every trade deal post-NAFTA–don’t worry, so-called "free trade" advocates tell us (including free trade zealots Bill Clinton and Robert Reich) about these deals…we will put in place "labor protections" to make sure workers […]

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   Sigh. Dumb economics again–promoted by a whole lot of good Democrats who just cannot embrace the idea that you cannot fix so-called "free trade" deals by pretending to retrain people for new jobs. It’s a false, cruel promise. At first glance, it looks like a hard fight on behalf of workers: Forty-one Senate Democrats […]

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   Guarantee you this won’t merit front-page news: Progress on a free trade deal with Colombia has cleared the way for the White House to seek Congressional approval of a package of trade agreements that includes pacts with South Korea and Panama, as Republicans have demanded. Obama administration officials said Wednesday that they expected technical […]

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