Working Life

Every day, a worker dies somewhere just doing his or her job. And that death rate hits hard particularly communities of color and immigrants because many work in industries and jobs with low pay and very sketchy safety practices.

This is murder at work, the human “cost of doing business” in the glorious “free market”–except there is very little cost to the company. And usually the managers and CEOs skate, getting a fine or some other slap-on-the-wrist.

Those who wear the burden are the family members of the murdered worker.

In this sea of injustice, a glimmer of justice beckons from New York.

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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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   A lot of pain is going to continue to wash across the country. Witness this info on the continued lag in the construction industry: Construction is a big employer and one of the better-paid sectors for men who lack a college degree. The sector has shed 2.1 million jobs from its peak in March […]

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This is not a post about the auto industry. The attack against the decent standard of living fought for and won by auto workers over many generations is just one of the most visible assaults on the American Dream–an assault that is sweeping through every corner of the economy as workers have to pay for […]

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   Those of us who have lived in the reality-based universe have known, for a long time, that the ideologues who permeated our government in the 1980s so they could cripple government were actually killing people and creating havoc in our economic lives. So, now that we have lived with the cost of de-regulation and […]

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   There is a pretty interesting poll out today in The New York Times about our billionaire mayor. The teflon mayor is still pretty popular–something I’ve never understood. But, people are paying attention to one of his failings–choosing development over the lives of workers. I’ve been watching the fatalities and injuries pile up for a […]

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I’ve always believed, and have said in the past, that until we start locking up executives who let workers die and be maimed on the job because of unsafe working conditions, the toll will continue to climb. That is why this is good news, just posted on the Times website: Contractor Charged With Manslaughter By […]

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    Today there is more news on the deaths of construction workers in New York City. Apparently, our mayor–who never saw a nice, shiny building project he didn’t like no matter if most residents in the city can never afford to live in those nice, shiny buildings–has noticed that a bunch of construction workers are, […]

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  Like a lot of workers, construction workers aren’t seen by most people going to and from work, home or whatever else they happen to be doing–until a construction worker dies some horrible death. Their deaths are, I think, shrugged off as the inevitable cost of "progress" and "economic activity". But, these deaths do not […]

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    I actually have been out of town so I wasn’t in NYC when the crane fell on the East Side. But, yesterday, the death toll in the crane collapse reached seven people, six out of seven of them were construction workers. Back in January, it struck me that there was a real increase in […]

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