Working Life

Calling people “gig” workers is a subtle trap. “Gig” can sound anywhere from upbeat to just a mundane description. The truth is the “gig” economy is just another way of exploiting people and it’s a dream for all capitalists to have a pool of workers who can be used and abused at the beckon call […]

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“Economic inequality is out of control. In 2019, the world’s billionaires, only 2,153 people, had more wealth than 4.6 billion people.” Those two sentences lead off Oxfam’s annual look at inequality. This year, Oxfam looks at unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis. I speak with Paul O’Brien, Vice President of Policy […]

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   Via the International Labor Organization: The new ILO standards set out that domestic workers around the world who care for families and households, must have the same basic labour rights as those available to other workers: reasonable hours of work, weekly rest of at least 24 consecutive hours, a limit on in-kind payment, clear […]

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    Meanwhile, as we are subjected to the foolish efforts by Democrats to cut pensions for workers, over in Geneva there is some serious talk about the social crisis underway worldwide. Via the meeting of the International Labor Organization, thousands of people from around the world are talking about the grand crisis ripping throughout the […]

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   This is very good news: In a city of secret economies, few are as vital to the life of New York as the business of nannies, the legions of women who emancipate high-powered professionals and less glamorous working parents from the duties of daily child care so they might get to work. Those nannies, […]

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   I’ve been honored to be part of a campaign in New York to try to win some basic rights for the 200,000 women who labor every day as domestic workers in New York–200,000!!! So, to get to the point, here is an update and some thing you can do: You’ll be happy to know […]

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   Readers of this blog know that I strongly believe that we need to start throwing corporate executives in jail when workers are injured or die on the job. Fines just don’t cut it–it’s a cost of doing business…and a tax-deductible cost to boot. Let them lose touch with their BMWs, personal assistants, Blackberries, good […]

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