Working Life

If you believed the media spin, well, it was just about time that those auto workers gave up their generous health care benefits provided by General Motors. What? The real issue that should have been thrust on to the front pages is: why don’t we have a universal health care system in this country? The […]

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Just around the corner is the premier of the film about Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. You can see a clip of it here and also register to either host a screening or go to a screening–and get your very own DVD.

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Well, while corporate executives at Delphi are trying to make off with hauls of cash as the company tanks, the Congress did nothing to hike the minimum wage: it’s been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997 and proposals to hike the wage to $6.25 went down. Since this might pop up again, I thought […]

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The Beast from Bentonville (by the way, that would be the corporation upon whose board Hillary Clinton sat…) has been trying to get into the banking business. But, it’s been met with a fairly stiff campaign, which has included resistance from banks, as well as the good folks from WalMart Watch. According to today’s New […]

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I’m with those people who are amazed at the oracle-like status given Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve. Even debating his legacy (he’s on his way out after the New Year) within the narrow world of the financial markets, he’s been a total shill for the Bush Administration’s completely irresponsible economic policies: roaring fiscal […]

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So, what good is an “expanding” economy and a growing Gross Domestic Product when workers are going to see their pay cut from $27 an hour to $10 an hour? Or, at least that’s what the Delphi Corporation is demanding from UAW workers to avoid bankruptcy. I saw one quote from a worker that makes […]

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One of my pet peeves has been the Gross Domestic Product. I’m not against measuring GDP but I think it’s been completely abused, for political reasons, as a measure of what is happening to real people. This isn’t an attack just on Republicans because Democrats misuse the GDP number, too. The best thing you can […]

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Seems to me this headline in today’s New York Times should have been on the front page, not buried in the business section: “At The Very Top, A Surge in Income in ’03”, followed by a subhead that is even more revealing–“I.R.S. Data Show Thin Slice of Richest 1% Got Outsize Gains.” Now, we here […]

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Got an early morning meeting but saw this in today’s Wall Street Journal. More bad news for workers at Northwest. Here’s part of the article: Northwest Seeks More ConcessionsBy SUSAN CAREYStaff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALSeptember 29, 2005 Less than two weeks after filing for bankruptcy-court protection, Northwest Airlines warned three unions that it […]

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You have to read this piece today by The New York Times’ Mary Williams Walsh, who, by my way of thinking, has done one of the best jobs in the MSM (and even the non-MSM) in covering the debacle facing the private pensions system. Walsh chronicles the business strategy of one Robert Miller which can […]

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