Working Life

Really good story in today’s New York Times’ Sunday Business Section called “How Wall Street Wrecked United’s Pension” (registration required). Written by Mary Williams Walsh (who, I think, has done really good reporting on the attack on pensions), the piece shows how United’s pension fund money managers collected about $125 million in fees over the […]

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And here from the political newsletter Hotline….note the Republicans who voted No. CAFTA: I’ll Take That De-CAFTAnated A “sharply divided” House early 7/28 “passed a hard-fought Central American trade agreement that had become one of the year’s biggest political fights.” The victory was “a huge one” for Pres. Bush and GOPers, “whose legislative agenda could […]

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Enough. Enough. Enough. If we ever want to make politicians take us seriously when it comes to important laws touching the lives of workers, we must punish the 15 so-called Democrats who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)–and punish them hard. Not a single one of those cowardly 15 should receive a […]

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Well, that’s kind of the message we’ve been bombarded with for the past decade or two: the solution to future employment is to get retrained and get smarter because, guess what, you’re too dumb and unskilled in the great “New Economy” of the future. This has been one of my pet peeves for lo these […]

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Here are the seeds of a revolution–and even the elites are starting to see the danger. Used to be, if you worked your ass off and worked more efficiently, that would translate into more money in your paycheck. Not anymore, as I observe in the most recent installment of my TomPaine.com “Working in America” series. […]

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I don’t want to be a downer. Really. I’d like to be constantly upbeat and sunny about the recent unemployment figures. But, I just can’t shake the feeling that something ominous looms down the road–and not too far down the road. Yeah, the unemployment number dropped to five percent of the workforce (this is cause […]

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I wonder: did Steven Spielberg, fresh off “War of The Worlds” (entertaining but nothing stupendous, says your sometime film critic), write Jonathan Weisman’s article today in The Washington Post “CAFTA Reflects Democrats’ Shift From Trade Bills“? (registration required). After all, there are enough scary monsters in that article to put any horror film to shame: […]

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So, here’s my take on the vote yesterday on CAFTA–beyond the obvious, it’s a great sign why the Democrats will continue to be in the minority for some time. First, the vote was not a straight partisan vote: 10 Democrats voted YES, while 12 Republicans voted NO. Here are the pathetic Democrats who voted YES–and […]

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Back in the wild and crazy world of the Beast of Bentonville, today’s Financial Times has a front-page story about Wal-Mart’s plans to expand into central and eastern Europe. And its also licking its chops at the prospect of moving into more countries in “Latin America, in addition to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, where it […]

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A pause today in the saga of the House of Labor (more interesting developments later today or tomorrow) to talk about your own house–or, really, all those houses built of paper profits. I’ve been meaning to say something about this for sometime and two things happened over the weekend that got me off the dime. […]

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