Working Life

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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So-called "free trade" is part of the relentless class warfare under way in America. And the so-called "free trade" deal with South Korea is no exception. That said, a lot of the shallow criticism of the UAW’s support for the deal is–well, shallow. Here’s my view about how we should engage the UAW–my union–via an […]

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   Today is a day to celebrate–no kidding. The so-called "free trade" deal with South Korea is dead in the water–at least for now. There are a whole host of reasons these deals stink from top to bottom. But, little attention is ever given to this reason: the phony promises made about enforcing labor and […]

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War is peace. Lies are truth. And, now, Melissa Bean is like Elizabeth Warren. That is the instant thought I had when reading about the rumors that the White House might consider appointing Melissa Bean to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if she ends up on the short end of the vote count in […]

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Yesterday, I wrote about the disastrous state of labor in the wake of the elections. Suffering from either a lack of sleep or simple brain lock, I neglected to include one of the most dangerous coming debacles: we have lost much of the ground built opposing so-called "free trade" agreements, which have played a central […]

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I get why people are angry. Not the anger espoused by the racists, birthers and anti-government people. Across the political spectrum, wherever people place themselves, there is a unifying point that keeps coming up: we’ve been robbed by corporate powers. And the foolish, failed so-called "free trade" policies–pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike–is a place […]

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   I recently wrote about the revolt against poverty wages around the world. Some good news–which is so rare in international labor work–via our friends from the National Labor Committee: Mr. Montu Ghosh, an important progressive trade union leader and lawyer in Bangladesh was released an hour ago on bail, after having spent 73 days […]

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 Sure, elections do matter, at some level–it is no coincidence that, in the wake of Citizens United, a torrent of corporate money is flowing to mostly Republican candidates. But, the truth is that, whatever the results of the elections, we will not end up with a government willing to stop the global movement of jobs […]

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Yesterday, I wrote about how the decline of U.S. wages has made workers here cheaper to hire than workers in India, at least in the call center industry. Today, the news hails from Asia where workers are rising up against poverty-level wages.   From the Financial Times (and, as a side observation, the FT gives […]

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   Okay, something to like on a 102-degree day: The Obama administration on Tuesday sued Arizona over the state’s strict new immigration law, attempting to wrestle back control over the issue but infuriating Republicans who said the border required more security. The administration argued the Arizona law, which requires state and local police to investigate […]

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