Working Life

For a very long time, I’ve pointed out the moral outrage of the so-called “minimum wage”, so-called because it is really a poverty wage, not a minimum wage. Minimum wage gives the impression that it is the minimum a person can live on. But, you can’t live on that wage. That’s where a hike in the poverty wage is welcome, even if it is still not enough.

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That CEOs of American-based, flagless corporations will say, or do, anything to make a buck–and line their own pockets–is not a surprising notion. That our political leadership keeps buying the nonsense spewed out by the Chamber of Commerce and the other megaphones of corporate greed is a tragedy–an obvious result of the corrupt campaign finance […]

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   The Wall Street Journal has a pretty conventional, yawn piece about a subject which not a yawn: trying to get some fairness back in rules governing workers’ rights and abilities to form a union at work…which is almost non-existent these days. But, what caught my eye is this: At a House Education and the […]

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This is just silly–but, unfortunately, not entirely surprising. Chuck Schumer has grabbed on to the idiotic idea of rewarding corporate America for tax dodging and stashing billions of dollars overseas. And the senior Senator is doing a huge flip-flop–one that is bad for the country. We’re talking about one of the worst ideas ever thought […]

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   This seems so logical it is hard to argue against it. It’s too bad that the fear of an epidemic is spurring a sensible policy: In an effort to rein in the spread of the H1N1 flu, Representative George Miller,  the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, introduced legislation on Tuesday that […]

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If you believe that a society cannot be truly democratic without a strong labor movement, and if you believe that the only way to build a fair economy is by making sure people can belong to unions, then, this is where a line must be drawn: Democratic Senators who block or undercut the Employee Free […]

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    For some politicians, the deaths of workers are either almost invisible or convenient props for getting attention. Recently, during yet another carnage of constructions workers in New York, politicians rushed to the scene to express their concern–the same politicians that do very little day-to-day and actually collect campaign contributions from people who endanger workers’ […]

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    It’s no secret that undocumented workers are some of the most vulnerable workers in society. Employers ruthlessly exploit them. I don’t think that most people can understand–deeply understand in your gut–the fear that undocumented workers have to live with every day. Well, here’s as close as you might get to understanding what it feels […]

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    Yesterday, the House passed a bill called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. You may remember Ledbetter was the victim of an idiotic Supreme Court decision that denied her claim of discrimination because the Court said she had waited too long to file the claim. That outrageous decision would be overturned by law if […]

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