Working Life

Next to Yogi, I always like to harken back to Deep Throat when I’m looking for an appropriate analogy. Not Linda Lovelace but the mysterious figure from Watergate who, apparently, said, when asked how to unravel the political scandal, “follow the money.” Well, to twist this slightly, if you want to know if a union […]

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Hmmmm…so, the United Auto Workers today endorsed John Sweeney for re-election. Before I go further, I remind people that I was a UAW local president and am still a proud UAW member so figure that into anything I say (or don’t say). The statement from UAW prez Ron Gettelfinger says that, “As AFL-CIO president, John […]

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A quick break from our on-going soap opera inside the AFL-CIO to talk about, uh, organizing–you know, that thing that all this hoo-hah is about. I’m all for beating the crap out of Wal-Mart and the Walton family until it starts behaving. But, there’s another Wal-Mart looming: Whole Foods. And, if we want to control […]

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A relevant point to raise in the current debate over the future of the labor movement: listen up, sometimes old white guys can do the right thing (this being a bit of the bone of contention in the back and forth between Anonymous AFL-er and Union Maid over my post on seniority). Take Sol Stetin, […]

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Last week, I asked whether there was any international union president willing to say publicly that the seniority is a sacred union principle and that the way in which the AFL-CIO layoffs were structured potentially threatens that principle. I haven’t heard from any international president. But, I just got this letter that was written by […]

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My occassional clean-up of left-over stuff, just the antidote for Sunday easy reading– On the Wal-Mart Front–Good News, Bad News: The Beast has thrown in the towel, pretty quickly I might add, on the on-line DVD rental biz. Netflix’s head start in the business tailor-made for couch potatoes and parents with no baby sitters was […]

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Well, actually, I’m not sure…my previous post about the issue emanated from what I think now is a bad rumor. There is too much information flying around and sometimes (as Newsweek discovered) it may be wrong, I’d say forget it—and I’ve also taken the step of deleting this information from this post. Ah, the beauty […]

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A few tidbits today from 16th Street. A good friend, deep inside 16th Street, says that based on a draft job description of the new job categories decreed by Chairman Welsh, “there is no way the AFL-CIO is going to win any arbitration because they are so similar.” My friend knows the details of the […]

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So, I’ll join the general hysteria over the release of the latest Star Wars movie (which, once the lines get normal, I’ll be shelling out my $10.50 for…I can’t remember what it cost to see the first one 30 years ago). Back in the Reagan Era (which, as shocking as it may seem, feels somewhat […]

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I have just been given two letters that were sent to John Sweeney yesterday by Federation workers at 16th Street in the wake of the deep cuts announced two weeks ago. Coming soon after the release of the insurgents new proposal, this cannot help John Sweeney try to stem the vibrations coursing through the AFL-CIO […]

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