Working Life

I learned tonight from a reliable source on Capitol Hill that the Inspector General of the Department of Labor has agreed to probe the sweetheart deal the agency struck with Wal-Mart that let the company get away with a puny $135,000 and change fine and a promise the DOL would give Wal-Mart a 15-day heads-up […]

Read the full story

Thinking about Wal-Mart’s child labor violations reminded me of an international effort around violations of labor rights worldwide. The Campaign to Abolish Sweatshops and Child Labor had put together a piece of legislation that would “require companies to disclose information related to potential violations of core labor standards, by preventing a market for goods made […]

Read the full story

Wal-Mart cut itself a great deal with the government. Not only does it pay a puny $135,000 and change fine for 24 child labor violations, the Department of Labor has promised to give Wal-Mart a 15-day heads-up before it starts any future investigations. Enough time to get those paper shredders going and muddle the trail. […]

Read the full story

What does Wal-Mart do when workers try to exercise basic rights? Fire ’em! Not just in the U.S. but in Canada: Wal-Mart Plans to Close Unionized Store in Quebec (Update3) Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to close its first unionized store in North America and fire 190 workers after it failed to […]

Read the full story

The Administration’s record on jobs is still pathetic, as the Economic Policy Institute points out: EPI tells us that: On average, it has taken 21 months to surpass the prior employment peak after a recession. In this case it took 46 months, making this the longest slump of this type on record. Had we done […]

Read the full story

As if things couldn’t get worse, the labor movement is even smaller than it was a year ago. Actually, the movement hasn’t been this small in six decades. In 2003, unions represented 12.9 percent of workers overall; in 2004, that percentage dropped to 12.5. The story is actually worse if you look just at the […]

Read the full story

I think you can get a feel for the different approaches in the debate about the future of labor. I don’t agree with every piece of anyone’s proposal but having open debate is essential. SEIU’s website (www.unitedtowin.org) is freewheeling–it lets anyone post a comment and go on for as long as they wish…though that’s not […]

Read the full story

You remember the Administration’s Iraq “Coalition of the Willing,” which was a sham from the start, including such important military powers as Poland. It was a title for a coalition with no real meaning. Labor has its version. Just picked up the AFL-CIO magazine, which notes, as has been noted elsewhere in labor’s propoganda, that […]

Read the full story

James Brooke has a piece today on the devastation facing Mongolia when the worldwide quotas on apparel end Jan 1 2005. I’ve previously mulled this over here and here. What struck me with this piece was the observation that Brooke says that the end of the quotas would save American consumers $6 billion a year. […]

Read the full story

It’s bad enough that Wal-Mart is everywhere in the economy: largest importer of goods from China; driving other companies like Toys-R-Us to the verge of bankruptcy by driving prices down, down, down, chirping on the television with those misleading ads talking about the Wal-Mart paradise for communities and workers; and, of course, paying workers poverty […]

Read the full story