Working Life

This is a fact of life: a large number of people in the world enjoy all sorts of luxuries because of the horrendous conditions that tens of millions of workers endure–slave wages, dangerous workplaces and physically-abusive employers. This is a small slice of that fact–and you can do something about it.   The National Labor […]

Read the full story

   I don’t have much to add on the extremely disappointing and inadequate health care bill that passed the Senate yesterday–it’s been said by others–so I turned my attention to a couple of international developments.    Every so often, when I discuss trade, here or in debates elsewhere, people say: well, we live in a […]

Read the full story

  With the collapse of the financial system, we are witnessing one obvious spectacular failure of the wonders of the "free market". Let’s not forget, though, the other part of the wonderful "free market": the grueling hours, despicable conditions and substandard wages that half the world live in, all a product of the fine system […]

Read the full story

  Not to be holier than thou, I understand why its cool to drive a Prius–rented one recently on a trip and loved that gas mileage. Clean for the environment, easy on the wallet–what’s not to like? How about this: Your Prius is being made by workers who are being driven to the brink of […]

Read the full story

    Almost three years ago, I wrote about James Lynn, a whistle-blower who worked for Wal-Mart and exposed the Beast’s exploitation of workers in Central America. Wal-Mart fired Lynn, claiming he had engaged in improper "fraternization" with a colleague. A couple of days ago, the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled in Wal-Mart’s favor: The Arkansas […]

Read the full story

    If it’s possible to say that there is good news from the sweatshop front, here it comes, from our friends at the National Labor Committee: Fifty-eight workers fired for organizing a union at the Star SA factory in Honduras’s El Porvenir free trade zone (owned by the U.S. Anvil t-shirt company) have been reinstated […]

Read the full story

    If it’s possible to say that there is good news from the sweatshop front, here it comes, from our friends at the National Labor Committee: Fifty-eight workers fired for organizing a union at the Star SA factory in Honduras’s El Porvenir free trade zone (owned by the U.S. Anvil t-shirt company) have been reinstated […]

Read the full story

    China is a complicated place. And, certainly, there has been a lot of debate in U.S. labor circles about how to engage with the Chinese labor movement–some see the one legal union in China as simply a government-run monolith that stands in for any independent union, while others see a more complicated picture where […]

Read the full story

    China is a complicated place. And, certainly, there has been a lot of debate in U.S. labor circles about how to engage with the Chinese labor movement–some see the one legal union in China as simply a government-run monolith that stands in for any independent union, while others see a more complicated picture where […]

Read the full story

    Recently, I wrote about the atrocious conditions at facilities in Jordan that churn out product for Victoria’s Secret. On Friday, I got an alert from my friends at the National Labor Committee about a strike that has broken out among workers who work in factories turning out goods for Wal-Mart, Gloria Vanderbilt and GAP […]

Read the full story