Working Life

Just when you thought the greed and outrageous behavior of corporate America could get no worse, the leaders of companies have sunk to a new low: they are using workers’ pension money to fund CEO pensions. No this is not a joke.   The evidence is laid out today in The Wall Street Journal by […]

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    One of the under-reported stories in America is the way in which the corporate thugs in their executive suites come up with new ways to screw people out of their pensions. Normally, what we get when the press covers pensions is the sky-is-falling story, which translates into "workers’ pensions are too generous and should […]

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  I happened to see a cartoon recently in which one person says to another, "My 401(k) feels like a 201(k)". That is, indeed, one of the other, less-talked about facts that many people are facing in the more-visible credit-crisis gripping our economy. You would think that that reality would force a serious rethinking of […]

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    We just had an amazing panel here on the crisis in retirement security (if you missed it…you had your chance…make sure you get to our future events!). Bruce Raynor, general president of UNITE-HERE, gave some very clear examples of how defined benefit pensions are crucial to his members’ retirement, pointing out that pensions bind […]

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Even for me, $58 billion sounds like a lot of money…that’s apparently the shortfall in the New Jersey state pension funds, which the state plans on confirming tomorrow. Mary Williams Walsh in The New York Times reports today that: It turns out that New Jersey will need about $58 billion, in today’s dollars, to provide […]

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    I promise I won’t keep writing every day about the UAW–it might seem like favoritism–but, if you’re interested, there is a transcript of an on-line chat that UAW prez Ron Gettelfinger had with members.     One thing I found interesting was this little snippet: Ludington, Mich.: Gentlemen, as a Chrysler retiree and former chief […]

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The folks that are going to buy Chrysler–the private equity firm of Cerberus Capital Management–are working hard to reassure the UAW and rank-and-file workers that a bunch of workers are not heading for the unemployment line. I’m skeptical–mainly for the long haul. The Wall Street Journal has this today (subscription only):   Leaders of the […]

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Yesterday, I did a television interview about the buy-out of Chrysler by a private-equity firm. It was striking to me during that interview—and is reaffirmed if you read the MSM coverage of the story—how much the story is being framed entirely around the “sacrifices” that the rank-and-file workers will have to make to keep Chrysler […]

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     The real story bubbling within the auto industry is not the news that Toyota vaulted over General Motors in worldwide auto sales. Rather, it’s the growing ideological–not economic–drumbeat that is gathering targeting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of auto workers. And this is a direct attack against a decent standard of living for […]

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The inevitable ideological attacks against the UAW has begun. Just in time for the news that Toyota overtook General Motors in worldwide sales for the first time in history, the drumbeat has picked up in the pages of the business press: auto workers have to just buck it up and take the hit to save […]

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