Working Life

Another day, another chapter in the new ways to screw workers. This time, the target is workers inside hog processing plants—who are already doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. I talk with expert Debbie Berkowitz about the Department of Agriculture’s new proposal to speed up the processing line–so that Big Ag […]

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The uprising is hitting Arizona. Tomorrow, thousands of teachers will flood the state capitol to demand—like their brethren in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Colorado—fair wages. I talk with the both the head of the union and a rank-and-file union leader. I also take up the silly idea of privatization, inspired by a recent dumb-as-can-be […]

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Beto. He’s the guy who will send Ted Cruz into retirement.  I talk with Beto O’Rourke while he’s out driving on the campaign trail in Texas. Have you tried to live on a teacher’s salary? In Oklahoma, it means counting on visiting a food pantry to survive, as I learn in my in-depth talk with […]

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Now it’s the turn of teachers in Oklahoma to rise up. I chat with Alicia Priest, the president of the Oklahoma Education Association, and Jennifer Thornton, a third-grade teacher in Tulsa, after the state’s teachers walked off the job to push for higher pay so they don’t have to go to a food pantry to feed their […]

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Nine days striking isn’t the longest walk-out you will see. But, when you do that in defiance of the law, whoa, now that’s showing some spine. I kick off the podcast with a chat with the president of the West Virginia Education Association, Dale Lee, to get a read on what we can learn from […]

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One of the dumbest, and pernicious, obsessions has to be trying to tag teachers for the bad state of a lot of schools. Seriously? It’s just mindless, blind ideological hatred that comes straight from a hostile right-wing that wants to eviscerate the political power of teachers’ unions. In the list of the assault add the bad decision coming out of the mouth of a mediocre Los Angeles judge.

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So, Chicago teachers agreed to end their strike, and go back to teaching for an average of $77,000 per year. Which made me think: which is a better bargain?

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If you are one who is already bored by the 2012 elections and the rhetorical, mind-numbing repetition, here’s a little taste of what you can expect all the way into the distant future of 2016. The poodle-for-the-rich governor of New York has determined that his path to the White House in 2016–and, despite the boring […]

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    I think we make a mistake describing the unrelenting class warfare underway as a campaign undertaken by evil, crazed or demented very rich people. Sure, there are a few of them and it is certainly a part of an ideological belief ("we rich people are just better and more skilled and tough luck"). But, […]

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   It’s hard to read about what has happened to Detroit. Now, this via The Wall Street Journal: A new state law has emboldened the Detroit mayor and schools chief to take a more aggressive stance toward public unions as the city leaders try to mop up hundreds of millions of dollars in red ink. […]

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