Working Life

There has been a lot of hand-wringing going on about the apparent demise of the so-called Doha round of world trade negotiations. Here, I’ve been hoping that the reports of the demise are, in fact, not a Mark Twain-like premature wish. But, buried in today’s New York Times story on the last-ditch effort to make […]

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This story in today’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Global Trade Talks Near Collapse Amid Farming, Other Disputes” offers some hope that perhaps there are real brakes to be put on the imposition of so-called “free trade” on a global scale. Yes, individual countries are striking these deals–see the U.S. Oman deal–but if the global framework […]

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So-called “free trade” rears its ugly head–again. I wrote about the negotiations for the new deal with Oman back in May and now its headed to Congress. It’s bad, bad, bad–and here’s a letter signed by a ton of organizations explaining why it’s bad: On behalf of the millions of Americans we represent, the undersigned […]

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Yesterday, the AFL-CIO unveiled a new legal challenge to the Chinese labor system that is at the heart of a vexing problem for workers here and in other countries: how do you compete against workers who make bottom-of-the-barrel wages thanks to a government policy to artificially suppress wages? I don’t know if this challenge has […]

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Here I was thinking that so-called “free trade” was reeling…fat chance. There’s a deal that’s now surfacing with Oman. It’s bad and here’s just a little taste from the Citizen’s Trade Campaign: Despite commitments by the Omani Sultan dating back to the mid-1990s to labor law to make it consistent with core ILO labor standards, […]

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Back when NAFTA passed in 1993, a guy named Tom Sawyer was a so-called Democrat Congressmember from Ohio who voted for NAFTA. He was, then, beaten in a 2002 primary because of his NAFTA vote. Well, Tom tried for a comeback, running in the Democratic primary in the 13th Congressional District in Ohio to succeed […]

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The headline in The New York Times was kind of comic: “An Ugly Side of Free Trade: Sweatshops in Jordan.” It was almost as if The Times, which has been an unabashed editorial supporter of so-called “free trade,” was shocked, shocked, to find sweatshops spoiling the economic miracle promised by so-called “free trade.” Well, yes, […]

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That will get your attention. The MSM are all in a twist today that world trade talks may be dead for the rest of the Bush Administration. It certainly wasn’t the intention of this miserable Administration to give working people around the world a breather from the relentless assault of so-called “free trade.” But, we’ll […]

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Just about a month ago, before the escalating debate over the ports deal, I pointed out that a new round of attacks was beginning to be launched against people who opposed globalization. The mainstream media is feeding that assault. Today, you can read a superficial piece by David Sanger in The New York Times. Anchored […]

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…another so-called “free trade” agreement is trying to impose itself on unsuspecting people. Every time I think of the birth of these agreements, I think of those plant-like things in “Alien” that pop out yet another terrifying monster. This new ugly brew is called the Andean Free Trade Agreement because it will cover Peru, Columbia […]

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