Working Life

As Labor Day looms on the horizon, I ring up Larry Mishel, distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, to talk about his new study looking at CEO greed. Not a shock, but if you are wondering where that pay increase went, it’s probably in the CEO’s bank account. A logical conversation after digging into […]

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It’s just a smidgen but every time you get a chance to hear about the shake-ups needed in our beloved labor movement, it’s worth saying “yeah, baby”. And, sisters and brothers, we have a double-barreled shot for you today. I chat first with MaryBe McMillan, the new president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, about organizing […]

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Start by being inspired by Billy Bragg’s “There Is Power In The Union”. Then, listen as I talk to a Nissan worker who is at the center of a critical campaign to win a union at Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi—a two-day vote that will start tomorrow (and we will update the result for our […]

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The Pope and Bernie Sanders share something: concern for the poor and a sharp critique of capitalism, as well as no fondness for the Wall Street class which funds virtually every other candidate, including the presumed front-runner. While others jostle for tickets to be in the picture with the Pope, Bernie’s hitting the streets with the very people he is campaigning to defend.

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It just gets worse for workers.

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I’m always on the lookout for things to add to the George Orwell list of “War is Peace” double talk. So, now, comes a threat to the whole idea of winning neutrality agreements in union organizing campaigns.

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It is the strangest contradiction: things have not been so bad for workers probably since the Great Depression, with wages declining, health care costs going up, pensions becoming a thing of the past. People are really angry and frustrated. Yet, at the same time, unions continue to decline in numbers and power.

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One of the most powerful weapons used against unions is to essentially write them out of history: children don’t learn about unions in schools. Most politicians only mention unions when they are slumming for a check for their campaigns or they promise to put on sneakers and walk picket lines when elected but somehow that promise is forgotten once the election is over; they talk great rhetoric about the “middle class” but you almost never hear, unprompted and certainly not in front of crowds outside a union hall, a great speech about unions and their central place in making a healthy economy. Which is why the despicable refusal to elect Marvin Miller to baseball’s Hall of Fame matters–and it should matter to every person who cares about unions, even if you’ve never watched a minute of baseball in your life.

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Where do you start to comment when you read a piece that is, at best, deeply spineless, and, at worse, completely clueless? We cease to be surprised by the relentless foolishness on the part of the transcribers of press releases (formerly called “journalists”). But, though I am not surprised, I can’t let these things go. In this case, it’s a dumb piece called, “Standard of Living Is in the Shadows as Election Issue”.

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   This is one reason people do not understand how the economy really works–because transcribers of press releases (formerly known as "journalists") don’t do their jobs. A basic point of journalism is tell the reader, fairly soon, WHY something happened…well, if you read this story, you don’t get there until it’s way too late: Investors […]

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