Working Life

   The obscenity continues in America. The economy is destroyed–short-term and long-term–by incompetents and greedy people. But, it’s regular people who had nothing to do with this disaster who take the hit. And now we have the governor of New York blessing the disaster by taking aim at workers and letting the rich of the […]

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Admittedly, I’ve never been into the bi-partisan meme. Maybe it’s because I’m a labor movement person and the mission of the Republican party, and its allies, is to destroy the labor movement. But, I still remain mystified: why exactly, given the Republican party’s record, is the new Administration working so hard to win it over? […]

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  President-elect Obama has publicly stated that he wants "unconventional" thinking among the people who give him advice on the economy. Fantastic. So, here are some suggestions.    I’m throwing out these suggestions—-and welcome others—-partly because of the debate zapping around progressive circles about how critical progressives should be about the incoming Administration. I find […]

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   McDonald’s really knows how to celebrate liberty and justice. On the eve of the international recognition Human Rights Day, McDonald’s announced it will launch a massive campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. So, let’s respond in kind: boycott McDonald’s.   As a reminder, the right to form a union is an internationally […]

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  Hear me out: this is an argument as much about the place of workers’ issues in the future Administration, as it is an argument for making John Edwards the next Labor Secretary.   When it comes to tackling the economic crisis, the president-elect has been pre-occupied, personnel-wise, with the question of who will be […]

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   Regular readers know that I have been pointing out that the next shoe to drop will be a wave of bankruptcies that erupt because consumers have no more money to spend. Well, here we go: First came the mortgage crisis. Now comes the credit card crisis. After years of flooding Americans with credit card […]

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   As I said yesterday, the crazy-assed rise in the stock market on Monday was all about one-time profit-taking. And today look for things to begin to come down to earth because, as The Wall Street Journal reports just now on its website: U.S. retail sales took the sharpest drop in three years during September […]

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   A few thoughts about Sen. Obama’s speech last, mainly from the perspective, as usual, for what it means for workers and labor. I was at Invesco Field last night. It was an amazing night, something you can say thirty years from now that you witnessed. One of the hardest things to do at a […]

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   Well, Wal-Mart has a union…but not in the U.S…across the border, and only because a judge imposed the union on the Beast. Shows you what a slightly better legal system can do for union organizing. Here’s what The Wall Street Journal has today: An arbitrator has imposed a contract on a Wal-Mart Canada auto […]

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   The world of the Beast of Bentonville is all abuzz with news of various kinds–not the kind of news that is fuzzy and warm to living creatures everywhere (a friend of mine says I should write more positive things…okay, I’ll try…he obviously didn’t read my recent baseball riff). So, where do we start? How […]

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