Working Life

I’m going to spend a second day here on the Beast of Bentonville. If you want to know why the Democratic Party will continue to be the minority party in the country, look no further than the raft of Democratic operatives and elected representatives who do the bidding of Wal-Mart. At the end of this […]

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Whew. Today, it’s all about the Beast of Bentonville. Hard to decide where to start but…how about today’s world premiere of Robert Greenwald’s film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” Yours truly will be at the advance screening tonight here in NYC and I’ll report back with a movie review tomorrow. But, in the […]

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I’ll bet this is a shock to you: Wal-Mart wants to cut its health care costs…but check out the story in today’s New York Times (registration required) to get the Beast of Bentonville’s rationale and strategy. Describing an internal company memo, the article gives a strong view of the real corporate mentality prevailing at Wal-Mart […]

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You remember good ‘ole Melissa Bean? She’s one of our CAFTA 15–so-called Democrats who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement. As a repayment for their votes, the CAFTA 15 have been getting a rush of corporate dollars–you may remember the fundraiser thrown for the CAFTA 15 by a whole raft of business interests. […]

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One of the strategies in trying to topple the Beast of Bentonville is setting up a non-union workers association as the first outreach vehicle to Wal-Mart workers; not a single Wal-Mart store in unionized. Today’s USA Today carries an AP story on the first big effort in central Florida (a bit of it is below). […]

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My occassional clean-up of left-over stuff, just the antidote for Sunday easy reading– On the Wal-Mart Front–Good News, Bad News: The Beast has thrown in the towel, pretty quickly I might add, on the on-line DVD rental biz. Netflix’s head start in the business tailor-made for couch potatoes and parents with no baby sitters was […]

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So, what would you do if you were, along with your mommy, the richest woman in the world, but your workers either can’t afford health insurance or have to pay through the nose to get pathetic insurance and, as a matter of policy, your CEO tells the world that your company doesn’t expect its pay […]

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No, there’s no real connection between all those three headliners—just a confluence of stories in today’s newspapers. Steven Greenhouse has been a busy boy. He has two pieces in the New York Times today. His front-page Business section story looks at the debate over wages at Wal-Mart. I think the best nugget of information from […]

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I should have connected my recent blog about worker pay going down with the AFL-CIO’s updated site on CEO pay. My favorite entry, in keeping with my own obsession, was the one on Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott: When it comes to CEO pay, Wal-Mart definitely does not have always low prices. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott […]

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I thought the end of civilization had arrived with reality T.V. but this morning I’ve been once again reassured that our crazy country can come up with the ever-more bizarre. CNN carried a local video report from a TV station in Latham, New York reporting on a real special wedding (it’s on the CNN website […]

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