Working Life

   Wal-Mart is always ready to exploit women, employ people at low wages, use slave labor in China and violate wage and hour laws. What it apparently isn’t ready to do is answer questions: Wal-Mart execs are boycotting a City Council hearing on the chain’s plans to open its first store in New York City, the […]

Read the full story

   Some people get it about Wal-Mart: But interviews with New Yorkers shopping here on a recent day revealed some surprising views: even some of Wal-Mart’s loyal customers would rather drive to the bargains than risk bringing those low prices — along with the crowds and competition that may come with them — closer to […]

Read the full story

   I am hardly surprised by this: More than six years before the biggest sex discrimination lawsuit in history was filed against Wal-Mart Stores, the company hired a prominent law firm to examine its vulnerability to just such a suit. The law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, found widespread gender disparities in pay […]

Read the full story

    In the midst of the focus on the unethical behavior of Wall Street, let’s give a little stage time for Wal-Mart: In a closely watched case, a sharply divided federal appeals court on Monday ruled 6-5 that a sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart could proceed as a class action for more than a million […]

Read the full story

   We haven’t checked in with the folks from Bentonville in a bit but Wal-Mart makes the news today: A small group of West African men who came to the Rockies in search of economic opportunity are embroiled in a dispute with Wal-Mart, accusing it of a raft of discriminatory actions. Most say they were […]

Read the full story

There are lots of reasons to oppose the Senate bill in its current form, and hope that, if the Senate does pass a bill, that the final form of the bill is closer to the House version (I am leaving aside for the moment the argument, pro or con, that anything short of "Medicare For […]

Read the full story

   I have made this point before–I know that it sounds counter-intuitive to say that a strong dollar is NOT a good thing but it isn’t–except maybe for Wal-Mart and American tourists. I certainly have sympathy for tourists, less so for Wal-Mart. I’m reminded of this because of this article in today’s Wall Street Journal: […]

Read the full story

   The obsession with the value of the dollar is kind of goofy. More than three years ago, not for the first time, I suggested that it would actually be a good thing if the value of the dollar declined significantly, particularly as it relates to the trade relationship with China. People in political circles […]

Read the full story

   The debate I took part in yesterday–well, it’s hard to call it a debate when your opponent is not operating with a full deck of cards…meaning facts–on CNBC really illustrates, in the most starkest terms, the two visions of America. One vision sees unionized jobs, like those that many people have had in the […]

Read the full story

   For at least three years, I’ve been arguing that one of the problems we have, in the larger economic scheme, is that the value of the dollar is too high. Yup–a high dollar basically helps American tourists traveling abroad (and I am sympathetic to that) and Wal-Mart (because a high dollar means, basically, that […]

Read the full story