As Vice President Joe Biden announced his decision last week not to run for president, he talked about dreams denied, possibilities foreclosed. He wasn’t speaking of his own aspirations, though. He conveyed absolutely no bitterness about relinquishing the potential to serve as president. Instead, he voiced deep...
Some terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the 12-nation trade proposal completed last week, are so repulsive that the New Zealand trade minister who helped negotiate the scheme described accepting them as swallowing dead rats. Here’s what New Zealand Minister Tim Groser said: “On the hardest...
Republicans and the rich guys who imposed 35 years of stagnant wages on American workers now offer a prescription for easing this pain! Their solution for robber-baron-level income inequality is not the obvious: Give workers raises. They don’t want to increase the minimum wage, which would...
Last week, Scott Walker one-upped the gang of GOP presidential candidates all jostling for the coveted Republican title of Best Billionaire Bootlicker. He accomplished that by announcing with pomp and fanfare that, unlike those other Republican pansies, a President Walker wouldn’t stop at crushing labor unions....
Jeff Smisek, the guy forced by scandal to resign last week as CEO of the world’s fourth-largest airline, is a major reason American workers can’t get a raise. Smisek and his overpaid boardroom buddies nationwide have swindled American workers and American communities in a scam to...
Instead of picnicking, Steelworkers in six states will spend this Labor Day picketing the gates of a dozen Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI) specialty mills. These 2,200 Steelworkers are not on strike. They never even took a strike vote to threaten a walkout. ATI locked them out of...
Teamster Leader Speaks to Thousands at Detroit Labor Day Parade (DETROIT) – In remarks at the Detroit Labor Day Parade today, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa pledged solidarity with the United Auto Workers (UAW) in their contract negotiations with the Big Three: Ford, Chrysler and GM. “I...
Strike Averted as Workers Ratify Agreement With Raises, Job Protections CHICAGO — Chicago Skyway toll collectors stood together to secure a new three-year contract that gives them a living wage and critical new job protections. The workers ratified the agreement on Sept. 2. “Because our members stood together...
Specialty metals manufacturer ATI reinvented itself in recent years. Instead of serving as a vital organ in the dozen communities where it operates mills, it decided to be a boil, blight -- a bane upon civic life in six states. Communities once cherished their ATI specialty...
Confronted with a dire situation, a world power last week took strong action to secure its domestic jobs and manufacturing. That was China. Not the United States. China diminished the value of its currency. This gave its exporting industries a boost while simultaneously blocking imports. The move...