Year over year, productivity growth was at its highest level in over 50 years last quarter, pushing corporate profits to record highs and helping the economy grow. But a huge group of people are being left out of the party. Millions of workers who have already been unemployed for months, if not years, will most [...]
“These guys on Wall Street, they don’t render any services at all. They don’t help the economy any except their own employees, their own little family.” — protester Paul Akers “Wall Street has taken so much money from the American people and haven’t given anything back, and it’s absolutely absurd.” — Jim Brown, operating engineer
“Our lives and our livelihoods are all bound together,” he said. “We are one country! When greed runs amok on Wall Street it means lost jobs and shut stores on Main Street. We need to go back to basics where good jobs, not bad debts drive our growth, an economy where Wall Street is the [...]
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
About 40% of freelancers had trouble getting paid in 2009, according to a survey released in mid-April by the New York-based Freelancers Union, a 135,000-member organization for independent contractors across the country in fields such as media, technology, and advertising. It was the first year the group asked the question on its member survey. And [...]
It is an historical irony that in last two years’ public discussions about bailing out Detroit, what was once perceived as the death of dignified labor was portrayed by Republican lawmakers and reactionary journalists as a kind of overpaid, over-compensated worker’s paradise. This characterization of the reasonable wages, paid vacations and sick days, health insurance, [...]
Global steel prices are set to leap by up to a third, pushing up the cost of everyday goods from cars to domestic appliances, after miners and steelmakers on Tuesday agreed a ground-breaking change in the iron ore price system. The deal by Vale of Brazil and Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton [BLT-LN] with Japanese and Chinese [...]
You will have noticed that this is not, at heart, a drugs story. It’s a money story. More and more young professional Britons are turning to cannabis cultivation as a profit-making venture. They are teachers, lawyers, designers, property developers and plumbers. They should be thriving in the legitimate success of their careers but, somehow, they [...]
(Xinhua) Updated: 2010-03-12 16:52 BEIJING – China’s Information Office of the State Council published a report titled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009” here Friday. Following is the full text: The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing [...]
Filed in Documents, News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged AIDs, Arms Trafficking, BATF, Censorship, Child Labor, China, CIA, Civil Rights, Crime, Cuba, Cuban Embargo, Detainees, Discrimination, DOJ, ECHELON, Education, Environment, Equal Pay, Espionage, FBI, FISA, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Speech, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, Hegemony, Homeless, Homelessness, Human Rights, Hunger, Hypocrisy, Imperialism, Internet, Military, Minorities, Murder, NSA, Oppression, Overseas Military Installations, Patriot Act, Poverty, Prisoners, Prisons, Racism, Rape, Rendition, Surveillance, Torture, Unemployment, US Human Rights Record 2009, Veterans, Walmart, Wiretapping, Women
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Monday, February 15, 2010
There has been widespread public anger against the hubris of the banks, who are regarded as being to blame for the financial crisis. Their bonus policies, which have persisted even after the system has been bailed out by the taxpayer, have been attacked by politicians and the media. But what I can’t understand is why [...]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Let me be clear: Our world has changed, utterly. The old Michigan economy is gone. Anyone who believed that Michigan would just naturally rebound without making deep and lasting change had a rendezvous with reality in 2009. The year that just ended was a dividing line — the finale of what Time magazine has called [...]
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Before the economic downturn, some internships were available for most college students or recent graduates who wanted one, Franzen said. Now that others are jumping into the internship field though, he believes it’s only a matter of time before the question of legality comes up in court. But can unpaid internships actually be illegal? If [...]
Filed in Journalism, News Blurbs
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Also tagged College, DOL, Economy, Employment, Ethics, Exploitation, Internships, Law, Students, University
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Even after decades of women suiting up in shoulder pads and trying to cross that line, we continue to simultaneously embrace the idea that powerful women promise to be different, somehow, from powerful men. Supposedly, women are natural mediators. Women know how to multitask. Women are more levelheaded. If women ruled the world, it would [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Aggression, Ann Friedman, Assertiveness, Career, Clay Shirky, Feminists, Gender, Glass Ceiling, Management, Wages, Women, Work
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RICHARD TRUMKA: Well, I’ll give you an example. Nancy Pelosi in the House said, “We will put a 5.6 percent tax surcharge on any income over $1 million. Just money over $1 million.” And that would have produced $400 billion. Enough to pay for four million jobs. BILL MOYERS: Your message is very clear. Tax the rich. [...]
Saturday, January 30, 2010
We were in a restaurant at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan. Also there was Anthony Arnove, who had worked closely with Mr. Zinn in recent years and had collaborated on his last major project, “The People Speak.” It’s a film in which well-known performers bring to life the inspirational words of everyday citizens whose struggles [...]
Saturday, January 23, 2010
A legendary story about automaker Henry Ford holds that he once had a problem with the generators in his factory. He hired electrical genius Charlie Steinmetz to figure out the problem, which he did, and Ford received a bill for $10,000. Steinmetz broke down the outrageous price: It cost $10 to tinker with the generators, [...]
Saturday, January 9, 2010
An exodus of discouraged workers from the job market kept the U.S. unemployment rate from climbing above 10 percent in December, economists said. Had the labor force not decreased by 661,000 last month, the jobless rate would have been 10.4 percent, according to economists including David Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff & Associates in Toronto and [...]
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British [...]
While markets surged past 10,000, the official unemployment rate stood near 10 percent. The United States is in a unique historical position. People on top are doing extraordinarily well, but in the real world the middle class is collapsing. The top 1 percent owns more wealth then the bottom 90 percent. CEOs of large corporations [...]
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The 9.8 percent figure may be a twenty-six-year high, but it’s actually a lowball fantasy. The number of Americans who cannot find work now tops 15 million; the number working part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time ones is above 9 million. Add frustrated job seekers who have long since given up looking, and the [...]
Monday, September 28, 2009
On Friday in Capitol Hill, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis attended a press conference along with representatives of CIW and the world’s largest food service company, Compass Group, to announce that the company will pay an extra 1.5 cents per pound of tomatoes that it purchases annually, with one cent per pound going directly to the [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Agriculture, CIW, Compass Group, DOJ, ECGP, Fair Food, Farmworkers, Florida, FTGE, Human Rights, Slavery
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