Verizon strike has bigger lessons for U.S.
By Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of America
The 45,000 CWA and IBEW members are hopeful that Monday night's return to work at Verizon after a two- week strike will bringmeaningful collective bargaining and a good result for all concerned. For us, the strike was about real collective bargaining rights as much as about preserving the standard of living for our families.
The unity of our members and the widespread public support for workers really speak to the general state of working families in the US. This includes stagnating real wages in recent years, the collapse of employer based health care, declining retirement security and the export of good jobs to low wage contractors and offshore. The root cause of much of this decline is the collapse of bargaining rights in the US in both the public and private sectors.
Corporations keep overseas job figures a closely-guarded secret
By Muriel Kane
Sunday, August 21st, 2011 -- 8:30 pm
Many of the same corporations that have been seeking tax breaks for creating jobs in the United States are jealously guarding their figures on how many of their jobs are actually created overseas.
The Washington Post reported Sunday, "So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009."
Ayn Rand 2.0 - An Emerging American AristocracyGuest post by Stan Sorscher I went to France in June and couldn't help comparing the French revolution to our own. So, let’s start with aristocracy, then we’ll get to Ayn Rand. Stick with me. In a nutshell, shortly after our revolution, peasants in France concluded that aristocrats were giving them a really crappy deal. Within a short time, peasants and workers rounded up aristocrats, and took them to Place de la Concorde in downtown Paris, and chopped off their heads. Very serious stuff. In a museum, I saw "The Gleaners," a famous work by Jean-François Millet, depicting 3 peasant women stooping over to pick up wheat left behind in the harvest. I knew this painting from Sunday school, where I learned as a child that people of wealth have a moral obligation to acknowledge the dignity of poor people. Gleaning in the fields was a case in point, going back to the Old Testament.
NFL OWNERS TAKE LOCK-OUT TO NEXT STEPSeattle – Today the NFL owners announced that they would not be conducting a lock-out of the NFL Players Association. They have opted instead to outsource and offshore the league, and have released the new team locations and any name changes that are in the works. Among some of the changes that fans can expect have The New England Patriots moved to the Caribbean and re-named The Haiti A spokesman for the owners said “We expect the changes to be well received by the fans, and will improve the overall quality of play in a global market.” One exception has emerged in the Detroit Lions. No other city has made a bid to host the team. |
Microsoft Still Crying The Blues Over So-Called Lack of Skilled Americans When They Just Want Younger, Cheaper Foreign WorkersBy Susie Madrak Anyone who's ever worked in IT knows tons of skilled, experienced and unemployed programmers who can't find work - while companies are crying they can't fill jobs. This has been going on for a really long time, and during a time when American jobs are so badly needed, politicians shouldn't be helping them with this shell game: What IT labor shortage? That's what reps for unemployed programmers and other IT workers are asking in response to Microsoft's claim that it needs to import more foreign help because the United States isn't producing enough individuals with the high-tech skills it needs. Workers' advocates say that if big tech companies are having a tough time finding qualified employees it's only because they are limiting their searches to younger, less expensive workers. "Experienced IT workers who are over 40 years old have a hard time even getting noticed by companies like Microsoft," said Rennie Sawade, communications director for WashTech, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America. "They're really after the younger, more inexpensive workers."
The terrorist threat we're ignoringHow the high-tech software we import from China is setting us up for potential cyberattacksBy David Sirota According to the U.S. government, the list of known boogeymen working to compromise American national security is long and getting longer by the day. By my back of the envelope count, we have shoe bombers, underwear bombers, train bombers, cargo bombers, dirty bombers, car bombers and, never to be forgotten, box-cutter hijackers. Now, as of last week, we are told to fear the brand new "implant bomber" -- the terrorist who will surgically stitch explosives to his innards for the purposes of a suicide attack.
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Pirates. Also announced: the Yokohama 49ers, the Amsterdam Falcons and the Zhengzhou Seahawks among others.
