CtW Chair Anna Burger's statement for Labor Day 2007: Over the past year, Change to Win has asked workers in surveys and focus groups to assess the American Dream for themselves and their families. Does the American Dream have any...
When we created the CEO pay calculator last year, average CEO pay was 262 times the pay of the average worker. At the time, we thought that was pretty ridiculous. A new report out this week shows how much...
Today's Krugman column in the NYTimes is another brilliant, scathing indictment of the Bush Administration. On the second anniversary of Katrina, Krugman describes how the administration's incompetence, willful ignorance, and "self-congratulation in the face of abject failure" has become...
I've written in this space before about the Justice at Smithfield campaign, which is working to help thousands of working people at the Smithfield Foods meatpacking plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina achieve the American Dream. Yesterday, Smithfield held a...
Yesterday, the Census Bureau released the latest edition of their Current Population Survey, titled Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006 (PDF). The New York Times reviewed the report and found that its news about working peoples'...
Here's a statement that you will probably consider uncontroversial: "The less that people have to pay out of their own pockets to have health coverage, the more people will have health coverage." And yet there are people who will argue with you...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say everything was "done by the book" when federal agents stormed the home of a Moroccan family in Wallingford, CT at 5:30 a.m on Monday. Apparently the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) handbook calls...
Speaking of ICE, they've struck again -- this time at the Smithfield meat-packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, rounding up workers at 4 in the morning. UFCW statement: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are raiding communities today in...
You know, if you're looking for a laugh, the "blog" over at the Center for Union "Facts" has really been stepping up to the plate. The guy who writes it, Bret Jacobson, definitely knows how to bring the funny;...
In his column in today's Washington Post, Harold Myerson describes the Bush Administration's disdainful attitude towards expanding children's health care coverage as Dickensian. [In "Oliver Twist,"] the plucky young hero has been chosen by the other boys to ask the...
When Change to Win’s first American Dream survey was released in September 2006 and showed that the vast majority of workers in America believe that their children will be no better off or worse off than they are some questioned...
The chickens have come home to roost on the speculative Bush economy - an economy built on massive amounts of debt - and working Americans are going to pay the price. More U.S. workers will lose their homes through foreclosures...
Back in March, we told you about the tragic fate of Eleazar Torres-Gomez, a worker at a Cintas laundry facility in Tulsa who was dragged to his death inside an industrial dryer. The following month, Mr. Torres-Gomez's son Emmanuel came...
From yesterday's New York Times: “Many customers are running out of money at the end of the month,” said H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of Wal-Mart... For the year, Wal-Mart said it would earn $3.05 to $3.13 a...
Some voices from today's UFCW-organized meeting on ICE's abuses of power: Mike Graves, worker at a plant raided by ICE on December 12 and lifelong U.S. citizen and resident: When I tried to report to the cafeteria during the raid,...
The UFCW is standing up for the rights of workers everywhere in the face of increasingly aggressive and harassing tactics by the agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): Omaha, Neb.— Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) and community members...
This is super cool -- the first real fruit to come from the alliance of Techies and Teamsters at the Yearly Kos Convention: Kossacks and Teamsters are joining together to win justice for school bus drivers! The response to my...
At this week's debate for Democratic Presidential candidates organized by the AFL-CIO, retired steelworker Steve Skvara described how his pension had been cut and his health care coverage eliminated by the company where he had worked for decades. He then...
Kos and Hoffa: How the Netroots and the Dem Party Can Win Allying with Others (TomP at DailyKos) YearlyKos: Catching Up with Change to Win (Shai Sachs)...
Cintas Corp., a uniform and laundry services company, has a history of breaking the law and violating workers' rights. In March of this year, Eleazar Torres-Gomez, a Cintas worker in Tulsa, Oklahoma was killed on the job when he was...
And now, the rest of my miscellaneous impressions from Yearly Kos... DNC Chair Governor Howard Dean's keynote on the first night was a barn-burner -- he brought the crowd to its feet several times, and announced a strong new effort...
I wasn't the only person from Change to Win who made it to Yearly Kos -- some of the leaders of CtW unions were there as well. Andy Stern of SEIU had a lunchtime keynote discussion on the labor issues...
The next issue I'd like to address from Yearly Kos is a broader one that I think deserves some attention and discussion. The question is this: why are the "progressive netroots" so disconnected from the challenges facing average working-class people? We...
So I spent the better part of last week at the Yearly Kos Convention in Chicago, hanging out with the "progressive netroots". I thought I'd start my recapping of the event by jumping straight to the bit most people care...
I spent the better part of last week at the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, confabb-ing with the progressive netroots. I've got a bunch of stuff to post about the conference now that I'm back in DC, but in the meantime,...
SCHIP Passes House; Bush still threatens veto. Five million children of the working poor who would otherwise have no access to health care would be covered under expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The bill passed...
