Current viewpoints on workplace issues. Editorials, op-eds, political commentaries, columnists and more.
Good Racial Data Can Add Up to Progress
Format: Political Column
Source: Sheryl McCarthy, New York Newsday
Date: June 2, 2003
Ward Connerly's at it again. The irrepressible University
of California Regent who led the fight to eliminate race as a consideration from the University of
California's admissions program, is pushing for a state ban on collecting any information at all about race.
Connerly led a successful petition drive to put the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative on the ballot next
March. It would amend the state constitution to bar state or local government agencies from collecting racial
data concerning public schools, public contracts or public jobs.
Five Ways to Promote Diversity in the Workplace
Format: Advice Column
Source: Anne Fisher (Ask Annie), Fortune
Date: June 2, 2003
Diversity
is not just about gender, skin color, or ethnic background -- it?s also about thinking differently. To make
sure you're getting the best possible ideas and effort from all your people, one expert tells how to build
?inclusivity? into everyday life at the office.
Family-Leave Law Finally Gets The Support It Deserves
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jane Eisner (Philadelphia Inquirer), Tallahassee Democrat
Date: June 4, 2003
Imagine a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring that the federal
government has the power to enforce a law protecting women from discrimination in the workplace and encouraging
men to share in the obligations of caring for family. The justice supports the law even though it places
demands on those who employ more than half the nation's work force and makes it harder to dismiss workers
arbitrarily. And he or she upholds the law's reach even though some colleagues argue it dangerously expands
the scope of federal authority over the states. Never underestimate Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's
ability to surprise.
How to Give Job Seekers a Tastier Carrot
Format: Political Column
Source: David Leonhardt, New York Times
Date: June 8, 2003
If you want to persuade people to do something quickly, don't give them money for every day they have
not finished the job. This is the philosophy behind a Bush administration proposal to create a new program for
unemployed workers. Unlike the regular unemployment insurance system, which pays workers each week that they
look but fail to find a job for up to six months, the Bush proposal would give them the equivalent of a single
payment. People who find a job in four weeks end up with as large a benefit as those who searched for 12 weeks,
giving them another reason to find new work as quickly as possible. A great majority of people who have lost
their jobs simply want to find new ones. Because of changes in the economy over the last few decades, some will
struggle to do so for months, regardless of what kind of benefits they can receive. But human nature suggests
that giving people an incentive to find work more quickly will cause some of them to do just that.
Executives' Pay Can Defy Normal Logic for Business
Format: Political Column
Source: Jeff Brown (Knight Ridder), Detroit Free Press
Date: June 9, 2003
Imagine you're a police officer or firefighter facing a perilous situation. Whom do you want to
go through the door with -- someone in it just for the paycheck? The answer is obvious. But the biggest
problem on the job these days is not a few rotten apples we have to work with; it's the ones we work for. Read
the accounts of the extraordinary compensation packages handed out to top executives. It's a portrait of
rampant greed.
Why America Outpaces Europe (Clue: The God Factor)
Format: Political Column
Source: Niall Ferguson, New York Times
Date: June 8, 2003
It was almost a century ago that the German sociologist Max Weber published his influential essay
"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." In it, Weber argued that modern capitalism was "born from
the spirit of Christian asceticism" in its specifically Protestant form ? in other words, there was a link
between the self-denying ethos of the Protestant sects and the behavior patterns associated with capitalism,
above all hard work. Many scholars have built careers out of criticizing Weber's thesis. Yet the experience
of Western Europe in the past quarter-century offers an unexpected confirmation of it. To put it bluntly, we
are witnessing the decline and fall of the Protestant work ethic in Europe. This represents the stunning
triumph of secularization in Western Europe ? the simultaneous decline of both Protestantism and its unique
work ethic.
Format: Political Column
Source: William Raspberry, Washington Post
Date: June 9, 2003
Sometimes Democrats do manage to find their voices. They sang together loudly enough last week that the
Senate's Republican leadership agreed to modify the president's $350 billion tax-cut package to ensure that
minimum-wage workers will get the same child tax credit as other families.
Format: Editorial
Source: Editorial, Washington Post
Date: June 16, 2003
Both
the House and the Senate have now passed bills that would increase the child tax credit for low-income
families. Before anything else is said about these two strikingly different proposals, it is worth pointing out
that whatever relief any such measure will provide, it cannot offset the enormous damage that will be done to
low-income families and low-income children over the next few years by the tax cuts that Congress has already
passed this year.
Format: Advice Column
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Date: June 17, 2003
When
employees walked into Freddie Mac's offices Monday morning, they were greeted by an e-mail with a link to the
company's intranet, called the Home Front. There, employees could read that their president and chief
operating officer were fired, that the chief executive and chairman retired, and that the chief financial
officer resigned. With such big news to swallow on a Monday morning, there naturally was a lot of chatter among
the 3,000-plus employees, many of whom are based in the McLean headquarters. At many of the companies that have
lately suffered crises, useless rumors have swirled, stirring up feelings of concern and sometimes animosity.
But at Freddie, all that nail-biting was quickly stopped because the company provided a bevy of information
from the start.
Must I Take a Working Vacation (When I Need a Real One)?
Format: Advice Column
Source: Anne Fisher (Ask Annie), Fortune.com
Date: June 16, 2003
If you're required to check in with the office while you're away, here's how to keep staying
in touch from stressing you out. Plus, chronological vs. functional resumes -- which is better?
Not Leading the World but Following It
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Laurence R. Helfer, New York Times
Date: June 18, 2003
Disparities in the legal treatment of lesbians and gay men in the United States and their treatment in the
rest of the world are becoming more pronounced. As the United States Supreme Court considers an important gay
rights case, expected to be decided this month, it should realize that much of the globe sees the issue as a
matter of basic human rights.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: June 20, 2003
In an attempt to
relive its financial heyday of years past, Abercrombie & Fitch underwent a large image makeover. It no
longer wanted to be known as "The Greatest Sporting Goods Store in the World." It wanted to be the modern store
for the young and hip, known more for the near-naked models on its posters and catalogs than the fact that
Theodore Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart used to shop there.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: June 20, 2003
The big
rise in the stock market is definitely telling us something. Bulls think it says the economy is about to take
off. But I think it's a sign that America is still blowing bubbles ? that a three-year bear market and the
biggest corporate scandals in history haven't cured investors of irrational exuberance yet.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: James Ryerson, Boston Globe
Date: June 15, 2003
The
work week has become less distinct, with home time and office time blurring into each other thanks to
cellphones, the Internet, and other technologies. The 40-hour work week, enshrined in law since 1938, has
eroded over the decades as more Americans have moved into professional and other employment categories that are
exempt from overtime rules. And the basic 40-hour rule itself has recently come up for consideration. Last
week, the GOP-sponsored Family Time Flexibility Act, which allowed employees the option of receiving overtime
pay in the form of time off, died in the House of Representatives in the face of strong opposition from labor
groups.
Fair Overtime Pay
Wanted: Whistle-Blower Managers
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jeffrey L. Seglin, New York Times
Date: June 22, 2003
Senior managers need to wake up. Rather than wallowing in the wreckage of corporate scandals and
blaming a few overzealous chief executives or overeager young workers who might do anything to get ahead,
managers need to step up, take responsibility for how business is done in their companies and, well, start
managing. In most businesses, people know when bad behavior is going on. They know who's cutting corners. They
know about suspect expense reports. They know when promises to customers are consistently unfulfilled. They
especially know when their own work is undermined by a colleague. Of course, not everyone is aware of every bit
of misconduct, but rest assured that some workers see the various infractions as they occur. To paraphrase
Edmund Burke, all that's necessary for evil workers to triumph is for good managers to do nothing.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: June 23, 2003
It's a great time
to be George W. Bush.
The president will waltz into Manhattan today for another $2,000-a-plate fund-raiser,
the latest stop on his fabulously successful dining-for-dollars tour. But while these may be the best of times
for George W., this is not such a great moment for America.
The Dwindling Youth Vote: Where Will It Be in 2004?
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert Weiner and Amy Rieth, Christian Science Monitor
Date: June 23, 2003
Plain and simple: Young people don't vote in the numbers they used to. When 18-year-olds
were granted the right to vote in 1972, the turnout of 18- to 24-year-old voters was a healthy 52 percent. But
it dropped steadily to 38 percent in 2000. Why are young people - critical to our nation's future - voting in
drastically lower numbers? How can we bring them back?
Format: Political Column
Source: David Von Drehle, Washington Post
Date: June 24, 2003
The U.S. Supreme Court can be awfully imposing in those black robes on that elevated bench
inside that Corinthian temple, but sometimes, the court looks just like America. Yesterday's decision on
affirmative action was one of those times. Opinion polls make clear that affirmative action is an idea most
Americans approve of in theory, but are wary of in practice. The idea of opening doors for minorities is widely
popular; the idea of boosting minority students over the threshold is less so.
Ending Bias Takes More Than Time
Format: Political Column
Source: Diane Carman, Denver Post
Date: June 25, 2003
"We expect
that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest
approved today."
-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority in Grutter vs.
Bollinger
Some in the minority community wonder what the distinguished justice was thinking when she
predicted that affirmative action might no longer be necessary in 2028.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: June 24, 2003
The Supreme Court
took a historic stand for equality of opportunity yesterday, upholding affirmative action in university
admissions. The court handed down a split decision, approving one University of Michigan admissions program and
striking down another, but its message was a strong endorsement of using race to promote campus diversity. The
fact that the key decision was 5 to 4 is cause for concern, however. One resignation on the court could produce
the opposite result in a few years.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Date: June 29, 2003
Antonin
Scalia fancies himself the intellectual of the Supreme Court, an aesthete who likes opera and wines, a bon
vivant who loves poker and plays songs like "It's a Grand Old Flag" on the piano; a real man who hunts and
reads Ducks Unlimited magazine; a Catholic father of nine who once told a prayer breakfast: "We are fools for
Christ's sake. We must pray for the courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world." He's an American
archetype, or Archie type. Full of blustery rants against modernity and nostalgia for "the way Glenn Miller
played, songs that made the hit parade . . . girls were girls and men were men." Antonin Scalia is Archie
Bunker in a high-backed chair. Like Archie, Nino is the last one to realize that his intolerance is risibly
out-of-date.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: June 27, 2003
Gay Americans won a
historic victory yesterday when the Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy law. The sweeping 6-to-3 decision
made a point of overturning a 17-year-old precedent that was curtly dismissive of gay rights. Yesterday's
ruling has implications that reach beyond sodomy, and is an important step toward winning gay men and women
full equality under the law.
Format: Political Column
Source: Bill Keller, New York Times
Date: June 28, 2003
hatever
you think of the jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas, his dissent in the University of Michigan Law School
affirmative action case this week is surely one of the most poignant documents ever issued by the U.S. Supreme
Court. It is the angry exclamation of a black man who feels personally patronized and demeaned by what he sees
as racial gerrymandering.
Take It From Her, Office Theft is Not Always That Petty
Format: Advice Column
Source: Amy Yelin, Boston Globe
Date: June 29, 2003
But for some
reason, when it comes to items from work, my good conscience and integrity go right out the supply closet
window. During my years working for various employers, I've been guilty of acquiring everything from
ballpoint pens, to pads of paper, to envelopes, to postage (lots of postage), to sticky-notes, to those
multisized clips that you squeeze to grasp paper or to stop the circulation in your fingertips, depending on
how adept you are at using them.
Affirmative Action, Productive Potential
Format: Political Column
Source: Daniel Altman, New York Times
Date: June 29, 2003
The Supreme Court's decisions on affirmative action brought a raft of social issues to the fore last
week. But what of the economic consequences? By its nature, affirmative action takes innate attributes that may
have nothing to do with ability and makes them part of an educational or professional selection process. An
economist's knee-jerk reaction to any policy like this is usually that it will keep a market from matching
buyers and sellers in the most efficient way. In other words, you had better have a darn good reason to do
it.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: June 29, 2003
At a time when
President Bush and his Republican majority in Congress are continually arguing that they have the mandate to
appoint extreme conservatives to the federal bench, the highest court of all has surprised many people with its
moderation. The Supreme Court, it appears, is better at reading the election returns than some elected
politicians.
Welcoming Gay People Back Into the Fold: The Supreme Court Overrules Bowers v. Hardwick
Format: News Commentary
Source: Sherry Colb, FindLaw's Writ
Date: June 30, 2003
Just in time for the close of Gay Pride Month 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court handed
gay Americans and their friends something to celebrate. On June 26, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Court overruled
Bowers v. Hardwick, in which a five-to-four majority had upheld a Georgia law prohibiting consensual sodomy. In
a sweeping opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court said of the Georgia sodomy case that it
"was not correct when it was decided and it is not correct today .... Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is
overruled." This ruling represents a major legal and rhetorical victory for gay civil rights, in a variety of
ways.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: July 3, 2003
The Bush
administration is engineering bread-and-butter changes in the federal regulation of overtime pay, commendably
making hundreds of thousands more low-wage earners eligible for time-and-a-half. At the same time, however,
proposed Labor Department regulations have stirred justifiable concern that numerous white-collar,
middle-income workers could lose income because employers will have more leeway to pronounce them managers and
deny their current right to overtime.
Read More:
href="http://www.workplacefairness.org/overtimepay.php">Fair Overtime Pay
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: July 3, 2003
The Bush
administration, which has the very bad habit of smiling at working people while siphoning money from their
pockets, is trying to change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in a way that could cause millions of workers
to lose their right to overtime pay.
Read More:
href="http://www.workplacefairness.org/overtimepay.php">Fair Overtime Pay
Bush's Record on Jobs: Risking Unhappy Comparisons
Format: News Commentary
Source: David Leonhardt, New York Times
Date: July 3, 2003
For George W. Bush, the race has begun to escape comparisons to Herbert Hoover.
With more than two
million jobs having disappeared since Mr. Bush took office in January 2001, he finds himself in danger of
becoming the first president since Hoover to oversee a decline in the country's employment. Economists
disagree on how much blame, if any, Mr. Bush deserves for the long slump, but even White House aides view the
economy as one of the only big threats to his re-election campaign. Now, a turning point could be approaching.
The Labor Department will release its jobs report for June this morning, and some forecasters are predicting
that it will mark the beginning of a rebound. An increase in the nation's payrolls ? the odds of which are
roughly even, Wall Street economists say ? would be the first since January.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Adam Goodheart, New York Times
Date: July 3, 2003
In his
majority opinion in last week's ruling, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy dismissed conservative arguments that laws
against same-sex intercourse had deep roots in Anglo-American tradition. Sodomy codes, he wrote, originally
proscribed both homosexual and heterosexual acts, and in any event were rarely enforced except in cases of
rape. Therefore, he wrote, defenders of the Texas law were wrong to claim that history was on their side. But
Justice Kennedy's well-intentioned evasion slighted the true past. America has a long tradition of laws
regulating private sexual conduct, and these laws have been enforced with particular ferocity when the conduct
has been between people of the same sex. In the case of Richard Cornish ? a sea captain convicted, on flimsy
evidence, of sodomy with an indentured servant ? not only was he hanged, but when several other settlers
grumbled about the verdict, they were whipped or pilloried, or had their ears cut off.
Format: Political Column
Source: Molly Ivins, Intellivu.com
Date: July 3, 2003
Congratulations to the Supreme Court on its 6-3 decision in the Texas sodomy law case and to
all those, including the gay rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union, who have fought so long and
hard to rid the legal system of this manifest injustice. The Sunday chat shows featured a number of curious
contentions over this legal decision: It was interesting to see rank bigotry against gays trying to disguise
itself as a legal argument. Justice Antonin Scalia was foremost in this camp, throwing a public tantrum devoid
of legal reasoning over the decision. Talk about lack of judicial temperament. Some advanced the argument that
the law should have been left in place because it is rarely enforced. In fact, it was enforced, that's why
there was a case in front of the Supreme Court, and under what principle is rarity an excuse for injustice?
Because we relatively rarely execute people who are innocent, does that make it right? Slavery rarely occurs in
this country, but it is still illegal.
Format: Political Column
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: July 7, 2003
t\'s
been more than 30 years since Whitney Young Jr. died and his name is no longer particularly well known, which
is a shame. Mr. Young was the executive director of the National Urban League and one of the big four civil
rights leaders of the 1960\'s, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins and James Farmer.
He drowned
at the absurdly young age of 49 during a visit to Nigeria in 1971. More than 6,000 people attended his funeral
at Manhattan\'s Riverside Church, and thousands more lined the streets of Harlem to view the funeral
procession. Mr. Young had been a giant in the movement and it was widely recognized that his death represented
a terrible loss.
What was not understood at the time was that an incredible decades-long slide into the
horrors of violence and degradation for millions of African-American youngsters was already under way. More
than three decades later we still haven\'t stopped the descent.
Heartfelt Words From the Rehnquist Court
Format: News Commentary
Source: Linda Greenhouse, New York Times
Date: July 6, 2003
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was asked some years ago whether his views on any major legal subject had
"evolved" during his decades on the Supreme Court. He considered the question for a moment, cocked an eyebrow
and said in a self-mocking tone, "Oh, you mean have I shown a capacity for growth?" His wry response reflected
not only an awareness of his own reputation as a rock-ribbed conservative, but his acknowledgment that
evolution, far from a neutral word in this context, connotes a one-way path toward greater enlightenment.
Indeed, the "one-way ratchet" in constitutional law, the observed phenomenon by which rights expand but never
seem to contract, is a familiar concept among students of the court. Call it growth, evolution or something in
the water: something was going on during this Supreme Court term. In the absence of a unified field theory, it
could be that webs of personal association and experience have led the justices to see old problems in new
ways.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert C. Pozen, New York Times
Date: July 8, 2003
When
the United States unemployment rate climbed to 6.4 percent last week, the highest point in almost a decade,
analysts were generally glum about the prospects for job seekers. They were being far too pessimistic, however:
a close look at four other economic indicators point to the end of what some have called the "jobless"
recovery. These indicators show significant declines in the rate of job losses ? and positive signs of new
hiring in growing industries.
They Won't Know Your Interest if You Don't Put Your Name In
Format: Advice Column
Source: Carol Kleiman, Chicago Tribune
Date: July 9, 2003
Q. I have a friend who used to work for a large company. She's now
back in the job market and recently spoke to her former supervisor about working there again. He promised to
call her if an opening arose. Recently, she found out that there actually is an opening, but the supervisor
never called her about it as promised. Should she call him and ask to be considered for it anyway?
A.
Yes. Tell her to go for it. What does she have to lose?
The 2002-03 Supreme Court Term in Review: Landmark Cases Stress the Theme Of Equality
Format: News Commentary
Source: Vikram David Amar, FindLaw's Writ
Date: July 11, 2003
For constitutional lawyers, the Supreme Court Term that just ended was a blockbuster
- perhaps the biggest since the late 1980's, if one takes into account both breadth and depth. Granted, there
were some notable omissions. For instance, there were no major cases addressing "war on terror" issues - such
as what due process requires for those detained, and the scope of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable
searches and seizures as applied to the Administration's terror campaign. In the near future, the Court will
have no choice but to take up some of these issues. Nevertheless, the Court addressed a huge range of very
important constitutional topics this Term. If the Term had a single, overriding theme (and I realize that to
claim it did is inherently to oversimplify), it was probably "old-fashioned equal protection."
Eliminating Options at Microsoft
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: July 14, 2003
The news from
Redmond, Wash., is not good for anyone still hoping for a return of the financially exuberant 1990\'s.
Microsoft, the software giant that minted hundreds of millionaires by doling out stock options to a generation
of employees who happened to be at the right place at the right time, will no longer grant stock options. The
move reflects a change in business culture as well as the evolution of an iconic American corporation.
Will Congress Let Accounting Fiction Obscure Pension Reality?
Format: News Commentary
Source: Floyd Norris (Bloomberg News), New York Times
Date: July 18, 2003
What should be done when an important sector of the American economy has severe
problems? The easy answer is to avoid admitting the problems and hope that time will make everything better.
Look for an accounting gimmick to obscure the reality. That is how the government dealt with the early days of
the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. It made the situation much worse than it needed to be. Which
brings us to the corporate pension system. Much of corporate America is looking for a way to make its pension
deficits appear smaller than they really are, and the politicians appear to be tempted to comply.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: July 18, 2003
Here's
another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not
ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations."
Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even
though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But
even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's
irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing
to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books.
Slouching Toward a Labor Shortage
Format: Advice Column
Source: Ken Gaffey, Electronic Recruiting Exchange
Date: July 17, 2003
Ten years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a member of the Department of Labor
address an HR/staffing conference. This wasn't a huge conference, so we did not rate the actual Secretary of
Labor. Rather we got the Assistant Under-Secretary for More-Or-Less Aligned Issues Occurring on Alternate
Tuesdays (or something like that).
Even though he chose not to speak about report writing on excel
spreadsheets (a big hit in HR/staffing today referred to as metrics) or about how to update forms (another big
hit amongst the masses), he did manage to come up with an interesting issue: we are running out of people. The
baby-boomer generation was, and is, approaching the accepted retirement age.
Why Affirmative Action Matters
Format: News Commentary
Source: Alan B. Krueger, New York Times
Date: July 24, 2003
When
we see a complicated, seemingly intractable problem," the comedian Al Franken once remarked about affirmative
action, "we have the only really genuine, authentic human reaction you can have: we're confused." Supreme
Court justices do not have the same luxury. The justices were forced to take sides last month in the landmark
cases involving admissions practices at the University of Michigan. Their rulings will likely satisfy Mr.
Franken's quest to find the "mushball middle" when it comes to affirmative action.
Experts Urge Strong Education Rather Than Big Tariffs
Format: News Commentary
Source: Daniel Altman, New York Times
Date: July 28, 2003
As the job market gropes for a recovery from the recession, some of those looking to place blame have
settled on the nation's imports and exports. Consumers are importing too many goods and services, the argument
goes, while companies are exporting too many jobs. But while these activities may indeed be slowing the
recovery in the short term, in the long term they are likely to be essential to raising standards of living.
Last week, an article in The New York Times described a conference call of executives at I.B.M. who said the
company needed to move more white-collar positions to India and elsewhere overseas. A union leader interviewed
in the article said he worried that letting the jobs leave the country would pull down wages in the United
States. In the meantime, several economic analysts have been bemoaning the fact that the trade deficit has
expanded since the start of the recession. Had exports held up and the increased imports been replaced by
spending on goods produced at home, they said, the recovery would have been strong rather than weak.
Shades of Bias at Police Academy
Format: News Commentary
Source: Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News
Date: July 29, 2003
Nine months ago, Deputy Police Commissioner James Fyfe, head of the Police Academy, denied allegations by the
Latino Officers Association that he was removing Hispanics from top positions at the school. Since then, four
of five Hispanics in supervisory posts at the school have been transferred.
Another Bad Initiative in California
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: August 4, 2003
A misguided
proposition to bar the state government from classifying people by race will now appear on the Oct. 7 ballot in
California, complicating an already chaotic election that will also decide whether Gov. Gray Davis will be
recalled from office. We hope the voters take the time to focus on this side issue and reject the proposition.
Supporters of the measure call it a step toward a "colorblind society." But the initiative, a brainchild of
Ward Connerly, a University of California regent who also led the campaign to ban affirmative action in the
state, is the opposite of what it appears. It would, among other things, complicate enforcement of
antidiscrimination legislation as well as state programs aimed at improving health care and education for
minorities.
Format: Political Column
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: August 7, 2003
The folks
who put the voodoo back in economics keep telling us that prosperity is just around the corner. For the
unemployed, that would mean more jobs. Are there more jobs just around the corner? This alleged economic upturn
is not just a jobless recovery, it's a job loss recovery. The hemorrhaging of jobs in the aftermath of the
recent "mild" recession is like nothing the U.S. has seen in more than half a century. Millions continue to
look desperately for work, and millions more have given up in despair.
Note to Bosses: It's Time to Make Nice
Format: Advice Column
Source: Patricia Kitchen, Newsday
Date: August 4, 2003
Yes, we know those who hire are still in the drivers seat. And that it's been many a moon since some bosses
have given a thought to employee retention. But it might just be time for them to dust off their old
Make-Nice-to-Employees handbooks. I'm not saying this recovery isn't still jobless. But just look at what's
happening in the hearts and minds of employees - those on the receiving end of added work, no raises and
equally important in some cases, no empathy.
A Marriage, and Divorce, of Convenience at Verizon
Format: News Commentary
Source: Matt Richtel, New York Times
Date: August 8, 2003
Negotiations between Verizon Communications and its two main unions appeared to grow more thorny yesterday,
with a settlement now unlikely in the next few days. But while the company and its workers currently find
themselves on opposite sides of the bargaining table, they have often found themselves fighting on the same
side, lobbying politicians and petitioning regulators. Organized labor has for years helped the industry push
its political and regulatory agenda. But that help has come at a price. In supporting management's efforts to,
for example, break into the long-distance market, unions have earned concessions for their members. This kind
of relationship extends beyond Verizon, with labor being an influential supporter of major telecommunications
companies like SBC and BellSouth with regulators. Indeed, industry analysts assert that while it is not
uncommon for unions and management to work together on regulatory issues, the level of cooperation in
telecommunications is perhaps more pronounced and sustained than in any other industry.
Title VII Protects Workers From Discrimination
Format: Advice Column
Source: Bob Rosner, Corpus Christi Caller
Date: August 8, 2003
Recently, a British ad agency paid students $20 to walk around in public for three hours with a logo
temporarily tattooed on their foreheads. Those ads worked because something written on someone's forehead is
hard to miss. It also brings into play once of the reasons it can be so challenging to hire an employee -
you've got to look past all that's hard to miss (their race, color, sex, etc.). In America, protection from
workplace discrimination is covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You may be surprised at how
many workers are covered by it.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: August 14, 2003
Talk about
preaching to the choir. President Bush and his clueless team of economic advisers held a summit at the
president's ranch in Crawford, Tex., yesterday. This is the ferociously irresponsible crowd that has turned
its back on simple arithmetic and thinks the answer to every economic question is a gigantic tax cut for the
rich. Their voodoo fantasies were safe in Crawford. There was no one at the ranch to chastise them for
bequeathing backbreaking budget deficits to generations yet unborn. And no one was there to confront them with
evidence of the intense suffering that so many poor, working-class and middle-class families are experiencing
right now because of job losses on Mr. Bush's watch. After the meeting, Mr. Bush said, "This administration is
optimistic about job creation."
Not Much Job Growth, but Mediocre May Look Good in 2004
Format: News Commentary
Source: Floyd Norris, New York Times
Date: August 15, 2003
It is a recovery. And it is not a jobless one. As the economy has gradually shown strength, unevenly
to be sure, one critical mantra has been to call it a jobless recovery. But there are statistics that belie
that and indicate that the number of people with jobs has been growing since last fall. That growth, to be
sure, has been less than overwhelming. At best, it is barely keeping up with the natural growth of the labor
force. But it is better than people think.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Walter Kirn, New York Times
Date: August 17, 2003
A couple
of weeks ago the secretaries of commerce, labor and the treasury took a two-day bus trip through the Midwest to
talk up their boss's economic policies and confront, as sensitively as possible, the festering unemployment
issue that may prove decisive in choosing the next president. Given that the current jobless rate hovers a
little above 6 percent (a good 2 points higher than when Bush took office), the cabinet members' choice of
transportation was a thoughtful touch. If the jobless rate were much higher -- say, 8 or 9 percent -- old
bicycles would have been more appropriate, or maybe even a walking tour, but as things stand motor coaches were
just right, evoking a nation that's still on the move but just not quite as quickly as it might be.
Addicted to Work? Sure, Isn't Everyone?
Format: Political Column
Source: Abby Ellin, New York times
Date: August 17, 2003
While many people will spend Labor Day weekend closing down their summer homes or taking final splashes in the
pool, I will probably be at my computer, well, laboring away. I have always been a hard worker. Sure, I've
been known to cancel plans if I'm on deadline (which is often), and I often travel with my laptop computer.
And, yes, there are friends whom I haven't seen in ages because I'm just too busy. But I thought that's what
we do here in the big city. We work. What else would we do?
Format: News Commentary
Source: Stan Simpson, Hartford Courant
Date: August 20, 2003
In four years, the tide indeed turned at the state Commission on Human Rights
and Opportunities. White employees, for the most part, no longer feel the boss has little regard for them.
It's African Americans who have said they have gotten the shaft. Executive Director Cynthia Watts Elder will
resign next week for a legal job with The Phoenix Companies. She was hired in 1999 to calm a bubbling caldron
of an agency that was understaffed, overwhelmed and waylaid by internal bickering about race, hiring and
promotions. She leaves with the agency understaffed, overwhelmed, fending off internal discrimination lawsuits
and a perception that it has lost its compass.
A Way to Break the Cycle of Servitude
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Louis Uchitelle, New York Times
Date: August 31, 2003
On this Labor Day weekend, let us remember low-wage workers. Twenty percent of the work force ? 26
million people ? earn $8.23 an hour or less. Most of them are not teenagers snagging pocket money, but adults
supporting families. With so little income, too many Americans are pushed into poverty, and getting out of this
trap is increasingly difficult. As many studies have shown, rising income inequality has driven people apart.
And low-wage workers, occupying the bottom rung in this ruptured society, have descended into what amounts to a
servant class. It is not their work that makes them servants. We need factory assemblers, store clerks, child
care workers and the telephone operators who field calls to "800" numbers, processing much of the nation's
commerce. What makes them servants is the miserable pay. Measuring status by wage, as many Americans do, no one
? the employers of low-wage worker, the public or the low-wage workers themselves ? seems to value this class
of work. Promotion, or higher pay, would be a way out. Unfortunately, neither solution kicks in very often.
More than in the past, low-wage workers are stuck in place.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Edward T. O'Donnell, New York Times
Date: August 31, 2003
One hundred-twenty-one years ago Labor Day meant something more than a three-day weekend and
the unofficial end of summer. On Sept. 5, 1882, thousands of workers in New York risked being fired for taking
an unauthorized day off to participate in festivities honoring honest toil and the rights of labor. This first
commemoration of Labor Day testified to labor's rising power and unity in the Gilded Age and its sense that
both were necessary to withstand the growing power of capital. The Labor Day holiday originated with the
Central Labor Union, a local labor federation formed the previous January to promote the interests of workers
in the New York area.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: September 1, 2003
There was
an interesting lead paragraph in an article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal last Thursday: "The
blackout of 2003 offers a simple but powerful lesson: Markets are a great way to organize economic activity,
but they need adult supervision." Gee. They've finally figured that out. The nuns I had in grammar school were
onto this adult supervision notion decades ago. It seems to be just dawning on the power brokers of the 21st
century. Maybe soon the voters will catch on. You need adults in charge.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: September 2, 2003
Public cynicism about
how much of an insider's game Wall Street plays can only be increased by the disclosure of the compensation
riches that the New York Stock Exchange pays to Richard Grasso, its chief executive. It turns out to be $140
million in deferred savings and retirement benefits, and an estimated salary and bonus of $12 million plus.
That is risk-free cash, without even coupons to clip, plus an eye-popping 8 percent rate on deferred
compensation. This prodigious package has already stirred gasps among some of the lesser-paid chief executive
millionaires subject to Mr. Grasso in his role as their quasi-regulatory watchdog. It was disclosed because the
exchange, after Enron and other painful fallout, realizes that it must be less secretive in attempting to
rekindle investors' confidence.
Jobs: Liars, Damn Liars & Statistics
Format: News Commentary
Source: John Crudele, New York Post
Date: September 2, 2003
Yesterday was the day America
celebrated workers. On Friday we'll find out how many people aren't working.
So, as I sat at home this
holiday weekend with a plate of potato salad on my lap, barbecue sauce dripping down my chin, I decided to do a
different kind of column: a labor-free one. Here's a list of some employment facts you might want to know and
probably don't. These may come in handy if you want to depress a date, scare a colleague or bore a friend.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bill Maxwell, St. Petersburg Times
Date: August 31, 2003
Each year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission receives about 85,000 discrimination cases, a
phenomenon to be expected in a society that touts itself as a "melting pot." Many of these cases involve the
complaints of minority groups against majority groups. We rarely expect a member of a minority group to
discriminate against someone else in the same group. But that is exactly what happens among African-Americans.
More than any other minority group in the United States, blacks discriminate against one another. The
discrimination, called "colorism," is based on skin tone: whether a person is dark-skinned or light-skinned or
in the broad middle somewhere.
Accountability is Sad Casualty of Blame Game in Workplace
Format: Advice Column
Source: Daneen Skube, Seattle Times
Date: September 2, 2003
Q: Blaming and attacking seem to be the norm in the workplace. What drives such
common and difficult reactions in an environment where productivity is supposed to be the goal? A:
Productivity is the intellectual and conscious goal of all workplaces because we all know if a business isn't
making money, it doesn't survive. However, the emotional goal at work is a feeling of competency and
self-esteem. When the intellectual goal of productivity competes with the emotional goal of self-esteem, it is
not uncommon for productivity to be the loser.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: September 3, 2003
Considering that over
80,000 jobs have been shed for each month of his incumbency, President Bush's announcement that he is creating
a new undersecretary of commerce post devoted to job creation is notable for its feebleness. The only detail
yet clear is that the post is to be devoted to the "needs of manufacturers," and that is hardly a confidence
builder for the 9 million trying to find work plus the millions more who have given up.
No New Postings in Today's News Headlines Until 9/12
Source: Workplace Fairness
Date: September 4, 2003
Due to staff vacation,
there will be no posting of new entries in Today's News Headlines until September 12, 2003. Our daily
listings of workplace-related news articles will resume at that time.
Who Guards Civil Rights Today?
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Dorothy Height, USA Today
Date: September 11, 2003
Some
question whether the civil rights movement and its organizations are still relevant. Their next query: "Who is
the leader?" Answers can be found at the 33rd Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus
(CBC), which will be held Sept. 24-27 in Washington. As we near the 50-year mark of Brown vs. Board of
Education, the groundbreaking Supreme Court decision that declared separate-but-equal unconstitutional, there
are more than 9,000 African-American elected officials. CBC's 39 U.S. House members represent nearly every
region. The groundwork for these monumental successes was built decades before by the unrelenting drive of
organizations, especially the NAACP, to bring social justice issues to the fore through mobilization and the
courts.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: September 15, 2003
The Daley
twins, Kate and Kelly, are 24 years old, witty, charming and, above all, intelligent. You couldn't necessarily
tell from just talking with them that they had been the victims of a catastrophe. But you can tell by looking
at them. Kate and Kelly have been profoundly disfigured by a rare degenerative skin disease that literally
ravaged their bodies from head to foot. They were born with the disease, epidermolysis bullosa. Its appalling
effect has been comparable to being burned every day of one's life. Many of the suits brought against I.B.M.
by people claiming to have been harmed by chemicals in the workplace involve birth defects suffered by the
children of employees.
Good Economy. Bad Job Market. Huh?
Format: News Commentary
Source: Louis Uchitelle, New York Times
Date: September 14, 2003
It was like waiting for Godot. We waited for years for productivity to
accelerate, and now, unlike Godot, who never showed up, that day has finally arrived. Productivity is soaring,
holding out the promise of rising prosperity. Unfortunately, now we\'re waiting for the prosperity to kick
in. A second term for President Bush could ride on whether it does, and how soon. The United States economy has
not experienced anything like this since World War II. Normally, a spike in productivity is accompanied by an
even greater spike in demand.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: September 14, 2003
Bruce Tinsley's comic strip, ''Mallard Fillmore,'' is, he says, ''for the average person out
there: the forgotten American taxpayer who's sick of the liberal media.'' In June, that forgotten taxpayer
made an appearance in the strip, attacking his TV set with a baseball bat and yelling: ''I can't afford to
send my kids to college, or even take 'em out of their substandard public school, because the federal, state
and local governments take more than 50 percent of my income in taxes. And then the guy on the news asks with a
straight face whether or not we can 'afford' tax cuts.'' Nobody likes paying taxes, and no doubt some
Americans are as angry about their taxes as Tinsley's imaginary character. But most Americans also care a lot
about the things taxes pay for. All politicians say they're for public education; almost all of them also say
they support a strong national defense, maintaining Social Security and, if anything, expanding the coverage of
Medicare. When the ''guy on the news'' asks whether we can afford a tax cut, he's asking whether, after
yet another tax cut goes through, there will be enough money to pay for those things. And the answer is no.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Alan M. Webber, USA Today
Date: September 7, 2003
Summer came and went ? and it didn't feel much like summer. There may be a lesson in that, because the
recession came and went ? and this doesn't feel much like a recovery. That's because jobs are still
disappearing. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao points to statistics that say the economy grew by 3.1% in the second
quarter. But there are other statistics, gloomier and more telling: The country has lost 3 million jobs over
the past three years, 2.5 million of them in manufacturing. One survey found that 18% of American workers
reported being laid off in the past three years. And this summer the average length of unemployment jumped to
19 weeks, the highest level in 20 years. The statistics tell a discouraging story, and that growing sense of
discouragement is exactly the point: Beyond the numbers are two critically important groups of American workers
whose emotions, beliefs and attitudes will have an enormous influence over the direction of American politics
as the presidential election heats up. For President Bush, the key to the intersection of jobs and voting
patterns is not women, who lean more toward Democrats. It is men, predominately white, who tend to be in the
Republican camp.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: September 12, 2003
Ethylene
glycol ethers are a group of organic solvents that proved to be extremely effective at coating surfaces evenly.
They've been used in paints, nail polish, de-icers and many other products. One of their most important
industrial applications was in the semiconductor industry. These marvelous chemicals, E.G.E.'s, were the key
ingredients in a solution used in the fabrication of computer chips. But there were some problems. Studies
began emerging in the late 1970's that showed these chemicals wreaking havoc with the reproductive processes
in rodents. They were linked to testicular damage, miscarriages and birth defects. Even as the warnings grew
louder, workers by the thousands were toiling in the "clean rooms" where extraordinary amounts of toxic
chemicals, including E.G.E.'s, were being put to use in the manufacture of chips, disks and other electronic
components.
Format: Advice Column
Source: Randy Cohen, New York Times
Date: September 21, 2003
"I
was downsized from my job in January. Recently I was offered a new position, but it's work that I
loathe....Should I take it?"
Boots on the Ground, Family Back Home
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Mark L. Kimmey, New York Times
Date: September 21, 2003
The Army's decision to keep its Reserve forces in Iraq on duty for a full year from their arrival may
have profound consequences for both the Army and the war in Iraq. While the Army will gain increased
flexibility with its "boots on the ground," the long deployments may demoralize reservists. When mobilization
and demobilization are included, 12 months on duty in Iraq will mean a 14- to 16-month separation from family
and career for reservists. "Fair doesn't mean equal," a battalion commander once told me. But the message to
reservists is unmistakable: the Army no longer takes into account sacrifices made to maintain two careers and
lives. Many reservists will watch the regular soldiers with whom they came to Iraq go home before they do. The
Army may not care about the disparity between the way the forces are treated, but those of us in the Reserve
do.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Date: September 20, 2003
To
end the 22-day strike that was embarrassing Yale and grating on its students, the university gave its two main
unions wage and pension increases that are generous by most any definition. Yale granted its largest union,
representing 2,900 clerical workers, raises of 44 percent over eight years and agreed to a richer pension
formula that will increase pensions for most future retirees by 80 percent or more.
Was Anyone Taken for a Ride in the U.A.W.-Big 3 Contract Talks?
Format: News Commentary
Source: Danny Hakim, New York Times
Date: September 23, 2003
Last week, the United Automobile Workers offered more concessions to the Big Three than it has in the
last two decades of contract talks. Then again, concessions have not really been a feature of the last two
decades of contract talks in the American auto industry. While auto workers see a contract that extends a
lifeline to the struggling Big Three, Wall Street sees baby steps that amount to a glass half-full in some
minds and fully empty in others. \"Does this make the industry even a little bit more competitive? No,\" said
Maryann Keller, an auto analyst and former executive who ran Priceline.com\'s automotive division. \"This
contract does nothing to even make a slight dent in the fundamental problems,\" she added.
It Turns Out You Can Be Too Rich
Format: News Commentary
Source: Clyde Haberman, New York Times
Date: September 19, 2003
It
takes about 45 minutes to get from Elmhurst in Queens to the financial district in Manhattan. That is the
measure of distance and time on the R subway line. In most other respects, though, working-class Elmhurst and
the canyons of Wall Street are light-years apart. Richard A. Grasso, for many the latest avatar of unquenchable
greed, crossed that great divide long ago. The boy who would become top man at the New York Stock Exchange was
schooled in Elmhurst, at Newtown High School on 90th Street, and lived in neighboring Jackson Heights. By all
accounts, Mr. Grasso's blue collar never completely faded, no matter how many millions he earned.
Slippery Data on the Job Market
Format: News Commentary
Source: Alan B. Krueger, New York Times
Date: September 18, 2003
"Essentially unchanged" ? that is how Kathleen Utgoff, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
described the unemployment rate in August compared with July. The secretary of labor, Elaine Chao, however,
hailed the news, saying, "I'm pleased that the unemployment rate has dropped." Why the different
interpretations? Who is right? In a sense, both are. The official estimate did fall by a tenth of a point, from
6.18 percent in July to 6.08 percent in August. But the unemployment rate is just an estimate based on a sample
of the population, and like all estimates, there is no guarantee it is exactly right. It could be off because
of sampling errors (results differ from sample to sample) and nonsampling errors (respondents may not answer
the questions correctly). Sampling errors alone are enough to lead one to doubt whether unemployment actually
fell in August.
What the Monkeys Can Teach Humans About Making America Fairer
Format: Political Column
Source: Adam Cohen, New York Times
Date: September 20, 2003
Give a capuchin monkey a cucumber slice, and she will eagerly
trade a small pebble for it. But when a second monkey, in an adjoining cage, receives a more-desirable grape
for the same pebble, it changes everything. The first monkey will then reject her cucumber, and sometimes throw
it out of the cage. Monkeys rarely refuse food, but in this case they appear to be pursuing an even higher
value than eating: fairness. The capuchin monkey study, published last week in Nature, has generated a lot of
interest for a scant three-page report buried in the journal's letters section. There is, certainly, a risk of
reading too much into the feeding habits of 10 research monkeys. But in a week when fairness was so evidently
on the ropes ? from the World Trade Organization meeting in Canc?n, which poor nations walked out of in
frustration, to the latest issue of Forbes, reporting that the richest 400 Americans are worth $955 billion ?
the capuchin monkeys offered a glimmer of hope from the primate gene pool.
Unemployment Problem Needs Improved Solution
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bharath Parthasarathy, The Emory Wheel
Date: September 26, 2003
As the seasons shift from the dog days of summer to the crisp nights of autumn, the stately trees
that dot the campus have begun to shed their tarnished golden leaves. In much the same fashion, as the year has
progressed, the American economy has continually shed millions of workers as it creeps out of recession. In
fact, since the Bush administration took office, more than three million workers have shown up at their
manufacturing and service sector jobs only to leave the premises with pink slips in their hands. Georgia alone
has witnessed the reduction of 98,200 manufacturing jobs over the past five years. As a result, the American
economy currently supports more unemployed workers than at any given time in the past decade.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Elaine Chao (Secretary of Labor), Baltimore Sun
Date: September 30, 2003
Critics of the Department of Labor's proposal to
modernize white-collar exemptions to overtime have wrongly portrayed a recent vote in the Senate to block the
proposal from moving forward as a victory for workers.
In fact, if enacted, the amendment by Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa, would be a huge setback for America's workers and has the potential to prevent more than a
million low-wage workers from getting overtime pay for the first time.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: September 30, 2003
John Reed,
the former Citicorp chief executive, is beginning his first week as interim chairman of the New York Stock
Exchange. His mandate is to overhaul the beleaguered Big Board in the wake of Richard Grasso's departure. He
has his work cut out for him. One of Mr. Reed's immediate priorities is to ensure that his predecessor
doesn't take the exchange for close to $60 million more. Mr. Grasso's departure was triggered by the public
uproar that followed disclosure of his earlier $140 million payday, much of it for deferred compensation and
benefits. Now Mr. Grasso and his lawyers may want to claim that his resignation was a termination, which would
entitle him to tens of millions more under his employment contract. Mr. Reed should strenuously oppose making
any such payments. Mr. Reed must also ask most directors for their resignations. Carl McCall, the former state
comptroller and gubernatorial candidate, and J?rgen Schrempp, the chief executive of DaimlerChrysler, have
stepped down. But most others should follow them out the door, especially those who had anything to do with
approving Mr. Grasso's compensation.
White House Facing Revolt Within GOP
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe
Date: October 1, 2003
In just a few weeks the political tide has turned dramatically against
President Bush. His popularity ratings have dipped below 50 percent. His policies are under fire on the Iraq
war, the economy, and the budget mess. Moreover, Bush is facing an escalating revolt from within his own party.
A little-noted indicator is that Republican senators and House members are no longer willing to take unpopular
votes merely because the White House demands them. Lately the administration has lost several key votes that
were billed as Republican tests of loyalty:
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: October 1, 2003
harles Pickering of
Mississippi, whose nomination for an important federal judgeship was wisely rejected once, is scheduled to be
voted on again tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate should again refuse to confirm him. The
Bush administration is pushing hard to put Judge Pickering, a federal district court judge, on the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The first battle
over Judge Pickering too often descended into a fight over whether he is a "racist." The real question is
whether he would be the kind of judge the Fifth Circuit ? one of the most heavily minority circuits in the
country ? needs. His record strongly suggests he would not.
The Wages of Luck in a Bad Economy
Format: Political Column
Source: Charles Page (Chicago Tribune), Baltimore Sun
Date: October 2, 2003
This presidential campaign season is beginning to look like
something that Yogi Berra might call "d?j? vu all over again." Imagine, for example, a president named Bush who
gains sky-high approval ratings from a war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, only to face shrinking popularity
amid a sluggish economy back home. Yes, that was what happened with Bill Clinton's unexpected victory over the
elder President Bush in 1992. The elder Mr. Bush's problem, as it turned out, was not so much the economy as
much as it was the voting public's perceptions of the economy. Even as the economy was starting to turn around
in early 1992, Mr. Bush's pollster Robert Teeter warned that there were storm clouds on the horizon: a growing
disapproval with the direction in which the country was headed.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Morton Marcus, Munster Times
Date: October 5, 2003
The economy has been growing for nearly two years since the bottom of the
recession, yet employment problems remain. The 275 metropolitan areas in the United States had a total loss of
533,000 jobs from August 2002 to the same month this year. As serious as this sounds, the total loss was only
0.3 percent for the year. In addition, while 61 percent of the metro areas (168) did lose jobs, 103 metro areas
added jobs and four remained unchanged.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Richard W. Stevenson, New York Times
Date: October 4, 2003
Aides to President Bush say he is willing to make big bets on policies he believes in. When it comes to the
economy, Mr. Bush has been like a gambler, pushing through one tax cut after another despite early signs that
his policies were not stopping big losses of jobs. On Friday, Mr. Bush was finally able to point to evidence
that his approach had results. The news that the economy had added 57,000 jobs in September and that during the
summer it had not lost as many as previously estimated was the first sign since January that the so-far-jobless
recovery was giving way to a slowly improving employment situation. Still, in the time since Mr. Bush took
office and the three tax cuts were passed, the economy has lost 2.8 million jobs. That fact remains an
uncomfortable obstacle to his claims of progress in recovering from the recession, which started two months
after he moved into the White House but ended nearly two years ago.
Format: Political Column
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: October 7, 2003
Economists call it the "lump of labor fallacy." It's the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done
in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs. (A
famous example: those dire warnings in the 1950's that automation would lead to mass unemployment.) As the
derisive name suggests, it's an idea economists view with contempt, yet the fallacy makes a comeback whenever
the economy is sluggish. Sure enough, the lump-of-labor fallacy has resurfaced in the United States ? but with
a twist. Traditionally, it is a fallacy of the economically na?ve left ? for example, four years ago France's
Socialist government tried to create more jobs by reducing the length of the workweek. But in America today
you're more likely to hear lump-of-labor arguments from the right, as an excuse for the Bush administration's
policy failures.
Time and a Half in the Capitol
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: October 8, 2003
In a rare Republican
rebellion against pro-business priorities, the House has rejected a controversial plan to overhaul the rules
covering overtime for millions of American workers. The House initially approved the plan last July, but
several members of the G.O.P. majority, clearly sensing voters' concern about hard economic times, switched
sides last week. That gave the second round to the Democrats, who were warning that many white-collar workers
would be stripped of their overtime rights.
N-Word in the Workplace is Not Tolerable
Format: News Commentary
Source: Tim Chavez, Tennessean
Date: October 10, 2003
Attorney Stephen
Crofford decided to take Donna Phillips' case when she cried. ''The reason I took the case is because she
cried in my office about the humiliation she felt when they didn't take it (her complaint) seriously,''
Crofford said. Consider that Sen. Trent Lott and talk show host Rush Limbaugh faced a national uproar and
employment consequences for comments that carried racial overtones. Lott lost his majority leader's job and
Limbaugh resigned his ESPN gig. Yet there were no tones or degrees to the comments about Phillips ? a 14-year
prison guard who also happens to be black. She was called the ''dumbest n??r bitch I have to deal with'' by
a contract worker who sells popcorn to inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and fills vending
machines.
Format: Editorial
Source: The Capital Times
Date: October 10, 2003
Picking up the
initiative advanced by the Madison Fair Wage Campaign, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz is proposing an ordinance to
establish a local minimum wage of $7.75 an hour. While the Fair Wage campaigners will continue their petition
drive seeking to place the issue on the April ballot, the mayor's ordinance proposal is the best vehicle for
securing a wage hike for working Madisonians. That the wage hike is needed is beyond question. The federal
minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is absurdly low. States and cities across the country have moved to implement
higher minimum wages. And Madison, where rising housing and transportation costs have made it increasingly
difficult for full-time workers to live in the city where they do their jobs, needs to join them.
Black America's Crisis in Unemployment
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Marc H. Morial, Kankakee Daily Journal
Date: October 12, 2003
At first glance,
the federal Department of Labor monthly report released recently seemed to contain good news: The unemployment
rate fell from 6.4 percent in June to 6.2 percent in July. But that seemingly good news was a mirage: The
decline stemmed from the fact that nearly half a million jobless workers who had been looking for work stopped
their search entirely and so weren't counted as being in the labor force at all. The unemployment rate
improved statistically only because the number of people looking for jobs fell faster than the number of people
holding jobs. In other words, the dispiriting news on the jobs front continues
Rhetoric Vies With Reality on a Hot Topic: Jobs
Format: News Commentary
Source: David Leonhardt, New York Times
Date: October 12, 2003
Jobs
-- the loss of them over the past three years and plans for creating them in coming years - have moved quickly
to the center stage of the young presidential campaign. President Bush and his aides refer to the recent tax
cut, almost without exception, as the "jobs and growth" package. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor
seeking the Democratic nomination, said on Wednesday that he expected jobs to be the race's biggest issue.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, another Democratic candidate, interrupted himself in a recent
debate to announce, "This is all about jobs." With the attention has come an escalating battle between the
parties to define the terms of the debate and the numbers used in it. To no one's surprise, that battle
includes some hyperbole.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: October 14, 2003
The Social Security
Administration has been not only mean-spirited but also illogical in handling Pauline Thomas's disability
claim. It denied payment to Ms. Thomas, a 61-year-old elevator operator in New Jersey who has a serious heart
problem, on the ground that there is a job she can do ? a job that no longer exists. It is an absurd decision,
but one fully in keeping with the Bush administration's drive to cut back on spending for the needy. The
Supreme Court, which hears her case today, should strike a blow for common sense by upholding her claim.
Labor Gap Predictions Full of Holes
Format: Political Column
Source: Al Lewis, Denver Post
Date: October 14, 2003
"Yo, Corporate
America! I want a fat salary, a signing bonus and a cappuccino machine - oh, and I'm bringing my bird to
work." So read the March 16, 1998, cover of Fortune magazine, which also sported a smug, twenty-something dude
with a pet parrot on his head. Inside was a story about a skilled-labor shortage, and how there just weren't
enough talented people to serve big business, particularly in technology. "Gold collar workers," the article
called them. "Anyone who's educated, smart, creative, computer-literate, equipped with portable skills - and
demanding." Many believe these days will be back again soon.
Format: Political Column
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: October 20, 2003
With the
nation at war, the wretched state of millions of young people in America's urban centers is getting even less
attention than usual. While the U.S. is trying to figure out how to pay for its incursion into Iraq, millions
of teenagers and young adults, especially in the inner cities, are drifting aimlessly from one day to the next.
They're out of school, out of work and, as I've said before in this column, all but out of hope.
Promoting Employees: How to Get it Right
Format: Advice Column
Source: Jeff Wuorio , MicroSoft bCentral
Date: October 23, 2003
Promoting the right
person at the right time takes more diligence. But it can be as important to the well being of your company as
ditching the smokes can be for your health. Many businesses approach the concept of job promotions with
something less than a studied eye. While the process may seem basic, the consequences of an ill-advised
promotion can be nothing short of cataclysmic ? particularly if it happens over and over. That means it's
critical to understand what works and what doesn't in the art of promoting employees.
Low Wages May Mean Hefty Credit
Format: Editorial
Source: Battle Creek Enquirer
Date: October 22, 2003
People who earn between $11,000 and $35,000 a year can hardly be classified as wealthy. Most struggle just to
pay for food, shelter and life's other necessities. Depending on how many children they have and how many
people work in the household, most such wage earners qualify for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. The
credit can be for as much as $382 for a single worker with no children, and up to $4,204 for married workers
with two or more children. And yet, in 2001, nearly 88,000 of the 527,000 Michigan workers who qualified for
the Earned Income Tax Credit - about one in six - failed to claim it. Why? Apparently many workers are unaware
that they qualify for the credit or don't know how to go about claiming it. That needs to change, and we are
glad that the state of Michigan is teaming up with community organizations, activists and tax consultants to
spread the word to the thousands of people who are missing out on money they can claim.
Format: Political Column
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: October 24, 2003
John
Snow, the Treasury secretary, told The Times of London on Monday that he expected the U.S. economy to add two
million jobs before the next election ? that is, almost 200,000 per month. His forecast was higher than those
of most independent analysts; nothing in the data suggests that jobs are being created at that rate. (New
claims for unemployment insurance are running at slightly less than 400,000 a week, the number that corresponds
to zero job growth. If jobs were being created as rapidly as Mr. Snow forecasts, the new claims number would be
closer to 300,000.) Still, Mr. Snow may get lucky, and the job market may pick up. But his prediction was a
huge climb-down from administration predictions earlier this year, when the White House insisted that it
expected the economy to add more than five million jobs by next November. And even if Mr. Snow's forecast
comes true, that won't vindicate the administration's economic policy. In fact, while private analysts are
criticizing Mr. Snow for being overly optimistic, I think the stronger criticism is that he's trying to lower
the bar: to define as success a performance that, even if it materializes, should really be considered a dismal
failure.
Format: Political Column
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: October 27, 2003
The
president tells us the economy is accelerating, and the statistics seem to bear him out. But don't hold your
breath waiting for your standard of living to improve. Bush country is not a good environment for working
families. In the real world, which is the world of families trying to pay their mortgages and get their
children off to college, the economy remains troubled. While the analysts and commentators of the comfortable
class are assuring us that the president's tax cuts and the billions being spent on Iraq have been good for
the gross domestic product, the workaday folks are locked in a less sanguine reality.
A Statistic That Tells Only Half the Story
Format: News Commentary
Source: Daniel Gross, New York Times
Date: October 26, 2003
Thursday morning, investors, economic forecasters and, increasingly, political pundits pounce on the Labor
Department's numbers for new jobless claims. The report provides a sort of weekly thumbs up or thumbs down on
the economy's progress and, hence, on the Bush administration's economic policy. Last week, the department
reported that first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell by 4,000, to 386,000, in the week ended Oct. 18.
The four-week average - more useful because it smoothes weekly fluctuations - held steady at 392,250. Labor
Secretary Elaine L. Chao hailed the data as another tile placed in an increasingly shiny mosaic. "With the
president's jobs and growth plan now having a real, positive and lasting impact on the economy, we expect to
see increased job creation in the coming months," she said. Should we really be encouraged? After all, aren't
386,000 more people - roughly the population of Sacramento, Calif. - now standing on unemployment lines?
Job Creation Math: The Three-Card Monte of Economics
Format: News Commentary
Source: David Leonhardt, New York Times
Date: October 26, 2003
What does an increase in jobs really mean? John W. Snow, the Treasury secretary, raised the issue
last week by saying that he expected the economy to add 200,000 jobs a month for the next year. With almost
three million jobs having been lost since early 2001, the comment had an air of bold optimism to it and caused
a bit of a stir on Wall Street. "We are surprised," a senior economist at Goldman Sachs wrote to clients, "that
Snow would choose to hand the Democratic presidential candidates this optimistic prediction." But it looks
optimistic mainly because people think of zero as the threshold. In fact, job creation must keep up with
population growth in order to prevent the labor market from deteriorating. These days, the economy must add
from 150,000 to 200,000 jobs every month to keep the unemployment rate from rising, economists say.
All Fired Up Over a Phony Firing Technique
Format: Advice Column
Source: Carrie Mason-Draffen, Newsday
Date: October 26, 2003
DEAR CARRIE: I was recently fired from my job over the telephone. I was on
a vacation when my boss called to tell me not to come back to work. Someone told me it was illegal to fire
someone over the phone. What's more, my boss had never criticized my work. Do I have any recourse? -Dial F for
Fired
DEAR F: You worked for a real coward. Only cowards fire by phone or e-mail or any other way that
prevents a more dignified face-to-face meeting to announce such monumental news.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Annette Bernhardt, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Date: October 29, 2003
Federal officials missed the boat last week when they arrested 300 undocumented workers whom
contractors had hired to clean Wal-Mart stores. The real offenders aren't uncarded custodians. They are their
employers and not simply because they employ undocumented immigrants. Wal-Mart -- and other low-wage employers
that follow its lead -- relentlessly and systematically cut costs by reducing the wages and health benefits of
both its in-house and subcontracted workers, regardless of their immigration status. Jailing janitors after a
long night shift of cleaning up after shoppers isn't the answer. Ultimately, the only effective response is to
reinstate America's wage and workplace standards that have been decimated over the past 30 years.
Format: Political Column
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: October 31, 2003
The
Commerce Department announces very good growth during the previous quarter. Many observers declare the
economy's troubles over. And the administration's supporters claim that the economy's turnaround validates
its policies. That's what happened 18 months ago, when a preliminary estimate put first-quarter 2002 growth at
5.8 percent. That was later revised down to 5.0. More important, growth in the next quarter slumped to 1.3
percent, and we now know that the economy wasn't really on the mend: after that brief spurt, the nation
proceeded to lose another 600,000 jobs. The same story unfolded in the third quarter of 2002, when growth rose
to 4 percent, and the economy actually gained 200,000 jobs. But growth slipped back down to 1.4 percent, and
job losses resumed. My purpose is not to denigrate the impressive estimated 7.2 percent growth rate for the
third quarter of 2003. It is, rather, to stress the obvious: we've had our hopes dashed in the past, and it
remains to be seen whether this is just another one-hit wonder.
Why Do Employers Pay for Health Insurance, Anyhow?
Format: Political Column
Source: Daniel Akst, New York Times
Date: November 2, 2003
Nobody expects employers to provide groceries, housing or clothing, but for odd historical reasons American
employers have evolved into providers of health insurance. Nearly two-thirds of Americans under 65 rely on
health coverage from an employer. Some of America's largest companies, maybe eager to level the playing field,
favor requiring employers to provide insurance. But they have it backward. They should be advocating an end to
employer-financed health coverage altogether.
Beneath the Smiles, a Churning Anxiety
Format: News Commentary
Source: Louis Uchitelle, New York Times
Date: November 2, 2003
We live in a manic-depressive economy, and right now we're in the manic phase. The annual growth
rate, 7.2 percent in the third quarter, was spectacular. The Keynesian-style stimulus has been wonderfully
effective. But the depressive phase may kick in again soon, as growth slows and millions of employed and
unemployed Americans struggle to make up for lost incomes. They are out there trying now, earning $40,000 or
$50,000, for example, rather than the $50,000 or $60,000 they made before they were laid off and took pay cuts
to get work again. The Labor Department does not calculate their growing numbers, and neither does anyone else.
Age Discrimination Slams the Door on Women
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Ellen Lieber, Newsday
Date: November 4, 2003
Normally, I am a "glass half-full" kind of gal, but my spring 2003 layoff left me
with a little too much negative energy, especially since I was replaced by a younger (read: cheaper) male with
less experience and fewer credentials. Middle-aged women, just like me, are being overlooked by prospective
employers as they were by their former employers who chose to lay them off. Fearful that they will be sued for
discriminatory hiring or terminating practices, no employer will own up to acting inappropriately. But bias
against middle-aged women is hard to refute when so many of my female friends and former colleagues have faced
the same obstacles I have.
Unemployment is Forcing Many to Drop Out of College
Format: Editorial
Source: Dwight Lewis, The Tennessean
Date: November 9, 2003
It seemed like such an unbelievable story. But it's a true one. Just listen: ''I
sit on the Board of Regents of Morgan State University in Baltimore,'' said U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.,
''and we just had to let go about 1,000 students out of 13,000, not because they weren't qualified but
because they did not have the money to go to school. ''We interviewed them before they left, and many of them
said at one time they had a part-time job or even a full-time job, but those jobs have gone away. They want to
participate and get a good education, but the job situation we're in means we're leaving a lot of them
out.''
A Manufactured Crisis on Judges
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: November 10, 2003
Conservative
activists have been demanding that Senate Republicans do more to push through the Bush administration's most
extreme judicial nominees. So the Republican leadership is planning a 30-hour talk marathon later this week to
protest the Democrats' blocking of a handful of candidates. To up the public-relations quotient, there may be
calls for votes on three controversial female nominees. Lost amid the grandstanding about a "crisis" in
judicial nominations are the facts: 168 Bush nominees have been confirmed and only four rejected, a far better
percentage than for President Bill Clinton. Bush administration nominees have been moving through the Senate at
a rapid clip: in his first three years in office, President Bush has gotten more judges confirmed than
President Ronald Reagan did in his first four. When Republicans controlled the Senate, more than 60 Clinton
administration judicial candidates were blocked.
Workplace No Place for Violence
Format: Political Column
Source: John Eckberg, Cincinnati Enquirer
Date: November 10, 2003
The tragic truck depot shooting in West Chester last week underscored a simmering reality of today's
workplace. Random violence can be visited upon any job site on any given day. And with guns sold in big-box
stores, gun shops and flea markets from one end of this country to the other, there is probably not a whole lot
that anybody can do about it. Thomas C. West, 50, a former truck driver who resigned two years ago from his
Atlanta-based job for Watkins Motor Lines Inc., allegedly shot and killed two people and wounded three others
in a shooting rampage that lasted only seconds. The irony is that that's about as long as it takes for a
manager to fire somebody.
Always Low Wages: Exploitation of Illegals is Rampant
Format: News Commentary
Source: Joe Rodriguez (San Jose Mercury News), The Tallahassee Democrat
Date: November 8, 2003
Now we know why Wal-Mart's motto is "Always low prices." It's
much easier to beat the competition's prices when you don't employ your own janitors, and the contractors you
depend on to clean your stores have the nasty habit of hiring and exploiting illegal immigrants from Mexico and
Eastern Europe. Immigration cops last month raided 61 Wal-Mart stores, arrested 245 illegal workers and then
hauled company executives and janitorial contractors into court. The feds are trying to make an example of
Wal-Mart. Fine, but we know who's going to pay the highest price.
Longtime Labor Friend Passed Over for Endorsements
Format: Political Column
Source: Chris Christoff, Detroit Free Press
Date: November 8, 2003
Dick
Gephardt must feel like a faithful boyfriend watching his girl go to the prom with the new kid in school. No
presidential candidate has been more closely aligned with labor than the longtime congressman from Missouri.
He's been a stalwart on such causes as opposing unfair foreign trade and supporting broad health care for
everyone. So, what does Gephardt get in return? Thursday, the national Service Employees International Union
endorsed Democratic rival Howard Dean. Next week, Dean is expected to get the endorsement of the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. So two of the nation's biggest unions are coming out for
Dean. And Friday, the UAW's international board voted to make no recommendation in the presidential race.
It's another national endorsement Gephardt banked on, but which slipped away.
Integrity in Workplace Never Takes Day Off, Even [When] Boss Calls In Sick
Format: Advice Column
Source: Jim Bracher, The Californian (Salinas, CA)
Date: November 12, 2003
Question: You write about owners and bosses and how the leaders in
various organizations need to clean up their acts. But what do you think about employees who don't pull their
weight when the boss is absent? What about workers who talk on the phone in a retail store instead of greeting
customers? What about employees who come in late, leave early, are not very nice to customers and fellow
employees, and still expect to be paid for a full day's work? Isn't integrity a two-way street?
Response: Integrity is a two-way street. Employers owe to those with whom they work an opportunity to
be productive, successful, safe, healthy and proud. Owners and operators of enterprises are responsible for
creating and supporting a working environment that is sustainable for all stakeholders (investors, customers,
suppliers, employees, members of the community).
Format: Op-Ed
Source: W. Michael Cox & Richard Alm, New York Times
Date: November 7, 2003
Apparently unconvinced by last week's eye-popping growth figures, economic pessimists remain
fixated on the labor market. Today's release of the Labor Department's latest employment figures, we are
told, will give a true picture of the pace of economic recovery. But the monthly statistics, while relevant
within the larger context of all economic indicators, don't tell the whole story of what is happening with
Americans' jobs. Focusing on net employment gains or losses misses the real show, the long-running drama that
drives the economy forward. While it may seem that little progress is being made on the jobs front, beneath
the surface the economy is doing what it's done for decades: orchestrating a relentless and enormous recycling
of jobs and workers.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Alan B. Krueger, New York Times
Date: November 13, 2003
The latest reports from the Labor Department suggest that what might be called the Energizer
Bunny recession in the job market - it just keeps going and going - might finally have come to an end. If
sustained job growth has indeed arrived, why did it take so long? Although there are no definitive answers, it
is possible to piece together some plausible stories and to rule out others.
The Wal-Martization of America
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: November 15, 2003
The 70,000 grocery
workers on strike in Southern California are the front line in a battle to prevent middle-class service jobs
from turning into poverty-level ones. The supermarkets say they are forced to lower their labor costs to
compete with Wal-Mart, a nonunion, low-wage employer aggressively moving into the grocery business. Everyone
should be concerned about this fight. It is, at bottom, about the ability of retail workers to earn wages that
keep their families out of poverty. Grocery stores in Southern California are bracing for the arrival, in
February, of the first of 40 Wal-Mart grocery supercenters. Wal-Mart's prices are about 14 percent lower than
other groceries' because the company is aggressive about squeezing costs, including labor costs. Its workers
earn a third less than unionized grocery workers, and pay for much of their health insurance. Wal-Mart uses
hardball tactics to ward off unions. Since 1995, the government has issued at least 60 complaints alleging
illegal anti-union activities. Southern California's supermarket chains have reacted by demanding a two-year
freeze on current workers' salaries and lower pay for newly hired workers, and they want employees to pay more
for health insurance. The union counters that if the supermarkets match Wal-Mart, their workers will be pushed
out of the middle class. Those workers are already only a step ? or a second family income ? from poverty, with
wages of roughly $18,000 a year. Wal-Mart sales clerks make about $14,000 a year, below the $15,060 poverty
line for a family of three.
Fair Labor Contracts Benefit All
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Daniel Hoffman, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Date: November 15, 2003
In the Nov. 8 issue of the News-Miner, it was reported that the Alaska Community Colleges'
Federation of Teachers had reached a tentative contract agreement with the University of Alaska. By reaching
this agreement, a strike was averted that would have brought the university's teaching function to a
standstill. Further, the new agreement will replace a contract that had expired over two whole months ago!
Hmmmm. It appears that the threat of a strike, with the accompanying disruption of a critical service, can be a
strong motivator in bringing two sides together--and in a timely fashion. While that may be the case, I will
never know. Why? Because I'm a Fairbanks police officer. The police officers and 911-dispatchers that I work
with provide essential, emergency services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As such, the state of Alaska
considers us as "class one" employees and prohibits our right to strike.
How Workers' Comp Affects Businesses
Format: Advice Column
Source: Benjamin H. Moore , Orlando Sentinel
Date: November 17, 2003
Question: As a small-business owner, how does
workers' compensation insurance affect my business?
Answer: Workers' compensation insurance is
required by the state of Florida to cover medical and partial wage-replacement benefits for any employee who is
injured in a workplace accident. The program is administered by the Department of Financial Services, Division
of Workers' Compensation. Required coverage under the workers' compensation rules is divided into
construction industry rules and nonconstruction industry rules.
How to Tell if a Workplace is Too Damaged for You to Remain
Format: Advice Column
Source: Chad Graham (Des Moines Register), Honolulu Advertiser
Date: November 17, 2003
Everyone knows there's no fun in dysfunctional workplaces. What's tricky
is determining when an office environment can be fixed by talking to the boss or working as a team to change
the culture. How do you know when a company has such severe, unfixable problems that it's better to clean out
your desk and bolt screaming?
Workplace is Not the Place to Spill Details of Your Private Life
Format: Advice Column
Source: Corby O'Connor (Newhouse News Service), Plain Dealer
Date: November 17, 2003
Have you been a recipient of details you would
rather not hear, sometimes known as TMI, or too much information? You know it when you hear it: the gory
details of your co-worker's medical procedure, the prowess of your cubicle mate's significant other, your
secretary's no- good spouse. Or are you the one who leads the soap-opera life, spewing intimate and personal
facts of the drama you live to ev eryone within hearing distance? It is a good idea to get along with your
co-workers and establish good relationships. But when it comes to sharing details about our personal lives,
some particulars are better left out.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Ezekiel J. Emanuel & Victor R. Fuchs, New York Times
Date: November 18, 2003
The public has good reason to be worried about health coverage. After five years of relative
stability, insurance premiums, prescription-drug prices and other costs have soared. This year, premiums went
up nearly 14 percent, with those paid by employees increasing nearly 50 percent since 2000. The number of
Americans without health insurance increased more than 5 percent just in the last year. And strikes by workers
in Los Angeles and elsewhere showed that health coverage is the flashpoint of labor discord. As a solution,
many policymakers are advocating small reforms like a Medicare prescription drug benefit and expansion of the
Children's Health Insurance Program. Unfortunately, more services for some groups may increase costs and force
reductions in coverage for others. What we need is a fair proposal that is simple, efficient and appealing to
disparate constituencies. For more than a decade, as members of the medical and economics communities, we have
advocated such an alternative: universal health care vouchers.
Watch Out for Falling Wages at Wal-Mart
Format: Editorial
Source: Berkshire Eagle
Date: November 17, 2003
The world's
largest retailer is busy making a name for itself as one of the world's biggest social menaces. Back in the
news for its exploitive and inhumane treatment of illegal aliens, Wal-Mart has a long history of ruthlessness.
It has been caught underpricing local pharmacists, then jacking up prices after the independent town pharmacies
folded. For years the company expected some employees to work "off the clock," punching out to go home and then
staying on for more hours of unpaid labor. IBM it isn't.
MCP Strike Over Standards a Lesson for Labor
Format: Political Column
Source: Ronnie Polaneczky, Philadelphia Daily News
Date: November 18, 2003
There's something riveting about the nursing strike at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. This one ain't
just about money or benefits. It's about standards. Let me ask you: When's the last time a strike in this
city was about anything other than socking it to The Man, right in the wallet? Whether they're schoolteachers
who want better insurance or bus drivers hankering after a cushier retirement, organized labor nearly always
walks the picket line in blatant self interest. Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't necessarily stir
public support beyond a general feeling of empathy. Who doesn't want a fatter paycheck and juicier benefits?
But the MCP nurses - still on the picket line over the weekend - are using their moral authority as front-line
caregivers to call attention to something we should all be worried about: There aren't enough of them to go
around. Their hospital is so understaffed, they say, they are constantly forced to work overtime.
Format: Political Column
Source: Howard Kurtz, Washington Post
Date: November 21, 2003
Howard Dean needs a better phrase-maker. He has just declared himself a champion of
"re-regulation." Not exactly a stirring call to arms. What do you think of when you hear the word "regulation"?
I conjure up a room full of glum, vacant-eyed bureaucrats stamping useless forms while the phones keep ringing
and no one answers them. People hate the idea of government regulation. They want safer skies, cleaner air and
healthier meat. They want to be protected from shady Wall Street traders and hazardous toys. But they don't
like the word regulation.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Austan Goolsbee, New York Times
Date: November 30, 2003
The
government's announcement on Tuesday that the economy grew even faster than expected makes the current
"jobless recovery" even more puzzling. To give some perspective, unemployment normally falls significantly in
such economic boom times. The last time growth was this good, in 1983, unemployment fell 2.5 percentage points
and another full percentage point the next year. That's what happens in a typical recovery. So why not this
time? Because we have more to recover from than we've been told. The reality is that we didn't have a mild
recession. Jobs-wise, we had a deep one.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Stephen S. Roach, New York Times
Date: November 30, 2003
Despite the economy's stunning 8.2 percent surge in the third quarter, the staying power of this economic
recovery remains a matter of debate. But there is one aspect of the economy on which agreement is nearly
unanimous: America's miraculous productivity. In the third quarter, productivity grew by 8.1 percent in the
nonfarm business sector ? a figure likely to be revised upwards ? and it has grown at an average rate of 5.4
percent in the last two years. This surge is not simply a byproduct of the business cycle, even accounting for
the usual uptick in productivity after a recession. In the first two years of the six most recent recoveries,
productivity gains averaged only 3.5 percent. The favored explanation is that improved productivity is yet
another benefit of the so-called New Economy. American business has reinvented itself. Manufacturing and
services companies have figured out how to get more from less. By using information technologies, they can
squeeze ever increasing value out of the average worker. It's a great story, and if correct, it could lead to
a new and lasting prosperity in the United States. But it may be wide of the mark.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: December 2, 2003
President Bush plans to attend a fundraiser in Pittsburgh today. He also plans this week to repeal the tariffs
he applied to imported steel nearly two years ago. In theory, these two events should have nothing to do with
one another: A fundraiser is a fundraiser, and a trade decision is a trade decision. But in practice, the steel
tariffs had everything to do with fundraising and everything to do with winning votes in Pennsylvania. And that
goes to the heart of what was wrong with them. Not only were the steel tariffs purely about domestic politics
from the start, no one in the administration ever pretended otherwise. Their main purpose, which no one denied,
was to win back some of the steel country votes the president lost in the 2000 elections.
Family Values Profit Businesses and Employees
Format: Advice Column
Source: Erin Raccah, Portland Press Herald
Date: December 5, 2003
The recognition that employees are real people with real lives outside the workplace is no longer an "aha"
revelation to many employers. Words like "flex time" or "job sharing" aren't necessarily seen as threats. And
thanks in large part to the Family and Medical Leave Act, corporate America has come to realize that it
actually can survive brief interruptions for family obligations. But the reality is that each new parent - each
new mom, in particular - is helping to write the rules every day.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: December 8, 2003
The House plans to show up today for what looks to be its sole day of work this month; the Senate will put in
an appearance Tuesday. After that, lawmakers will likely leave for a long Christmas break, but unless
Republican leaders change their minds, Congress will leave a major task undone: extending emergency benefits
for the long-term unemployed. The emergency program will begin to phase out starting Dec. 21; as a result, an
estimated half million of the nation's jobless will be without benefits by the time lawmakers come back to
town Jan. 20.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: December 6, 2003
America's gross
domestic product grew at a China-like 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter. The productivity growth and
manufacturing activity numbers released this week were the best in two decades. Corporate profits are at record
highs, consumer confidence is rising, and interest rates remain low. All of which makes November's anemic jobs
report, released yesterday, so disappointing. It was, to be fair, the fourth-consecutive month of added jobs,
and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.9 percent. Still, the 57,000 jobs created in the month were far below
expectations, and fell short of the 200,000-plus needed per month, on average, to reduce the unemployment rate
substantially. The "glass half-empty" report added fuel to the ongoing debate among analysts. The bulls think
that it is only a matter of time before strong job growth kicks in, while pessimistic observers argue that
structural changes -- things like technology-driven productivity gains and the outsourcing of labor --
foreclose any major improvement.
Format: Political Column
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: December 15, 2003
There are
two things I hope will emerge from the capture of Saddam. Like so many others, I hope the effort in Iraq
becomes much more widely shared, internationalized, which would be good not just for Iraq and the U.S. but for
the short- and long-term stability of the entire planet. My second hope is that the Bush administration will
begin to apply the kind of focus, energy and resources that it used in Iraq to the economic difficulties of
ordinary working families here in America. If you just went by recent headlines, you'd have the impression
that the U.S. economy is as bright as the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. The G.D.P. is surging. The
stock market, retail sales and corporate profits are up. So is productivity. The Bush crowd will tell you that
these economic goodies are bound to trickle down. Jobs will become plentiful. Pay envelopes will fatten.
Nirvana is just around the corner. The problem with this scenario is that there are no facts to back it up. The
closer you look at employment in this country, the more convinced you become that the condition of the ordinary
worker is deteriorating, not improving.
Nation of Hypocrites on Labor Rights
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Julius Getman and F. Ray Marshall, Los Angeles Times
Date: December 12, 2003
The rights of workers to organize, to strike
and to bargain collectively are essential attributes of human liberty, recognized as such by treaties, court
opinions, papal encyclicals, government officials and every major international rights treaty. One is the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the United States ratified in 1992 but
has done little to implement. Bush administration officials do not dispute the importance of these rights. They
would probably even agree that sustainable growth and political and social stability all require free and
democratic labor movements. They claim that worker rights are adequately protected and recognized in the U.S.
After all, our basic labor statute, the National Labor Relations Act, sets forth that workers have "the right
to self organization, to form, join or assist labor organizations to bargain collectively ? and to engage in
other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." It also
makes interfering with these rights an unfair labor practice. But the reality is far different. The rights
enunciated almost 70 years ago are constantly challenged and frequently denied. Those who oppose the right of
workers to organize and strike have learned to phrase their opposition in the language of liberty and to
justify it in terms of the best interests of working people. There are few areas where hypocrisy is more firmly
entrenched.
Latino Labor Helps Make Nation Great
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Tisha Tallman & Charlie Flemming, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Date: December 15, 2003
On June 26, 2000, then Texas Gov. George W. Bush, campaigning for the
presidency, underscored the belief held by many Americans regarding Latino immigrants living in the United
States. "Latinos come to the U.S. to seek the same dreams that have inspired millions of others: They want a
better life for their children," said Bush. "Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande. Latinos enrich our
country with faith in God, a strong ethic of work, community and responsibility. We can all learn from the
strength, solidarity and values of Latinos. Immigration is not a problem to be solved; it is the sign of a
successful nation." The statement is particularly relevant now in the Southeast, which has experienced
exponential growth over the last 10 years.
Hard Ceiling: For Many Women, the Glass is Unbreakable
Format: Editorial
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Date: December 16, 2003
The glass
ceiling is still there. After decades of progress toward improving women's education and work experience, a
new congressional study reveals that the wage gap between men and women isn't narrowing -- it's widening.
Officials say there's only one explanation: discrimination. The General Accounting Office, a watchdog arm of
Congress, says that for every dollar men earned in 1983, women earned 80.4 cents. But by the year 2000, that
had actually dropped slightly, to 79.7 cents for women. Between 1983 and 2000, about a quarter of that
difference was due to job tenure, hours worked, education and job flexibility. But the GAO could not blame the
rest of the difference on anything other than discrimination.
Spiraling Wages Can't Continue
Format: Editorial
Source: Pasadena Star-News
Date: December 16, 2003
It
didn't take a 9/11 for Southern California residents of small- and medium-sized cities to appreciate our
police and firefighters. We always have, and how. For at least two decades, we've not only shared the love: we
have showed it by opening our pocketbooks very, very wide. And that's fine. Public-safety officers put their
lives on the line for us. In the old days, the rotten part was that they weren't well-compensated for that
career choice. Now they are, quite extraordinarily so, with excellent salaries from cadets to chiefs, and with
some of the most generous benefit and retirement packages in the history of American employment.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Brooks, New York Times
Date: December 20, 2003
Not long ago, a man who runs a construction company came to the White House to meet with a
senior Bush administration official. He talked economic policy, then was asked how his business was going. He
said things were going well. Orders were up. He'd revamped his I.T. system, and he'd re-engineered his
production process so he'd been able to reduce his work force to 7,200 from 9,800. You can imagine the
reaction as he dribbled out this final bit of good news. For here in a nutshell is the administration's
problem. The economy is doing well, but because of enormous productivity gains, it is not yet producing enough
jobs to sharply reduce unemployment and ensure President Bush's re-election.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: December 23, 2003
Job-related deaths often seem to be isolated instances of carelessness or bad luck. Add them up over
time, however, and they amount to something quite different -- a litany of employer indifference matched only
by the timidity of the federal agency charged with ensuring workplace safety, the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration. In a series of three investigative articles ending today, The Times's David Barstow has
now done the necessary adding up. Between 1982 and 2002, a total of 2,197 workers were killed on the job
because their employers "willfully" violated safety laws. With full knowledge of their responsibilities, they
ignored accepted safety precautions, removed safety devices to speed up production or denied workers protective
gear. Nevertheless, in 93 percent of the 1,242 cases investigated by OSHA -- there were multiple deaths in some
cases, and state agencies investigated others -- the agency declined to seek prosecution.
Boeing: Putting Out The Labor Fires
Format: News Commentary
Source: Stanley Holmes, BusinessWeek
Date: December 29, 2003
On Dec. 16, Boeing's new CEO, Harry C. Stonecipher, stood up in a Seattle convention center and announced
that the company would go ahead with its 7e7 jetliner and build it in nearby Everett, Wash. "The 7e7 is a real
game-changer," he declared as commercial-plane division chief Allan Mulally looked on approvingly. "Now let's
go sell it." What Stonecipher didn't tell the assembled 3,000 Boeing Co. employees was that 10 days earlier,
he had quietly approached the chief of the company's biggest and feistiest union, the International
Association of Machinists, to offer an olive branch. At that meeting, Stonecipher not only told Machinists
President R. Thomas Buffenbarger that Boeing would build the plane in Everett, he went much further -- offering
to work hand in hand with the unions to end decades of bitter labor relations that have sunk employee morale to
an all-time low. Why would Stonecipher, long considered a foe of organized labor, have such a radical change of
heart? Company insiders say it's because he realizes that Boeing's future rests in part on its ability to
deliver the 7e7 cheaper and faster than it has any previous jetliner. An angry Machinists union could disrupt
those plans.
Overweight Employee Isn't Necessarily 'Disabled'
Format: Advice Column
Source: Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, Corvallis Gazette Times
Date: January 5, 2004
Obesity is generally not, by itself, a disability that is
protected under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. This is a tricky area, however, because obesity is
often associated with other conditions that are disabilities, and in some cases courts have held that "morbid
obesity" is a protected medical condition. Also, under the ADA and related Oregon statutes, it is illegal for
an employer to discriminate because of a record of disability or "perceived disability." Some lawsuits for
discrimination based on weight are filed on the basis that the employer regarded the overweight employee as
having a disability -- even if the employee was not in fact "disabled" as defined by law.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 5, 2004
Investors made 2003 the year of living dangerously, shaking off wartime concerns and disclosures of
scandals corrupting the very heart of the marketplace -- from the New York Stock Exchange to the mutual fund
industry -- to break a three-year losing streak. All major stock indices registered their first annual gains
since 1999. The new year's first piece of economic news suggests that the ongoing recovery continues to gather
strength, and should bolster investor confidence. Far surpassing economists' expectations, an influential
monthly index of nationwide manufacturing activity posted its highest number in two decades in December. The
report augurs well for the economy's chances of reducing unemployment in coming months. Jobs have been hard to
come by early on in this recovery. That's not unusual, as businesses are able to meet a surge in consumer
demand with their unsold inventories, or by tapping unused capacity. Moreover, despite a fall in the nation's
unemployment rate to 5.9 percent from 6.4 percent in the second half of 2003, technology-driven productivity
growth and the exporting of many jobs overseas have raised concerns that this time a frothy economy might not
lead to a labor market in which workers feel secure about their prospects and see wages rise briskly.
At Home and Work, Still a Man's World
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Emily Bazelon & Judith Resnik, Los Angeles Times
Date: January 2, 2004
Behind many a successful man is a woman who
manages his family and home life--an arrangement that men rarely appear to reciprocate, even today. A new study
of 160,000 doctoral recipients spotlights the telling difference between men and women in academia: Of the
married men tenured in science or social science, more than half had stay-at-home spouses, compared with 9% of
the married tenured women in those disciplines. In a parallel study, Princeton found that none of the married
women teaching similar subjects had a husband who didn't work. And though 52% of the men had spouses who
worked part time, just 15% of the female faculty did. Anyone who helps run a household-- from buying groceries
and doing the laundry to paying the bills -- knows what this means.
Format: Political Column
Source: E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
Date: January 2, 2004
Here's a hope for 2004: that this is the year when we remember the forgotten. The forgotten are not
rich, powerful or famous. They are not the people who show up at President Bush's fundraisers or get big tax
breaks. They are not Michael Jackson or his lawyers. They are forgotten by definition: Nobody pays any
attention to them. We pay lip service to the forgotten. We praise our men and women in uniform. But how much do
we think about the reservists whose lives have been so disrupted by tours of duty extended far beyond anything
they signed up for? How much attention do we pay to those who have lost limbs in Iraq or Afghanistan?
Politicians who have never served in battle give lovely speeches about patriotism. How often do they think
about the sacrifices being asked of those who carry out their policies? We praise hard work all the time. But
as a society, we do very little for those who work hard every day and receive little reward for what they do.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Joseph E. Stiglitz, New York Times
Date: January 6, 2004
The celebrations of Nafta's 10th anniversary are far more muted than those
involved in its creation might have hoped. In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement has
failed to fulfill the most dire warnings of its opponents and the most fervent expectations of its supporters.
In Mexico, however, the treaty remains controversial and even harmful -- as do America's efforts to liberalize
trade throughout the hemisphere. There is some good news. In America, the "giant sucking sound of jobs being
pulled out of this country" that Ross Perot predicted never quite materialized. The first six years of Nafta
saw unemployment in the United States fall to new lows. (Of course, to most economists there was little basis
for Mr. Perot's worries in the first place. Maintaining full employment is the concern of monetary and fiscal
policy, not of trade policy.) Nafta has brought some benefits to Mexico as well; it was trade with America,
fueled by Nafta -- not the bailout of Wall Street lenders -- that was responsible for Mexico's quick recovery
after the financial crisis of December 1994. But while Mexico benefited in the early days, especially with
exports from factories near the United States border, those benefits have waned, both with the weakening of the
American economy and intense competition from China.
Why Retirement Plans are Falling Short
Format: Advice Column
Source: David R. Francis, Christian Science Monitor
Date: January 5, 2004
By
now, it is no secret: Many American workers don't save adequately for retirement. And in most cases, the
ever-popular 401(k) plans offered by private businesses will not make up for the inadequacy of a Social
Security pension. In short, 401(k)s are failing many workers, especially younger ones - not because these plans
are themselves inadequate, but because Americans are not taking full advantage of them.
Border Politics as Bush Woos 2 Key Groups With Proposal
Format: News Commentary
Source: Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times
Date: January 8, 2004
President Bush's sweeping proposal on Wednesday to give legal status to millions of illegal workers was a
political document as well as an immigration policy and sought to re-establish his credentials as a
compassionate conservative at the starting gate of an election year. White House political advisers have long
talked of the critical importance of Hispanics to Mr. Bush's re-election. But political analysts said that his
latest proposal was also designed to appeal to a much larger political prize, suburban swing voters, who might
see the plan as evidence of a gentler Republican Party. "For a party that's trying to look more inclusive and
welcoming, the proposal has broader thematics that show an openness to America's new immigrants," said Bill
McInturff, a leading Republican pollster.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 8, 2004
President Bush has now waded
into one of the most turbulent and emotional issues of our day: immigration reform. He had barely thrown out
the first hints of a new guest worker program yesterday when it came under a noisy assault from both
conservatives and advocates for immigrants. For simply reopening what has always been a torturous debate in
this country, the president deserves applause. He has recognized that the nation's immigration system is, as
he put it, "broken." At first glance, it is not clear exactly how the Bush plan would clear up a border policy
that has become steadily less rational, humane and secure, as the number of illegal immigrants here grows by
350,000 each year. But the president started at the right place by addressing one of the basic conflicts in
America's immigration policy, that persistent tug of war between keeping the borders secure and enticing
needed low-paid workers to sneak past the immigration agents. Essentially, the White House wants to create a
guest worker program, this one mostly for lower-skilled jobs. Yet for this proposal to be anything more than a
bow to Hispanic voters or a convenient prelude to meetings with the Mexican government, Mr. Bush and his party
have a lot of work to do.
American Jobs but Not the American Dream
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Abraham, New York Times
Date: January 9, 2004
President Bush's
immigration reform proposal, unveiled on Wednesday, is a classic guest worker program on the European model. As
such, it may be doomed from the start: Europe's guest worker programs created as many problems as they solved,
and to this day they remain unpopular. Guest worker programs were widely used in Europe from the 1950's
through the 1970's during a period of extreme labor shortages. Most of the several million Turks and Yugoslavs
in Germany, for example, are there today because of Germany's substantial guest-worker program of that period.
Lesser but substantial numbers of guest workers are also to be found among the Muslim populations of Central
and Northern Europe. The details of the program announced by President Bush have yet to be worked out. But its
outlines are clear. At the invitation of employers, workers will be permitted to stay in the United States for
a limited time without having to wait in its long immigration lines. They would also secure many of the
benefits and protections of American-born workers.
Call It the Family Risk Factor
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jacob S. Hacker, New York Times
Date: January 11, 2004
On the heels of
Friday's glum Labor Department report, Americans have a right to be confused. Soaring growth, stocks and
consumer confidence have heartened investors. And yet, the country remains mired in a jobless recovery. The
reality is that the economy has become more uncertain and anxiety-producing for most of us -- not just over the
past three years, but over the past 30. But by fixating on the day-to-day ups and downs, analysts have largely
missed the more telling trend: an increasing shift of economic risk from government and corporations onto
workers and their families. Signs of this transformation are everywhere: in the laid-off programmer whose stock
options are suddenly worthless, in the former welfare mom who can get a job but not health care or day care, in
the family forced into bankruptcy by the sickness of a child. But these episodes, while viewed with sympathy,
are usually seen in isolation, rather than as parts of a larger problem. This blinkered view stands in the way
of both diagnoses of the causes of the new economic insecurity and prescriptions for its cure.
Can Disabled People Be Forced to Crawl Up the Courthouse Steps?
Format: Editorial
Source: Adam Cohen, New York Times
Date: January 11, 2004
When
George Lane showed up at the Polk County Courthouse with a crushed hip and pelvis, he had a problem. His
hearing was on the second floor, there was no elevator, and the judge said he had better get upstairs. Mr.
Lane, both of whose legs were in casts, somehow managed to get out of his wheelchair and crawl up two flights
of stairs. "On a pain scale of 1 to 10, it was way past 10," he says. While Mr. Lane crawled up, he says, the
judge and other courthouse employees "stood at the top of the stairs and laughed at me." His case was not heard
in the morning session, he says, and at the lunch break he crawled back down. That afternoon, when he refused
to crawl upstairs again, he was arrested for failing to appear, and put in jail. Anyone looking for evidence
that a mean mood has descended on the nation need only stop by the Supreme Court Tuesday for the arguments in
Tennessee v. Lane. Mr. Lane and other disabled people are suing Tennessee under the Americans With Disabilities
Act for failing to make its courthouses accessible. Tennessee, backed by a group of other states, is belittling
the claims, and insisting it has immunity to the suit. Incredibly, there is a real chance the Supreme Court
will side with Tennessee.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Kathleen Hays, CNN
Date: January 12, 2004
How many
grains of salt should we take with the December employment report which showed only 1000 jobs created that
month? The first one is the obvious one that all the skeptics pounced on: There are many other indicators
showing strength -- from the super-fast third quarter GDP growth rate, to the healthy retail shopping during
the holidays, to surveys from manufacturing that show growth. One that gets less attention is an indicator of
small business hiring from the National Federation of Independent Business which took a nice jump up in
December.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 12, 2004
President Bush wants to create
a new class of "temporary" workers in America. As he said in his immigration proposal last week, he expects
these workers to spend several years here, and he would offer them incentives to return permanently to their
home countries. This is a reasonable idea but unduly limited. It is clear that there are low-skilled jobs that
are open, and that there are many eager to come, earn higher wages here and then return. At the same time, some
should be able to seek permanent residency. Moreover, the history of guest workers in America is a brutal one,
filled with abuse by employers and the government as well as legitimate concerns by American workers. The
challenge for the president, the Congress and the leaders of nations that would provide the new class of
workers will be to find a better way to serve their needs, ensuring that those who are temporary are given a
fair, enforceable deal while offering some portion of them the chance to stay and become permanent.
Inequities Persist for Women in Media
Format: News Commentary
Source: Sheila Gibbons, Women's E-News
Date: January 21, 2004
What must it be like
to be a woman reporting on the economy and the national gender pay gap, knowing you're a victim yourself? And
knowing that the longer you work, the less will be your compensation compared with the guy at the next desk?
And that down the road, your pay gap will create a pension gap. After reading the latest report about the
shatter-proof glass ceiling in communications companies--in the December report from the Annenberg Public
Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania--I can only assume that plenty of female employees out there
are entertaining such bitter thoughts.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 20, 2004
Some ominous fine print has
turned up in the Bush administration's promise to help long-suffering low-wage workers get the overtime pay
they have long been denied. As initially presented, the White House estimated that its new rules governing
nonunion workers would mean $895 million in guaranteed time-and-a-half pay for 1.3 million of the nation's
poorest-paid workers. That inviting proposal was coupled with a far more controversial plan to allow employers
greater leeway to close out overtime pay for a midrange of white-collar professionals by designating them as
managers. That part was questionable enough -- critics warned that it could cut earnings and force unpaid
overtime on millions of workers, and even the Republican-led Congress became leery. But now, in delving into
the sweetener half of the plan covering the lowest-paid, The Associated Press has discovered that the Labor
Department's advisory includes suggestions to employers about ways they can keep their costs from actually
going up.
Coffee Shops Are The New Workplace
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Andy Letendre, Hartford Courant
Date: January 20, 2004
The rise in unemployment and the proliferation of coffee shops are no
coincidence. The army of out-placed professionals turned bedroom consultants has latched onto these coffee
emporiums in recent years as ideal alternative offices. Just look around the next time you stop for a cup of
Joe at your favorite coffee spot. You'll find your regulars getting an eye-opening dose of caffeine on the way
to work. But you'll also see klatches of former business executives, worn briefcases by their sides,
cellphones atop their tables, notepads spread before them, ready for a business meeting or just some time away
from the isolation of the bedroom workplace. It's their office away from home.
The Workplace: Fear Not Europe's Migrants
Format: News Commentary
Source: Doreen Carvajal, International Herald Tribune
Date: January 21, 2004
If America
considers itself a nation of immigrants, then Europe is the land that bid them goodbye. And so West European
countries have never developed a culture entirely comfortable with newcomers, even from other European
countries. Recent immigration policies reflect that ambivalence as the European Union prepares to expand by 10
countries in May. But despite these insecurities, new migrants from Eastern Europe offer Western countries a
potent labor market strategy to help resolve critical demographic issues like declining and aging
populations.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jeff Madrick, New York Times
Date: January 22, 2004
President's
Bush's recent proposal to grant temporary legal status to illegal immigrants is not yet fleshed out enough to
judge how effective it will be. Six million to eight million illegal workers would qualify, as would future
immigrants hired by companies that could show that Americans were not willing to take the jobs. One especially
serious concern is that immigrant workers will be tied indefinitely to the company that sponsors them. Teresa
Ghilarducci, an economist at Notre Dame, warns that this would give the company undue power over wages and
other worker rights, and a result could be a permanent class of low-wage employees. But if the Bush plan raises
more questions than it answers, it is still an encouraging first step that focuses needed attention on an issue
that will become more urgent in coming years.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post
Date: January 22, 2004
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) was not the only loser in the Iowa caucuses. Organized
labor, especially the nation's manufacturing and industrial unions, which poured huge resources into Iowa to
support their longtime ally, suffered an equally embarrassing defeat. In addition, the public-sector unions
that broke ranks and supported former Vermont governor Howard Dean saw their candidate finish behind Sens. John
F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.), who had little official union support. Labor organizations backing
Gephardt and Dean brought hundreds of organizers into Iowa, where about 50,000 union members are registered
Democrats eligible to vote in the caucuses. Despite that effort, a plurality of union members, 29 percent,
backed Kerry. Dean and Edwards tied for second place with 22 percent each, and Gephardt got only 19 percent,
according to surveys of caucus-goers.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: January 23, 2004
Either the president
doesn't get it, or he is deliberately ignoring the hard times that have enveloped millions of Americans on his
watch. "For the sake of job growth," said Mr. Bush, to the loud applause of the Congressional bobbleheads at
his State of the Union address, "the tax cuts you passed should be made permanent." Job growth? That's the
weirdest thing Mr. Bush has said since he told a CNN discussion group, "As governor of Texas, I have set high
standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards." Nearly 2.5 million jobs have been lost since
Mr. Bush became president, and the most recent employment statistics have made a mockery of the claim that tax
cuts for the rich would be the engine of job growth for the middle and working classes.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 30, 2004
The pernicious joblessness
bedeviling the nation is spawning a new category of Americans dubbed "exhaustees": the hundreds of thousands of
hard-core unemployed who have run through state and federal unemployment aid. According to the latest
estimates, close to two million Americans, futilely hunting for work while scrambling for economic sustenance,
will join the ranks of exhaustees in the next six months. They represent a record flood of unemployed
individuals with expired benefits -- the highest in 30 years -- who are plainly desperate for help. President
Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are doing nothing to help these people. Washington showed no qualms
last month in allowing the expiration of the emergency federal program that had offered an extra 13 weeks of
help to those who exhausted state benefits. Historically, such help has been continued in periods of continuing
job shortages. A year ago, the aid was extended an extra year by Republican leaders. But now, the G.O.P.'s
election-year talk is of a recovery rooted in the tax cuts weighted for affluent America. Tending to the
exhaustees clearly mars that message.
Navigating the Politics of Talking Politics at Work
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Whitemyer, Boston Globe
Date: February 1, 2004
Never talk about politics or religion among friends or coworkers. It's sound advice based on the
simple notion that those subjects are the ones for which people harbor the most hardcore passion and
conviction. This rule of thumb seems especially relevant in today's workplace, where offending a colleague
with strong opinions can have drastic consequences on your career, or at the very least, your daily peace of
mind. Still, with the recent New Hampshire primary, Boston hosting the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and
a presidential race this fall, there's plenty to keep tongues wagging and the area around the office water
cooler humming. It's also easy to see how office banter regarding current events can boil over.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Wendy W. Ghannam, Media Monitors Network
Date: February 2, 2004
It's certainly been a weather-impacted autumn here in the Nation's Capital, and the Bush
Administration definitely has "egg on its face" which won't readily wash off!! Certain developments have
occurred in the political arena surrounding allegations of sexism and outright management deviousness going on
inside the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), at it downtown Wash. DC location and its various
affiliate offices worldwide. USAID, a federal agency which is supposed to be spearheading and rectifying
abysmal quality-of-life circumstances relevant to Third World women and children--and the countries in which
they live, is quite literally not "abiding by its own regulatory mission scope" with its own stateside female
workforce members. In other words, USAID is "shafting" its working women.
The Glint of the Revolving Door
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: February 5, 2004
While Washington was engrossed
in a ricin scare and the presidential primaries this week, one of the most powerful members of the House of
Representatives quietly announced that he was heading for the private sector. Representative Billy Tauzin of
Louisiana, the chairman of House Energy and Commerce Committee and the chief architect of the new Medicare
prescription drug law, will now be looking for employment. It's a tribute to the ethically challenged culture
of the nation's Capitol that speculation about his next job centers on lobbying for the pharmaceuticals
industry. If the pharmaceutical industry is indeed where Mr. Tauzin is destined, he could easily claim to have
already earned his salary. The Medicare bill he championed is a lucrative windfall for the drug makers.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: February 9, 2004
The question: What
can we believe? The president is genial enough, but it might be time for a bipartisan truth squad to follow him
around, sorting out the facts from his musings, speculations, fantasies and mis-rememberings. Here at home, the
president has been as wrong about jobs as he was about weapons of mass destruction. More than two million jobs
have vanished on Mr. Bush's watch and the recent uptick in job creation has, by all accounts, been meager. The
tax cuts signed into law by Mr. Bush in May 2003 were euphemistically dubbed the Jobs and Growth Act. Workers
are still waiting for the jobs.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert C. Pozen, New York Times
Date: February 7, 2004
In its fiscal
2005 budget, the Bush administration proposes to encourage Americans to save more by creating two private
savings accounts. These new entitlements may be worthwhile, but they are also expensive. Congress should not
approve them unless the president also agrees to Social Security reform. The new accounts, called the
Retirement Savings Account and the Lifetime Savings Account, would allow Americans to save for retirement or
for major purchases, like a home or a college education. Both accounts would set a maximum contribution of
$5,000 per year, allow earnings to build tax-free and permit tax-free withdrawals after a specified age, number
of years or for a particular purpose. Most important, these tax benefits would be available without the income
limits that apply now to I.R.A.'s. Encouraging middle- and high-wage workers, who would be the most likely
users of these accounts, to save more for retirement is good policy -- but only if accompanied by an effort to
slow the growth of Social Security benefits.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: February 7, 2004
It's a presidential election
year, so the economy is being described as both feast and famine. The Bush administration would have you
believe that the good times are roaring back, while Democrats paint a bleak picture of a broken nation, about
to export its last few jobs to India and China. Neither portrait is accurate or conducive to a sound policy
debate. Though there is a real recovery under way, the growth has yet to be translated into an equally robust
expansion of corporate payrolls. The economy added 112,000 nonfarm jobs for the month -- a decent number, but
far below expectations. The administration, which has presided over the loss of some two million jobs,
predicted last fall that the economy would soon be creating some 200,000 new jobs a month. That target has not
been reached, despite overall economic growth of 6 percent in the second half of 2003. The pace of growth is
slowing, in fact, and public anxieties about the job market remain high.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: February 10, 2004
Last Friday the
Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered yet another disappointing employment report. Since there's a lot of
confusion on this subject, let's talk about the numbers. The bureau actually produces two estimates of
employment, one based on a survey that asks each employer in a random sample how many workers are on its
payroll, the other on a survey that asks each household in a random sample how many of its members are
employed. Most experts regard the employer survey as more reliable; even in the midst of the recovery, that
survey has contained nothing but bad news. The household numbers look better, but not particularly good. For
technical reasons involving seasonal adjustment, many economists expected the January report to show a one-time
bounce in both measures. Yet employment as measured by the payroll survey rose by only 112,000 -- well short of
the increase needed just to keep up with a growing population. If employment were rising as rapidly as it did
when the economy was emerging from the 1990-1991 recession, we'd be seeing monthly numbers more like 275,000.
Taking a longer view, the payroll numbers tell a dismal story.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times
Date: February 11, 2004
The topic
today is the growing furor over the outsourcing of jobs to India -- and, more broadly, educational lapses here.
One reason for the jobless recovery in the U.S. is that it doesn't make much sense to have an American
radiologist, say, examine your X-ray when it can be done so much more cheaply in New Delhi. Indeed, why should
computer software be written, taxes prepared, pathology specimens examined, financial analysis done or homework
graded in the U.S., when all of that can be done more cheaply in Bangalore? I.B.M. is moving thousands of jobs
to India and China, and Reuters says it will have Indian reporters cover some U.S. companies from there. All
this is unsettling. But to me the alarm seems overwrought -- and dangerous, for it is likely to fuel calls for
protectionism. A dozen years ago, there was a similar panic about high-tech jobs going abroad, and people said
that Asia would be making computer chips while Americans produced potato chips.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: February 16, 2004
One of the main
reasons for the decline in President Bush's credibility is the disconnect between the rosy economic scenarios
his administration keeps touting and the much more dismal real-life experience of millions of American
families. Mr. Bush likes to say, "America's economy is strong and getting stronger." He recently boasted,
"Since May 2003 we have seen the economy grow at its fastest pace in nearly 20 years." He predicted that
prosperity would soon "reach every corner of America." The president needs to get out more. He could visit the
working men and women across the state of South Carolina who have watched the factories and the mills close and
their jobs vanish like lights in a blackout. He could chat with the people lining up at soup kitchens and food
pantries from Harlem to Oklahoma and beyond. He could take a tour of the Pacific Northwest or Silicon Valley,
listening to families that have been devastated by the information technology bust and the outsourcing of
high-tech jobs.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Carl Pope and Ron Gettelfinger, New York Times
Date: February 18, 2004
The Bush administration has issued a proposal that would weaken one of the
nation's most successful environmental laws. The administration's plan would change current automotive fuel
economy standards and allow a loophole that would hurt the environment, auto workers and the economy. While
many details of the plan remain vague, and any changes would not take effect for several years, the
administration has begun soliciting public comment on its proposal. Under current law, automakers are required
to meet an average fuel economy standard for their fleets of cars and light trucks. They can make vehicles that
fall below the average so long as they make enough that exceed it. By requiring an average fuel economy of 27.5
miles per gallon for cars and 20.7 for light trucks, current standards save more than 2.8 million barrels of
oil per day while reducing heat-trapping global warming emissions by nearly 600 million tons per year. At the
same time, workers and communities benefit because auto companies must produce small cars in the United States
to balance out their production of larger vehicles. This fleetwide approach gives companies flexibility in
designing and producing vehicles.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post
Date: February 18, 2004
Two previous columns on "offshoring" parted with free-trade orthodoxy on two fronts. First, that corporate
executives, egged on relentlessly by Wall Street to cut costs and increase earnings, may be overdoing the
offshoring thing to the detriment of their firms' long-term competitiveness. Second, that the standard
free-trade defense of offshoring fails to take into account the skill levels of the jobs being lost, the nature
of competition in high-tech markets and the impact of suddenly adding more than a billion new workers to global
labor markets. Now comes the hard part -- figuring out what to do about it.
Generational Warfare in the Workplace
Format: Political Column
Source: Dale McFeatters, Naples Daily News
Date: February 19, 2004
Since I count myself among their number, I take an interest in the status of older
workers. More and more, older workers seem to be getting pushed out the door one way or another -- layoffs,
buyouts, outsourcing, mandatory retirements. It is not pretty. A survey of senior executives by a job-placement
service firm found 82 percent believed age bias was "a serious problem" -- and these are people who have a job,
not desperate older workers looking for one. "So many 50-something managers have suffered layoffs and early
retirement that survivors in this age bracket feel pressured to look and act as young as possible to hang onto
their posts," reports The Wall Street Journal.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: February 20, 2004
The classic story of
the American economy is a saga about an ever-expanding middle class that systematically absorbs the
responsible, hard-working families from the lower economic groups. It's about the young people of each
successive generation doing better than their parents' generation. The plotline is supposed to be a proud
model for the rest of the world. One of the reasons there is so much unease among voters this year is the fact
that this story no longer rings so true. Books based on its plotline are increasingly being placed in the
stacks labeled "fantasy." The middle class is in trouble. Globalization and outsourcing are hot topics in this
election season because so many middle-class Americans, instead of having the luxury of looking ahead to a
brighter future for the next generation, are worried about slipping into a lower economic segment themselves.
This is happening in the middle of an economic expansion, which should tell us that the terrain has changed.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times
Date: February 22, 2004
For
more than a year, Bush administration officials and Republicans in Congress have seized on an intriguing
statistical puzzle to suggest that job creation in the United States may be much stronger than it appears at
first glance. The puzzle is the enormous divergence between the two surveys that are used by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics to measure job creation and unemployment. The payroll survey, which is based on a monthly poll
of 400,000 employers, shows a loss of more than two million jobs since 2001. The household survey, based on
questions posed to people in 50,000 households, shows an increase of more than 500,000 jobs over the same
period. If the payroll survey is correct, Mr. Bush is on track to be the first president since Herbert Hoover
to complete a term in office with fewer jobs than when he started. If the household survey is correct, Mr. Bush
can claim credit for creating jobs despite the blows of a recession, terrorist attacks and two wars.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: February 23, 2004
Five months into fiscal 2004, the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that it is
no longer accepting applications for H-1B "business" visas, which are issued to educated foreign professionals.
The number of visas is capped, by Congress, at 65,000. As of last week, 65,000 visas had already been granted.
For the past few years, larger numbers of visas were issued -- 78,000 in fiscal 2002, and 79,000 in fiscal 2003
-- because the cap had been temporarily raised in the late 1990s to a possible 195,000 to accommodate the
demand for foreign computer and tech workers. The raised cap then lapsed, but the demand, while never as high
as some had predicted, has not lapsed along with it. The holders of H-1B visas are the forgotten face of the
foreign work force. By definition, they make nonsense of the prejudice that all foreign workers are low-wage
service workers who speak little English.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
Date: February 22, 2004
We grew up
with the hippies in the 1960's. Thanks to the high-tech revolution, many of us became yuppies in the 1980's.
And now, fasten your seat belt, because you may soon lose your job to a "zippie" in the 2000's. "The Zippies
Are Here," declared the Indian weekly magazine Outlook. Zippies are this huge cohort of Indian youth who are
the first to come of age since India shifted away from socialism and dived headfirst into global trade, the
information revolution and turning itself into the world's service center. Outlook calls India's zippies
"Liberalization's Children," and defines one as "a young city or suburban resident, between 15 and 25 years of
age, with a zip in the stride. Belongs to generation Z. Can be male or female, studying or working. Oozes
attitude, ambition and aspiration. Cool, confident and creative. Seeks challenges, loves risks and shuns
fears." Indian zippies carry no guilt about making money or spending it. They are, says one Indian analyst
quoted by Outlook, destination driven, not destiny driven; outward, not inward, looking; upwardly mobile, not
stuck-in-my-station-in-life.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: February 23, 2004
Welcome to the 21st
century. The landscape has changed. We're in a new hypercompetitive worldwide economy, driven by breathtaking
advances in technology. Men and women are being added to the global work force by the hundreds of millions. In
this dynamic, potentially very treacherous labor market, few people are looking out for the interests of the
American worker. The very concept of the traditional high-paid American job, with its generous health and
pension benefits and paid vacations, is at risk. Senator Charles Schumer of New York sees the economic changes
as a paradigm shift. In an era of high-bandwith communications and the free flow of capital, most goods and
services can be produced or performed anywhere in the world. And with highly educated workers in countries like
China and India ready and able to perform sophisticated tasks at a fraction of the pay earned by Americans,
there are fewer and fewer reasons for those American jobs not to take flight. In light of these changes, said
Senator Schumer, we should at least be asking some tough questions about the real-world effects of free trade
as we've known it.
Workers' Rights Are Being Rolled Back
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post
Date: February 25, 2004
While the Bush administration is gung-ho for democracy in Iraq and Zimbabwe, there is one place it wants to be
sure it never sees the light of day: the American workplace. I am talking here about a right that most
Americans thought they won back in 1935 -- the right to form unions and bargain collectively. Over the years,
that right has been whittled away by legislation, poked with holes by appeals courts and reduced to irrelevancy
by a well-meaning bureaucracy that has let itself be intimidated by political and legal thuggery. As a result,
any company willing to use intimidation and delaying tactics will never have to sign a first contract with a
union, even if employees really want one.
Online commentary on Steven Pearlstein's column:
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2282-2004Feb24.html">The Lost Right to Unionize
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: February 27, 2004
You can't blame
the Democrats for making the most of the Bush administration's message malfunction on trade and jobs. When the
president's top economist suggests, even hypothetically, considering hamburger-flipping a form of
manufacturing, it's a golden opportunity to accuse the White House of being out of touch with the concerns of
working Americans. ("Will special sauce now be counted as a durable good?" Representative John Dingell asks.)
And the accusation sticks, because it's true. But the Democratic presidential candidates have to walk a
tightrope. To exploit the administration's vulnerability, they must offer relief to threatened workers. But
they also have to avoid falling into destructive protectionism.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
Date: February 29, 2004
Indians are
so hospitable. I got an ovation the other day from a roomful of Indian 20-year-olds just for reading perfectly
the following paragraph: "A bottle of bottled water held 30 little turtles. It didn't matter that each turtle
had to rattle a metal ladle in order to get a little bit of noodles, a total turtle delicacy. The problem was
that there were many turtle battles for less than oodles of noodles." I was sitting in on an "accent
neutralization" class at the Indian call center 24/7 Customer. The instructor was teaching the would-be Indian
call center operators to suppress their native Indian accents and speak with a Canadian one -- she teaches
British and U.S. accents as well, but these youths will be serving the Canadian market. Since I'm originally
from Minnesota, near Canada, and still speak like someone out of the movie "Fargo," I gave these young Indians
an authentic rendition of "30 Little Turtles," which is designed to teach them the proper Canadian
pronunciations. Hence the rousing applause.
Attire Too Sexy? Employers Can Ban It
Format: Advice Column
Source: Carol Kleiman, Chicago Tribune
Date: March 4, 2004
Ban on "sexy" dressing: "Courts around the country, mostly federal courts
governing states such as Illinois and California, are permitting businesses to ban what employers call "sexy"
dressing in the workplace," reports Eric Matusewitch, deputy director of the New York City Equal Employment
Practices Commission. And what is "sexy?" Matusewitch, who has worked on equal employment opportunity issues
for 20 years, says the courts put it this way: "It's considered attire that is particularly revealing and of
extreme fit, such as spandex, and also use of excessive makeup." In response to charges by female employees
that such codes discriminate against women, Matusewitch points out that "courts are holding that employers have
a right to set reasonable dress and appearance codes.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Kathleen Hays, CNN/Money
Date: March 4, 2004
The
monthly chain store numbers today are confirming what we've been seeing -- and writing about -- in the recent
weekly numbers from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC): a nice jump in spending at department
stores, specialty retailers and discounters in the month of February. One conclusion easy to reach is that with
many Americans getting bigger tax refunds (an average increase of $500 is expected) or at the very least
sending smaller tax payments to the government, people are feeling extra change jangling in their pockets and
spending it! The harder factor to gauge is the labor market. Jobless claims have come down to around 350,000 a
week, a level considered consistent with improvement in the employment outlook but not with out-and-out
healing.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: March 4, 2004
Nobody can say for sure how many U.S. jobs will be "offshored" to places such as India, but the best estimates
are around 3.5 million between now and 2015. If that number sounds scary, try this one: The total number of
U.S. jobs destroyed over the same period is likely to be well over 300 million. Capitalism eliminates jobs
constantly, but except during recessions it creates new ones even more quickly: In 1999 alone, 33 million jobs
were destroyed and 36 million created. In short, the loss of a few hundred thousand jobs per year to offshoring
is a small part of the churning that goes on in the U.S. labor market. Precisely because every job loss is
painful, it makes more sense to think of ways of stimulating employment generally than to craft legislation to
address 1 percent of the problem.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times
Date: March 6, 2004
The business
world finally cracked down this week on one of the world's biggest welfare moochers, dragging Michael Eisner
out of the chairman's seat at the Walt Disney Company. Probably the only thing that allows Mr. Eisner to hold
on to the job of chief executive is that he has been so incompetent -- or shrewd? -- that he has failed to
cultivate not only profits, but also a successor. The larger question is not why the Disney board allowed Mr.
Eisner to run the company nearly into the ground. Rather, it is why it has paid him $285 million since 1996 to
do that. You'd think that the board could have found a chairman to mismanage Disney for only, say, $2 million
a year. But corporate boards routinely overpay for mediocrity. Indeed, while corporate America ruthlessly
applies capitalism to shave costs in acquiring paper clips or secretaries, the top executive suites tend to be,
along with North Korea, the world's last enclaves of socialism.
Productivity and Jobs: The Political Vagaries
Format: News Commentary
Source: Daniel Gross, New York Times
Date: March 7, 2004
If you're a socialite, you can never be too thin or too rich. And if you're an economy, you can never be too
productive. Productivity - the measure of how much labor it takes to create a product or service - is a measure
of our collective wealth. An economy that can do more with the same amount of human resources enjoys a higher
standard of living in the long run. And for the American economy, the recent productivity boom has been a
competitive advantage. Nonfarm productivity rose 4.4 percent in 2003 after a 5.0 percent gain in 2002. But in
the short term, elevated productivity can mean slower job creation. And now that political consultants are
watching monthly jobs figures with the same intensity as economists do, many people in Washington are wishing
that American companies would stop being so darn efficient. As of January, some 2.3 million payroll jobs have
been lost in the United States since January 2001. If they are not regained by next January, President Bush
will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to see the number of payroll jobs decline during his four-year
term.
Fly High Above the Battlefield
Format: Editorial
Source: Stanley B. Greenberg, New York Times
Date: March 7, 2004
While John
Kerry was vanquishing his Democratic opponents and rising in the national polls, the Republican Party was
arming for battle. The president's campaign broadcast its first television advertisements last week, and they
depicted George Bush as a steady leader. Mr. Kerry and the Democrats, meanwhile, will be deciding in the next
few weeks which issues to embrace in the coming campaign. Republicans have already begun fighting a culture
war; Democrats have begun fighting a class war. One party is talking about gay marriage, the other about
corporate greed. But Mr. Kerry should not settle for a campaign waged on such narrow terms. In 2004, Americans
are eager to be engaged in matters of greater significance both to the nation and to their everyday lives. This
election will be decided by those voters who care about more than just this debate -- those who do not like
either Rosie O'Donnell or Kenneth Lay. To break the current political impasse and appeal to these voters, Mr.
Kerry should portray this election as a choice between different visions of America. His campaign will surely
reflect Democrats' middle-class sensibilities, and be aligned with them, but Mr. Kerry should also take up the
public's yearning for opportunity, community, loyalty and patriotism.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: March 8, 2004
The Bush crowd
couldn't have been more pleased with the timing of the Martha Stewart verdict on Friday afternoon. The big
news heading into the weekend was almost guaranteed to be the awful jobs report released by the Labor
Department Friday morning. The White House needed a world-class distraction and the Stewart jury, eager to wrap
things up before the weekend, obliged. It strolled in, as if on cue, with a verdict of guilty on all counts.
Distractions don't get much bigger. The Labor Department report was as grim as faces on a bread line. Despite
all the president's promises, the economy added just 21,000 jobs last month. No jobs were added by the private
sector. The 21,000 additional jobs were all government hires. The report also showed that job growth in
December and January was worse than previously believed. The January tally was revised from 112,000 to 97,000.
The December count dropped from 16,000 to a pathetic 8,000.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: March 9, 2004
Despite a string of
dismal employment reports, the administration insists that its economic program, which has relied entirely on
tax cuts focused on the affluent, will produce big job gains any day now. Should we believe these promises?
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: March 9, 2004
At
the height of the late 1990s boom, corporate-governance advocates used to travel the country, pleading with
U.S. attorneys to prosecute executives who had defrauded shareholders. The prosecutors generally retorted that
corporate malfeasance was too unglamorous to justify the effort of trying complex cases. Now, however,
executives from Enron to Adelphia to WorldCom have been hauled into court, and the examples may deter future
theft from investors. But pendulums that swing one way generally swing back. Hence the importance of two
regulatory debates that come to a head today and tomorrow. Today's action takes place at the audit oversight
board created as a result of the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley law passed in 2002. The board is set to vote on a rule
that requires firms to strengthen their internal financial controls and requires outside auditors to verify
that these controls are robust. Of all the provisions in the Sarbanes-Oxley law, this may be the most expensive
to firms; according to one complaining report, companies with revenue over $5 billion expect to pay an average
of $4.7 million in the first year of implementation. Lobbyists have pressured the audit board to relax the
rule, even though the compliance costs look reasonable when set against the cost to investors of dishonest
accounting and even though compliance will grow cheaper once companies put in place the financial controls that
they should have adopted long ago, without regulatory prompting. To its credit, the oversight board has stood
firm against the lobbyists. Today's vote is expected to go in favor of financial honesty.
Opinion: How Can We Breed or Keep Jobs at Home?
Format: Political Column
Source: Robert Landauer, Oregonian
Date: March 9, 2004
Job exports will be a hot topic until Election Day on Nov. 2. Here are
authorities who replied to my request for ideas that would allow the connected issues of domestic job
generation and offshore outsourcing of jobs to serve the long-term interests of the U.S. economy and its
workers.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Kathleen Hays, CNN/Money
Date: March 9, 2004
We all
know that consumer spending makes up about two-thirds of the nation's gross domestic product (the sum of all
spending basically), and that's why it's so important to the economic and financial outlook. Right now, the
outlook isn't bad, but it isn't all that great. Chain store sales fell by 0.3% in the week ended March 6
after being flat the previous week, according to the survey done by Mike Niemira at the International Council
of Shopping Centers. That sounds pretty lackluster until you look at the year-over-year comparison, up 7.0%.
The main problem with the year-over-year comparison is that last year we were on the verge of the war in Iraq
and consumers were paralyzed, waiting for the conflict to start, wondering how bad it would be, fearing how
long it might last. On a less dramatic note, warmer weather helped sales with the nation's average temperature
about ten degrees higher than usual. The big question is where are we heading if jobs aren't picking up?
A Mother's Place Is in the Women's Movement
Format: News Commentary
Source: Elizabeth Bauchner , Women's e-News
Date: March 10, 2004
The 1970s
women's liberation movement, or Second Wave of Feminism, necessarily focused on getting women out of the house
and into the paid work force. That movement largely ignored the needs of mothers regardless if they worked
outside the home or did not. The unintended result of that is that mothers now find it harder than ever to
provide meaningful care for their young children. That should be corrected now, while the political sun shines
during campaign season. The women's movement should rally itself and fight for mothers' rights and put child
care into the spotlight. Mothers should let our policy makers know what we want and need.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Todd Buchholz, New York Times
Date: March 19, 2004
The gross domestic
product is going up, but hiring looks sluggish. Credit cards bills go unpaid, but big-screen TV's are flying
off the shelves. With statistics so contradictory, maybe economists should ditch their spreadsheets for dart
boards. Let's leave aside all the estimates and extrapolations for a moment and ask a simple question that may
help cut through all the confusion: if you were a manager, why would you hire a human being instead of a
machine? Humans get sick. They daydream. And they take coffee breaks. The cost of capital equipment, meanwhile,
from laptop computers to lathes, has plummeted since 1995. Moreover, the cost of leasing and financing new
tools has fallen to the lowest levels since, well, before there were laptops and lathes. At the same time,
federal tax policy has been tilted toward capital spending, with taxes on most dividends and capital gains
falling to 15 percent. Changes in the tax law two years ago allow small businesses to write off $100,000 in new
equipment immediately, while big firms get a temporary 50 percent write-off. People, however, remain relatively
expensive.
Questioning Free Trade Mathematics
Format: News Commentary
Source: Jeff Madrick, New York Times
Date: March 18, 2004
Free trade theory
has a growing number of detractors, and one of their traditional concerns has understandably moved to center
stage in this presidential election year. How much has the exporting of jobs to foreign nations contributed to
the lack of jobs and the absence of wage growth in the current expansion at home? The standard tenets of free
trade theory strongly support the case for outsourcing. Generally, as business finds cheaper ways to make
products, it reduces prices to consumers. And some businesses may not survive unless they can reduce labor
costs. In general, most economists believe that the "consumer surplus" that results from lower prices far
outweighs the cost of lost jobs or lower wages. In other words, there are many more winners than losers. But
recent research suggests that the magnitude of this advantage has been exaggerated. Also, the plight of the
losers has clearly been sorely neglected in the economic literature.
How Dangerous Employees Continue to Get New Jobs
Format: Editorial
Source: USA Today
Date: March 23, 2004
Co-workers often complained about
Charles Cullen, a nurse suspected of killing dozens of patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania with drug
overdoses. He'd been fired by several hospitals and nursing homes, left others under a cloud and had known
mental problems that included three suicide attempts. Prosecutors investigated him about suspicious deaths
dating back to 1993, but no charges were filed. Instead, Cullen easily found new nursing jobs. Why? Former
employers didn't share their suspicions with persons checking references, and state health agencies couldn't
legally reveal pending inquiries about him. As a result, Cullen wasn't arrested until December, after
authorities found that at least two patients at a Somerville, N.J., hospital received overdoses of drugs that
hadn't been prescribed. Cullen was charged with murder and attempted murder. Detectives say he admitted
killing 30 to 40 patients during 16 years to ''alleviate their suffering.'' Cullen's case is an extreme
example. But reticence by businesses and governments that give job references is standard.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Newt Gingrich, Washington Post
Date: March 25, 2004
The Democrats think they've found the perfect one-sided debate by presenting themselves as
the party that opposes "outsourcing" of American jobs. They hope the Republican Party will be dumb enough to
take the bait and be the side that favors outsourcing. That kind of binary argument, in which the Republicans
take the role of defending the loss of jobs overseas, would be a dead loser for the GOP. Republicans must set
up a new, winning argument by focusing not on the loss of old jobs but on the creation of new ones.
It's Jobs, Stupid, and Tax Cuts, Too
Format: News Commentary
Source: John Mercurio, CNN
Date: March 26, 2004
With his party $11 million
richer from last night's unity dinner, John Kerry travels to Michigan today to take a whack at the soft spot
in President Bush's economic recovery -- jobs. In the first major policy address since he clinched his
party's nod, Kerry hits back at new Bush ads that claim Kerry has backed some 350 tax hikes in the Senate,
while he offers a plan to create 10 million jobs by 2009. In the first of three speeches he'll deliver in
coming weeks, Kerry today appears at Wayne University in Detroit to outline a tax reform plan designed to
encourage job creation. In the second speech, which sources say is scheduled for sometime early next month,
Kerry will unveil his plan to give Americans the education and training and skills they need to fill and create
21st century jobs. In the third speech, Kerry will outline his plan to restore fiscal discipline and confidence
in the American economy.
Community of Character: Fairness in the Workplace
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Herbert Hughes, Cordele Dispatch (GA)
Date: March 26, 2004
How many times have you heard someone working with you exclaim: "It's just not fair"? Have you ever
stopped and thought about what's fair and what isn't? It can become quite confusing. What's fair to one
won't seem fair to another. Being fair would mean that everyone shared equally in all things, and we know that
doesn't happen. Some people will always do more work than others. Some will always be asked to do more than
others. Is that fair? It depends. Is the one doing the extra work being compensated for it? If so, you could
say it was fair. As an employee, what can you expect in the way of fairness? Here are a few thoughts: You
should have the same opportunity for raises and promotions as any employee. If you do the same quantity of
work, the same quality of work and have the same qualifications as another employee you should expect to
receive the same privileges and compensation as that employee. You should be treated as an equal with that
employee. That's all you can ask.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: April 1, 2004
The Age Discrimination in
Employment Act was intended to protect older workers from bias. Federal courts, however, have frequently given
the law an unduly narrow interpretation, leaving older Americans vulnerable to unfair treatment. This week, the
Supreme Court accepted a case that can rectify this problem -- if it decides that older workers can rely on the
same burden of proof as plaintiffs in cases of race and sex bias. Doing otherwise would leave millions of
working Americans who are 40 or older vulnerable to mistreatment. The age-bias law's text almost exactly
tracks the language of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars race and sex discrimination. Under
Title VII, plaintiffs can make their case by showing "disparate impact" -- that is, that an employer's actions
have an unequal impact on their group. After such a showing, the employer has the burden of proving that its
supposedly neutral policy serves a legitimate purpose. The disparate-impact standard is important because it is
often impossible to prove an employer's intent to discriminate.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Joseph Loconte , New York Times
Date: April 1, 2004
The United
Nations Commission on Human Rights, the world's most important political body devoted to human rights
concerns, is halfway through its deliberations here. Each year delegates from the 53 member states meet for six
weeks to name the worst offending countries and adopt resolutions condemning their abuses. For years, however,
the commission instead has been a haven for rogue governments -- who get elected to the body in order to shield
themselves from international scrutiny and criticism. The failure of international leadership has become
increasingly intolerable, especially in an age when terrorism and repressive regimes go hand in hand. Indeed,
the Commission on Human Rights no longer can be counted on to "name and shame" even the most egregious
violators.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Brooks, New York Times
Date: April 3, 2004
If you were
obsessed with the political campaign over the past year, you would have gotten the impression that there's no
such thing as a service sector of the economy -- it's all manufacturing -- and that the U.S. is getting
trounced by China and India in the competition for global business. That's a distorted view of reality. Since
1995, the U.S. has enjoyed a productivity renaissance. The McKinsey Global Institute breaks the economy down
into 60 sectors. U.S. workers are the most productive on earth in at least 50 of them. Productivity gains cause
standard of living increases. Productivity gains lead to employment gains. If history is any judge,
yesterday's excellent job numbers could mark the beginning of another surge in job creation. As William W.
Lewis, a former McKinsey partner, writes in "The Power of Productivity," about half the U.S. productivity gains
have occurred in just two sectors, wholesale and retail trade. We've gotten really efficient at getting stuff
from the hands of manufacturers to the hands of consumers. These innovations have had more important effects on
how people really live than anything done in Washington.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: April 6, 2004
As the Bush administration
focuses attention on ex-offenders with its modest program to help them return to the community, an eye-opening
new study shows that the effort will require a lot more than re-entry programs. Not only do all 50 states
continue to punish and marginalize convicts after they leave jail, but most also have laws that punish millions
of people for crimes for which they were never convicted. The new study, from the Legal Action Center, a
criminal justice policy group, identifies laws in all 50 states that hamper former offenders' ability to
re-enter society. These excessively punitive laws, which must be modified or repealed before ex-convicts have a
real chance at jobs, homes and mainstream lives, bar them from scores of professions that require state
licenses but are unrelated to their crimes. The study, which will soon be available on the Web, ranks the
states based on the stringency of laws that bar former offenders from whole professions, or strip them of
driver's licenses, parental rights and the right to vote.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: April 8, 2004
Lawmakers considering whether companies should be required to report the value of employee stock options as
expenses on their corporate balance sheets might want to take a look at a new report on the topic from their
own budget office. The Financial Accounting Standards Board, the private body that writes rules for the
accounting industry, has just proposed a rule -- more than a decade in the making -- that would require
companies to show the fair market value of options as expenses. Anti-expensing forces, led by high-tech firms
that rely heavily on options to attract employees, are pressing a measure in Congress that would block the FASB
rule from taking effect. The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the issue is therefore timely -- and just
as important, it's written in language understandable to those without advanced accounting degrees. The CBO
concludes, "If firms do not recognize as an expense the fair value of employee stock options, measured when the
options are granted, the firms' reported net income will be overstated." Under the current rule, firms report
the fair market value of their options, but they can tuck the number in the notes appended to their financial
statements and not count it against profits. If options were treated like other compensation costs, the CBO
notes, analysts and investors would be able to more easily assess a company's compensation practices and how
those affect its profits; likewise, that "improved transparency would also aid corporate committees that
approve managers' compensation packages."
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: April 9, 2004
At last, a
favorable surprise on jobs: estimated payroll employment rose 308,000 in March, above almost everyone's
expectations. You can't blame the administration for trying to play up the good news, and for being dismayed
when the sound of popping Champagne corks was drowned out by the crackle of gunfire. But has the economy, after
so many false starts, finally started to deliver? For perspective, it helps to remember what solid job growth
looks like. During Bill Clinton's eight years in office, the economy added 236,000 jobs per month. But that's
just an average: a graph of monthly changes looks like an electrocardiogram. There were 23 months with 300,000
or more new jobs; in March 2000, the economy added 493,000 jobs. This tells us not to make too much of one
month's data; payroll numbers are, as economists say, noisy. It also tells us that by past standards, March
2004 was nothing special. And we should be seeing something special, because our economy should be on the
rebound.
Maybe It's Time for Another New Deal
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Louis Uchitelle, New York Times
Date: April 11, 2004
Can
the private sector generate enough jobs to return the United States to full employment? Or must government play
a much greater supporting role in job creation? That question, once hotly debated, is barely mentioned today.
It should be. For 30 years, the assumption has been that the private sector would generate full employment on
its own. It has not, except for a five-year stretch in the late 1990's. Now the situation has become worse.
Despite robust economic growth, the private sector is generating fewer jobs than ever in a recovery.
Now Can We Talk About Health Care?
Format: News Commentary
Source: Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Times
Date: April 18, 2004
I know
what you're thinking. Hillary Clinton and health care? Been there. Didn't do that! No, it's not 1994; it's
2004. And believe it or not, we have more problems today than we had back then. Issues like soaring health
costs and millions of uninsured have yet to fix themselves. And now we are confronting a new set of challenges
associated with the arrival of the information age, the technological revolution and modern life. Think for a
moment about recent advances in genetic testing. Knowing you are prone to cancer or heart disease or Lou
Gehrig's disease may give you a fighting chance. But just try, with that information in hand, to get health
insurance in a system without strong protections against discrimination for pre-existing or genetic conditions.
Each vaunted scientific breakthrough brings with it new challenges to our health system. But it's not only
medicine that is changing. So, too, are the economy, our personal behaviors and our environment. Unless
Americans across the political spectrum come together to change our health care system, that system, already
buckling under the pressures of today, will collapse with the problems of tomorrow.
Should You Stay, or Should You Go?
Format: Advice Column
Source: Cheryl Dahle, New York Times
Date: April 18, 2004
Q. A
workweek from hell is coming up. Your project team has a major deadline, but friends from college have invited
you on a not-to-be-missed ski trip on the weekend just before it. Should you go, and risk coming back
exhausted? Dare you ask for Friday or Monday off?
A. Tough call. No one wants to pass up a raucous
weekend skiing to spend more time slaving away in an office cubicle. Still, a wrong choice could make your
career bear a resemblance to your weekend activities - headed downhill fast.
No News in Newsroom Census: Gender Gap Persists
Format: News Commentary
Source: Michele Weldon, Women's E-News
Date: April 21, 2004
Ambition defies the
boundaries of gender. Opportunity is less democratic. For women working in daily newspapers across the country,
the crawl toward the goal post of equity continues. The numbers of women on the staffs of daily newspapers in
2003 increased minutely to 37.23 percent of newsroom employees, according to the annual ASNE Newsroom
Employment Census released Tuesday by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The meager improvement from
37.05 percent after a two-year decline in numbers of women in newsrooms forces us to decode the writing on the
wall and choose the appropriate cliche: Is it "slow and steady wins the race?" Or "quit while you still can?"
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: April 22, 2004
Mayor Michael Bloomberg drew a
line in the sand on giving retroactive pay raises to city workers shortly after he took office and inherited a
fiscal crisis. That line shifted recently with an improving budget outlook and the need to take care of certain
matters before the 2005 re-election campaign. This week City Hall gave in on the point altogether, agreeing to
pay members of the city's largest municipal workers' union additional money for the two years they have
worked without a contract. Still, in reaching a tentative three-year settlement with the union, the mayor at
least did not give in entirely on another, perhaps more important, principle: that workers must produce savings
to pay for their own wage increases.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
Date: April 22, 2004
I was just
out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn't
say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn't detected before: a real undertow of
concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-?-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and
that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation. Several executives explained to me that they were
opening new plants in Asia -- not because of cheaper labor. Labor is a small component now in an automated
high-tech manufacturing plant. It is because governments in these countries are so eager for employment and the
transfer of technology to their young populations that they are offering huge tax holidays for U.S.
manufacturers who will set up shop. Because most of these countries also offer some form of national health
insurance, U.S. companies shed that huge open liability as well. Other executives complained bitterly that the
Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in
America that many have given up the age-old dream of coming here. Instead, they are studying in England and
other Western European nations, and even China. This is leading to a twofold disaster.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: April 26, 2004
The decoding of
the human genome opens new prospects for medicine. Genetic testing can determine an individual's
susceptibility to an array of cancers, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's
disease -- the list grows almost daily. Understanding the genetic basis of certain diseases may lead to new
treatments and better preventive care. But this promise is tempered by the risk that individuals' genetic
heritage could be used against them. Employers could refuse to hire, or could fire, those predisposed to
develop a disease. An insurer could refuse coverage, or charge higher premiums, on the basis of genetic
tendency. And the specter of such discrimination could deter people from undergoing genetic testing, thus
potentially undermining their own care and slowing the pace of scientific discovery. Nearly three years ago,
President Bush, echoing a call by his predecessor, urged Congress to pass legislation to prevent discrimination
based on genetic information. "To deny employment or insurance to a healthy person based only on a
predisposition violates our country's belief in equal treatment and individual merit," he said. Last fall the
Senate approved the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act on a 95 to 0 vote after lawmakers, trying to
address business concerns, set limits on the right of victims of genetic discrimination to sue for damages. Now
Republican House leaders are dragging their feet, though a majority of House members have co-sponsored a
version that would go even further than the Senate bill.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: April 26, 2004
The baseball season
was a month old and the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants were fighting for first place in the National
League. A war hero named Eisenhower was president. In London, Winston Churchill was adding his voice to the
cadre of world leaders engaged in the difficult search for a solution to the war in Indo-China. And in
Washington, on Monday, May 17, 1954, a warm and muggy spring day in the nation's capital, history was being
made. "We conclude, unanimously," said Chief Justice Earl Warren, reading from the court's decision in the
case of Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, "that in the field of public education the
doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." That
ruling, the most profound of the 20th century, was the essential first step toward a difficult but phenomenal
transformation of the American social landscape.
Blindsided by the Boss in Your Annual Review
Format: Advice Column
Source: Cheryl Dahle, New York Times
Date: May 2, 2004
Q. The
boss just shredded your job performance in an annual review. What's worse, the bad news was a surprise. How do
you handle it?
A. First off, don't say anything you'll regret. Muzzle your anger. If you can, buy
yourself some time by suggesting that because you respect the seriousness of the feedback, you prefer to
respond more thoughtfully in a few days. Then consider: Is there a kernel of truth in the evaluation? Be
brutally honest with yourself, says Lois P. Frankel, a psychologist, career coach and author of "Nice Girls
Don't Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers" (Warner Books,
2004).
Maternity Leave is a Sticky Issue
Format: Advice Column
Source: Carrie Mason-Draffen (Newsday), Detroit News
Date: May 3, 2004
Q. We are a company of about 30 people. One of our employees is on maternity leave. When she returns, do we
have to reinstate her to the job she held before the leave? The answer is crucial because her replacement does
a much better job, and we would like to keep her in the position. Can’t we just offer the returning employee
a job in another department?
A. Because of your company’s size, your question doesn’t have easy
answers. You’re too small to fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which
covers companies with at least 50 employees. That act would require you to return the employee to the same
position. On the other hand, you do fall under other antidiscrimination statutes such as the federal Pregnancy
Discrimination Act or New York State human rights laws.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: May 4, 2004
Last year the
Labor Department drew widespread criticism for proposed changes to overtime rules for white-collar workers. We
agreed with critics who said the new rules tilted to employers and risked depriving too many workers of pay to
which they are entitled. Now Labor has revised its proposal, and the new rules, while still worrisome in some
respects, are substantially improved. Unions and their allies, with some basis for being suspicious of this
administration's attitude toward workers in general and the overtime question in particular, argue that the
regulations still would unfairly jeopardize the overtime rights of millions of workers. They are pressing for a
Senate vote, expected today, that would block the rules from taking effect. We think lawmakers should hold off.
If the regulations are inconsistent with the federal law designed to protect the right to overtime pay, they
can be challenged in court. And if employers exploit the regulations to unfairly deny overtime pay to workers,
they, too, are subject to being sued. In the meantime, the new rules offer some significant benefits for
workers.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Andrew J. Cherlin and Prem Krishnamurthy, New York Times
Date: May 9, 2004
Working mothers get less sleep, watch less TV, spend less time with their children and generally have
less free time than mothers who don't work outside the home. So why are employed mothers more satisfied with
their family lives? The first clue is that, while employed mothers do spend less time with their children than
do other mothers, the difference is far less than is generally believed -- only about five hours a week.
Working mothers clearly protect their family time: even as their free time falls by 32 percent, time with their
children drops by only 16 percent. This leisure gap takes its toll on working mothers, although they compensate
by doing less housework.
What Are They Smoking at the Labor Dept.?
Format: Political Column
Source: John Crudele, New York Post
Date: May 11, 2004
Don't get too excited
about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April. I'm not going to waste a lot of my
precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says
were created last month may not really exist. They could be figments of statisticians' optimism. Anyone who
plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that job growth in April would be better than the
160,000 to 170,000 jobs that the "pros" were anticipating. But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the
stronger growth would be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy predictions
about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor justified.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Lee Drutman, TomPaine.com
Date: June 18, 2004
When former New
York Stock Exchange Chairman and CEO Dick Grasso made headlines last fall for his outrageous $188 million pay
package, it seemed the apotheosis of so much that had gone wrong in corporate America. Today's epidemic of
extravagant executive compensation comes at the expense of economic justice and a sense of shared prosperity.
It offends our sense of decency and fairness. But it is not a law enforcement problem. It is a problem of
corporate governance and old-fashioned cronyism. And until we can find a way to cut through the conflicts of
interest that pervade corporate boardrooms and give shareholders more control, greedy executives will likely
continue to have their way.
Dueling studies support both sides of offshoring debate
Format: News Commentary
Source: Mike Cassidy, Mercury News [California]
Date: June 22, 2004
Consider two reports released this month. One, from the Labor Department, said very few workers
are losing their jobs to offshoring. The other, from management consultancy Foote Partners, said offshoring is
the key reason technology workers' pay is declining. The search for hard statistics misses the larger point.
Offshoring is not an evil in itself. It is part of a bigger issue--the changing compact between employers and
employees. Workers today are being asked to give more and more in return for less and less--less job security,
lower wages, fewer benefits. And while the offshoring debate is often framed as a struggle between U.S. workers
and foreign workers, that's not it at all. Recent history shows that when profits rise, it is not workers who
benefit the most, but rather U.S. companies and their investors.
Wage hike for bottom 5 percent spurs productivity
Format: Editorial
Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal
Date: June 24, 2004
The more purchasing power people gain, the higher the average standard of living, the bigger
the economy. The minimum wage does make labor slightly more expensive, but it also encourages companies to
innovate more by recouping labor costs with efficiency, which raises productivity. John Kerry is proposing to
raise the minimum wage to $7 by 2007, if he's elected. Regardless of who wins in November, a more decent
minimum wage should be a bipartisan priority seen--and sold--for what it is: An overall benefit to the business
climate, but also, and mostly, a necessary pay increase for those who make the least.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: G Pascal Zachary, Daily Times [Pakistan]
Date: June 24, 2004
Ghana is best known for producing cocoa and gold, but today Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a
Texas company, is the country's largest private employer. African 'key punchers' earn $4 to $5 a day--four
times the legal minimum wage--and receive health insurance, meals, and subsidized transport. ACS's employees
are but the first Africans to benefit from the hottest trend in the global economy: outsourcing, or the shift
of service jobs from high-wage to low-wage countries. To be sure, the number of jobs moving to Africa is tiny
compared to those going to Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. But the big news is that Africa is finally
competing in the economic contest that is reshaping the world economy.
Job equality doesn't just happen, girls
Format: Editorial
Source: Ellen Goodman, The Oregonian
Date: June 25, 2004
We sometimes forget that the lives of men and women didn't simply passively
evolve. But on July 2, we'll celebrate the 40th anniversary of a powerful engine of this social change, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. One unexpected word was tucked into Title VII of that landmark legislation banning
racial segregation and discrimination: sex. When President Johnson signed the bill, it became illegal for the
first time to discriminate in employment on the grounds of gender. What had seemed to many like a "natural" way
of treating men and women differently because of their roles in the family and society became what the courts
now call "invidious."
Wal-Mart faces its biggest problem
Format: Political Column
Source: Robert Trigaux, St. Petersburg Times
Date: June 25, 2004
In a long-awaited ruling this week, a federal judge said an employment discrimination lawsuit against
the world's largest retailer can proceed as a class action. The suit covers up to 1.6-million current and
former female workers, [such as] Ramona Scott, Gail Lovejoy, DeAnna Willard, Anna Stumpf and Jenny Williams.
These women say they worked hard at Wal-Marts in the Tampa Bay area. They achieved strong job reviews. But when
they asked for opportunities to advance, they typically found themselves shunted aside, paid less than male
workers with equal or less experience or--when asking management for an explanation--simply given the
runaround. I am struck by the similarity of troubles these five women endured at area Wal-Marts. Their stories
can be found among the nearly 200 court depositions offered up by angry Wal-Mart women across the country.
Rights and wrongs: protecting the freedom of association in the American workplace
Format: Political Column
Source: David Bonior, Center for American Progress
Date: June 25, 2004
Protecting the right to organize and collectively bargain is
not simply a workplace issue, but an urgent crisis linked to the preservation of democracy, ideals of justice
and fair play, and the economic security of American families and communities. By attempting to form unions and
negotiate contracts, workers are advancing race and gender equality in the workplace, combating poverty, and
protecting the environment by setting higher health and safety standards. It's time we all stood with workers
and acknowledged that their freedom to form unions and collectively bargain without enduring intimidation,
harassment, and the threat of termination by their employers are rights--not privileges--that must be upheld.
Think again: on the economy, listen to the voters
Format: Political Column
Source: Bill Scher, Center for American Progress
Date: June 24, 2004
Mainstream [media] outlets that point the finger at voters' skepticism are picking up an argument
pushed by some conservatives who want people to think the current state of Bush's economy is worth getting
excited about. Yet what is receiving almost no attention from those pontificating on the economy is the nature
of the growth they so admire. In fact, it demonstrates a massive growth discrepancy between corporate profits
and wages. As the Economic Policy Institute calculated last month, corporate profits have grown by 62 percent
since the first quarter of 2001, but "labor compensation"--which includes paychecks and benefits--grew only 2.8
percent, and "private wage and salary income" fell by 0.6 percent. Voters have good reason to be dissatisfied
with Bush's economy, and many are doing the optimistic thing: demanding better. Instead of trying to tell the
public why it's misguided, the media should delve into why the economy isn't working for many Americans, and
what the solutions might be.
Wal-Mart sex-bias case could stir up talk, more lawsuits
Format: News Commentary
Source: Michael Kinsman, San Diego Union-Tribune
Date: June 27, 2004
The nation's largest workplace sex discrimination case is supposed to be
about 1.6 million women who work for, or used to work for, Wal-Mart. But it really is about the attitude of
every working American toward women in the workplace. As it unfolds, this case could open up a broader public
awareness of workplace gender discrimination and how it occurs. It should make us all look around, think about
how we conduct ourselves, how our workplaces treat women and what we can do to ensure that gender
discrimination finds no home in our workplaces.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Deborah Cutler-Ortiz, TomPaine.com
Date: June 29, 2004
The
administration blame game of denigrating the poor has hindered the implementation of proven welfare policies.
It is more compelling to address the problems of unemployment, underemployment and low wages for people trying
to get off welfare--rather than character flaws of the poor. Helping families become self-sufficient, preparing
them for permanent employment and lifting them out of poverty should be the goals of the welfare program.
Congress must allow welfare recipients to receive an appropriate education and training, child care,
transportation and health insurance so they can become self-sufficient.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Date: June 30, 2004
Bob
Kerrey's biography lists many roles. Democratic senator from Nebraska. Vietnam War hero. Dated actress Debra
Winger. Now he has added another line to his resume: attempted union-buster. In February, the adjunct faculty
at the New School in New York City voted to unionize, choosing the United Auto Workers as its representative by
a vote of 530 to 466. Kerrey is the president of the institution, which was founded as a place to pursue a more
socially progressive education. How Kerrey has behaved during the union organizing efforts is a sobering lesson
about the political landscape facing workers who try to exercise their right to form a union in America.
Workplace equality still elusive
Format: Political Column
Source: Diane Stafford, Kansas City Star
Date: July 1, 2004
A quiet
anniversary will be observed Friday: the 40th year after enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Though
it's not the kind of date that generates headlines, it's appropriate to recognize the act's workplace
legacy. The milestone federal law banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment and any federally
assisted programs. In most people's minds, the words ?civil rights? evoke thoughts of skin color. The act did,
indeed, open job opportunities to racial minorities--although progress has been slow and sporadic. But the act
also barred sex discrimination in the workplace. In that, too, progress has been made, though some would call
the pace glacial.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Eduardo Ruelas, New York Times
Date: July 4, 2004
It's not a lot of fun for me to have to get up at every morning at 5, stand on the street corner hoping to be
offered a job, and worry that if I do get work it might be dangerous. I've had friends who have broken their
arms and legs and even lost fingers while on the job. None of us has medical coverage. But the hardest part
about waiting for work is hearing the insults that are yelled at us by Farmingville residents. The fact that I
stand on a corner for work doesn't make me less human or less worthy of respect. The way I see it, everyone
from the business owners and contractors to the residents with beautifully landscaped yards benefits from
Mexican laborers. We do the jobs nobody else will do. Why can't anyone see that?
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: July 3, 2004
It would be wrong to read too
much into one month's statistics, but there is plenty of reason to worry that this expansion is not raising
wages as much as American families need. The American economy added 112,000 new jobs last month, far fewer than
expected. That number represents a notable slowdown from the strong pace of hiring in the previous three
months. The nation's impressive productivity growth will make it difficult to significantly reduce the 5.6
percent unemployment rate. And in the absence of a tighter labor market, there is little chance that workers
will see wages increase anywhere near as much as corporate profits have. Indeed, take-home pay, as a share of
the economy, is at its lowest level since the government started keeping track in 1929. All of this suggests
that the recovery remains a work in progress for many Americans.
Working mothers caught in a bind
Format: Political Column
Source: Christian E. Weller, Center for American Progress
Date: July 2, 2004
For the past few months, the labor market has turned a corner and begun to create jobs at
a growing rate, although its pace seems to have slowed again. As jobs are being created, more and more people
who had completely given up looking for work are drawn back into the labor market. Although they are not the
majority of new job holders, women still constitute a large proportion of them. And while women tend to be the
primary caregivers of their children, the job opportunities that are expanding the fastest for women are those
where child care benefits are rarest, part-time and service-industry jobs. Consequently, affordable child care
will continue to be an important issue as the labor market continues to grow.
A cloud over civilisation: corporate power is the driving force behind US foreign policy--and the slaughter in Iraq
Format: Op-Ed
Source: JK Galbraith, The Guardian [UK]
Date: July 15, 2004
The
modern corporation is a dominant force in the present-day economy. Corporate power has shaped the public
purpose to its own needs. As the corporate interest moves to power in what was the public sector, it serves the
corporate interest. It is most clearly evident in the largest such movement, that of nominally private firms
into the defence establishment. From this comes a primary influence on the military budget, on foreign policy,
military commitment and, ultimately, military action. War. Civilisation has made great strides over the
centuries in science, healthcare, the arts and most, if not all, economic well-being. But it has also given a
privileged position to the development of weapons and the threat and reality of war.
Minimum wage can stand some maximizing
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Amy Chasanov, The Hill
Date: July 14, 2004
Sen. Edward Kennedy's
(D-Mass.) Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2004 proposes increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.00. Some
Republican leaders and employer-backed organizations have come up with a disingenuous twist to their
opposition, saying they're against such an increase because it would harm the working poor. But would it help
or hurt low-wage workers to put a few more dollars in their paychecks? Fortunately, we don't have to rely on
guesswork--we've got history to guide us. Let's look at what happened after the increase in the minimum wage
that took effect in 1996 and 1997.
Red-state America against itself
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Thomas Frank, Tomdispatch.com
Date: July 15, 2004
That our
politics have been shifting rightward for more than thirty years is a generally acknowledged fact of American
life. That this rightward movement has largely been accomplished by working-class voters whose lives have been
materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported is a less comfortable fact, one we have
trouble talking about in a straightforward manner. I chose to observe the phenomenon by going back to my home
state of Kansas, a place that has been particularly ill-served by the conservative policies of privatization,
deregulation, and de-unionization, and that has reacted to its worsening situation by becoming more
conservative still.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: July 19, 2004
A new study of black
male employment trends has come up with the following extremely depressing finding: "By 2002, one of every four
black men in the U.S. was idle all year long. This idleness rate was twice as high as that of white and
Hispanic males." It's possible the rate of idleness is even higher, said the lead author of the study, Andrew
Sum, who is director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. "That was a
conservative count," he said. The study did not consider homeless men or those in jail or prison.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Susan Antilla, New York Times
Date: July 21, 2004
As Wall Street sex
discrimination cases go, last week's $54 million deal between Morgan Stanley and the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission wasn't a bad one for women. But Morgan Stanley, and all of Wall Street, scored an even
bigger win: the statistics remain under wraps. No matter how generous a dollar settlement the commission
garnered, it is still an important step short. Wall Street will make changes only when its culture, and the
hard numbers of compensation and promotion, are exposed in open court. But don't hold your breath.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe
Date: July 21, 2004
There are far more ordinary wage-earning people than wealthy investors and
corporate moguls, but the political right has done far better at using class solidarity to its advantage than
the liberal left. Americans like to view their country as a wide-open land of opportunity. Most are uneasy
thinking in terms of class at all. Polls consistently show that if you emphasize the poor you run smack into
the fact that most Americans consider themselves middle class. Even though individual voters may resent the
fact that jobs are moving to India or that schools are lacking necessary funds or that health care benefits are
evaporating, this is not a country where most voters resent the rich as a class. It's a land where nearly
everyone would like to be rich.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Stephen S. Roach, New York Times
Date: July 22, 2004
Through
February, the United States was mired in the depths of the worst jobless recovery of the post-World War II era.
Now, there are signs the magic may be back. More than a million jobs have been added to total nonfarm payrolls
over the past four months, the sharpest increase since early 2000. But there's little cause for celebration:
the increases barely make a dent in the weakest hiring cycle in modern history. From three different vantage
points--employment breakdowns by industry, by occupation and by degree of attachment--the same basic picture
emerges: While there has been an increase in job creation over the past four months, the bulk of the activity
has been at the low end of the quality spectrum. The Great American Job Machine is not even close to generating
the surge of the high-powered jobs that is typically the driving force behind greater incomes and consumer
demand.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: July 23, 2004
A startling new
study shows that all of the growth in the employed population in the United States over the past few years can
be attributed to recently arrived immigrants. The study found that from the beginning of 2001 through the first
four months of 2004, the number of new immigrants who found work in the U.S. was 2.06 million, while the number
of native-born and longer-term immigrant workers declined by more than 1.3 million. The study, from the Center
for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, is further confirmation that American families
are still struggling with serious issues of joblessness and underemployment.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times
Date: July 26, 2004
This could be
the central battle of the 21st century: Earth people versus the Wal-Martians. Wal-Mart's only hope lies with
its ostensible opponents, like Madeline Janis-Aparicio, who led the successful fight against a new superstore
in Inglewood, Calif. "The point is not to destroy them," she told me, "but to make them accountable." Similarly
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, will soon begin a national effort to "bring
Wal-Mart up to standards we can live with." He envisions a nationwide movement bringing together the unions,
churches, community organizations and environmentalists who are already standing up to the company's
recklessly metastatic growth. Earth to Wal-Mars, or wherever you come from: Live with us or go back to the
mother ship.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Lee Price, TomPaine.com
Date: August 10, 2004
Our economy is
sputtering once again. July, with its meager 32,000 job gain, was the fourth consecutive month of shrinking job
gains. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. We need faster job growth, to provide more people with income
from work. Just to keep even with population growth, we need to add 140,000 to 150,000 jobs every month. To
absorb new workers and to put the unemployed back in jobs, we ought to create at least 250,000 to 300,000 jobs
each month. A few months of weak job gains would be less worrisome if other indicators' strength made a
rebound seem imminent. Unfortunately, that is not the case today.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jacob S. Hacker, Washington Post
Date: August 10, 2004
Over the past two decades, two great transformations have been on a collision course--the rise of the
two-earner family and all but stagnant real wages for most workers. The sluggish economy of the past few years
has made the resulting strains unmistakable. By many measures, American families in the middle of the income
ladder are stretched thinner today than at any point since the early 1980s. Perhaps more important, their
economic situation has, in ways both big and small, become notably more precarious.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Date: August 12, 2004
United
Airlines' attempt to shed responsibility for its multi-billion pension promises [is] another sure sign of the
Wal-Martization of America: the coming collapse of the traditional private sector pension plan system, mainly
because of the decline of unions. Indeed, the underfunding of pension plans is a looming disaster:
Single-employer pension plans are $350 billion short of what should be in their plans; historically, the plans
have only been short $20 to 25 billion. How do we turn back from a Wal-Mart economy to an economy in which,
among other things, real pensions become the standard? The best way to guarantee middle class livelihoods is to
encourage unionization and collective bargaining. Unless unions thrive, the end of pensions is near, signaling
the obliteration of yet another pillar of the middle class.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jared Bernstein, American Prospect
Date: August 11, 2004
A few months ago, the Federal Reserve made it clear that it was going to start raising
interest rates. It did so at its most prior meeting in June, raising the federal funds rate. Today they went up
another 0.25 percent to 1.5 percent. Why'd the bank do it? My concern comes from the fact that rate hikes work
their magic by slowing down economic growth. As far as the job market is concerned, why would you want to
decelerate when you're already crawling? Though the Fed claims not to be influenced by political concerns,
this is, after all, Washington. Today's statement ended with a warning that the [Fed] reserves its rights to
"respond to changes in economic prospects as needed to fulfill its obligation to maintain price stability."
Note the glaring omission of "and full employment" at the end of that sentence.
Canadian health care better than we think
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Dave Zweifel, The Capital Times [Wisconsin]
Date: August 16, 2004
Thanks to years of propaganda from the giant corporations with a vested interest in the U.S.
health system, Americans have a somewhat jaundiced view of Canada's national health insurance program. We're
told that Canadians have to wait for simple procedures and that there are huge waiting lines for surgery.
Doctors aren't compensated adequately. We've been told that so often that we think it's true. Almost all of
it, however, is false. One of this column's regular readers sent me an article written by a Canadian doctor
after he and a group of colleagues spent some time working in our U.S. health system. Suffice it to say that
America's health insurers and drug companies aren't passing the article around.
Format: Editorial
Source: Baltimore Sun
Date: August 19, 2004
The Labor Department's trumpeting of its new regulations governing overtime, which go into
effect next week, sounds a little tinny. But Mr. Law is right about the new day dawning Monday, when the
revisions to the Fair Labor Standards Act become the law of the land. Labor predicts the rules will require
employers to pay 1.3 million more workers at the bottom of the pay scales overtime if they earn it. Revisions
in the duties tests and classifications, though, could cause between 100,000 and 6 million to lose their
overtime eligibility. That number has been hotly debated, not only by big unions but by nonpartisan think tanks
and former Labor officials from the past two administrations. Now the nation will act as a giant laboratory.
Overtime cut undermines workers
Format: Op-Ed
Source: John Sweeney, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Date: August 24, 2004
Yesterday, the biggest pay cut in American history took effect: The Bush administration's overtime pay cut
became official. It's a new federal rule that could strip up to 6 million workers of overtime pay protection,
forcing them to work longer hours without fair compensation. Not only will these employees no longer get
overtime pay--they'll be working extra hours for free, earning only their base salary. Under the new rule,
employers will tend to work their current workers longer hours rather than creating new jobs, making the
underlying problems in our economy even worse. At a time when workers' paychecks are down, joblessness is up
and Americans are working more hours than workers in any other industrialized nation, Bush has made the wrong
decision in implementing his new rule.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: August 27, 2004
In most advanced
countries, the government provides everyone with health insurance. In America, however, the government offers
insurance only if you're elderly (Medicare) or poor (Medicaid). Otherwise, you're expected to get private
health insurance, usually through your job. But insurance premiums are exploding, and the system of
employment-linked insurance is falling apart. Rising health care costs aren't just causing a rapid rise in the
ranks of the uninsured; they're also, because of their link to employment, a major reason why this economic
recovery has generated fewer jobs than any previous economic expansion. Clearly, health care reform is an
urgent social and economic issue.
Format: Editorial
Source: Milford Mirror
Date: September 1, 2004
The emergence of Labor Day as a national holiday 110 years ago was borne out of change in
the workplace. As the country became more industrialized, many people were working long hours in dangerous
conditions for minimal compensation. As their bosses became wealthier and they toiled harder, workers decided
they weren't going to take it anymore. Labor Day is a time for everyone to appreciate the hard work of all
Americans. That hard work will continue, but with some changes. People shouldn't be afraid of those changes.
Instead, they must focus on acquiring all the skills they can to succeed in an evolving workplace. Lifelong
training should be seen as an opportunity.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Peter Dreier, The Nation
Date: September 2, 2004
Hidden in a Census
Bureau report on poverty released in late August is a factoid with significant political and social
consequences. Poverty has moved to the suburbs. Or, more accurately, poverty has expanded to the suburbs.
Today, 13.8 million poor Americans live in the suburbs--almost as many as the 14.6 million who live in central
cities. The suburban poor represent 38.5 percent of the nation's poor, compared with 40.6 percent of the total
who live in central cities. The Census data remind us that stereotypes about the "inner-city poor" and the
"suburban middle class" no longer reflect how we live.
An economy that turns American values upside down
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: September 6, 2004
Today's workers
have lost power in many different ways--through the slack labor market, government policies that favor
corporate interests, the weakening of unions, the growth of lower-paying service industries, global trade,
capital mobility, the declining real value of the minimum wage, immigration and so on. The end result of all
this is a portrait of American families struggling just to hang on, rather than to get ahead. The benefits of
productivity gains and economic growth are flowing to profits, not worker compensation. The fat cats are
getting fatter, while workers, at least for the time being, are watching the curtain come down on the heralded
American dream.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Alain de Botton, New York Times
Date: September 6, 2004
Whatever
camaraderie may build up between employer and employed, whatever goodwill workers may display and however many
years they may have devoted to a task, they must live with the knowledge and attendant anxiety that their
status is not guaranteed--that it remains dependent on their own performance and the economic well-being of
their organizations; that they are hence a means to profit, and never ends in themselves. This is all sad, but
not half as sad as it can be if we blind ourselves to the reality and raise our expectations of our work to
extreme levels. A firm belief in the necessary misery of life was for centuries one of mankind's most
important assets, a bulwark against bitterness, a defense against dashed hopes. Now it has been cruelly
undermined by the expectations incubated by the modern worldview. Now perhaps, as many of us return from summer
vacations, we can temper [our] sadness by remembering that work is often more bearable when we don't, in
addition to money, expect it always to deliver happiness.
Minimum wage an insult to Americans
Format: Political Column
Source: Esther Tolson, Arbiter
Date: September 9, 2004
Why
the current refusal on the part of Bush and Republicans to stand up and call for Americans to pay their fellow
Americans a wage that does not require public assistance to survive on? Why would the party that so adamantly
despises social welfare programs want to ensure their continued need? The excuse that Republicans have used to
justify blocking numerous proposed increases to the minimum wage is that raising the minimum wage will result
in loss of jobs and harm the poor folk we are purporting to help. Others claim that it would ruin small
businesses. Unfortunately, statistics do not support this claim.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert B. Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: September 9, 2004
The
news last week that unemployment was down to 5.4 percent sounded good. But, unfortunately, there wasn't a
corresponding rise in payroll jobs. So how good, really, is the news? To understand what the unemployment
numbers really mean, you need to know what questions surveyers are asking--and how they're asking them. Bottom
line: Employers are still reluctant to hire. And it's not hard to figure out why. Demand for their goods and
services remains soft--because consumers, who are also workers, don't have enough money in their pockets or
confidence in their jobs and paychecks to flood back into the malls.
Format: Political Column
Source: David S. Broder, Washington Post
Date: September 9, 2004
There is a story about workers and organized labor that has gone largely unnoticed this year: the link between
the decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of liberal legislation, and the steady
weakening of organized labor. For those who think a Wal-Mart economy is the American future, the falloff in
labor's influence is no cause for regret. But I suspect the country will continue to pay a price--and not just
union families--until labor regains a place at the economic and political table.
Bush's flextime remedy could be right pill for our "hurry sickness"
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Froma Harrop, Seattle Times
Date: September 15, 2004
Organized labor opposes Bush's "flextime" proposal, which it sees as a sneaky way
to help companies pay their workers less money. Unions do come by their suspicions honestly. There's hardly a
cheap-labor idea this administration hasn't embraced. But this concept does have merit. Actually, flextime has
been around many years as a women's issue. But feminists envisioned moving those 40 hours around--not reducing
them. So would it be so terrible to let Americans who put in a 45-hour week turn those five hours of overtime
into an extra day off, rather than more money? Labor groups fighting this particular Bush proposal should save
their strength for better battles.
Uncle Sam is hard at work for U.S. corporations
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Walter Williams, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Date: September 27, 2004
The worsening income disparities between the rich and ordinary citizens--the greatest
since the 1920s--have been a major factor pushing the nation into plutocratic governance. The tax reductions
for the wealthy and major business firms provided money that helped fuel the campaigns of Washington
politicians. Under George W. Bush, the United States has become a government of the corporation, by the
corporation and for the corporation, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Such an entrenched
plutocracy is totally incompatible with the form of governance created by the Constitution to support
representative democracy.
You are guilty ... of shopping at Wal-Mart
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Mike Kilen, Des Moines Register
Date: September 27, 2004
Nearly every day you can read astounding Wal-Mart Nation news and add your own
exaggeration. So where is the guilt for driving down wages, pitting workers against consumers and for ravaging
Main Street Iowa? Average Iowans vote with their feet and enter by the thousands under the "Lower Prices"
banner every day. They can't afford not to. The question remains for any shopper: At what point do personal
savings outweigh the social cost?
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York Times
Date: September 26, 2004
When
black policy types let themselves dream about racial uplift, they dream about getting to average. The fantasy
isn't that inequality vanishes; it's that inequality in black America catches up with inequality in white
America. "Look at what we could achieve if we got to be average!" Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae, told
me. "We don't need to take everybody from the ghetto and make them Harvard graduates. We just need to get
folks to average, and we'd all look around and say, 'My God, what a fundamental change has happened in this
country.'" Recently, I asked a few experts on poverty in black America about how we might get to average.
Where did all the jobs go? Nowhere
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Daniel W. Drezner, New York Times
Date: September 29, 2004
Now, we can
add some actual figures to the overheated [outsourcing] debate. The Government Accountability Office has issued
its first review of the data, and one undeniable conclusion to be drawn from it is that outsourcing is not
quite the job-destroying tsunami it's been made out to be. The American economy has some formidable challenges
in the coming decades--rising health care costs, a ballooning federal budget deficit, failing schools and the
need for greater investment in new technology and innovation. The voters should concentrate on the candidates'
plans to overcome those obstacles, not on needless hoopla over outsourcing.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Austan Goolsbee, New York Times
Date: October 1, 2004
A serious
financial disaster looms for the pension system. The crisis concerns the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation,
the federal agency that insures workers' pensions in case their employer defaults. The system is not supposed
to cost taxpayers anything. But a dreadful lack of judgment, coupled with a new federal law, could leave the
public with a $100 billion bill. Why doesn't the agency have the money to cover this shortfall? Fundamentally,
it is an insurance company. Higher risk ought to mean higher prices. But the pension agency doesn't work that
way. Congress is doing its best to make financial catastrophe more likely.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: October 8, 2004
A new study
shows how tough a time American families are having in their never-ending struggle to put food on the table and
keep a roof over their heads. The study, jointly sponsored by the Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller
Foundations, show[s] that 9.2 million working families in the United States--one out of every four--earn wages
that are so low they are barely able to survive financially. "Our data is very solid and shows that this is a
much bigger problem than most people imagine," said Brandon Roberts, one of the authors of the report. Mr.
Roberts said he hoped the study, titled "Working Hard, Falling Short," would help initiate a national
discussion of the plight of families who are doing the right thing but not earning enough to get ahead.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Matt Miller, Star-Telegram
Date: October 15, 2004
Here's an idea so far
outside the box that it may not get the hearing it deserves: It's time to disenfranchise men and allow only
women to vote. Suppose that you want an America in which everyone has basic health coverage, every full-time
worker earns a living wage and every poor child has a great teacher in a fixed-up school. I want these things
so much I wrote a book (The Two Percent Solution) about how both parties might come together on this
agenda in ways that blend the best of liberal and conservative approaches. After asking some top political
consultants how to make the ideas more actionable, I commissioned a poll. That's when I found out: Men are the
problem.
Social policy? Stereotypes are simpler
Format: Editorial
Source: Rod Watson, Buffalo News
Date: October 21, 2004
[A] report came out
the other day showing that the wealth gap between whites and minorities has increased and that blacks actually
saw their net worth decline from 1996 to 2002. The report was socioeconomic manna to those eager to point to
the poor personal choices by blacks who would rather buy frivolous stuff than save or invest. You can't
explain why whites' median net worth of $88,651 is 14 times that of blacks'--and 11 times that of
Hispanics'--by pointing simply to spending habits. So what does explain the wealth gap? It's a legacy of U.S.
social policy. And it will be closed only through conscious social policy.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Karen Kornbluh, Laurie Rubiner, TomPaine.com
Date: October 21, 2004
Women pay the greatest price for our outdated social contract. They can no longer depend on a lifelong mate to
provide economic security, and when they enter the job market themselves, their family responsibilities close
many doors. They have less job security, lower wages and fewer benefits. But what the president offers women is
bait-and-switch politics. His Ownership Society proposals would make women far less economically secure than
they are today by eliminating--instead of reforming--the risk-sharing mechanisms of our social contract
programs. These proposals would leave Americans "owning" more of their own economic insecurity.
Still waiting to hear how poverty war will be won
Format: Editorial
Source: Martha Orozco, Houston Chronicle
Date: October 28, 2004
For the past year, I've listened with interest to the presidential candidates. I have listened specifically
for the candidates' views on poverty joblessness, homelessness, hunger, lack of health care and a living wage.
With few exceptions, the men and women who sought the presidency talked little of these issues in the context
of poor people. It should not matter whether you are a Republican with compassionate conservative values or a
Democrat who values social justice. You should want better for your fellow Americans than what is available to
the 35.8 million people living below the poverty line in the richest country in the world.
A federal minimum wage increase is urgent, regardless of election outcome
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Matthew Cardinale, OpEdNews.com
Date: November 15, 2004
Working American families can't wait four more years more for a more sympathetic President to
fight for an increase in the federal minimum wage increase. It's time to raise it now. Progressive activists
need to carry on the crucial fight, with or without Kerry in the White House. For a national culture that
supposedly values "hard work," we certainly don't put our money where our mouth is. Often we see the hardest
working Americans only sinking further into debt, unable to afford health care, and even going through episodes
of homelessness. These kinds of contradictions, where our policies don't match our values, are leading to
disillusionment among the children of working families today.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: November 17, 2004
The basic
concept of Social Security is one based on trust--which is why the spectre of future generations placing money
into private accounts breaks that trust and raises the question of where the money will come from for the next
retiring generation. Bush's guarantees that he won't change Social Security benefits for current retirees is
highly unlikely under a privatization plan.
A warning for Social Security "reformers"
Format: News Commentary
Source: Bernard Wasow, Century Foundation
Date: November 17, 2004
The
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), which guarantees private pension plans, just announced that its
net liabilities are double earlier estimates, more than $23 billion. Are Social Security privatization and
trouble at the PBGC related? You bet. The trouble at the PBGC illustrates the great risks involved in
retirement planning, risks that have swamped enough private pension plans to require a Congressional bailout.
Yet the Bush administration is proposing to wind down the only part of retirement income that is
secure--guaranteed against the business cycle, inflation, and corporate malfeasance--and replace it with risky
private accounts, with no guarantees at all.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: November 22, 2004
A report from the
Department of Agriculture show[s] that more than 12 million American families continue to struggle to feed
themselves. The 12 million families represent 11.2 percent of all U.S. households. "At some time during the
year," the report said, "these households were uncertain of having enough food." These are dismal statistics
for a country as well-to-do as the United States. But we don't hear much about them because hunger is
associated with poverty, and poverty is not even close to becoming part of our national conversation. What does
that tell you about American values?
Media blacks out Bush assault on minimum wage
Format: News Commentary
Source: David Swanson, International Labor Communications Association
Date: November 22, 2004
Bush's success in
reducing the value of the minimum wage in each of the past four years has wreaked havoc with the lives of
millions of working Americans, but it does not exist as a media story. Don't expect a flood of coverage of
this issue. Don't expect lies about the effects of a decent minimum wage to be eliminated or corrected. Don't
expect "think tanks" funded by restaurants and hotels to be identified by their funding sources. And don't
expect the views of those working for the minimum wage to be included in media coverage. Public opinion, of
course, favors fixing the minimum wage, but our public discourse--dominated by the major media outlets--often
has little regard for public opinion.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Robert B. Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: November 24, 2004
The holiday buying
season is upon us. You might as well spend your cash now because the dollar is dropping like a stone in
international currency markets. It's dropped nearly 30 percent since 2001, and is now at a record low. Even
without the recent dour pronouncements of Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary John Snow, the greenback is
likely to fall further. And the reason is simple: We're living beyond our means. American consumers are deep
in debt. The nation is importing more than we're exporting. Most importantly, the federal budget deficit is
out of control.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Charlie Cray, Lee Drutman, TomPaine.com
Date: November 30, 2004
One abiding faith that almost all Americans share is that in a democracy, the citizens should
be able to decide how they wish to live--not some big bureaucracy or institution, whether it's the government
or a big corporation. The most effective way to control corporations will be to reclaim the once
widely-accepted principle that corporations exist to serve the public good. Until we have brought the most
important economic institutions under control, it will be impossible to create the just and sustainable economy
that we seek, an economy driven by the values of human life and community and democracy instead of the current
suicide economy driven only by the relentless pursuit of financial profit at any cost.
Social Security is not in crisis
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Dean Baker, TomPaine.com
Date: November 30, 2004
After
the inauguration, Bush is scheduled to push for tort reform first, then attack Social Security. His
entitlements offensive relies on the White House's ability to make Americans think Social Security is in
crisis. If people knew the truth about Social Security's finances, there would be no support for [the]
President's benefit cuts and privatization plan--and that is why proponents of privatization have worked hard
to spread fear about Social Security's financial health. But look at the numbers and reach your own
conclusion.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: November 30, 2004
The Supreme Court hears
arguments today in a case that raises important issues about who is covered by antidiscrimination law. An
Alabama girls' basketball coach lost his position in 2001 after complaining that his team was being
discriminated against. He sued under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools
receiving federal funds. The school argued, in response, that the coach was not part of the class that Congress
intended to protect with the law. The court should hold that he is covered by Title IX, because he is alleging
that he lost his position as a result of sex discrimination.
Restoring workers' rights has always been a moral value
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Stewart Acuff, International Labor Communications Association
Date: November 30, 2004
Though many might
scoff, I think there is a neat and convenient intersection where our values and political pragmatism meet. At
this intersection are universal healthcare, improving Social Security, a global trading system that lifts
working families and not just corporations, full-time work for living wages, and the restoration of workers'
freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. It is critical that the progressive community takes on this
issue as its own fight because it is a comprehensive effort that brings together so many issues important to
us. Restoring the freedom to form unions ties so many of the issues and values we care about together.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Patrick C. Doherty, TomPaine.com
Date: December 2, 2004
Last
week, America received two pieces of monstrously bad news. First, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley (along
with Robert Reich, Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, China and the currency markets) warned us that the U.S. economy
is about to collapse. Second, we learned that the Bush administration is willing to ignore the likelihood of
collapse and will push ahead aggressively with tax and Social Security reform. Put these two pieces of
information together and you get a nightmare scenario. Movement conservatives are willing to tank the economy
while they control the federal government in order to remake it according to their liking.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: December 6, 2004
Persistent subpar job creation
might cause some leaders to question their policies. Yet, more high-end tax cuts and higher deficits are the
template for President Bush's second term. And flush with a victory, the president is unlikely to undertake
any policy reversals. It will be up to Congress to break out of its lockstep with Mr. Bush and take steps to
address the real problems of constituents, rather than the intransigent aspirations of the administration.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: December 7, 2004
Privatizing
Social Security--replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts--won't
do anything to strengthen the system's finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the
politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of
collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it. Very little about the privatizers'
position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about
the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success. For
Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending
can make people's lives better and more secure.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: J. Bradford DeLong, TomPaine.com
Date: December 10, 2004
Almost
all of the world's developed countries consider themselves, and are, social democracies: mixed economies with
very large governments performing a wide array of welfare and social insurance functions, and removing large
chunks of wealth and commodity distribution from the market. The United States is something different. Or is
it? Whatever it has been in the past, the United States in the future will have to choose whether, and how
much, it will be a social democracy.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Dean Baker, The Nation
Date: December 9, 2004
Social Security is
the country's most important and successful social program. While polls show majority support for private
accounts, that's only when the question is asked, Would you like a private account? When the real-world
question, Would you like a private account if it means a cut in your Social Security benefits? is asked,
substantial majorities say no. Bush's Social Security plans are grounds for a decisive battle early in the
Administration's second term. The public is overwhelmingly on our side; they just need to know the truth.
Raising the minimum wage morally right
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Peter Dreier, Kelly Candaele, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Date: December 12, 2004
The minimum wage victories in Florida and Nevada are a political neon
sign blinking brightly at Democrats. Although these two states favored President Bush on Nov. 2, voters
overwhelmingly approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage by one dollar in both states. The
conventional wisdom says that Bush won a second term by defending the moral values derived from traditional
religious teachings. But many major religious denominations support raising the minimum wage. When President
Bush is sworn in for a second term, we should all push our lawmakers to raise the national minimum wage.
Unions, civil rights groups, religious organizations and others who care about basic fairness ought to lead
this charge.
Other views: what's a 'girlie woman' to think?
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Rebecca LaVally, Sacramento Bee
Date: December 13, 2004
2004 marked the 40-year anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon
Johnson, which in part banned job discrimination based on gender, race and ethnicity. When Congress and the
president acted ahead of public opinion to bring equity to the workplace, they set in motion forces that would
change the way we speak. At the time, the notion that any female or male could hold practically any job she or
he was qualified for was revolutionary. But by the mid-1970s, affirmative action and federal lawsuits were
making the notion stick, propelling women into formerly all-male work. As realities changed, so would the
mother tongue, now forced to contort herself around such oddities as female mailman.
What's new in the legal world? A growing campaign to undo the New Deal
Format: Editorial
Source: Adam Cohen, New York Times
Date: December 14, 2004
The New Deal made an unexpected appearance at the Supreme Court recently--in the form of a 1942 case about
wheat. Some prominent states' rights conservatives were asking the court to overturn Wickard v. Filburn, a
landmark ruling that laid out an expansive view of Congress's power to legislate in the public interest.
Supporters of states' rights have always blamed Wickard, and a few other cases of the same era, for paving the
way for strong federal action on workplace safety, civil rights and the environment. Although they are unlikely
to reverse Wickard soon, states' rights conservatives are making progress in their drive to restore the narrow
view of federal power that predated the New Deal--and render Congress too weak to protect Americans on many
fronts.
Protecting Americans' rights at work
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Bonior, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Date: December 26, 2004
American workers are losing their rights. Over the past several months, decisions
by the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency charged with enforcing labor law, have stripped
workers of legal protections. The system to protect workers has been broken for a long time, but it's getting
worse. As Americans, we value the democratic notion that working men and women should have a voice in the
workplace. We believe that hard work and loyalty deserve to be rewarded and that working people should share in
the benefits of the good things they help make possible. Americans' rights at work must be restored, protected
and guaranteed.
The Social Security fear factor
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 3, 2005
The administration wants
workers to divert some of the payroll taxes that currently pay for Social Security into private investment
accounts, in exchange for a much-reduced government benefit. To replace the taxes it would otherwise have
collected--money it needs to pay benefits to current and near retirees--the government would borrow an
estimated $2 trillion over the next 10 years or so and even more thereafter. In effect, the administration's
plan would get rid of the financial burden of Social Security by getting rid of Social Security. The plan
shifts the financial risk of growing old onto each individual and off of the government--where it is dispersed
among a very large population, as with any sensible insurance policy. In a privatized system, you may do fine,
but your fellow retirees may not, or vice versa.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: January 4, 2005
The people who
hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary
weapons are now trying another bum's rush. If they succeed, we will do nothing about the real fiscal threat
and will instead dismantle Social Security, a program that is in much better financial shape than the rest of
the federal government. In the next few weeks, I'll explain why privatization will fatally undermine Social
Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program. I'll also talk about the much more urgent fiscal
problems the administration hopes you won't notice while it scares you about Social Security. Today let's
focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis.
The 'other America' may be coming back
Format: Political Column
Source: Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Date: January 5, 2005
We
have come so far in such a short time that's it's hard for people who aren't seniors to imagine an America
in which old age was all but synonymous with desperation. There's no great mystery to unravel here. Above all,
what changed the lives of America's senior citizens were the significant increases in Social Security benefits
enacted in the 1960s and '70s, and the indexing of those benefits to average wage growth. But since the Bush
administration is reportedly soon to propose ending that indexing, and replacing it with a different formula
that would greatly reduce benefits, it's worth taking a moment to look back at senior poverty as it existed in
the year of John F. Kennedy's election as president.
Comcast can do better for workers
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Bonior, Philadelphia Daily News
Date: January 7, 2005
This weekend, the nation's foremost labor and management academics, practitioners and government officials
will gather in Philadelphia for the Labor and Employment Relations Association's annual conference. Labor
relations in the United States has reached a state of crisis. It's in our interest to reverse this condition.
All of us--employers and workers, academics, public-interest organizations, government agencies and the general
public--must put our heads together. We need to create labor relations strategies that both support corporate
growth at the same time we preserve workers' rights to organize and bargain with their bosses over the terms
and conditions of their employment.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Bacon, International Labor Communications Association
Date: January 6, 2005
The AFL-CIO has a huge job. Raising the percentage of
organized workers in the U.S. from just 10 to 11 percent would mean organizing over a million people. Only a
social movement can organize people on this scale. In addition to examining structural reforms that can make
unions more effective and concentrate their power, the labor movement needs a program which can inspire people
to organize on their own, one which is unafraid to put forward radical demands, and rejects the constant
argument that any proposal that can't get through Congress next year is not worth fighting for. Only a new,
radical social vision can inspire the wave of commitment, idealism and activity necessary to rebuild the labor
movement.
Format: Political Column
Source: Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
Date: January 12, 2005
On
January 20, hundreds of Republicans will descend on Washington, DC, wearing furs, boots and Stetsons, and
partying like the Hollywood stars (they love to loathe) at festivities that will cost some $40 million to
host--or $25 million more than the first pledge of US assistance to victims of the tsunami. With the
Republicans in control of all three federal branches, building a new consensus for sane economic policies that
give more opportunity to more Americans will take time, organizing and savvy political and policy skills. But,
it's an urgent project, and it's never too late to begin setting out the alternatives. Americans should not
be required to work eighty-hour weeks just to pay the rent, eat, and live in a decent neighborhood.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: J. Bradford DeLong, TomPaine.com
Date: January 14, 2005
Trying to assess the urgency of Social Security reform? In comparison to the massive threat posed by the
deficits in the general fund, currently standing at $7 trillion, the far-off imbalance of Social Security is
but a slowly leaking tire on a car that has already crashed into a tree. So why is the Bush administration
proposing radical changes to the Social Security system?
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Ben Hubbard, Boston Globe
Date: January 14, 2005
If there's one voice conspicuously absent in the debate over replacing Social
Security with private investment accounts, it is young people--the ones with the most to lose. Listen to any
argument for privatization and one thing is clear--it's all in the name of young Americans. But, in fact, this
administration's record reflects a deep disregard for the interests of young Americans. This administration
has demonstrated over and over its willingness to put ideological purity, political loyalty, and the profits of
its corporate patrons above the broad public interest. Why should young people believe that its risky Social
Security privatization scheme would be any different?
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: January 14, 2005
The details of
British privatization differ from the likely Bush administration plan because the starting point was different.
But there are basic similarities. Guaranteed benefits were cut; workers were expected to make up for these
benefit cuts by earning high returns on their private accounts. The selling of privatization also bore a
striking resemblance to President Bush's crisis-mongering. Britain had a retirement system that was working
quite well, but conservative politicians issued grim warnings about the distant future, insisting that
privatization was the only answer. The main difference from the current U.S. situation was that Britain was
better prepared for the transition. Even so, it all went wrong.
We Need to Play Fair in Game of Life
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Tim McGuire, Ventura County Star
Date: January 15, 2005
Some people say sports are metaphors for life. I would argue sports are real
life and they offer us some instructive lessons for ethics and workplace harmony.
Ensuring economic fairness is every worker's battle to wage
Format: Political Column
Source: Bill Graham, Kansas City Star
Date: January 19, 2005
This business of increasing the number of
working people living just above or below the poverty line -- but with little hope of escaping debt and money
troubles -- will turn on us someday. One point of justice that concerned Martin Luther King Jr. is among the
most difficult to address -- economic fairness. The Rev. Vernon P. Howard, featured speaker Monday at
Liberty's King celebration, reminded those in Gano Chapel that King was slain during his efforts on behalf of
striking garbage workers in Memphis. "He died trying to help sanitation workers get decent wages and working
conditions," Howard said.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: January 24, 2005
The president promises that
under a private retirement scheme, anyone age 55 or older would continue to receive full Social Security
benefits. What he repeatedly fails to mention is that privatization would require some $2 trillion in new
borrowing over the next 10 years and an additional $4.5 trillion in the decade thereafter. That's on top of
the trillions that need to be found to cover the costs of Medicare and Medicaid and - if the president gets his
way - to make this decade's tax cuts permanent. It's foolhardy to assume that the government could continue
to meet all of its obligations, including the payment of Social Security benefits, under such a mountain of
debt.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Shelley Waters Boots, TomPaine.com
Date: January 26, 2005
Time is
money, and these days there doesn't seem to be enough of either to go around. The new reality in today's 24/7
economy is that the demands on workers continue to grow, but compensation, benefits and flexibility fail to
keep up. Unfortunately, it is not just workers that pay a high price. In this game of long hours, shrinking
benefits and stagnating wages, the biggest losers are workers' children and families. Between 1970 and 2001,
the percentage of mothers in the workforce rose from 38 to 67 percent. Compared to 30 years ago, today's
dual-income parents put in one additional month of full-time work each year. So what are the realities that
parents and their children face when it comes to balancing work and family?
Privatizing Social Security: 'me' over 'we'
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Benjamin R. Barber, Los Angeles Times
Date: January 27, 2005
Social Security privatization has been vigorously challenged on both economic and
technical grounds. Yet the most profound cost of privatization has been wholly ignored: the systemic cost to
our public way of life. By turning a public social insurance and pension policy into a private bet in which
personal and private decisions determine who does well and who does badly, we do irreparable harm to our
democratic "common ground." After all, one of this nation's greatest public goods has been its promise to give
every working family a guarantee of support at retirement, or in case of disability or death. You cannot simply
take justice out of the public realm and put it into the private realm without fundamentally weakening the
democracy on which the very possibility of justice depends.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert B. Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: January 28, 2005
Think the budget
deficit is too large, but not really something you should worry about? Think again. The deficit may be so large
as to seem abstract, but it translates to higher prices on everything you buy. Our economy is steadily slowing
down, choked by debt--all so tax cuts for the rich can become a permanent fixture.
Format: Political Column
Source: V.B. Price, Albuquerque Tribute
Date: January 31, 2005
I wonder what Dennis Chavez, the late U.S. senator from New Mexico, would be thinking
today in an America where unions have been gutted, civil liberties are being undermined and the old-age
protections of Social Security and Medicare are being seriously attacked by plutocrats in the White House. I
say he'd be outraged and eloquently and relentlessly outspoken. He wouldn't be toadying around with the
Ruling Party.
Fairness in workplace is a double-edged sword
Format: Advice Column
Source: Andrea Kay (Gannett), The Desert Sun
Date: January 31, 2005
Most of you tell me what you will never tell your employer. How much you
resent your boss for not giving you feedback. How annoyed you are they brought in some yo-yo from the outside
to fill a position you aspired to for three years. How unappreciated you are, how ill-equipped you feel to do a
job because no one is supporting you. Or how uncreative your work has become. Why are you telling me instead of
your manager? Let me guess. You figure it won't do any good. You've tried but nothing changed. You've
dropped 10 hints. It could even be risky. Besides, by now you're looking for a new job, right? Whether you're
a senior executive or an administrative assistant, you have one thing in common with every dissatisfied worker
I hear from: You feel you've been treated unfairly.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Date: February 1, 2005
Among his
priorities this year, President Bush wants to make his tax cuts permanent. Not only do these tax cuts heap
billions onto our national debt, but the evidence shows they don't produce the jobs his administration claims
they will. Since the tax cuts took effect in July 2003, the administration's projected monthly job growth was
only met or exceeded three times. Overall, the promise of 5.5 million jobs fell 3.1 million jobs short--one of
the worst job-creation records in the past century. As important, wages are stagnating--which explains why
people remain very nervous about the economy. With the past experience laid out for all to see--the public
should not buy any State of the Union claims that more tax cuts will help create more jobs.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: February 1, 2005
The fight over
Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have. But it's also about numbers. And
the numbers the privatizers use just don't add up. Let me inflict some of those numbers on you. Sorry, but
this is important. Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic
Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return,
6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't
deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows
much faster than anyone is now expecting.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: February 4, 2005
A few weeks ago I
tried to explain the logic of Bush-style Social Security privatization: it is, in effect, as if your financial
adviser told you that you wouldn't have enough money when you retire--but you shouldn't save more. Instead,
you should borrow a lot of money, buy stocks and hope for capital gains. Do you believe that we should replace
America's most successful government program with a system in which workers engage in speculation that no
financial adviser would recommend? Do you believe that we should do this even though it will do nothing to
improve the program's finances? If so, George Bush has a deal for you.
Format: Editorial
Source: Washington Post
Date: February 7, 2005
Between 2000 and
2003, the number of people living in poverty rose 14 percent. In 2003, one out of every eight Americans was
poor, a disproportionate number of them children. The number without health insurance was the highest on
record. The poorest fell further below the poverty line while the richest took home a greater share of national
income than ever. We recite these depressing numbers today, as President Bush prepares to unveil his fiscal
2006 budget, because budgets are not only dry, fact-choked documents but a measure of the national character.
These are the budgetary times that try the nation's soul. In the face of this unhappy fiscal reality, the risk
is that the budget ax will fall most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, those with the
greatest need for government help but the smallest voice in the corridors of power.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: February 6, 2005
Meatpackers, driven by the
brutal economics of the industry, always try to hire the cheapest labor they can find. That increasingly means
immigrants whose language difficulties compound the risks of the job. The result, according to a new report by
Human Rights Watch, is "extraordinarily high rates of injury" in conditions that systematically violate human
rights. The industry has little incentive to improve conditions on its own, except a decent regard for human
rights. The only reasonable prospect of improvement depends on the enforcement of federal and state law.
Unfortunately, those laws at present are too weak and too riddled with loopholes to provide the regulations
needed to increase worker safety and improve workers' rights. A systematic regulatory look at the meat
industry, with an eye to toughening standards, is desperately needed.
The right's attack on public pensions
Format: News Commentary
Source: Phil Angelides, Los Angeles Times
Date: February 7, 2005
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says getting rid of public pension plans for California's state
and local government workers is about helping to balance the budget. Peel back the budget wrapping on his plan,
though, and you will find the governor's real agenda: the California prong of a national attack on the pension
funds that have stood up for corporate reform and the interests of ordinary families and investors hurt by the
recent wave of corporate scandal. Across the country, the governor's ideological soul mates are targeting
public pension funds for elimination because those funds have stood up for ordinary investors against rampant
corporate abuses. The governor and his right-wing ideologues have targeted the pension funds not because the
funds have strayed, but because they are leading the fight on behalf of ordinary shareholders to put
transparency and accountability back into American capitalism.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Martha Burk, TomPaine.com
Date: February 10, 2005
One of the loudest
voices in the debate about Social Security privatization belongs to Rep. Bill Thomas. Thomas recently proposed
"adjusting" Social Security benefits so that women, who live longer than men, wouldn't receive greater overall
benefits. But it turns out that the numbers show women are already being cheated out of well-earned benefits.
It's definitely time for an adjustment--just not the one Rep. Thomas has in mind.
Boomers, budget and a so-called bust
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert B. Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: February 11, 2005
Today's [baby] boomers bankroll today's Social Security retirees with their payroll taxes, as does every
generation. That's the way Social Security was designed--as a pay-as-you-go system. But boomers outnumber
retirees. So there's extra money in the kitty--a Social Security surplus. Here's the dirty little secret.
Those surpluses are being used to reduce the president's budget deficits. The president's new budget predicts
that this year's deficit will be $427 billion. But it would be much, much larger--a whopping $589
billion--without this year's Social Security surplus. So if the government's going to depend for years on the
boomer's payroll taxes to reduce its budget deficits, by the time the boomers retire it should replenish
Social Security with revenues from more progressive income and corporate taxes. And in the meantime, to be
really fair, raise the cap on the amount of wages subject to the payroll tax.
The twilight zone: black history, Bush-style
Format: News Commentary
Source: Maya Rockeymoore, Black Commentator
Date: February 10, 2005
Just in
time for Black History Month, the nation enters a dialogue about race that could have important socioeconomic
implications for generations of African Americans. At issue is President Bush's charge that the Social
Security system is unfair to African Americans because they do not live as long as whites. The President is
right to focus the nation on the need to promote ownership and wealth creation in the United States. Yet he is
wrong to attempt to execute his plan by undermining Social Security. If the President really cares about the
welfare of African Americans, he would seek to close health disparities and give people an opportunity to earn
extra money to put on top of Social Security's guarantee.
Social Security cure: procrastination
Format: News Commentary
Source: David R. Francis, Christian Science Monitor
Date: February 14, 2005
You
don't have to look hard for suggested solutions to Social Security. President Bush proposes private accounts.
Liberals want a number of minor tweaks. Here's another solution to the alleged crisis: do nothing. That's
right. Ignore the doomsayers. Wait for a decade or two, and see if the gloomy predictions are coming true.
It's not as crazy as it sounds because of one simple fact: No one really knows whether the forecast of a
solvency problem will come true or just gradually fade away. Why? Because economists have great difficulty
making accurate long-term projections. And 75-year economic forecasts--upon which all the current alarm is
based--are about as reliable as the Farmers' Almanac.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: David Smith, TomPaine.com
Date: February 15, 2005
With a
stunning absence of specifics, President Bush used his State of the Union address to propose a radical "reform"
of Social Security. The president was right about only one thing. Our three-legged retirement stool--Social
Security, pensions and individual savings--is weak and wobbly. Only Social Security is strong. On a range of
fronts, we should take steps to get wages growing again so that families can save--the minimum wage should go
up, it should be easier to form a union, tax policies which encourage the export of good jobs should be
repealed--and we should make affordable heath care for all a reality. Those steps--not reduced benefits and
private accounts--would bring us closer to real social security.
Format: News Commentary
Source: Charlotte Fishman, CommonDreams
Date: February 23, 2005
As the debate over
Lawrence Summers' remarks keeps building and building, I confess to feeling a strange thrill. It isn't just
the satisfaction of watching an arrogant white male being taken to the woodshed. It is something else--the
startled realization that I am witnessing a newly emerging social consensus--that really stirs my blood. After
years of discussion and debate bubbling under the surface of academia, a new social consensus is revealed:
women's failure to thrive in the realm of the scientific elite cannot plausibly be explained by their lack of
talent, interest or commitment. This emerging social consensus has significant legal implications.
Labor pains: eight simple rules
Format: News Commentary
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Date: February 28, 2005
Perhaps it's fitting that the AFL-CIO Executive Council, at which the roiling debate over the future of labor
will be played out, is being held in the land of fantasy: Las Vegas. Don't get me wrong: the fact that there
even is a debate--and a sharp one at that--is a great thing. But, count me as one who doubts that the current
debate will lead to the changes needed. These rules will help you understand what is happening in Sin City this
week and how to tell whether anything really will change.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert B. Reich, New York Times
Date: February 28, 2005
Today's
economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and
communities. We can blame big corporations, but we're mostly making this bargain with ourselves. The easier it
is for us to get great deals, the stronger the downward pressure on wages and benefits. But you and I aren't
just consumers. We're also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? The only way for the
workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases
a social choice as well as a personal one. The prices on sales tags don't reflect the full prices we have to
pay as workers and citizens. A sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as low as
possible.
Format: News Commentary
Source: William Fisher, Dissident Voice
Date: March 5, 2005
I don't really
care who gets hired by [certain] discredited and disgraceful outfits. At least, not until I'm asked to help
pay their salaries. And that's what the U.S. House of Representatives is asking me--and you--to do. Yesterday,
224 of our courageous representatives passed the first rollback of religious liberty since President Reagan
signed the Job Training Partnership Act into law back in 1982. What they okayed was use of tax dollars to fund
religious discrimination in hiring for government-funded jobs. So the House made it OK to demand that taxpayers
help finance hiring policies that say Protestants-only or Muslims-only, or Catholics-only, or Jews-only, or,
for that matter, whites or blacks or Asians-only. Despite the aggressive opposition of a huge coalition of
religious, civil rights, labor, educational, and other advocacy groups, President Bush pushed hard for passage
as part of his Faith Based Initiative.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: March 8, 2005
Today the Senate
is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill that toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the
bill's passage. A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by some Democrats, has already voted down a
series of amendments that would either have closed loopholes for the rich or provided protection for some poor
and middle-class families. The bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the industry's political
muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill also fits into the broader context of what Jacob
Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the
government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic
insecurity.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Arianna Huffington, TomPaine.com
Date: March 10, 2005
Instead
of cracking down on predatory lending practices, closing loopholes that favor the wealthy, and strengthening
the safety net for working people, single mothers and elderly Americans struggling to recover from a financial
setback, the Senate put together a nasty little bill that reads like a credit industry wish list. A recent
study by Harvard University found that half of last year's 1.6 million bankruptcies were the result of
crushing medical bills. Put another way: every 30 seconds, someone in this country files for bankruptcy in the
wake of a serious illness. Instead of adapting to this harsh new reality, where hardworking, middle-class folks
can be financially destroyed by a sudden illness, the Senate is about to approve a one-size-fits-all law that
treats a family man who has sunk into debt because of a heart attack the same as a con artist who maxes out his
MasterCard, then refuses to pay up.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: March 15, 2005
The argument
over Social Security privatization isn't about rival views on how to secure the program's future--even the
administration admits that private accounts would do nothing to help the system's finances. It's a debate
about what kind of society America should be. And it's a debate Republicans appear to be losing, because the
public doesn't share their view that it's a good idea to expose middle-class families, whose lives have
become steadily riskier over the past few decades, to even more risk. But the Republicans' loss may not be the
Democrats' gain, for two reasons. One is that some Democrats, in the name of centrism, echo Republican talking
points. The other is that claims to be defending average families ring hollow when you defer to corporate
interests on votes that matter.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe
Date: March 16, 2005
The Republicans just did it again. They pushed through Congress a bankruptcy
''reform" bill written by credit card companies. The bill makes it harder for ordinary people crushed by debt
(often medical debt) to start anew. It leaves intact dodges used by wealthy people, such as asset-hiding
trusts, and the corporate ability to use bankruptcy to slash wages, evade pension responsibilities, and stiff
creditors. There's a larger story here. Time after time, Bush administration policies do real economic harm to
ordinary people, yet the Democrats can't seem to turn that reality into winning politics. Why not?
Mr. Greenspan, I beg to differ
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert B. Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: March 17, 2005
It's
not federal spending that's out of whack. What's really responsible for the giant deficits is found on the
revenue side of the ledger. As a percentage of the total economy, tax revenues are plunging. We haven't seen
revenues this low, as measured against the total economy, in half a century. Take a close look at government
revenues. Payments coming into government from payroll taxes--which are paid mostly by America's huge middle
class--are at an historic high. But look at what's being collected from income and corporate taxes, and
measured against the economy as a whole you get the smallest take in more than 60 years. And, of course, income
taxes and corporate taxes come mainly from people earning more than $200,000 a year. In other words, the
federal deficit has gone up mainly because wealthier Americans are paying less in taxes.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Chuck Collins, TomPaine.com
Date: March 23, 2005
In one America,
we hold bake sales to buy Kevlar bulletproof vests for family members deployed to Iraq. In another America,
lobbyists press to abolish the estate tax. This will ensure that the children of multimillionaires--who are not
losing sleep over insufficient body armor--will harvest unlimited inheritances into the millions and billions.
As we mark the second anniversary of the Iraq mission, there is a stunning inequality of sacrifice on the home
front. The Bush administration and congressional leaders have shown little interest in the symbolism, let alone
practice, of shared sacrifice. There are no tire drives, no calls for rationing, nor any moral duty to share in
the costs of the war. The war managers are determined to isolate the domestic sacrifice and losses for this war
to as few families as possible--largely to those waiting for loved ones to return from duty in Iraq.
Dirty battle in the Social Security war
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Marie Cocco, Newsday
Date: March 29, 2005
Supporters of President Bush's plan to privatize part of Social Security are losing the public relations war.
Some of them have decided to fight dirty. Two top Republicans recently demanded a Labor Department
investigation into union political activity on Social Security. Organized labor is enjoying a rare moment of
success. Through its public protests and vigorous lobbying, it has managed to get some big investment firms to
back out of business coalitions that provide financial and lobbying support for the White House Social Security
effort. The firms manage billions in union pension assets. One by one, they've been deciding that their union
business is a plump bird in hand compared with the uncertainty of a deal on Social Security promoted by Bush.
Wal-Mart's culture of crime and greed
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Date: March 30, 2005
The Beast of Bentonville (better known as Wal-Mart) is grappling with a spate of management
dismissals and investigations over the past few months that appear rooted in internal petty thievery. But
rather than a few bad apples being rooted out, it's clear that crime, greed, wrongdoing, malfeasance and
cronyism are deeply embedded in the Wal-Mart business model. Indeed, Wal-Mart could not survive without
manipulating the system and breaking the law. The management schlubs who have been shown the door are not
anomalies. They are a reflection of a culture stretching back to Sam Walton himself--a man who was a classic
bully, willing to trample on the little guy and make a profit off of the poverty of millions of people. That's
the Wal-Mart way.
The economy is based on borrowing
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Mark Trahant, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Date: April 3, 2005
The Economic Policy Institute recently compiled its "State of Working America 2004/2005" report. "Many of the
problems that beset working Americans in the 2001 recession and protracted jobless recovery persist today,"
says the opening paragraph of the report. "The 2001 downturn stopped and even reversed most of the positive
economic trends that characterized the latter 1990s." The country's wealth scale is out of balance. "Using
newly available income data that goes all the way back to 1913, income in 2000 was only slightly less
concentrated among the top 1 percent of households than during the run-up to the Great Depression, which was
the worst period of uneven income concentration in the last century," the report says.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Eric Schlosser, New York Times
Date: April 6, 2005
Last month,
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that represents farm workers in Florida, announced it was ending a
four-year boycott of Taco Bell. The most remarkable thing about the announcement was the reason behind it: Taco
Bell had acceded to all of the coalition's demands. At a time of declining union membership, failed organizing
drives and public apathy about poverty, a group of immigrant tomato pickers had persuaded an enormous fast food
company to increase the wages of migrant workers and impose a tough code of conduct on Florida tomato
suppliers.
Drafted for the inflation battle
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Robert Reich, TomPaine.com
Date: April 7, 2005
When job growth is slow, like it is now, the poorest Americans suffer most. That's because
they're the last to get hired and the first to get fired. Now, Alan Greenspan wants to stop a possible
inflation outbreak and is raising interest rates to compensate. But inflation is highly unlikely to spiral out
of control, and the pre-emptive measures against it just mean poor Americans have fewer and fewer job options.
All the Fed is doing is widening the poverty gap. Poorer Americans are paying the price at the very time when
the White House is cutting low-income housing, cutting Medicaid for the poor, cutting child care, and cutting
other programs for poor families.
Justices split gray hairs in age-bias case
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Marianne Means, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Date: April 7, 2005
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law allows old folks to file job-related age-bias claims
without a finding of deliberate harmful intent. Sounds good, but then the justices noted that employers could
dump older workers if they had an undefined "reasonable" explanation. Wow. An escape clause big enough to drive
a truck through. Maybe the justices have forgotten that without a remedy, there is no right. So are senior
citizens a protected class like racial minorities and women? Not on your life. This is one of those disgusting
legal dodges in which the kindly, age-neutral rhetoric doesn't come close to reality.
Bush's Social Security playbook
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Waldman, TomPaine.com
Date: April 12, 2005
The current debate over Social Security is one of those rare occasions where the public is
getting the chance to really think about what is being proposed. As poll after poll has shown, the more they
hear about the administration's proposal, the less they like it. There is little reason to believe that the
argument that privatization is really about helping poor people will be any more persuasive than the previous
arguments that it was about helping black people or young people. Unfortunately for the administration, when
people actually know the facts and take the opportunity to think things out, it can be awfully hard to pull the
wool over their eyes.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Beth Shulman, TomPaine.com
Date: April 12, 2005
From
yesterday's daytime gabfests to today's reality shows, somehow in America, the insurmountable became the
inevitable. We went from counting on a family-sustaining job to expecting a pink slip. We've seen whole towns
rust and millions lose decent jobs. We've seen still others trapped in jobs that fail to provide the basics of
a decent life. Meanwhile, there aren't enough reality show makeovers to transform whole blocks--let alone
entire towns--or get us all college diplomas or decent jobs. So a few are chosen, and the rest of us are made
to feel like we failed. It's one thing to admire those who beat the odds, quite another to create a society
which makes the odds nearly impossible to overcome.
Struggle for workers' rights necessary
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Daniel Boudreau, BG News
Date: April 12, 2005
As the
days remaining in this academic year slip away, many soon-to-be-ex-students are pondering just what they are
going to do with their lives. I have this to suggest: go save your country. Find work within what is going to
be the major American battle of the 21st century: the fight for workers' rights and their ability to unionize.
Why not consider work that puts you at the center of this struggle, one that, when successful, will ultimately
bring some balance to an economy that currently breeds injustice? If current economic trends continue, and if
we don't step up to oppose them, that fancy college degree of yours might only be able to land you employment
at the local, non-unionized, Wal-Mart.
Format: News Commentary
Source: John Edwards, Talking Points Memo
Date: April 14, 2005
I'm now spending a lot of my time tackling the challenges of poverty, but I learned a lot about
bankruptcy on the campaign trail last year. I saw how many good families end up broke and poor, and how they
need the safety net of a fair bankruptcy law if they're going to get back on their feet. Like a lot of
Democrats, I voted for a bankruptcy reform bill before. I can't say it more simply than this: I was wrong. The
bill is supposed to crack down on irresponsible borrowers. That's the right thing to do. The problem is that
this bill imposes big burdens on families who did everything right but went broke just because they lost a job
or lost their health insurance. And, even more than the legislation I supported, this bill doesn't crack down
on the real abusers.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: April 18, 2005
In the 1970's
soaring prices of oil and other commodities led to stagflation--a combination of high inflation and high
unemployment, which left no good policy options. If the Fed cut interest rates to create jobs, it risked
causing an inflationary spiral; if it raised interest rates to bring inflation down, it would further increase
unemployment. Can it happen again? Last week fears of a return to stagflation sent stock prices to a five-month
low. What few seem to have noticed, however, is that a mild form of stagflation--rising inflation in an economy
still well short of full employment--has already arrived. Inflation is creeping up, and it's doing so despite
a labor market that is in worse shape than the official unemployment rate suggests.
A great idea--but not practiced in America
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Nancy Hurlbert, Tami Simms-Powel, Miami Herald
Date: April 19, 2005
Why do parking-lot attendants get paid more than childcare workers? Is it harder work? Does it take
more training? Is the work more valuable to society? Or is it that most parking lot attendants are men, and
most childcare workers are women? The day to ask these questions is April 19: Equal Pay Day. And here's
another question: Why April 19? If a man and a woman each started working on Jan. 1, 2004, the man would have
earned a year's pay by Dec. 31, 2004. The woman would have to continue working three months and 19 days longer
to earn the same amount. In America today, the woman's work year extends until April 19 of the next year. This
gives new meaning to the old saying: A woman's work is never done.
Wal-Mart's free market fallacy
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Date: April 21, 2005
Conservatives run around singing the praises of Wal-Mart, proclaiming it an American success
story. But what I love about Wal-Mart is the way the company highlights the phoniness of two centerpieces of
the conservative movement's sloganeering propaganda: the so-called "free market" and "local control." Truth
is, Wal-Mart could not survive in a real free market. Ironically, Wal-Mart's behavior does have one redeeming
factor. By puncturing the Wal-Mart-generated myths that it is good for America, by showing that its low-prices
come with a heavy cost, and by revealing how the company is a leech on communities, we may begin to pull back
the curtain hiding the true nature of the so-called "free market."
Think pay gap doesn't exist anymore? Think again
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Rekha Basu, Des Moines Register
Date: April 20, 2005
Imagine if your earnings for one-third of this year were simply wiped out. Say you were
furloughed from your job, or had to take a leave without pay to take care of family. Since we're already
almost a third of the way through 2005, all the work you've done so far this year would count for exactly
nothing. Now you have some sense of what it means to be the typical woman in the workforce. Tuesday was Equal
Pay Day, the symbolic date established by the National Committee on Pay Equity to show how many extra months
into the year a woman would have to work to earn as much as a man does in a year. Relative to male earnings,
the first nearly four months worked by a woman count for nothing.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: April 22, 2005
The United
States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more
medical services. How do we do it? We've created a vast and hugely expensive insurance bureaucracy that
accomplishes nothing. It's perverse but true that this system, which insures only 85 percent of the
population, costs much more than we would pay for a system that covered everyone. Why do we put up with such an
expensive, counterproductive health care system? Decades of indoctrination in the virtues of market competition
and the evils of big government have left many Americans unable to comprehend the idea that sometimes
competition is the problem, not the solution.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: April 25, 2005
Is the
administration's obliviousness to the public's economic anxiety just partisanship? I don't think so:
President Bush and other Republican leaders honestly think that we're living in the best of times. After all,
everyone they talk to says so. The administration's upbeat view of the economy is a case in point. Corporate
interests are doing very well. Over the last three years, profits grew the fastest since World War II. The
story is very different for the great majority of Americans. Over the past three years, wage and salary income
grew less than in any other postwar recovery--less than a tenth as fast as profits. But wage-earning Americans
aren't part of the base.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: April 29, 2005
American health care is unique among advanced countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector.
It's also uniquely inefficient. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country, yet many
Americans lack health insurance and don't receive essential care. This week yet another report emphasized just
how bad a job the American system does at providing basic health care. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation estimates that 20 million working Americans are uninsured; in Texas, which has the worst record,
more than 30 percent of the adults under 65 have no insurance. Our system is desperately in need of reform. Yet
it will be very hard to get useful reform, for two reasons: vested interests and ideology.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Beth Shulman, TomPaine.com
Date: May 3, 2005
When it
started small in Arkansas, perhaps [Wal-Mart] felt it had no choice but to create primarily low-wage jobs that
offered few benefits, to successfully compete. But isn't it high time to rethink this view? Couldn't Wal-Mart
provide family-sustaining jobs and be the General Motors of the 21st century? Wal-Mart has a decision to make
about how it wants to do business, the society it wants to help share and its legacy in America's history
books. It can either become the General Motors of the 21st century by rebuilding a strong middle class, or it
can continue to lead our country down the dangerous path to a low-wage economy. We all have a stake in its
decision. Because, like General Motors several decades ago: as goes Wal-Mart, so goes the nation.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post
Date: May 3, 2005
There is a name for those who continue to sit at a gambling table even after they learn
that the game is fixed. They are called fools. Now that President Bush has proposed Social Security benefit
cuts through "progressive indexing," his critics are said to have an obligation to negotiate in good faith to
achieve a solution. There are just two problems with that sentence: the words "good faith" and "solution."
Walking away from a rigged game is hard for some people, especially when those running it and the respected
opinion-makers who support them insist that this time the game will truly be on the level. But, especially when
the danger involves gambling away the future of Social Security, the truly responsible thing is to leave the
table.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Paul Krugman, New York Times
Date: May 2, 2005
A close look at
President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that
it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash
middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing. Cut an average worker's benefits, and you're
imposing real hardship. Cut or even eliminate Dick Cheney's benefits, and only his accountants will notice.
This is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s
most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it
with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Martha Burk, TomPaine.com
Date: May 6, 2005
Every year on
Mother's Day we stop to thank our moms with gifts and adoration. As individuals, we love our mothers dearly,
but as a society we don't give much of a flip for motherhood. The state of mothers in America is worse than
it's ever been. Close to three-quarters of all moms with children between the ages of 6 and 18 are in the
labor force. Even though a large majority of mothers in the country now work outside the home, we are lost in
the '50s when it comes to family policy. As a nation, we've got to grasp the fact that working mothers are
the norm, not the exception.
Roses, relaxation and real reform
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Shelley Waters Boots, Mary Bissell, TomPaine.com
Date: May 6, 2005
If the cult of motherhood has taken an angry turn these days, it's easy to understand why.
Mothers (and fathers) across the country are struggling to balance the needs of their families and the demands
of their jobs. And despite our collective rhetoric on valuing families, parents are largely forced to shoulder
these burdens alone. If we really want mothers to relax, marriages to prosper and children to thrive, it's
time for the government to implement an everyday Mother's Day strategy that will make a difference for years
to come.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Kim Gandy, TomPaine.com
Date: May 10, 2005
Make no
mistake, privatizing Social Security will be financially devastating for women. Without this essential social
insurance program, more than half of women over 65 would be living in poverty. Social Security provides a
guaranteed monthly income to retired workers, to workers who become disabled and to survivors of deceased
workers. It is time-tested, extremely cost efficient and--most importantly--it works. Fortunately, the public
is becoming more skeptical, not less. We must debunk the myths and tell the whole truth, so that everyone with
an interest in this fight understands how the system works and what is at stake. As always, knowledge truly is
power.
Format: Op-Ed
Source: Bob Herbert, New York Times
Date: May 12, 2005
A recent report
from Northeastern University tells us that the employment rate for the nation's teenagers in the first 11
months of 2004--just 36.3 percent--was the lowest it has ever been since the federal government began tracking
teenage employment in 1948. Whatever politicians and business-booster types may be saying, the simple truth is
that there are not nearly enough jobs available for the many millions of out-of-work or underworked men and
women who need them. The wages of those who are employed are not even keeping up with inflation. Wealth and
power in the United States has become ever more dangerously concentrated, leaving an entire generation of
essentially powerless workers largely at the mercy of employers.
Format: Editorial
Source: New York Times
Date: May 12, 2005
On Tuesday, when it received a
federal bankruptcy court's permission to terminate its pension plans, United Airlines became the biggest
pension defaulter in the history of corporate America. Analysts fear that Delta may also default, as well as
other ailing airlines, followed by auto parts companies and perhaps even, in five years or so, the car