Subscribe to the show today!Support Working Life @ https://www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePo...​or @ actblue.com/donate/working-life-1I have discussed a number of times the union organizing campaign at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. So, as the ballot counting is now underway, I thought today we could add two aspects to the conversation, while…

Subscribe to the show today!Support Working Life @ https://www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePo...​or @ actblue.com/donate/working-life-1I’ve spent a lot of time on the crisis facing workers around the world who before the pandemic even hit us faced some pretty dire economic realities. Tomorrow, a high-level group will convene, virtually naturally, to tal…

Subscribe to the show today!Support Working Life @ https://www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastor @ actblue.com/donate/working-life-1It’s those zombie voices again. The ones who rise up from the dead, or from a hidden policy corner, to start the drumbeat of fear about “debt” and “deficits”, all in order to block progress for the people.There is no de…

Subscribe to Working Life today!Support us @ https://www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastor @ actblue.com/donate/working-life-1Episode 217:It’s all about North Carolina today—the fight for better wages and the campaign to get a progressive person in the U.S. Senate, all of which is connected to my two guests today who represent the theme of the just-…

Episode 216:Subscribe to Working Life today!Support us @ https://www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastor @ actblue.com/donate/working-life-1The number that sticks in my mind today, and has since I heard it, is 40 percent. While over half a million people in the U.S. have died of COVID in one year, while millions of people have become sick, while milli…

Episode 215:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1You aren’t going to be surprised by this news: Big Pharma is killing people. All over the world. And the real kicker here is: after you, the taxpayer, gave billions of dollars to Big Pharma companies to come up with …

Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1Right before our eyes, in these very days and at this time of crisis, you can see so clearly this bankrupt system, defended and promoted by greedy CEOs and spineless politicians, but a system people are trying to rebel against a…

Episode 213:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1“Bi-partisanship” is an idea that should make everyone sick to their stomach. When someone is out to kill you, or your nation and community, making a deal for the sake of “bi-partisanship” or, its related political s…

Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1How many of you dealt with that chaos when it came to wrestling with the unemployment insurance system last year? Some of the rhetoric we heard was, “well that chaos was just the pandemic crush overwhelming the system”. Yes, tha…

Episode 211: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.” The discerning quick minds among you will know that that’s a sni…

Episode 210:I am guessing everyone who listens to this show considers himself or herself an environmentalist and cares about the planet. You believe in science—a shocking notion—so you get the climate change emergency. We know we have to do some pretty radical stuff to keep this spaceship habitable for generations to come. Here’s the problem: there…

Episode 209:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1Soccer, football, whatever you call it—it’s not my thing at all. Give me baseball every day, 365 days a week. But, what is my thing is making sure workers in every sport aren’t exploited—and that has been a reality f…

Episode 208: Back in the spring, I had a good chuckle when I found a topic of agreement between the AFL-CIO and Goldman Sachs, as well as agreement from lots of heads of states, many labor folks and business titans—creating trillions of dollars in grants, not debt, to give to poorer countries needing immediate financial aid right away to contend wi…

Episode 207:Ideology is in the way of a simple plan to end the pandemic in 30 days. Yes, 30 days: Lock down the country and pay everyone up to an annual wage of $90,000 to stay home. I’m resurrecting the argument I made months ago because the debate about a stimulus is on the agenda again—after Republicans have basically said fuck you to the entire…

Episode 206:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1Three questions post-election are on the menu this week. First, how does Tom Perez, the chair of the DNC, still have a job? Perez has been incompetent for a very long time. He was the choice of the Democratic Party e…

Episode 205:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1It’s the permanent government—the corporate lobbyists who have friends in both parties. It is at the heart of why we don’t have Medicare for All, why the Pentagon is rolling in dough and why banks and Wall Street rip…

Episode 204:The catastrophic failure to shrink global inequality has given COVID-19 the perfect breeding ground: tens of millions of people are at risk of hunger, extreme poverty, sickness and death because, overwhelmingly, most countries do not spend enough on public healthcare, and they have weak social safety nets and poor labor rights.Now, this…

Episode 203:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1When Donald Trump and his minions are eviscerated in less than three weeks so the country can survive, I can’t think of a better illustration of the fight still to come for progressives than taxes. Joe Biden’s tax pr…

Episode 202:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcastActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1For a sliver of time, the political world was talking about how Donald Trump cheats on his taxes. Virtually every rich person does what Trump does: they use the tax code to dodge paying their fair share, which costs …

Episode 201:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast ActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1I’ve been thinking a lot about firefighters these days, what with the jaw-dropping video we see virtually every day of these monstrous wild fires scorching millions of acres of forests in California and Oregon. For …

Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast and at ActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1Episode 200:CEOs like to play a three-card monte shell game. They want everyone to focus on their rhetoric about all the supposed wonderful things they do—say, creating a “green” friendly product—and, at the same time, w…

Episode 199:Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast and at ActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1What’s a worker’s life worth? To you and me, it’s priceless. Capitalism, though, doesn’t see it that way—a worker’s life is a cost of doing business, a life easily disposable when it comes to making profits. …

Support the Working Life Network here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast and at ActBlue: secure.actblue.com/donate/working-life-1Episode 198:The most important political figure in your economic life—to be sure, the boss of a company has got a lot of power—is not the president of the United States, no matter who that is. It’s probably the head of t…

Episode 197:The last name “Hoover” is, if I can use this term, a brand name in conservative circles. Herbert Hoover was the 31st president of the U.S. who served during the Great Depression, taking office in 1929 the year the stock market crashed—an apt historical reference for today perhaps since the economic implosion we are living through is the…

Episode 196:It’s never enough to remind people every single day how many workers are out there on the frontlines risking their lives in the pandemic. I’ve talked about those folks regularly on the show: the transit workers, retail workers, and teachers. And, surely, the workers who put food on our plates are right up there on the list—like the folk…