West coast ports remain open, because those dockworkers have a different union and negotiated a new contract a couple years ago. What’s behind the strike? Wages are front and center. West coast longshoremen, under their new contract, will make $60 an hour by 2027; the East and Gulf coast longshore[...]
Posts Tagged ‘labor’
California nurses’ strike bears fruit
A couple weeks ago I wrote here that nurses at Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto were threatening to strike over pay and working conditions. They did walk out, and after spending a week on picket lines, they appear to have won. The union president called the [...]
Is the Big Quit actually a mass strike?
America experienced mass strikes after the end of both world wars. For example, in 1946, 10% of the U.S. workforce struck employers. The reason? Companies had made a lot of money during the war, and they wanted their share. What makes a “mass strike” different from an ordinary strike is [...]
House passes pro-union bill
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed “labor groups’ top legislative priority, a bill aimed at strengthening workers’ rights to unionize,” setting the stage for a Senate battle over labor rights. Labor unions arguably created America’s middle class by raising wage[...]
November 11th, 2018 - 11:16 am § in Donald Trump
Trump’s worker bonuses go pffft.
Remember the worker bonuses Trump bragged about after signing his deficit-financed tax giveaways to billionaires and corporations? “Large companies actually cut back on bonuses in 2018 and plan to do so even more next year, according to new data from Aon, an insurance broker. (It surveyed 1,000 bu[...]
September 26th, 2018 - 11:06 pm § in Politics
Do unions help workers get higher wages?
It’s practically an article of faith that union jobs pay better. Do they? This graph (from Nate Silver’s “538” blog, based on BLS data) indicates they do. (Note: Public sector wages average more because of higher educational requirements and steady work schedules; most govern[...]
August 14th, 2018 - 11:36 am § in Misc.
Labor’s shrinking share of GDP, 1947-2016
The U.S. economy has grown over the last half-century, but most of the gains have gone to the top 10%, and inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant since 1970. Back then, labor got about 60%, and capital 40%, of what the economy produced. Today, those figures are reversed. This trend has gone han[...]
April 15th, 2018 - 9:00 pm § in Misc.
Report: Tesla compromised worker safety to appease Musk
Electric carmaker Tesla compromised worker safety at its Fremont, California plant to appease founder and CEO Elon Musk, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent journalism nonprofit that operates a website called RevealNews.org. Tesla “mislabeled and under-counted w[...]
March 23rd, 2018 - 1:23 am § in Misc.
Where the (low wage) jobs go
Just because you get rid of illegal migrant workers doesn’t mean you get the jobs back. Minimum wages are fair, but may not be efficient Automation is getting better with time and unskilled labor doesn’t. Knut Robert Knutsen FACEBOOK The “no citizen will do the work”[...]
October 1st, 2017 - 10:27 pm § in Misc.
The Unforseen Perils of Self Driving Trucks
These are likely to put thousands of working girls out of a job![...]