cengel Posts

By Dave Johnson
Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
Sunday I interviewed Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, a union with 1.3 million members. Now that we know Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is leaving the administration and a new Labor Secretary will be appointed and confirmed, I asked him about the policies that a new Secretary o...

A number of the benefits common in workplaces today exist in part because they were first negotiated by a union bargaining a collective agreement, including fair wages, parental leave, caregiver leave and workplace safety standards.
When workers and employers negotiate fair contracts, they set standards that improve both union and non-union workplaces, and help all Ontario families keep up....

By Dave Johnson
Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
When you hear anyone from the big multinationals or Wall Street using the word “reform,” watch out! The way they use the word, it means give them more and We, the People get less. They want to “reform” Social Security, “reform” Medicare and “reform”...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy...

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Senior Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future
In his review of Jared Diamond’s new book, David Brooks is appropriately horrified by the stories of tribal women who were left to die rather than be cared for by their communitie...

Jackie Tortora
AFL-CIO Blog/Social Media Manager
The union membership rate was 11.3% in 2012, down from 11.8% in 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which released updated figures last week. This decrease in union membership highlights the painful fac...

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By Sam Pizzigati
Editor, Too Much online magazine
How do unequal societies solve the problems — like traffic congestion — that make us miserable? They come up with solutions that make life easier for rich people.
Politicians and bureaucrats “inside the Beltway” that circles Washington, D.C., pundits like to prattle,...

By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist
If you are sensitive to stories of human suffering and economic hardship, let me warn you that the following report contains materials that could be upsetting, so discretion is advised.
It’s about a fellow named Jamie. He lives in New York, and he had a ver...

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
FRONTLINE investigates why Wall Street’s leaders have escaped prosecution for any fraud related to the sale of bad mortgages....

Bill Scher
Online Editor, Campaign for America's Future
To get House conservatives to capitulate on temporarily suspending the debt limit without securing any spending cuts, Boehner made a stunning pledge: the upcoming House budget would eliminate the deficit in 10 years.
As a talking point, that sounds great. As a budget, it is literally double the crazy of the...

Robert Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America's Future
Republicans in Congress are intent on creating yet another manufactured budget crisis. This one is timed to come after bruising negotiations over the next weeks to avoid the deep, across-the-board cuts required by the sequester and the threat to shut down the government with the expiration of the continuin...

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Rose Ann DeMoro
Executive Director, National Nurses United
With poverty rates spinning perilously out of control in the U.S., it’s time to send an unmistakable message to Congress and the White House as they prepare to resume the ongoing obsession with the deficit: End the silence on poverty, don’t make poverty worse by making cuts to Social...

By Kris Warner
Research Assistant, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual summary of unionization in the U.S. It reports that in 2012, the union-membership rate of wage and salary workers was 11.3 percent, compared with 11.8 percent in 2011. The trend has been downward for some time: Fifty years ago, the figure was almos...

Jackie Tortora
AFL-CIO Blog/Social Media Manager
During President Obama’s second inaugural address yesterday, he affirmed we’re stronger when we work together:
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual free...

Rachel Maddow explains that the time when the Senate can change its rule about the filibuster (which Senate Republicans have abused to an unprecedented degree) has come down to a 36-hour deadline set by Senator Harry Reid....

By Jared Bernstein
Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
I thought the President gave a strong and progressive second inaugural speech Monday, one that resonantly underscored the most important themes he’s been promulgating since before anyone even knew who he was. What I don’t see so clearly is the path ...

By Hilda Solis
Outgoing U.S. Secretary of Labor
It has been an honor to be your secretary of labor. Today, as I prepared to say farewell, I decided that I wanted to share my experience through journeys, and through beginnings and endings, because that reflects what’s in my mind, and more importantly, what is in my heart at this present moment.
Thirt...

Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America
On Dr. Martin Luther King Day,  Americans celebrated the life and legacy of Dr. King and the second inauguration of our first African-American President.
In many ways, President Obama reached back to the struggle of Dr. King and brought it forward to t...