As we stand with Walmart associates, restaurant staff and home care workers in their efforts for better job standards, we occasionally receive this dismissive response: “No one is forcing them to stay at their job. They should just quit and find another one!” But can these workers actually just quit… Read More»
The debate on the need for unions, initiated by blogger Evan Soltas’ call to let them die, has gained considerable attention. On the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s blog, Brad DeLong nicely compiled the back-and-forth – which has grown to include, among others, Kevin Drum, Timothy Noah and Michael Hiltzik.… Read More»
Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe wrote a response to our campaign to get him to meet with Walmart workers. Below is our letter back. Dear Mike, Thanks for taking the time to respond to us directly on your Facebook page. Jobs With Justice is a nonprofit organization committed to activism… Read More»
Opponents love to claim that raising the minimum wage will drive businesses elsewhere, but the evidence suggests otherwise. A study at the University of California at Berkeley compared hundreds of pairs of adjacent counties in states with differing minimum wage rates and concluded that a higher minimum wage didn’t significantly… Read More»
See for yourself: Year Minimum wage Representative Salary Senator Salary 1988 $3.35 $89,500 $89,500 1989 $3.35 $89,500 $89,500 1990 $3.80 $96,600 $98,400 1991 $4.25 $125,100 $125,100 1992 $4.25 $129,500 $129,500 1993 $4.25 $133,600 $133,600 1994 $4.25 $133,600 $133,600 1995 $4.25 $133,600 $133,600 1996 $4.75 $133,600 $133,600 1997 $5.15 $133,600 $133,600… Read More»
Walmart, the world’s most profitable retailer, is starting to show signs of decline. Last week, the company reported a 21 percent dip in profits over the fourth quarter and a decline in its same-store earnings over that same period, leading a financial analyst to downgrade the company’s stock rating on… Read More»
Like many cities during the Great Recession, Cleveland was facing budget cuts that threatened services and jobs at its public libraries. Instead of accepting layoffs, Cleveland Public Library’s (CPL) management and its union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) District 1199, came up with a creative solution of transferring employees… Read More»
Evan Soltas would like you to know he read a book about unions. In his recent Bloomberg View column, Soltas ponders the thesis of Richard Freeman and James Medoff’s seminal book What Do Unions Do? and concludes that unions don’t do much in today’s economy. As Soltas notes, Freeman and… Read More»
Have you ever suspected your school is receiving kickbacks from banks in exchange for promoting their products and services on campus? Turns out, they probably are. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report expressing concerns over such partnerships between banks and universities, and they’re not alone. In… Read More»
Last year, we publicized the brave protests and strikes the National Guestworker Alliance (NGA) and student guestworkers organized to blow the whistle on retaliation and labor abuse suffered at the hands of McDonald’s restaurants in Pennsylvania. The students, who paid $3,000 to $4,000 for their ‘cultural-exchange’ visas, were shocked to… Read More»
