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Showing posts with the label Unions

Reparations for the Common People

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  Reparations for the Common People Paying a long overdue dividend DONALD JEFFRIES I wrote the book  Survival of the Richest: How the Corruption of the Marketplace and the Disparity of Wealth Created the Greatest Conspiracy of All.  It received more critical praise than any of my books, from the likes of Arthur Blaustein, a former Chair of the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity. Look at the book’s Amazon page. It has a long list of impressive blurbs under the “Editorial Reviews” section. These were people I largely have never communicated with. It was heady stuff for a community college dropout like me. Naomi Wolf compared it to the late Barbara Ehrenreich’s excellent  Nickel and Dimed.  Naomi went on the write the Foreword to the paperback version. Needless to say, I was extremely honored. But the book just never sold well. Even Naomi’s name on the paperback didn’t seem to help. There was a huge distinction between the critical praise and the disappointing sales. That’s

Striking Slaves Will Only Harm Their Own Slavery

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 The original title of the article is: "Striking Autoworkers Will Only Harm Their Own Livelihoods" On Friday, September 15, 12,700 members of the United Auto Workers union (UAW)   walked off   the job at plants owned by the “Big Three” automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram). The walkout marked the beginning of a series of   long-expected   targeted strikes aiming to give the UAW leverage as it renegotiates contracts with the three companies. The strike is grounded in frustrations over worker compensation. Union members and their supporters point to high profits and CEO pay at the Big Three and compare them to stagnant wages and rising costs of living among autoworkers. They feel like they’re being ripped off. And they’re right. Like the rest of the working class, autoworkers are being ripped off. Decades of interventionism have built an economic system that harms workers while helping the corporate and political classes. The first