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www.workinglife.org:
A blog discussing the current state of the world of work
Barbara's Blog
Hillary’s Gift to Women
In Friday’s New York Times,
Susan Faludi rejoiced over Hillary Clinton’s destruction of the myth
of female prissiness and innate moral superiority, hailing Clinton’s
“no-holds-barred pugnacity” and her media reputation as “nasty” and
“ruthless.” Future female presidential candidates will owe a lot to
the race of 2008, Faludi wrote, “when Hillary Clinton broke through
the glass floor and got down with the boys.”
Read more >>
With the Truckers in DC
Truckers live in an alternative
dimension, at least so I conclude when trying to figure out how to
meet up with the convoy of trucks coming into to DC to protest high
diesel fuel prices on Monday. JB, aka Mike Schaffner, one of the
organizers of the action, calls early in the morning to suggest
various highway intersections, and I have to explain there’s no way
a pedestrian can be just standing on one the super-highways around
DC. We eventually settle on a spot in a desolate area of
southeastern DC, but even so, I probably couldn’t have made the
connection without the genes of a grandfather who rode the rails.
When I hear the honking, low and steady, and see the first trucks
rising out from an underpass, I scramble up to a narrow walkway
along their route and start waving frantically. Everyone waves back
nicely, and about the fifth truck actually stops. It’s JB and I leap
aboard.
Read more >>
Barbara's Guest Blogger
Greatest Nation in the World? How the U.S.
Stacks Up for Those In Labor
By Ellen Bravo
Recently I gave a talk in Calgary, Canada for
representatives of credit unions from around the world. The woman
who introduced me, a director of marketing, was Canadian. “I just
got back from maternity leave,” she told me, raving about her first
child.
I know that Canadian law allows for nearly a year
of leave at 55 percent pay. “How long did you take?” I asked.
“Oh, the whole year,” she replied. I mentioned
that the Family and Medical Leave Act in the U.S. provides for
considerably less time, 12 weeks, and that the time is unpaid. (I
didn’t mention that it covers only half the workforce.) The vast
majority of new mothers in the U.S. are back at work before 12
weeks. More than half of them get no pay at all.
Read more >>
The Death of Democracy
by Pete Orthmann
Having had to scratch around for survival all my life, I confess
total ignorance about living life as a mega-millionaire. From this
distance, it all seems so….. phony, and actually down-right
disgusting. Phony because, they apparently judge themselves and
everyone else on the basis of stuff as opposed to personal
qualities. Disgusting because most are so totally self absorbed they
fail to even notice the people around them who are literally
clinging to the very edge of life. Disgusting also, because they are
oblivious to the devastation caused by their excesses. Sure, there
are obvious exceptions like Bono, Oprah, Paul Newman and a handful
of others. But for the most part, the super rich seem compelled to
proudly demonstrate complete self-indulgence.
Read more >>
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