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Archive for the ‘labor’ Category

Who needs Fair Pay?

Monday, April 28th, 2008

 Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have enabled women  to more effectively sue employers over gender based wage discrimination.   The bill was intended to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear , which limited the ability of workers to seek legal recourse under Title VII by enforcing a statute of limitations of 180 days from the first instance of wage discrimination (despite the fact that this type of discrimination is often as subtle as it is insidious and therefore can take much longer to uncover).  John McCain was absent on voting day, but made clear through comments that he opposed the bill.  Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins had this to say about the bill, the vote, and the absent McCain’s stance in the debate: (more…)

Some Trade-Union Porn for Kevin

Saturday, April 19th, 2008
South African port and truck workers are refusing to move weapons from a ship that docked in the country on its way to Zimbabwe, union officials said Friday.

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Getting Workers’ Minds Right at the Fed

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Regular commenter quasibill, on the LeftLibertarian2 list, linked to an excellent article on Federal Reserve policy and inflation.  Here’s the money quote (no pun intended):

A popular misconception is that inflation cannot occur in an economy without wage inflation to transmit prices into all-goods prices. Indeed the Fed has waged war on wages since the early 1980s so this point of confusion is understandable…. But wage inflation is but one of a long list of factors that can create an inflation spiral.

Labor discipline, in fact, has been a central objective of Federal Reserve policy since Volcker’s recession in the early ’80s.

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