Trade
Why Business And Government Are Quiet About TPP Dissident Voice ...Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, who served in the Reagan and Clinton administrations, says that TPP won’t deliver jobs or curb China’s power, the former a fallacy...
Clyde Prestowitz on the Destructive Effects of TPP on American Workers naked capitalism …it is clear now, after a long and deep recession, that the economy is not always at full employment and that even if workers find new jobs, the pay is often lower than at their old jobs. Indeed, most of the jobs created in the last year have been in low-wage industries such as retailing and food service...
Currency Fight Hinders Talks on U.S.-Pacific Trade Deal Wall Street Journal …Concern that some trade partners are manipulating their currencies to gain an export edge has emerged as a major hurdle to the Obama administration’s efforts to move a Pacific trade agreement through Congress...
War on Workers
Greece Chooses Anti-Austerity Party in Major Shift New York Times … Greece rejected the harsh economics of austerity on Sunday and sent a warning to the rest of Europe as the left-wing Syriza party won a decisive victory in national elections...
Davos 2015: overriding pessimism over growing inequality Guardian …World leaders have not done enough to ensure economic growth has reduced inequality, Davos hears as fears turn to the impact of geopolitical tensions…
How Companies Like Walmart Are Fighting to Keep Workplace Injuries Secret Mother Jones …A new regulation that OSHA is scheduled to finalize this year would change that. OSHA wants to create a public database of workplace injury and illness data from all industries, not just manufacturing. This would help workers, the government, researchers, and journalists identify companies with safety problems. But the trade groups that represent some of America's biggest chains—including Walmart, Target, and McDonald's—are fighting back hard…
Robert Reich on Redefining Full-Time Work, Obamacare, and Employer Benefits Harvard Business Review ...we see from the 1970s onward a movement toward where we are right now, and that is more workers who are without benefits coming from their employment contract, whose wages are less a function of collective bargaining than they are a function of the workers’ own individual bargaining leverage, which is extremely small if the worker has no particular educational advantage over any other worker...
Miscellaneous
New York Braces for Blizzard Amid Warnings of Closings and Hazards New York Times …Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the storm approaching on Monday was likely to be one of the biggest to ever strike New York City, and he urged people to stay indoors to avoid powerful winds, low visibility and “treacherous” road conditions…
