January « 2009 « Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

Why Screw Workers?

Why Screw Workers?
New Orleans In the middle of this pronounced and historic recession I cannot help myself from monitoring some of the discordant voices out there about workers and wages these days, as business and government tries to find a place to land.

For example, in Lee Scott’s parting shot as CEO and grand [...]

Clawbacks

New Orleans Citi, Citicorp, Citibank, a division of the US Government, or whatever you might want to call the name of the financial services operation on Park Avenue did a smart, political thing and cut a deal with its major owner and lender to allow clawbacks. Finally, maybe we are getting something for our [...]

Four Day Week

Four Day Week
January 12, 2009
New Orleans The recession and the pursuit of savings for broke-ass governments at every level may allow some interesting reconsiderations. One might be the value of 4-day work weeks for public services that do not require essential or 24-hour coverage.

The state of Utah tried something along these lines this [...]

Comeback for Common Sense?

New Orleans Is it too much to hope that we might be on the verge of a comeback of common sense? My fingers are crossed. Perhaps I grabbing at straws but here are some sure signs.

A realization that housing prices will not always go up.

A recognition that a bare minimum of [...]

Attracting Grocery Stores

New Orleans The other day brainstorming with Rick Smith, Ben, Colin, Beth, and Hillary — the core of the whole WARN team in Florida — we found ourselves talking about the contradictory problem of outsized superstores that we have fought many places versus grocery “deserts” that also concern us when communities are isolated from [...]

Hope for Reunification

January 8, 2009
St. Petersburg Getting on the plane to fly home, I ran into some old friends who were the principal officers of the International Longshoreman Association in New Orleans. They had been at a bargaining conference in Tampa preparing for upcoming negotiations. We talked about what happened to their old hall [...]

Tax Credits for Poor Workers

St. Petersburg Talking about citizen wealth yesterday (and, yes, I’m fixated on this subject, because it’s also the subject of my book coming out this June, called: Citizen Wealth: The Campaign to Save Working Families, it seems when Obama came courting to Washington on Monday, he also threw out a [...]

Don’t Blame Hispanic Homeowners

Don’t Blame Hispanic Homeowners
New Orleans There was an incredible and irresponsible article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday by Susan Schmidt and Maurice Tamman called “Housing Push for Hispanics Spawns Wave of Foreclosure” in which once again there is an effort to blame the folks at the bottom for the mistakes at the [...]

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