Is it time to turn the page on Facebook?

At last week’s WWW2010/FutureWeb conference, there was some interesting discussion about online privacy issues. Unsurprisingly, Facebook was the subject of particular criticism for its increasingly cavalier attitude toward privacy and manifest disrespect for users’ interest in controlling how others may access and use the content they post. Dan Yoder sums up most of the concerns [...]

Health Care Refauxrm: Good for insurance corporations; not-so-good for health care

The stock market appears to be drawing the appropriate conclusions from the misbegotten health care finance bill: Insurance corporation share prices are up this week. Prospects for actually ensuring that everyone in the U.S. has access to adequate health care, not so much. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party Border Collie Patrol are working overtime trying to [...]

Rollin’ on Chrome

Despite my recent experience with images not displaying correctly in Chrome, and notwithstanding Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s disturbing views about privacy, I have recently made the switch from Firefox to Chrome as my default browser. The key is performance: consistent with the company’s claims and most reports, Chrome is noticeably faster and far less crash-prone [...]

German & U.S. unions join forces for T-Mobile representation

This is a great example of trans-national labor solidarity : U.S. and German labor leaders announced a transatlantic alliance on Wednesday aimed at persuading Germany’s giant Deutsche Telekom AG to allow collective bargaining at its subsidiary, T-Mobile USA. Under the agreement, which U.S. labor officials called unprecedented, German trade union Ver.di will represent T-Mobile USA [...]

Corporate medicine is hazardous to your health

I’ve read several criticisms of universal health care (a.k.a. “government-run medicine”) on the grounds of “you get what you pay for.” As stories like this remind us, that would be a vast improvement over the current insurance corporation-run system.

Union Busting 101

A great resource exposing the nasty and often illegal tactics of the real “labor thugs”: corporations and their hired lackeys who block workers from exercising their legal and human right to organize for their mutual aid and protection.

It’s good to be the King; it sucks to be his peasant

Victory for IWW-affiliated workers in Starbucks case

An administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that Starbucks committed multiple violations of federal law in its effort to squelch a union campaign. The case was initiated by Starbucks workers in Manhattan, who were part of an organizing effort by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In an [...]

Tar Heel workers sticking with the union

A sixteen year organizing struggle at the world’s largest pork production plant has ended with a union victory. Workers at the Smithfield Packing Company’s Tar Heel, North Carolina plant voted in favor of representation by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW). This caps off a good week for the U.S. labor movement, in which [...]

Capital, it fails us now!

Even though I’m sure it will end badly, I can’t help but regard this as good news.