Category Archives: Politics

Time Magazine on GM Crisis

Time Magazine has written a good story on the current crisis rippling across the automobile industry and it didn’t hurt that they quote me to good effect. 
Last year I wrote a series of research notes on the troubling joint effort by Big Three execs and the UAW leadership to sell the UAW membership on a new union-controlled healthcare plan. 
At the time I called it a “house of cards” and, sadly, that house appears about to collapse.
You can find links to those background materials in the sidebar on this blog page to the right.

Should Taxpayers Bail Out GM’s Retirees? – TIME

Are there real unions in China? A debate with labor historians David Brody and Nelson Lichtenstein, labor economist Ken Jacobs and legal scholar Stephen Diamond

I was part of a debate recently with some other academics on labor rights in China. You can listen to it here. It runs about an hour and a half. The other participants were labor historians Nelson Lichtenstein and David Brody and labor economist Ken Jacobs.

The panel was chaired by Dr. Arthur Lipow of the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, which hosted the panel.
A helpful background report by Dan Gallin, former head of the International Union of Foodworkers and now head of the Global Labour Institute, can be found here.
(Note: the discussion followed a showing of China Blue, a terrific documentary on labor conditions in China today.)

China labor debate