Salon spoke to Geoghegan over the phone about Germany’s luxurious worker benefits, our own dysfunctional attitudes towards work, and how we can make our lives more like theirs.
Archive | August, 2010
Think Again: Rupert Murdoch and the Myriad Means of Misinformation
Conservatives so consistently denigrate the amazing achievements of 21st century Europeans that one can’t help but wonder what has them so worried.
Unite Here to screen film about Union Tank Car
Unite Here, the hotel workers union, is planning a public screening Wednesday of “Show Us the Tax Breaks” – a short film that attacks Chicago’s Pritzker family and their decision to close East Chicago’s Union Tank Car plant in 2008. The plant was one of the largest employers in East Chicago and when it closed, hundreds of workers were left unemployed.
Ending the filibuster starts (t)here
Daily Kos has started a petition to end the filibuster. A good idea, if you ask me.
Union to ask federal judge to reverse layoffs
Lawyers for the Chicago Teachers Union will go to federal court Wednesday morning to ask a judge to issue a temporary injunction reversing the layoffs of about 1,400 teachers and instructional coaches.
Firedog Lake Book Salon
In the US, businesses seem to think they should be able to get machinists, who are the most skilled industrial workers, to work for $13 per hour, a rate that infuriates these crucial people. In Germany, machinists are respected. Maybe that’s why Germany is succeeding in a tough export climate against the rest of the world. Maybe we should try something like that.
David Kinchen reviews “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?”
As a one-time Chicago resident (1961-1963) and lifelong fan of the city where both of my parents were born, I can imagine sitting down with Chicago labor lawyer and author — and Irish storyteller Thomas Geoghegan — in a cozy pub with a pint or two or three of Harp Lager or Guinness Stout and listen to him chronicle his adventures in a country where only 8 percent of the workers belong to a labor union — the U.S.
The Vacation Gap
If you get a moment, come join the discussion at the New York Times’ Room for Debate, where Tom and UCLA historian Peter Baldwin are talking Germany, social democracy, and whether there’s an American out there who does his own laundry.
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