Free Republic

Ed Miliband launches Labour’s election campaign on Monday by calling on supporters to knock on four million doors. The party leader will vow to fight the Tories and Lib Dems “house by house, street by street and town by town” until polling day on May 7. In a rallying call in Manchester, he will say: “Today is day one of our general election campaign. This is nothing less than a once in a generation fight about who our country works for.” Vowing not to be intimidated by the big-spending Tories, he will add: “We will offer hope, not falsehood. We...

Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog has vowed to shut down the World Zionist Organization's Settlement Division, which functions as an operational arm of the government to build and establish communities and infrastructures in Judea and Samaria - leaving hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the region without governmental representation. "As Prime Minister I will close the Settlement Division and open it later to serve the Negev and the Galilee," Herzog stated during an interview on "Meet the Press" Saturday night. "We see again and again the same group takes over the interests of the state and Netanyahu gave in to it."...

A BBC investigation for Panorama has exposed poor working conditions in factories making Apple products in China. The undercover team secretly filmed the iPhone production line and found Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken. One undercover reporter - making parts for Apple computers - had to work 18 days without a day off. Other workers were filmed falling asleep. Apple say they will investigate any concerns brought to them. The BBC's Richard Bilton reports from Shanghai. [VIDEO]

A BBC investigation for Panorama has exposed poor working conditions in factories making Apple products in China. The undercover team secretly filmed the iPhone production line and found Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken. One undercover reporter - making parts for Apple computers - had to work 18 days without a day off. Other workers were filmed falling asleep. Apple say they will investigate any concerns brought to them. The BBC's Richard Bilton reports from Shanghai. [VIDEO]

>With more than 330 million people using the service to list their resumes, find jobs, or find new hires, LinkedIn has a lot of data about the job market. To close out 2014, the company released a list of the top skills people who got hired this year had listed on their profiles and that recruiters searched for the most. These are the 10 skills that got people jobs this year:

Allow me to unite America's left, right and center in just three words: No, Jeb, No. Former GOP Florida governor Jeb Bush made the obvious official this week when he announced on Facebook that he's "actively exploring" a 2016 White House run. Of course, he's running. That's what inveterate politicians do. Well, I hate to break it to Jeb Inc. There's no popular groundswell for Bush Part III. None, zip, nada. Independents, progressives and conservatives are all weary of the entrenched bipartisan dynasties that rule Washington and ruin America. Only in the hallowed bubble of D.C. and New York City...

We have two cautionary from overseas today.One of them is from Iran and the other is from France. Both of them demonstrate how wrongheaded, obtuse and shortsighted Democrats are on their policies and prescriptions for what ails the county.To battle unemployment France is considering a body of laws that would make it easier for French firms to hire people, including allowing shops to open on Sunday and relaxing labor laws that make it virtually impossible for French firms to fire someone. If you get a job in France, you apparently get a job for life whether your employer is a...

An Iranian photographer has captured the desperate lives of South Asian labourers who travel to Dubai in the hope of building a future for their families - but find only squalor, low wages and backbreaking work in stifling heat. Farhad Berahman's pictures were taken in Sonapur, the unofficial name for a work camp on the outskirts of Dubai, located far away from the luxury, soaring skyscrapers and vast wealth that the United Arab Emirates city is renowned for. 'Sonapur' - ironically, the name means 'City of Gold' in Hindi - is home to more than 150,000 workers, mostly from India,...

Scott Walker’s victory is a humiliating loss for organized labor. The Wisconsin governor’s challenger was Democrat Mary Burke, a former executive at Trek Bicycle Corp. It was no photo finish; with 72 percent of precincts reporting, Walker was up 6 points. But Walker’s true adversary in this re-election race — and for the four years that preceded it — was the labor movement. He won every time.

The AFL-CIO national campaign to build stronger communities by empowering eligible immigrants to become citizens and fully engage in the democratic process has become a reality in New Jersey, with the opening of the state’s first labor-led naturalization and community center.The We Are One New Jersey Hudson County Center officially opened on Oct. 28 in Jersey City. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre joined the New Jersey State AFL-CIO for the opening ceremony, along with Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.), New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech, New Jersey State AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Laurel Brennan...

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said President Barack Obama will take "aggressive executive action" on immigration, which Perez said will bring about more "shared prosperity." Addressing the National Press Club this week, Perez, who is reportedly on the short list to be Obama´s next attorney general, said the country needed to "fix our broken immigration system" with comprehensive amnesty legislation that is "big and bold" to ensure that there is "shared prosperity," which he said is a goal of his Labor Department. Though the Congressional Budget Office determined that comprehensive amnesty legislation would lower the wages of American workers, Labor Secretary...

Paid leave will improve the nation's labor participation rate, currently at record lows, Labor Secretary Tom Perez said on Monday. "It is a sleeper issue that will sleep no more," Perez told a gathering at the National Press Club. "Every first Friday of the month, the most frequently asked question I get, 'What can you do, Tom, to increase labor force participation?' Well, let's talk about paid leave and let's compare the United States with Canada," Perez said. "The labor force participation rate of women ages 25 to 54 in the year 2000 in the U.S. and Canada was virtually...

Kinkisharyo International LLC has scrapped plans to build a rail car manufacturing plant in Palmdale following a labor dispute and will instead look outside California to locate the facility. The Japanese company made the decision after failing to reach an agreement with Antelope Valley Residents for Responsible Development, a labor-supported group that objected to the plant citing environmental reasons. The group, which includes members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 11, in Pasadena, also objected to a backup plan by Kinkisharyo to build the cars in leased space from Los Angeles World Airports in Palmdale.

Everyone who isn't an Obamabot (Paul Krugman) or above the age of 5 knows that the current "official" unemployment rate of 5.9% is bogus. The real number that counts is the labor participation rate which has been shrinking for more than 5 years.Why is the labor force participation rate important? Ken Braun of MLive has very clear explanation: The U.S. “civilian noninstitutional population” - the total count of civilian adults - grew by 217,000 in September, according to the latest jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor. Those new entrants represent immigrants, young people coming of age, military personnel...

Most Americans think federal employees are working for the public. But a new report issued by the Office of Personnel Management on Monday shows that in fiscal 2012, 1.2 million federal workers spent 3.4 million hours reporting to their government unions. Paradoxically, time spent not working for the taxpayer is called “official time.” OPM reports that official time costs taxpayers $157 million in salary and benefits, up from $129 million in 2009 and $102 million in 2006. Taxpayers are subsidizing unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union and the National Federation of Federal...

Dawn Lafreeda began working at Denny’s when she was 16, making her way up from hostess to waitress. In 1984, at the age of 23, she bought her first store. She now owns over 70. “When I was a kid, I told myself that I was going to be self-employed when I grew up and have a better life and have the things I’d never had,” she told Entrepreneur magazine this past summer. Franchising was Dawn’s ticket to a better life. She’s not alone. Franchising has been a successful business model for Americans wanting to own their own businesses and...

“We made a decision very early on that protecting the Senate firewall was our top priority,” LCV spokesman Jeff Gohringer told The Hill.House Democratic strategists are frustrated that key outside groups are putting their money into the fight for the Senate at the expense of the House. Spending on House races by organized labor as well as groups representing women and environmental organizations as dropped by $18 million compared to the last cycle, the groups said. That has Democrats worried their House losses on Election Day could be in the double digits, making it that much harder to take back...

While by now everyone should know the answer, for those curious why the US unemployment rate just slid once more to a meager 5.9%, the lowest print since the summer of 2008, the answer is the same one we have shown every month since 2010: the collapse in the labor force participation rate, which in September slide from an already three decade low 62.8% to 62.7% - the lowest in over 36 years, matching the February 1978 lows. And while according to the Household Survey, 232K people found jobs, what is more disturbing is that the people not in the...

Hey, no bigs. The state just fined a tiny winery $115,000 for using volunteers who were learning to make wine while getting the vineyard’s product to market. They were illegal paid labor, you see. Can’t have two free parties engaging in a trade of labor for specialized knowledge without the state getting involved and depriving the area of this particular business, its job opportunities, and its wares. Congrats, public. You have been served and protected: A small-time vintner’s use of volunteer workers has put him out of business after the state squeezed him like a late-summer grape for $115,000...

There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25–54). Nearly one-quarter of this group—28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total—is not currently employed. They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. ... Those attempting to minimize the startling figures about America’s vanishing workforce—workplace participation overall is near a four-decade low—will say an aging population is to blame. But in fact, while the workforce overall has shrunk nearly 10 million since 2009, the cohort of workers in the labor force ages 55 to...