Free Republic

We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money? By BOB HERBERT It's like running on a treadmill that keeps increasing its speed. You have to go faster and faster just to stay in place. Or, as a factory worker said many years ago, "You can work 'til you drop dead, but you won't get ahead." American workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, but they are getting fewer and fewer of the benefits of this increased productivity. While the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, has been strong for some time now, ordinary workers have gotten little more...

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite one Republican leader’s insistence that it’s not likely, said Tuesday there will be a workers’ compensation agreement by week's end.</p> <p>“I see it, I feel it, I taste it,” the GOP governor said during a 30-minute interview with The Bee.</p>

But Chicago firm says tourney good for workplace morale That giant sucking sound ringing in the ears of employers throughout the country is the estimated loss of $1.5 billion in worker productivity caused by the distraction of the men's NCAA tournament, according to a study by a Chicago-based job placement company. "You don't need a television to watch the game any more," said John A. Challenger..... "Everybody's got computers on their desks and they are streaming the games right in." But don't blame computers alone. Challenger said water-cooler talk, office betting pools, long lunches, Internet downloads, television breaks and telephone...

Fired worker fed to the lions Feb 11, 2004 A South African game farmer and three of his employees have appeared before a magistrate's court on murder charges for allegedly feeding a fired worker to lions. Mark Scott Crossley, 35, Simon Mathebula, 43, Richard Mathebula, 41, and Robert Mnisi, 34, were remanded in custody for a week by Phalaborwa Magistrate's Court, police spokeswoman Ronel Otto said. The four were arrested at the Engedi game farm near Hoedspruit, about 350km north-east of Johannesburg, after police recovered the skull, pieces of leg and bloodied clothes of a man identified as 38-year-old Nelson...

"The Nation-State Is Finished" by William F. Jasper Robert Bartley, a closet one-worlder at the WSJ, used his newspaper’s "conservative" clout to seduce American business leaders into sacrificing U.S. sovereignty for trade. ‘‘What in blazes can President Bush be thinking?" That has been the general response — on talk radio and in media surveys, Internet postings and letters-to-the-editor — of many current and former Bush supporters angered and confused by the president’s immigration proposals. These folks would not have been surprised by the president’s outrageous announcement on January 7 or his remarks the following week at the Summit of the...

CARLSBAD – The walls came down slowly yesterday morning as former camp dweller Efren Martinez helped dismantle dozens of unauthorized shacks that migrant workers called home in a canyon north of Legoland. "I used to live here, too," Martinez, a day laborer, said while carrying rotting pieces of plywood up a hill. "You just pick up your belongings and go somewhere else, under another bush." About 20 acres owned by the city of Carlsbad, Carltas Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. east of Interstate 5, south of Cannon Road and west of Faraday Avenue are being cleared of...

Under Bush's presidency, Corporate America slashed paychecks that took you years to earn. They have cancelled holidays, including Good Friday -- they are trying to cancel the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, it seems. They have cut sick pay, rewritten family leave laws, cancelled bathroom breaks. It is even beginning to affect civil service professions such as the police force, now requesting to cut their sick pay to only thirteen weeks. Also under Bush's presidency, they have turned reservation offices into assembly line call centers. The union had warned of this but no one listened. We trusted Bush that it would...

Black workers fight Mugabe land thugs (Filed: 10/02/2004) Zimbabwe's farm seizures have met their first resistance at a firm supplying British supermarkets, writes Peta Thornycroft in Odzi Thousands of Zimbabweans who grow vegetables for British supermarkets are fighting attempts by a cabinet minister to confiscate the land they work on. The rebellion by 6,000 black workers is the first in nearly four years of state-sponsored terror on the country's white-owned farms. Kondozi's 1,500 profitable acres provide huge quantities of runner beans, mange tout and red peppers for stores including Safeway, Sainsbury's and Tesco. But the minister for agriculture, Joseph Made,...

Health Workers Take Aim at AIDS in South Sat Feb 7, 2:11 PM ET By WILLIAM L. HOLMES, Associated Press Writer SILER CITY, N.C. - According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, southern states have a third of the nation's population but 40 percent of Americans living with AIDS and 44 percent of new cases, mostly among blacks and Hispanics. While each of those groups makes up about 13 percent of the nation's population, they together accounted for 70 percent of new AIDS cases in 2002. "Not only are they the ones disproportionately affected but they're also the...

DANVILLE - Declaring herself to be the only candidate who can topple U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, Republican Toni Casey sharply criticized President Bush's immigration plan Tuesday. The former Los Altos Hills mayor, attempting to distinguish herself among a crowded field of GOP contenders, called Bush's proposal for a three-year temporary worker system "fatally flawed." "His solution rings of amnesty and I do not support amnesty," Casey told 50 members of the San Ramon Valley Republican Women during a luncheon speech. "It will do nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration." Casey offered her own plan for a temporary guest-worker...

Workers Taped Together Explosive Pieces By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Workers at the only U.S. factory for dismantling nuclear weapons risked an explosion this month by taping together broken pieces of high explosive being removed from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead, federal investigators said. The unorthodox handling of the unstable explosive increased the risk that the technicians would drop it and set off a "violent reaction," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said Tuesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites). Such a reaction could have "potentially unacceptable consequences," board...

Workers find signs of 7,500-year-old civilization while building water plant The Associated Press NORWELL, Mass. -- The discovery of a possible American Indian settlement as much as 7,500 years old has halted work on a new water treatment plant. Workers have found about 38 tools and stone chips used for making and repairing tools, as well as a hearth and a storage pit, at the site on South Street near Third Herring Brook. Lauren J. Cook, senior archaeologist on the team that surveyed the area, said it was unusual to find "features" of civilizations, like the hearth and the stone...

Lou Dobbs, host of the popular CNN Moneyline show, has been doing a great job covering the decline of American manufacturing and the perils such a decline poses for both the country’s prosperity and national security in our tumultuous world. He interviewed the always acerbic Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the January 8 program on President Bush’s proposal to give some form of legal “guest worker” status to millions of illegal aliens. Donohue argued that such an amnesty was a good thing for the large corporations that control his business organization. But along the way,...

<p>DOBBS: Hundreds of thousands of jobs being exported overseas to cheap labor markets and a record high trade deficit causing many Americans to fight back. They are part of what is a growing movement to support companies that keep their goods and services made in America.</p>

Clark:" ensure that undocumented workers have a way to eventually earn their citizenship." Dean: "We need earned legalization for undocumented immigrants" Edwards:"...so there is a clear road map to legalization and citizenship for undocumented immigrants" Gephardt: "My Earned Legalization and Family Unification Act of 2002"... Kerry: "I support an earned legalization proposal" Lieberman: "I will create a new one-time earned legalization status...create a work visa program"

President Bush's immigration initiative has sparked a great deal of discussion across the country. Perhaps the most interesting debate centers on whether the president, in announcing the initiative, has embraced conservative principles or abandoned them. I believe a temporary worker program is consistent with conservative principles, and here's why. First, conservatives value national security, and the status quo encourages anything but national security. The presence of 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens within the confines of our borders should prompt the type of reform the president has suggested. President Bush's proposal will ensure smarter border enforcement by redirecting resources...

<p>The law says a business caught hiring illegal aliens (search) can be fined up to $10,000 -- which sounds tough, but the truth is that businesses have very little to worry about.</p> <p>The General Accounting office estimates 200,000 business employees in the United States are illegal aliens. In 1992, more than 1,000 businesses were fined, but in 2002 that number dropped to 13 businesses.</p>

The United States often has been called “a nation of immigrants,” and most Americans—with the notable exception of Native Americans—have ancestors who arrived from other countries, either voluntarily or involuntarily as slaves. Throughout American history, immigrants helped build America’s cities, towns, farms, businesses, economies and civic and cultural institutions. Immigrants from around the world also helped build the American union movement, providing a generation after generation of members, activists and leaders. But today, immigrant workers in America often face the harshest forms of workplace problems that affect all workers, immigrant and nonimmigrant alike: employer interference with our rights to improve...

<p>The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.</p> <p>The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.</p>

Chinese construction workers housed by their Israeli employers in trailers in the West Bank are to be moved to a site inside Israel after intense US pressure, Channel 2 reported Saturday. The migrant Chinese laborers are building a new neighborhood in Kiryat Sefer, which sits just inside the Green Line, Channel 2 reported. But the workers have been living in trailers inside the West Bank, just meters from a Palestinian village. Israel is under intense US pressure to dismantle more than 100 unauthorized Jewish outposts set up in the past two years on land the Palestinians want for a future...