Leid Stories – 09.23.15

Auto Workers Begin Voting on New Contracts. Deal or No Deal?
Starving for Education in Chicago: Hunger Strikers Fight for A School
About 40,000 workers are voting this week on whether to ratify a new four-year contract their union, the United Auto Workers, has worked out with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. All eyes in the auto industry are looking for the outcome, which might predict how contract negotiations with General Motors and Ford Motor Co. will go as well. The industry employs 141,000 people.
Two longtime union workers discuss their concerns about the contract-negotiation process, the concessions they say the UAW has made, the definitive change in workers’ rights and benefits, and the outsourcing of jobs.
It took a 34-day hunger strike by 15 activists to force Chicago Public Schools to reopen the historic Dyett High School, shut down last year. But the fight’s just beginning, say the strikers, who envision the creation of the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, and the rebirth of community control over education in the City of Chicago.

Economic Update – Precarious Work = Capitalism’s Inefficiency – 09.13.15

Updates on economics of refugees, Ford buys French political wife, LAs homeless, Labor Day history, Seattle Teachers strike, and Japan’s jobs ever more precarious. Response to listeners on why rising wages need NOT mean rising prices. Interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad, mental health counselor, on the psychological pains, personal suffering, and huge social costs of imposing uncertainty and precarity on job security, hours and days of work, benefits, and wages.

11 Things Other Countries Do Way Better Than America By Larry Schwartz

America! Land of the free, home of the brave, and the greatest country on the face of the planet, right? A country with seemingly limitless natural resources, and according to many politicians, anointed by God herself to lead the world out of the wilderness and into a bright new age of liberty and justice for all. Too bad the road …

MATT FEENEY – Mob Injustice

Presenting the Best Picture award at this year’s Oscars, Sean Penn did all the right things to provoke a public shaming, and only by the grace of his hyper-celebrity did he escape unshamed. He split the envelope’s seal and stood squinting at the winner’s name. Then he paused dramatically and mumbled to no one in particular: “Who gave this son of …