Tag Archives: labor

Scott Walker’s Budget Includes $250,000 To Study ‘Wind Energy System-Related Health Issues’

by Myrna Posted on February 13, 2015

Previous studies have found no link between wind farms and increased health problems. Gateway Technical College/Flickr The two-year, $68 billion budget proposal Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker unveiled Tuesday includes a request for $250,000 to study the health impacts of wind turbines. Page 449 of the budget proposal includes a recommendation from the governor “directing the commission to conduct a study on wind energy system-related health issues.” The request states that a report should be submitted to the governor and legislature within a year after the budget goes into effect. “The request for a Wind Energy Health Issues Study was included with the intent to provide the Public Service Commission with comprehensive information to consider as they receive requests for future wind energy projects,” said Laurel Patrick, Walker’s press secretary, in a statement to The Huffington Post. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Visit site – Scott Walker’s Budget Includes $250,000 To Study ‘Wind Energy System-Related Health Issues’

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Scott Walker’s Budget Includes $250,000 To Study ‘Wind Energy System-Related Health Issues’

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Vaccines Are One of Our Best Weapons Against Global Warming

by Myrna Posted on February 11, 2015

Climate change could make deadly diseases like rotavirus even worse. A doctor administers measles vaccinations to children displaced by flooding in northern India in 2008. Manish Swarup/AP Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has suggested that vaccines cause ”profound mental disorders.” Paul has also said he’s “not sure anybody exactly knows why” the climate changes. So the likely presidential contender would probably find this fact pretty confusing: According to leading scientists, vaccines are among the “most effective” weapons in our arsenal for combating the threats that global warming poses to human health. In its landmark report (PDF) last year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that global warming poses a range of health threats—especially in the developing world. Warmer temperatures and changes in rainfall will reduce crop production, leading to malnutrition. Foodborne and waterborne illnesses will become a bigger problem. And, some scientists argue, diseases like malaria will spread as the insects that carry them migrate to new areas. So how should humanity adapt to these dangers? The IPCC report lays out a slew of public health interventions, including widespread vaccination: The most effective measures to reduce vulnerability in the near term are programs that implement and improve basic public health measures such as provision of clean water and sanitation, secure essential health care including vaccination and child health services, increase capacity for disaster preparedness and response, and alleviate poverty. There are a number of reasons that vaccines will play an important role in our efforts to adapt to a warming world. The most obvious is their ability to protect vulnerable populations from diseases that will be made worse by climate change. A prime example is rotavirus, a vaccine-preventable disease that can cause severe diarrhea. It killed roughly 450,000 children in 2008—mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Health Organization. “There is evidence that case rates of rotavirus are correlated with warming temperatures and high rainfall,” according to Erin Lipp, an environmental health professor at the University of Georgia and a contributor to the IPCC report. This is particularly true in developing countries with poor sanitation and drinking water sources, Lipp explained in an email. There are other, less direct, ways in which climate change can exacerbate a wide range of existing public health problems. Take measles, which is currently making a comeback in the United States—thanks in large part to the unscientific claims of the anti-vaccination movement. Measles killed nearly 150,000 people worldwide in 2013; it’s particularly common in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia that have extremely low vaccination rates—areas that will be hit especially hard by the impacts of climate change. Unlike with rotavirus, there’s no direct relationship between measles and global warming. But Kirk Smith—an environmental health expert at UC, Berkeley, and a lead author of the IPCC chapter on health impacts—points out that “a child weakened by measles is more likely to die from the malnutrition caused by climate change.” In other words, anything we can do to reduce the impact of existing health problems will be even more important in a warming world. And vaccinating children, he says, is one of the most cost-effective public health tools we have. Diseases like measles pose another threat, as well, says Alistair Woodward, who is also a lead author of the IPCC chapter. Woodward, an epidemiologist at the University of Auckland, points out that extreme climate events—crop failures in Africa, flooding in Bangladesh, and even storms like Hurricane Katrina—can displace large numbers of people. “In these circumstances, with crowding and poor living conditions, all the basic public health services are put under great strain,” said Woodward in an email. “The risks of infection go through the roof, for all communicable diseases…So ensuring that people are vaccinated is a logical thing to do as part of managing the risks of a rapidly changing climate.” Of course, making sure people are inoculated against deadly diseases isn’t easy. In the developing world, vaccination campaigns have to overcome transportation and security issues, as well as poor local health care systems. And these challenges, says Woodward, can dwarf the problems caused by the anti-vaxxer movement. Taken from: Vaccines Are One of Our Best Weapons Against Global Warming

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Vaccines Are One of Our Best Weapons Against Global Warming

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Walmart Cut My Hours, I Protested, and They Fired Me

by ChelseyUyc Posted on February 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, the union-backed Our Walmart campaign will hold demonstrations across the country calling on Walmart managers to reverse disciplinary actions against 35 workers in nine states who participated in Black Friday protests against the retailer. Our Walmart will also add claims of illegal retaliation against the workers to a 2013 unfair labor practices case against Walmart that is now being prosecuted by the National Labor Relations Board. One of the workers being added to the case is 26-year-old Kiana Howard of Sacramento, California. This is her story, edited for length and clarity, as told to Mother Jones:

My mom worked for the state legislative office for about 17 years and then she got laid off. My dad was in our life at the beginning, then he wasn’t around. Still, we have a big family and I had a pretty good life growing up, although I grew up in East Sacramento, in the ghetto. I didn’t graduate from high school because I couldn’t pass the math part of the exit exam. I did go back in 2013 and get my diploma. I was screaming and crying. I was so happy.

About a week later, I started working at the local Walmart. I love working around people and having conversations while ringing them up. You could be having a bad day and one customer in line says a joke and changes your whole day. My coworkers there were like family. We took care of each other because we were all going through the same situation. The managers, on the other hand, they don’t give a damn about us.

I started off at $8.40 an hour. Then California raised the minimum wage, and I got my yearly raise, which put me up to $9.80. But the most hours I could get in any week after picking up extra days and taking extra shifts was 36. After paying rent and utilities, I was barely scraping by. I was on welfare, getting $300. When they cut that off, I really started struggling. And then they cut my food stamps down by more than half, to $136, so I started having to spend money on food. I went to food banks to make sure I fed my seven-year-old son.

I live an hour away. I don’t have a car. I have to catch the bus and the light rail every day. My schedule was all over the place. Some days I would have to be at work at 5:30 in the morning, and then some days I would work from 8 p.m. to midnight. I was tired all the time. It was just madness. Especially because there’s no buses that run after 10 p.m.

Sometimes coworkers would give me rides home, but sometimes they would be like, “Oh, I can’t go that way, I don’t have the gas.” And I didn’t have gas money for them. Other times I would get on Facebook and ask people to give me rides.

Or there was this dating website called Tagged. I would write on my status: “Could anybody give me a ride home? Stranded at work.” And then people would message me. “Well, what time are you off?”

Some of the guys were people that I knew. Other guys I didn’t know. A lot of times I was scared but I had pepper spray and I was ready for whatever. I just had to make sure I got home. I was not spending the night at Walmart.

At the time, I was trying to get promoted to customer service. The manager kept telling me she was going to pick me, but then she takes somebody who has been at Walmart for a month and puts her there instead because she hadn’t missed any days. But she doesn’t have a child like I do. I missed three days because my son was sick, and I was late three days. They hold that against us for a whole year, and I feel like that’s just too long.

I actually started applying at different jobs. I applied at Burlington Coat Factory, Macy’s, Sears. But I just wasn’t getting calls back from those people. I just kind of gave up and kept working at Walmart.

Around August of last year, I’d had enough and put in an availability change with my supervisor. I told them I could only work between 5:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. That way I could get home to my son. People who had worked there for years told me, “Oh, they are going to cut your hours back for a while, and then you will get them back again.” But they cut my hours back—to just 23 a week—and they kept them cut back. It went on for a good month or two. That’s one reason I decided to join Our Walmart.

I feel like we were overworked and underpaid. When my customer service manager, who is in Our Walmart, told me we are going to be fighting for $15 and full time, I just felt like it needed to be done. A lot of associates were like, well, isn’t that too much for Walmart? I’m like, “No, dude! This is the richest family in America! What do you mean that’s too much? Really?” Walmart, I call it the devil’s palace. That’s how I feel.

On Black Friday we went on strike. The organizers picked us up in a white van and drove us to a picket at the Rancho Cordova store. It was me and a couple of other Our Walmart people. They had balloons; they tied them on our wrists. They had posters. And we stood out there for a minute, we talked, and we had people get on the mic and speak. We had a DJ out there. It was like a little party. I did an interview on the news.

Then we stated marching. They had me and my son in the front. We were chanting and singing and people were jumping and dancing. Then the police came. The people that got arrested, they were sitting down in the street. Santa Claus got arrested as well. They didn’t put handcuffs on Santa Claus, though. We took lots of pictures. It was good. I felt great. Everybody was like, “I seen you on the news!”

They retaliated on January 13, which was the day I got fired. I had a four-hour shift. Thirty minutes before I was about to get off, they pulled me off the register and brought me in the office. It was like, “You went on strike for Black Friday…” I wasn’t listening because I was upset. She said it counted as my fourth unexcused absence and that rolls over into me being terminated. I signed my papers and I gave her my badge and my vest and I left.

Since then, it has been hard. Our Walmart is going to help out with the retaliation fund, but that only lasts six months. With my last check I was able to pay my rent, but I can’t do laundry, I can’t pay any bills. I ran out of food and I had to go to the food bank once again. I feel like I’m gong into a depression. I just try to keep myself humble, because my son needs me. I can’t show him that I’m going through a lot right now.

Some employees don’t want to join Our Walmart because they don’t want to be in a predicament like I am. But I know they believe we’re fighting for a good cause. I’m just trying to stay prayed up and hope for the best.

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Walmart Cut My Hours, I Protested, and They Fired Me

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There’s More Global Warming Coverage on Your Television

by Myrna Posted on January 29, 2015

But that’s not always a good thing. A 2014 debate on NBC’s Meet the Press between Bill Nye and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a climate change denying Republican Screenshot: NBC News Here’s some good news: According to a new study, the major broadcast news networks are covering climate change more than they have in years. Now here’s the bad news: Much of that coverage includes misleading arguments from commentators who reject the scientific consensus that humans are warming the planet. The new analysis is set to be released Wednesday by the liberal group Media Matters for America. (Disclosure: I used to work there.) Media Matters reviewed 2014 climate coverage from the evening newscasts and Sunday morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting Company. All told, the networks devoted 154 minutes to global warming last year—up 19 percent compared to 2013 and far more than any year since 2009. That increase is a big deal. Millions of Americans watch the networks’ evening news shows. And the Sunday shows—ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and Fox News Sunday—frequently set the agenda for the week’s political reporting elsewhere in the media. The networks have been under pressure in recent years to pay more attention to the climate. After Media Matters reported last year that the Sunday shows had aired a combined total of just 27 minutes of climate change coverage in all of 2013, a group of Democratic senators sent a letter to network executives calling for a greater focus on the issue. They got their wish: In 2014, the Sunday shows tripled their global warming coverage to a combined total of 81 minutes. Each of the shows devoted about 20 minutes to climate. Among the evening news shows, CBS led the way with 35 minutes of climate reporting, followed by NBC with 25 minutes, and ABC with just 13 minutes. (Fox’s broadcast network, which is separate from the Fox News cable channel, doesn’t have an evening news program.) Of course, sheer quantity isn’t the only—or even the most important—measure of climate change reporting. For years, news outlets have been plagued by a tendency to balance the scientific fact that we’re warming the Earth with the very unscientific arguments of those who disagree. That was certainly the case on the Sunday shows last year. Nearly two-thirds of the climate coverage on NBC’s Meet the Press featured discussions that Media Matters classified as “false balance.” That included a debate between science educator Bill Nye and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who used the opportunity to argue that there is no scientific consensus on global warming. Both Nye and moderator David Gregory pushed back against Blackburn’s claims, but many viewers may have been confused by the segment. A far worse discussion aired on Fox News Sunday, where Washington Postcolumnist George Will and Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel rattled off a series of climate denial talking points, with little pushback from anyone on the panel. “Of course the climate is changing; it’s always changing,” said Will. “[Global warming] became climate change when you couldn’t prove that there was much global warming anymore…as the temperature didn’t change,” said Strassel. In all, nearly half of the 2014 climate coverage on both Fox News Sunday and ABC’S This Week featured false balance, according to Media Matters. Of the four Sunday shows, only CBS’s Face the Nation managed to avoid false balance entirely. “The networks continue to provide a platform for climate science deniers—despite the fact that 97 percent of climate scientists agree human activities are causing global warming,” said Andrew Seifter, the director of Media Matters’ climate and energy program, in a statement. “We hope that the networks will better inform their viewers by putting an end to this false balance in 2015.” More here – There’s More Global Warming Coverage on Your Television

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There’s More Global Warming Coverage on Your Television

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Hateful Little Cannibal Squirrels Could Help California Drought

by Myrna Posted on January 20, 2015

Farmers hate Belding’s ground squirrels. But they may be an essential piece of the state’s ecosystems. Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife/Wikimedia Commons Among alfalfa farmers in Northern California, Public Enemy No. 1 is a promiscuous, photogenic fur ball that weighs only half a pound and spends most of its life asleep. But with the critter helping the state weather its worst drought in 1,200 years, that perception may soon be a thing of the past. The diminutive Belding’s ground squirrel, an important link in the food chain for coyotes, bobcats, foxes, weasels, and raptors, has a long and troubled history as a major agricultural pest. Blame the squirrel’s voracious appetite for alfalfa. Blame its fleas, which can carry plague. Above all, blame the complex network of burrows it digs, which trip up livestock and damage farm machinery. All told, there are few animals in greater need of an image makeover than the rodent known to biologists as Urocitellus beldingi, and to detractors as pot gut, sage rat, and picket pin. But now, courtesy of climate change and California’s record-setting drought, Belding’s ground squirrels may be on the brink of a reversal of fortune. The same rodents responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of lost crops and damaged equipment might just turn out to be highly valuable ecosystem engineers, a designation reserved for organisms that modify their habitats, improving ecosystem stability and health. Read the rest at Grist. Link: Hateful Little Cannibal Squirrels Could Help California Drought

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Hateful Little Cannibal Squirrels Could Help California Drought

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Unemployment Is Low, But It Can Still Go a Lot Lower — And It Should

by XLNCharlidftxdy Posted on January 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Justin Wolfers makes a good point today. There’s a concept in economics called NAIRU, which rather awkwardly stands for the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment1. Basically it means that there’s a “natural” rate of unemployment in the economy2, and if you go below it then inflation will start to accelerate. When that happens, the Fed raises interest rates to slow down growth before inflation gets out of hand.

But what’s the actual value of NAIRU? Based on past experience, most economists think it’s around 5.5 percent or so—which happens to be where we are now. And yet, inflation is still very low, and definitely not accelerating. This could be just a temporary phenomenon as we recover from a huge balance-sheet recession, or it could be something more permanent. For two reasons, my guess is that it’s mostly the latter. First, inflation has been steadily dropping for 30 years in the US, and there’s some reason to think that it’s the 70s that were a high-inflation anomaly, not the rest of the low-inflation 20th century. Second, there’s reason to think that the headline unemployment rate is not measuring quite the same thing as it used to. If you look at long-term unemployment, marginally attached workers, and the decline of the labor force participation ratio—which has been falling for 15 years now—it appears that a headline rate of 5.5 percent probably implies more slack in the economy than it used to. Here’s Wolfers on the natural rate of unemployment:

The problem, though, is that no one really knows what that rate is. Our uncertainty is even greater today than it normally is, because no one knows the extent to which those workers who dropped out of the labor force in response to the financial crisis will return when jobs become plentiful. By this view, today’s most important macroeconomic question is what the natural rate actually is.

The latest jobs report helps answer this question. The unemployment rate has fallen to 5.6 percent, and there are still no signs that wage inflation is rising. Indeed, with wage growth running at only 1.7 percent, the economy is telling us that we still have the ability to bring many more of the jobless back into the fold without setting off inflation.

It is only when nominal wage growth exceeds the sum of inflation (about 2 percent) and productivity growth (about 1.5 percent) that the Fed needs to be concerned that the labor market is generating cost pressures that might raise inflation. So the latest wage growth numbers suggest that we are not yet near the natural rate. And that means the Fed should be content to let the recovery continue to generate more new jobs.

There’s one more thing to add: Even when unemployment falls to around 4 percent, we should remain cautious. We’ve tolerated an inflation rate that’s under the Fed’s 2 percent target for the past five years. There’s no reason we shouldn’t tolerate a catch-up inflation rate that’s a little over the Fed’s target as we begin to recover. If inflation runs at 3-4 percent for the next five years, it’s probably a good thing, not a bad one.

1Obviously economists could have used a branding expert to help them with this. On the other hand, if they’d done that we might have ended up with Xarelxo or JobsMax™. In any case, we’re stuck with it for now.

2The idea here is that even a thriving economy has a certain amount of natural unemployment as people leave their jobs and move to new ones—because new sectors pop up, old companies go out of business, etc. That’s a good thing and a perfectly natural one in a competitive economy that’s producing lots of innovation. Trying to push unemployment lower than the natural rate is basically fruitless.

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Unemployment Is Low, But It Can Still Go a Lot Lower — And It Should

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The Obama Recovery Has Been Miles Better Than the Bush Recovery

by LorrineWomble Posted on December 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Paul Krugman writes today about the dogged conservative claim that the current recovery has been weak thanks to the job-killing effects of Obamacare and Obama regulation and the generally dire effects of Obama’s hostility to the business sector. But I think Krugman undersells his case. He shows that the current recovery has created more private sector jobs than the 2001-2007 recovery, and that’s true. But in fairness to the Bush years, the labor force was smaller back then and Bush was working from a smaller base. So of course fewer jobs were created. What you really want to look at is jobs as a percent of the total labor force. And here’s what you get:

The Obama recovery isn’t just a little bit better than the Bush recovery. It’s miles better. But here’s the interesting thing. This chart looks only at private sector employment. If you want to make Bush look better, you can look at total employment instead. It’s still not a great picture, but it’s a little better:

Do you see what happened? The Bush recovery looks a bit healthier and the Obama recovery looks a bit weaker. Why? Because we added government jobs. Bush got a nice tailwind from increased hiring at the state and federal level. Obama, conversely, was sailing into heavy headwinds because he inherited a worse recession. States cut employment sharply—partly because they had to and partly because Republican governors saw the recession as an opportunity to slash the size of government—and Congress was unwilling to help them out in any kind of serious way.

This is obviously not a story that conservatives are especially likely to highlight. But there’s not much question about it. Bush benefited not just from a historic housing bubble, but from big increases in government spending and government employment. But even at that his recovery was anemic. Obama had no such help. He had to fight not just a historic housing bust, but big drops in both government spending and government employment. Despite that, his recovery outperformed Bush’s by a wide margin.

There are, of course, plenty of caveats to all this. First of all, the labor force participation rate has been shrinking ever since 2000, and that’s obviously not the fault of either Bush or Obama. It’s a secular trend. Second, the absolute size of the labor force started out smaller in 2001 than in 2010, but it grew during the Bush recovery, which makes his trend line look worse. Its growth has been pretty sluggish during the Obama recovery as people have dropped out of the labor force, which makes his trend line look better. These are the kinds of things that make simple comparisons between administrations so hard. And as Krugman points out, it’s unclear just how much economic policy from either administration really affected their respective recoveries anyway:

I would argue that in some ways the depth of the preceding slump set the stage for a faster recovery. But the point is that the usual suspects have been using the alleged uniquely poor performance under Obama to claim uniquely bad policies, or bad attitude, or something. And if that’s the game they want to play, they have just scored an impressive own goal.

Roger that. If you want to credit Bush for his tax cuts and malign Obama for his stimulus program and his regulatory posture, then you have to accept the results as well. And by virtually any measure, including the fact that the current recovery hasn’t ended in an epic global crash, Obama has done considerably better than Bush.

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The Obama Recovery Has Been Miles Better Than the Bush Recovery

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These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

by Trista3686 Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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In recent years, more and more big-box retailers have begun forcing their employees to work on Thanksgiving Day. Now, some Ohio state legislators have had enough. They’re introducing bills that would give workers the right to refuse to punch in on Thanksgiving, and, if they do agree to show up on the holiday, to receive substantial overtime pay.

“Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be a day when we retreat from consumerism,” says Cleveland’s Democratic State Rep. Mike Foley, the author of one such bill. “It’s a day when you hang out with your family, go play touch football, have a big turkey dinner, and complain about your crazy uncle or cousin—but you don’t think about super blockbuster sales at Target.”

Foley’s House Bill 360 would allow stores to open on Turkey Day but ban them from retaliating against workers who opt to stay home with their families. Workers who do show up would be guaranteed triple wages—which would also apply on Black Friday if stores open earlier than normal (12:01 a.m. and earlier openings have become common).

Foley says he was inspired to write the bill last year while leafing through newspaper circulars advertising Thanksgiving Day sales. “My wife said, ‘You’re a legislator, do something about this,'” he recalls. “And I thought, ‘Well, I am.'”

If employers want to treat Thanksgiving as “an opportunity to make money or get above the black line, so be it,” say Democratic Rep. Robert Hagan, the bill’s cosponsor. “But the fact still remains that they have that responsibility to take care of their workers.”

Out in Middletown, Connecticut, Democratic State Rep. Matt Lesser has pledged to introduce a similar bill next year. “The idea is to discourage retailers” from opening on Thanksgiving, he told the Hartford Courant. “And if they do require their workers to come in on Thanksgiving, that they would at least be paid overtime to compensate.”

Laws restricting Thanksgiving Day commerce aren’t without precedent. For decades, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island have completely banned most retailers from opening their doors on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rules date back to Colonial-era “blue laws” that restricted commercial activity on Sundays. More recently, some labor advocates have called for a federal blue law to protect Christmas and Thanksgiving. (Don’t hold your breath).

Although the GOP likes to think of itself as the party of family values, Foley and Hagan say that the Republicans who control the Ohio legislature want nothing to do with their Thanksgiving law. Their bill, first introduced last year, was quickly tabled. It’s not expected to come up for a vote this year either. “They are on the side of the retailers, the restaurant owners, the people making the money, as opposed to working families,” Hagan says. “That’s the bottom line.”

Still, the backlash against Turkey Day retail has gained some steam. The Boycott Black Thursday Facebook page has more than 100,000 likes. And more than two-dozen retail chains plan to stay dark on Thanksgiving this year, including Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dillards, Nordstrom, GameStop, and Costco. “We don’t believe that we will lose ground to competitors,” GameStop president Tony Bartel told the New York Times. “Even if we lose ground to competitors, we are making it corporate principle—we have committed to associates that we will not open on Thanksgiving.”

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These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

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Elizabeth Warren’s Next Target: Walmart

by ChristiSheppard Posted on November 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has it out for Walmart. On Tuesday, the freshman senator will hold an event on Capitol Hill calling out the retail giant for its low wages and terrible employment practices. The briefing will be held a week ahead of the nationwide anti-Walmart protests planned for Black Friday.

Warren will be joined by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.); members of OUR Walmart, a union-backed group helping organize Walmart workers; and representatives from other labor groups. Warren and her colleagues also plan to discuss legislation that could help Walmart employees and other low-wage workers around the country, including measures that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, forbid unpredictable irregular work schedules for part-time workers, and help prevent employers from retaliating against workers who share wage information.

Roughly 825,000 of Walmart’s hourly store employees earn less than $25,000 a year. About 600,000 Walmart workers are part-time, and many rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Walmart, the largest private employer in the US, says its average full-time hourly wage is $12.83, though OUR Walmart has calculated it as closer to $9 an hour.

Walmart has retaliated against employees who have protested these low wages. In January, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the company illegally fired, threatened, or disciplined more than 60 workers in 14 states for publicly complaining about wages and working conditions.

OUR Walmart is planning on holding a wave of protests at 1,600 Walmart stores the day after Thanksgiving to call for a $15 minimum wage and more opportunities for full-time hours. Last year, the group held demonstrations at more than 1,200 stores.

“The Walmart economy—a business model where a few profit significantly on the backs of the working poor and a diminishing middle class—perpetuates the income inequality problems that are devastating our country,” OUR Walmart and the United Food and Commercial Workers union said in a statement Monday.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Next Target: Walmart

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What’s Wrong With the Science of “Interstellar”?

by SallyFurlong Posted on November 12, 2014

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What’s Wrong With the Science of “Interstellar”?

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