LyrArc Article Gist
The Harris campaign and efforts by unions and workers to reach working class people in the closing days of Harris vs Trump in 2024.

LyrArc Article Gist
A 5% wage hike in Japan in 2023 for workers was the largest in 33 years. The central bank of Japan now supports a 5% wage hike in 2024 that unions are negotiating.

LyrArc Article Gist
Labor seeing a decline in unionized workers from 20% in 1980 in the private sector to 7.5% today according to the Labor Department, wants legislation embodied in the Employee Free Choice Act to help increase the number of unionized workers. Without the required 60 votes in the Senate to resist filibuster and reluctant to pick a big fight with the Chambers of Commerice and National Manufacturers Association and the business lobby on this issue early in the term, makes the Obama administration unlikely to push this issue too hard. The Employee Free Choice bill would give unions and not companies as under current law, the choice of having workers vote for a union by signing cards instead of through a secret ballot election. Card signing is preferred by unions because it can be done without an employer's knowledge. With secret ballot elections companies typically have months to mount an opposition. The bill also authorizes an arbitrator to impose a first contract ifa union fails to reach agreement with a company by 120 days following the union's formation. Under current law if the two sides don't reach a contract within a year, the union typically loses its right to be the exclusive bargaining agent for the workers....

LyrArc Article Gist
Why Rachel Reeves type of strict financial rules will hurt Labour. DJT in the US relaxed the borrowing limit to $5 trillion, and has designed his One Big Beautiful Act to have parts of it to boost the economy and investment. Reform UK gains on both sides with Reeves efforts to cut benefits losing Labor voters and it's struggles on migration hurting it on the other side with conservtaive voters who voted Labour. With the Conservatives in disarray, Labour has to keep its focus on improving the lives of Britons.  Today it does not matter whether you are Social Democrat or Christian Democrat or Socialist, what matters is to have common sense policies that help te vast majority of people even in unconventional ways by breaking the rules or fixed ideas about what can be done. DJT and Merz are on the Christian Democrat side, Denmark's PM Mette Frederiksen is Social Democrat, what matters is to have a culture and policies that help the people and stands up for ordinary people in the Nation. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
With continued job growth the US Fed is planning to continue its sequential interest rate increases. The Fed raised interest rates 0.75% at each of the last 3 Fed meetings and a fourth 0.75 rate increase is expected when it meets on November 1-2, 2022. This is the most rapid rate of increases since the 1980's and it is designed to bring inflation under control.

LyrArc Article Gist
48% of British voters see immigration as the most important issue says Ipsos. And 31% say their local area is housing more than its fair share of asylum seekers growing to 61% of Reform UK voters. Reform UK is now leading party with 34% of the vote to Labour's 25% and Liberals 11%. The report in the WSJ on Augu 28 shows how the Labour government did not live up to it's talk on immigration. It also shows how the Conservatives and Boris Johnson failed by opening up non EU immigration from Asia on the grounds that it would bring in the brightest and yet dropped the basic colege degree requirement paradoxically. Lobbying from health care home care increased migration for this field under Conservatives and is only now being reversed by Labour. Labour has been too slow and the culture of Britain and Labour has not changed enough to grasp the problem. Their are vested interests in Britain such as universities and home care health care that have influenced the conduct of policy so that migration on non-eu has replaced eu migration after Brexit but not attracted the most qualified immigrants. The 4% of the British population that entered Britain after Brexit as immigrants, millions arrived and now when Labour is trying to bring this down faces a large number of dependent applications.University students are now bringing in their dependents at rates that have skyrocketed. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Lack of wage growth and self imposed fiscal rules as barriers for Britain's Labour government in 2026. Keir Starmer faces challenges for the leadership after May 2026 elections. Self imposed fiscal rules set a limit to what the administration can achieve and finance minister Rachel Reeves lacking the imagination to come up with a way to boost growth with fiscal rules modified to generate jobs and wage growth working with British industry.

LyrArc Article Gist
Finland faces a severe shortage of workers with about 60% of positions unfilled in the larger Helsinki area. About 100,000 new tech positions will have to be filled. In other lower wage sectors there is the problem of low wages as there is no minimum wage in Finland with sector by sector negotiation for wages. Far right parties are opposed to immigration. Ukrainian workers have to learn Finnish or English to integrate into the Finnish workplace. Elections will be decided on this issue in 2023.

LyrArc Article Gist
Jeremy Corbyn is elected by a landslide in a vote of party members to the leadership of Britain's Labor Party. Like Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Corbyn started out as a fringe candidate, but his campaign gained momentum as he barnstormed the country this summer and was able to draw large enthusiastic crowds. Corbyn has represented the Islington North constituency of London in Britain's parliament since 1983. Corbyn opposes the austerity policies of the Conservative Cameron government and military adventurism. He proposes what he calls "a people's quantitative easing" which would finance new investments in infrastructure, large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects. He has apologized to students about the restoration of fees for education and loans replacing grants in universities, and would scrap tution fees, restore student maintenance grants, introduce universal childcare, support adult learning.The Bank of England would print money to support a national investment bank to provide the funding. Other funding would come from reducing corporate tax loopholes, and cutting into 20 billion British pounds of tax avoidance and 80 billion pounds in tax evasion. He favors immigration, and staying in the EU, opposes NATO membership on grounds that it has expanded too far to the borders of Russia....

LyrArc Article Gist
Times of London View in 2025- Labour would be wise to follow Merz of Germany's approach to illegal migrants and Farage's proposals need a hearing even if with a pinch of salt. Labour says The Times of London would be wise to take the get-tough approach of Germany's Merz.