Matthew Cunningham-Cook has written for Labor Notes, the Public Employee Press, Al Jazeera America, and the Nation.
New York’s Democrat-controlled legislature passed a bill this week to funnel an additional $54 billion in public pension funds to high-risk private equity investments. It’s most likely an unwise financial strategy — and only Wall Street will benefit.
The Joe Biden administration enacted the highest Medicare premium hikes in history last week. Most of the profits will be funneled to the private insurance companies that funded Biden’s presidential campaign.
Pennsylvania and Oregon election results from last night offer cause for hope for progressives: voters rejected the demands of oligarchs and Democratic elites.
We are not being honest about the horrific racist violence that took place in Buffalo this weekend and the racial inequality throughout the United States if we ignore how capitalism brought us here.
The Biden administration recently expanded on Donald Trump’s efforts to privatize Medicare. Now patients are being assigned to new private plans without their consent, and private equity firms and major health care companies are the ones profiting.
In 2020, Joe Biden pledged to ensure that companies would only get federal contracts if they remained neutral in union elections. But Amazon was just reawarded a $10 billion federal contract — despite the corporation’s vile union busting.
For decades, the American right has eroded the federal right to an abortion, while Democrats have failed to safeguard it. Democrats must now use their power to fund abortion access and protect basic reproductive freedoms.
Newly proposed legislation in New York would require financial firms to show what they are doing with hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ retirement savings — currently a huge source of dark money for Wall Street.
Amazon has received over $300 million in subsidies from New York State — deals that stipulate the company must follow labor laws. But their blatant union busting means they could be forced to give that public money back.
Starbucks chairwoman Mellody Hobson runs an investment firm that’s raking in millions in fees from unionized workers’ pension funds — all while Starbucks wages an aggressive anti-union campaign against its workers.
Joe Biden pledged to support workers’ unionization efforts at Amazon on Wednesday, saying, “Amazon, here we come.” But his failure so far to implement any of the recommendations of his task force on worker organization seems to speak louder than his words.
For decades, public workers’ pensions have been moved into private equity, hedge funds, and real estate investments, enriching finance industry moguls — and shortchanging retired public employees and teachers.
The Biden administration is expanding Donald Trump’s Medicare privatization scheme that is forcing hundreds of thousands of seniors onto for-profit health plans.
Verizon workers seeking to unionize in Washington state say the company just brought in executives to intimidate them.
Bankrolled by the finance sector, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has made the UK a safe haven for the dirtiest money in the world.
A new lawsuit challenges an interest-rate scheme that critics say helped Wall Street loot communities across America.
The Supreme Court isn’t a friend of workers. So a recent ruling that retirees can sue employers who help investment firms rip them off with high fees and poor performance is a rare and crucial win.
California’s top investment funds have resisted divestment from fossil fuels and funneled big money into firms like those behind Dakota Access. Not only are these investments dirty, but they’re costing public workers billions in the process.
Ohio retirees and whistleblowers are on the verge of exposing how hedge funds and private equity firms are abusing workers’ retirement savings.
The Federal Reserve could provide low-interest loans to small businesses and governments struggling under the pandemic as part of the stimulus. But the Fed providing those loans would mean Wall Street wouldn’t get that business, at much higher rates — something Republican Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey decided on Thursday could not happen.