In the spring of 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to join sanitation workers seeking better pay, fairer treatment and the right to form a union. I was with Dr. King as he stood with workers, all African-American, all fighting years of labor repression and wages

If I were a top executive in the retail or restaurant industries, or one of their hired guns in Washington, I'd be very nervous right now. Tomorrow will see what may be the first-ever national strike against restaurant and retail chains, with workers expected to walk off the jobs in 35 cities --

" Not only the absence of oppression but the presence of opportunity" In his speech at the Lincoln Memorial the President movingly honored the sacrifice and commitment of the people who marched on Washington fifty years ago today. He was emphatic in noting that the progress has been immense, an

Fifty years after the "dream" of racial equality invoked by Martin Luther King at the March on Washington, the reality is that African-Americans still suffer the most unemployment. Government statistics show the overall US unemployment rate stood at 7.4 percent in July. But while whites had a

The Cato Institute came out with a big study recently that argues the familiar point that generous welfare payments undermine incentives to work. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities promptly replied with a four-page paper rebutting key aspects of the report.

You know the drill — we have a dysfunctional political system and a gridlocked Congress. The House is firmly in the grip of a band of Republican maniacs and the Senate, though technically Democratic, requires a virtually impossible filibuster-proof majority to get anything passed. So we should just

On the eve of a march to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, labor and civil rights activists are calling on President Barack Obama to honor King with an executive order that would raise wages for as many as two million workers. One of the most poignant calls came Wednesday

Yesterday I wrote about why a tight labor market may not return any time soon to raise wages. But here's another scary thought: What if tight labor markets no longer push up wages like was once the case?

A tight labor market is the great conservative answer to the low-wage jobs crisis. If we can just get the economy booming again, the logic goes, wages will rise along with demand for low-skilled workers. Bill O'Reilly told me that earlier today, when I taped a segment at Fox on the economy. Of

When Walmart broke the bad news to shareholders last week about declining same-store sales and cuts to their profit and sales projections, the company offered a glib explanation. "The retail environment was challenging," asserted Walmart Stores President and CEO Michael Duke. Company executives