Following the historic precedent of Seattle’s divestment from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa (Seattle Resolution No. 27220, adopted December 17, 1984), an organization named “Seattle Divest from War and Occupation” has sponsored “Initiative No. 97,” which, if adopted, would force the Seattle Employees’ Retirement System funds to divest from corporations that fund war and occupation in the Middle East.

More specifically, this initiative would set policies and guidelines that would ensure that the city’s retirement funds not be invested in corporations (1) that profit directly from the U.S. presence in Iraq, or (2) that do business in or with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights. The City must also withdraw retirement funds invested with the Israeli government if Israel attacks Iran without U.N. authorization.

Self-help books are filled with advice about changing jobs, or even starting an entirely new career. For most of us, however, the reality is that we're not about to do either of those things, and we may not even want to. What we want is to improve the job we have -- to get more money, for example, or shorter hours, more flexibility, more interesting work assignments, or more responsibility.

It's not at all clear to most workers how to go about getting those things. To the extent that the advice columns in the newspaper address the issue at all, the recommendation is usually simply to go to the boss and ask nice, pointing out to him or her the fine work you've been doing and try to justify your request.

That's all well and good. But bosses didn't become bosses by handing out raises on request, or by letting their workers work shorter hours, or start a flex-time schedule, or telecommute. Eight times out of ten, the workers' carefully crafted request is denied. One time out of ten, maybe, it's granted. The other times, the request is not only denied, it gets the requester marked down as "dissatisfied" -- never a good thing to have on a worker's rap sheet.

There are almost 2 million fieldworkers in this country. On average, these workers make less than $12,000 a year. Almost a third of migrant workers' families are officially poor. These workers often fail to receive the same legal rights and benefits granted to other U.S. laborers.

Case in point: Florida tomato pickers. Their wages have stayed almost the same in real dollars for nearly 20 years -- a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each worker picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. That's 125 buckets per day which, at $.45 per bucket, equals $56.25 for a ten- or twelve-hour day of backbreaking labor.

In recent years, a concerted effort to raise these wages and improve these workers' working conditions has made surprising gains. In the spring of 2005, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a small farm laborers' group in Immokalee, Florida, won a surprising victory against the world's second-largest fast-food company. After a four-year boycott, Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, agreed to pay an additional one cent per pound for its tomatoes, with the extra penny going directly to the farm workers.

Opinion polls periodically, if not invariably, show that "the immigration problem" is one of the things voters care the most about. The issue itself has at least three primary attributes.

First, many people believe that it is unfair that residents of other countries are crossing our borders and staying in this country illegally, while applicants who seek to arrive by legal means are forced to wait years for entry visas and green cards.

Second, it is feared that the presence of undocumented workers results in lost or damaged work opportunities for legal residents, due both to the availability of these workers and to their willingness to work for lower wages than employers would otherwise pay to people here legally.

Third, there is (and always has been) a xenophobic streak in this country, whereby people simply don't want more "foreigners" – and especially non-white, not-English-speaking foreigners – becoming part of our community.

There is a long history of Democratic politicians, once in office, failing to stand up for the issues of greatest concern to labor. What’s even more surprising, given the close Democratic presidential primary race, is the failure of the Democratic politicians involved in that race to pay serious attention to those issues.

This is not only a missed opportunity for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but a troubling sign that even if one of those two candidates wins the general election in November, labor’s interests will not be at the top of the Democratic agenda.

The increasing wealth gap between the rich, the middle class, and the poor has become too obvious too ignore. The top 10% of income earners in the United States now own 70% of the wealth, and the wealthiest 1% own more than the bottom 95%, according to the Federal Reserve. In 2005, the top 300,000 Americans enjoyed about the same share of the nation's income - 21.8% - as the bottom 150 million.

A study released on March 31, 2008, by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) demonstrates how unions can provide a key counterweight to this phenomenon, especially for African Americans, who remain in many ways at the bottom of this country’s economic food chain. This report shows that unionized African Americans make substantially more money and have substantially better benefits than their non-union counterparts.

It’s been exactly one year since March 28, 2007, the date Circuit City Stores set a new low in corporate morality by laying off 3400 experienced workers whose relatively high salaries – typically, about $15 per hour – allegedly made them a liability. The company’s plan was to hire other new, untrained workers at $10.22 an hour to do the same work, thus saving the company … well, something. Not much, apparently, if you look at the steady decline of the company’s stock price, which has dropped from over $19 per share down to around $4 per share since they implemented this decision.

A year is a long time. After four months of unemployment, according to the Economics Policy Institute, most workers will no longer be covered by their state’s unemployment benefits program. They will have either found a new job, been disqualified for some alleged infraction – such as supposedly having given up looking for work – or will have exhausted the monetary benefits to which they are entitled. After one year, these laid-off Circuit City workers will certainly, in one way or another, have moved on.