Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives. And I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. Today we're going to be talking about

unionization at Trader Joe's, about the lottery system and the economics of lotteries,

about the extraordinary profits being raked in by the largest oil companies in the world,

and an advertising campaign by Big Pharma that I want to alert you, too.

And in the second half, we will have a wonderful interview in my judgment with V.J. Prashad about the fragility of global U.S. power and what is happening as we live the decline of that power.

So let me begin. Hadley, Massachusetts is a small community, but one that I've known well because it's right next door to Amherst, Massachusetts,

which is the location of the main campus of the University of Massachusetts, where I spent many years as a professor.

So my attention was grabbed when I learned that the Trader Joe's located right there on

the border between Hadley and Amherst,

was experiencing an effort by the 80 workers there to unionize.

And on July 28th, they voted.

And it was officiated by the National Labor Relations Board and the Union won,

with a vote of 45 to 31. That is, all but four workers voted. It's an independent union,

they formulated. It's not affiliated, at least not yet, with any

of the national unions in the United States. And it's called Trader Joe's United.

It is not the only Trader Joe to be unionized or to be engaged in a unionizing effort.

There's at least another one in Minneapolis, Minnesota,

and another one in Boulder, Colorado. And when I did a little more research, I discovered

that I should have been mentioning Canada, where there is a similar unionization effort going on.

It may be going on with Trader Joe's. I don't know,

but it is definitely going on with Starbucks because they have organized several Starbucks in

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