Blog

The need for aggressive enforcement of sweatfree purchasing policies

July 25, 2008

With such a close monitoring system in place, it is difficult to
understand how such egregious violations could have still been
happening. However, it seems as though Jin Shun was very strategic in
concealing these. The company provided workers with mock question and
answer sheets to memorize in case they were ever questioned about
conditions in the factory. They also provided falsified time records to
labor investigators – which, if correct, would show that workers
produced an entire piece of clothing in less than one minute. It is
amazing how long this system worked without being discovered and that
workers were being trained to cover up for their disgustingly inhumane
employers.

Working Women in Pakistan are being Stripped of all Labor Rights

July 24, 2008

Organizations like Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) and Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA) have undertaken a few
initiatives to address this growing concern in Pakistan. Their most
recent project titled “Pathway and Purse-strings: Market Access for
Women Producers in Pakistan” is geared towards providing marginalized
female producers with resources to access markets, where their goods
are in high demand. This particular program is estimated to improve the
economic condition of 16,000 to 20,000 women in rural Pakistan. (see

Working women are stripped of labor protections wherever they go

July 23, 2008

Domestic work is obviously difficult to regulate because workers aren’t
employed on an individual basis, especially when workers are migrating
from country to country, often without documentation.  What is more
disturbing is that women who are working in formal export industries
such as agriculture, textiles, and fish processing, with high
production demands in the US market, also lack most legal rights and
protections. If labor laws can protect these workers, they’re
systematically un-enforced.

NGO's=Terrorists? Uribe and The Wall Street Journal Think So

July 23, 2008

But the real twist came when footage
taken by a cameraman at the rescue showed one of the men from the Colombian
intelligence team wearing a bib bearing the logo of the American Red
Cross. Though Colombian President Alvaro
Uribe claims that the man acted alone and decided to put the shirt on because
he was “nervous,” many pundits find it hard to believe that this wasn’t part of
the plan all along. And if it was, it seems even more questionable that Uribe,
who in the past has accused human rights groups of being little more than
fronts for leftist groups in the country, would exploit the very connection he
had spent so much time attacking.

Join us in calling for justice in Zimbabwe!

July 19, 2008

TRANSAFRICA
FORUM and the COALITION OF BLACK TRADE UNIONISTS

JUSTICE
FOR ZIMBABWE

  • A Transitional Government

  • A New Constitution

  • Economic Justice – Workers Rights, A
    Debt Audit,

    Repatriation
    of Stolen Assets

  • People-driven Social Investment

  • A National "Truth and
    Reconciliation" Process to Begin National Healing

Monday,
July 21, 2008


4:30
pm – 6:30 pm


The
Embassy of Zimbabwe
18th Street and New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC

Local unions, self-interest, and global solidarity

July 18, 2008

These questions, and many others, came to mind when meeting with local
unions in New Jersey this past week. The purpose of meeting with local
New Jersey unions was to talk about a campaign, and identify places of
potential collaboration in our work and their work. However, on a more
philosophical level, we were working on talking to these unions about
the importance of supporting international labor rights issues – issues
that might not be in the immediate self-interest of local unions.

The Boss stole my salary?!?!?

July 17, 2008

I was recently at a briefing on Capitol Hill put on by
Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization that has been tackling this issue at
a federal and local level. Some of the statistics about wage theft are
shocking. According to the written testimony of IWJ Executive Director, Kim
Bobo:

* Two million workers aren’t paid the minimum wage.1

* Three million are mis-classified as independent
contractors instead of employees.2

* Millions more are illegally denied overtime pay.3

TRADE Act Should Be Approached With Praise, But Also Caution

July 15, 2008

The provisions of the 35-page TRADE act require a great deal
of analysis to be carried out on existing and future trade agreements, but are
not as clear about what is to be done with the resulting information. The act
calls for the Comptroller General to author a biennial report assessing all
trade agreements, including a section of recommendations on how to renegotiate
and improve any particular agreement. Yet how these recommendations will be
evaluated or carried out is not discussed in the bill, leaving it vulnerable to
corporations or governments (US or otherwise) that prefer to ignore these
suggestions in the interest of profit or convenience.

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