Archive for December, 2007
Health and Safety in Factories Top List of Labor Standards Violations
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Already this holiday season, we've learned how sweatshop labor has gone into creating holiday ornaments sold by Wal-Mart and crucifixes made for U.S. churches.
Now, a year-end report by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) found 2,511 violations of the organization's labor standards in factories around the globe, and nearly half (46 percent) were health and safety-related.
The Fair Labor Association: 2007 Annual Report provides information on unannounced factory inspections conducted in 2006 by independent auditors on the labor compliance programs of 38 companies affiliated with the association, and covers 147 factories and more than 110,000 workers. The FLA also found that 17 percent of violations pertained to wage and benefit standards.
Grinch of the Year: Smithfield Chairman
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The votes are in. And the winner, if you want to call him that, is Joseph Luter III, chairman of Smithfield Foods Inc.
With more than 10,000 votes cast, Luter grabbed 28 percent of the vote. But it was not a runaway. He barely beat out American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey (27 percent) for the (un)coveted title Grinch of the Year.
The seventh annual Grinch of the Year contest, sponsored by Jobs with Justice, gives us all the opportunity to cast a vote for the national figure who does the most harm to working families.
Leading Labor Law Scholars Say Bush NLRB Undermining U.S. Labor Laws
It's not just workers and unions that say the Bush National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is deliberately undermining workers' freedom to form unions. Some of the nation's leading legal scholars say the Bush NLRB
has mounted an aggressive campaign to curtail workers' rights under the statute.
In a letter submitted to the joint House-Senate hearing last week that examined the NLRB's war on workers, James Brudney of the Ohio State University Moritz School of Law and Cynthia Estlund of the New York University School of Law were joined by 56 additional labor law professors from our nation's most prestigious schools.
Workers Tell Their Stories Through UAW Campaign
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Yolanda Crosby addresses toy safety and fair trade standards (see video). Daphne Rice discusses the UAW’s efforts to support charitable causes. Andrew Linko looks at workplace safety and retiree James Fairchild talks about the need for higher workplace standards in the global economy.
Crosby, Rice, Linko or Fairchild, all UAW members, are featured in a new UAW-sponsored Internet and TV advertising campaign.
The ad campaign, launched in mid-December, highlights the union’s new interactive website, IAmtheUAW.org, which encourages UAW members, family, friends and supporters (including friends in other unions) to tell their stories and submit photos, podcasts and videos to the site.
Workers Lose Jobs to Trade—and Now Republican Trio Blocks Their Benefits
Three Republican senators led by Jon Kyl of Arizona ruined the holidays of tens of thousands of working people whose jobs were shipped overseas because of the flawed U.S. trade policies that encourage employers to move offshore. The senators blocked a unanimous consent agreement to extend the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program for three months.
TAA provides financial assistance and training to workers who lost their job due to imports or offshoring. The program is set to expire Dec. 31. Even though the House approved an extension last week, the Senate failed to do so yesterday before adjourning for the year.
Republican Obstruction Strategy Stalls Key Legislation in Senate
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Senate Republicans have hit a dubious record this year. On Dec. 18, they forced the 62nd cloture vote of the 110th Congress, effectively blocking yet another bill. With half of the session still ahead, the roadblock Republicans have broken the record for the use of the filibuster to halt Senate legislation.
In a new report, the Campaign for America’s Future examined the record of reactionary obstruction in the Senate, and the media’s ineffective response. In short, the report’s authors note:
The first session of Congress was more marked by conservative obstruction than by progressive gains.
$38 Billion in Bonuses for Wall Streeters, Home Foreclosures for Regular Folks. Really?
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While executives at the top five Wall Street firms are getting a record $38 billion in bonuses this Christmas season, millions of working families are worrying whether they will lose their homes in the New Year—in the wake of the nation’s mortgage crisis.
The AFL-CIO called today for major mortgage lenders to impose a one-year moratorium on subprime mortgage foreclosures. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, in a letter to the largest subprime mortgage lenders and underwriters, writes:
Wall Street seems to be giving unprecedented cash rewards to the very people whose conduct threatens to strip millions of Americans of their homes and drive our country into recession, while at the same time refusing to take the actions necessary to address the crisis.
Wrap Up of Bali: Time for Us to Save the Planet
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More than 10,000 delegates and observers from around the world traveled to Bali, Indonesia, for the U.N. Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) from Dec. 3-14. Of the 90 union delegates, more than 20 were from North America, including Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and chair of the Energy Task Force, who finalized this report after he got back to the United States. U.S. delegates sent us a series of posts from the conference: here, here, here, here, here and here.
When I began this blog, I was sitting in the opening ministry session for the UNCCC. The new prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, addressed the delegation. Earlier that day, he signed the Kyoto protocol and delivered it to the United Nations before speaking. We heard from the president of Indonesia and watched a compelling video from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the World Meteorological Organization and U.N. Environment Program Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There was a somber note and a moment of silence for those U.N. workers and citizens in Algeria who died in the terrorist attack in Algeria.
300 Southern California Nurses Join CNA/NNOC
For the third time in three weeks, registered nurses have voted for the California Nurses Association/ National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) to represent them. This time, the 300 nurses at Whittier Hospital Medical Center in the Los Angeles area voted by a whopping 87 percent for the union last night.
Whittier nurse Irma San Luis says the workers are happy about the win:
It will help bring a strong united nurse voice for patient care at Whittier.
Fight Just Beginning Over FCC’s Big-Media Ownership Rule
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Unions representing media workers roundly condemned yesterday’s decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow big-media moguls like Rupert Murdoch to swallow up more local media across the country and reduce the diversity of news and programming.
Ignoring strong public sentiment against the move, the FCC approved on a 3–2 party-line vote Chairman Kevin Martin’s proposal to allow a single corporation to own both a broadcast and newspaper operation in the 20 largest markets as long as at least eight other independent news sources exist in that market.
