Author Archive
250,000 Sign Petition to Apple to End Slave Conditions at Its Suppliers
Outraged at the inhumane treatment of workers in China who make iPads, iPhones and other Apple products, protesters visited a half-dozen Apple stores around the world yesterday to deliver petitions calling for reforms in the working conditions at factories run by Apple’s suppliers, accroding to Democracy Now!
A demonstration at Apple’s Grand Central Terminal store in New York City drew a dozen people, who peacefully handed over a petition with 250,000 signatures to an Apple store manager. Shelby Knox, the director for Change.org, led the effort to collect the signatures.
Knox and New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg, who helped break the story about the horrific conditions involved in producing the world’s most popular products, spoke today with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman. Also on the show: Mike Daisey, whose one-man play, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” is based partly on his visits to Apple’s Chinese factories and his interviews with the workers there. Daisey pointed out one of the key reasons the ability of Apple suppliers like Foxconn to institute slave-like working conditions–lack of a free labor movement. Read the rest of this entry »
Dean Baker: Auto Manufacturing Gives Big Boost to Jobs Growth
We asked economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), to expand upon recent reports that show a marked improvement in the nation’s jobs picture. In January, 243,000 jobs were created and unemployment dropped significantly for some of the hardest-hit workers. Baker’s intepretation of the data presents a still-mixed economic picture, but one bright point stands out clearly: President Obama’s support of the U.S. auto industry has been key to improving job creation for America’s workers. Be sure to pick up a copy of Baker’s latest book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.
Q.: As you’ve noted, the January drop in unemployment was especially sharp for African American and Latino workers. The jobless rate for black workers fell by 2.2 percentage points to 13.6 percent, the lowest level since March 2009. For Latino workers, the jobless rate dropped by 0.5 to 10.5 percent, the lowest since January 2009. What’s behind this good news?
A.: My best guess is that much of this is a statistical quirk. These numbers are always erratic and can and do jump around month to month. However, part of the drop is probably real. I suspect that with the African American population much of the story is related to the increase in manufacturing and construction employment, which is likely clustered in the Midwest. These are sectors that disproportionately employ African American workers.
The improvement for Latinos is less easily explained. Of course, many Latinos are employed in construction, but more in the West and South than Midwest, which has seen the biggest gains.
Anyhow, I suspect that part of the improvement in the employment picture is weather related. We had unusually warm weather across the Northeast/Midwest in December and January, which means that construction and manufacturing were not disrupted as much as usual. That would make it appear that we are adding jobs.
Q.: Employment in manufacturing and construction also showed strong growth in January. You attribute the construction job hike to unseasonably warm weather. But what about manufacturing? It’s been one area of job growth for several months now. What’s behind its resurgence and can it continue? Read the rest of this entry »
iSlaves: Forced Labor Key to Apple Profits
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More horrors out now from the Chinese serf-labor system involved in creating Apple products like iPads, iPhones and Kindles. It turns out many of the workers churning out millions of the devices in unendurable conditions at Foxconn and other factories are also forced laborers as young as 16.
The Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) says, “Legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products,” according to Alternet. One study found in some Foxconn factories, which employ 1.3 million people in China, up to 50 percent of the workforce were students.
SACOM and others report that schools teaching journalism, hotel management and nursing threatened students with failure if they did not take a factory position. The Chinese government-owned Global Times noted that “automotive majors at a vocational school in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, were also forced to serve as interns for Foxconn before they were given their diplomas.
Apple’s formula for mammoth profits, which topped $13 billion last quarter, depends upon a steady supply of forced laborers who are put through a torturous training to accustom them to the factory working conditions. Read the rest of this entry »
New Hampshire Lawmakers Try to End Worker Lunch Breaks
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Charles Dickens’s tales have nothing on New Hampshire lawmakers. According to American Progress, the Republican-controlled legislature is proposing to do away with a state regulation requiring employers to give workers time to eat lunch. After all, they argued, employers will do so anyway out of the goodness of their hearts.
Like Walmart maybe? Nope. Back in 2005, Walmart was forced to pay $172 million for denying workers their lunch breaks. California’s Embassy Suites? No, again. California ordered Embassy Suites to pay workers tens of thousands of dollars for forcing them to skip breaks.
Starving workers on the job. What a novel 19th century concept.
As the Dickens’s orphan begged the headmaster, his hands outstretched with an empty bowl:
Please sir, may I have more?
Take Action to Help Cleaning Workers in Netherlands
Spreading the work here from our friends at LabourStart, who sent this action request (and plug for its conference this year).
They’re calling it the “uprising of the invisible.”
Cleaning workers in the Netherlands have been on strike for 30 days and have now asked for international solidarity. They’ve created an online campaign on LabourStart which needs your help.
It will take you just one minute to tell their employers—and their employers’ clients—that it’s time to show these workers some respect, and to reach agreement to end the strike.
Please send off your message here today and spread the word.
And one more thing….
We’ve just announced the dates for the third annual LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, from Nov. 26-29 2012. To learn more and show your interest in attending, please visit the Event page on Facebook.
U.S. Tops Developed World in Income Inequality
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There’s income inequality, and then there’s the United States. New research shows that within the developed world, no nation has seen the income share of the top 1 percent grow faster over the past three decades than the United States.
To qualify for the elite status of 1 percent in annual income, an individual makes somewhere in the mid-$300,000s per year (or way more, like Mitt!).
(H/t to the Institute for Policy Studies.)
‘Downsized’: The Song
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From Union Communications Services:
Joe Glazer, known by many as labor’s troubadour, had for more than 50 years used his voice and guitar to rally supporters to the union cause, including for this timely tune, “Downsized.”
Before his death in 2006, he had performed in a hundred union halls, on dozens of picket lines and at scores of political and protest rallies and union conventions. He appeared in nearly every state in the union and in 60 countries around the world and recorded more than 25 LP albums, cassettes and CDs of labor and political music.
Click here to listen to “Downsized.”
You can purchase songs by Glazer and other labor music from the non-profit, labor-supported Labor Heritage Foundation.
Rep. Miller Asks Justice Dept. for Investigation of Possible Coercion of NLRB Member
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, asked the Department of Justice to look into evidence uncovered by a National Labor Relations Board Inspector General investigation that found board member Brian Hayes engaged in employment discussions with a law firm with business before the agency. Miller wrote:
The board plays a critical role in adjudicating and administering the rights of employees and employers under our nation’s labor law and Board members must be free of coercion and undue influence when executing their responsibilities.
The NLRB Inspector General investigation found that Hayes and an attorney with Morgan Lewis had a number of conversations beginning in late September or early October about potential employment if he were to resign his position on the NLRB. As part of those conversations, an attorney with the firm, according to Hayes, stated that “if you ever decide to resign we’d like to talk to you.”
More here.
Overall Union Membership Notches Up from 2010 to 2011
Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16- to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of 61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members.
Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.
Bottom line, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
Despite an unprecedented volley of partisan political attacks on workers’ rights and the continuing insecurity of our economic crisis, union membership increased slightly last year. Working men and women want to come together and to improve their lives.
Labor, Management Partner to Create Jobs in Wash. State
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Here’s a bipartisan solution: Labor and management working together to create jobs.
In Washington State, where construction workers are experiencing up to 50 percent unemployment, a labor-management coalition is working to push a jobs bill through the state legislature to alleviate the jobs crisis and rebuild infrastructure.
The Washington State Labor Council, the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council, the Association of General Contractors are sponsoring the Infrastructure Jobs Bond legislation and have released lists identifying which capital construction work around the state could be funded through the legislation.
Says Dave Myers, executive secretary of Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council:
These jobs will become a reality right away for thousands of laid off constructions workers and returning veterans. The projects will also be targeted toward key sectors of economic development including construction of aerospace training facilities and college research facilities, both of which will spin off other economic development.
Read more here.
