State Dept. Cracks Down on Abuse of Foreign Students by Hershey and Others
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In response to protests by foreign students exploited in a factory subcontracted by the Hershey Company and advocacy by the AFL-CIO and our allies, this week the U.S. State Department announced that it will make major revisions to a guest-worker and cultural exchange visa program and barred participation by a major player in the program, the Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA).
Harika Duygu Ozer, one of the students involved in the protest, told the New York Times:
I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like CETUSA, that we will not be your captive workers.
As we reported last summer, students recruited for a cultural exchange program found themselves instead all but indentured to a factory in Palmyra, Penn., where they were made to perform dangerous work loading Hershey products with no safety protection for less than the minimum wage. In addition, the students stayed in housing provided by the Hershey contractor, for which it overcharged. Rents were deducted from the students’ pay. Read the rest of this entry »
Wal-Mart’s Rob Walton Wins JWJ’s Scrooge of the Year
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He beat out some tough competition, but Rob Walton, chairman of Wal-Mart’s board of directors, is the top vote getter in the 11th annual Jobs with Justice (JWJ) Scrooge of the Year election.
Walton deemed a “billionaire bully” by Brave New Films, has an estimated net worth around $21 billion, JWJ reports. As a family, the Waltons control 49 percent of Wal-Mart and are, says JWJ, the richest family in the United States, with a combined net worth is $93 billion. The Walton Family has as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of American families combined—more than 35 million families.
The family’s dividends from their Wal-Mart stock alone are more than $2 billion a year. Just using their dividends, they could ensure that a million Wal-Mart employees make at least $12 an hour instead of the current average of $8.81 an hour.
Just last month Wal-Mart, under Rob’s leadership, slashed health care coverage for hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and their families—right before the holidays. What a scrooge! Read the rest of this entry »
Who’s Your ‘Scrooge of the Year’?
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The holiday season’s here and that means it’s time for the always-fun Jobs with Justice (JwJ) Scrooge of the Year contest. JwJ is now accepting nominations for the greediest, most cold-hearted company, CEO, or politician of 2011 in the 11th annual “Scrooge of the Year” contest. Click here to nominate your candidate.
Last year’s Scrooge of the Year was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for leading the Senate in aggressively blocking almost all legislation from passing, especially laws that would help working people. Other past winners of this dubious honor include: Wal-Mart, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street executives who broke our economy.
We’ll let you know as soon as the top nominees are announced later this month and then you can cast your vote for the Scrooge of the Year.
Report: Wage Theft Reaches Deep into the Low-Wage Economy
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A new report shows how wage theft reaches deep into the low-wage economy.
“The Movement to End Wage Theft” illustrates the problem with the stories of workers employed by a grocery chain, a temp agency, a construction company and other incorporated businesses. These workers’ wages were stolen by their employers who failed to pay the minimum wage or overtime, or refused to abide by work-break and safety rules.
Findings from a 2009 study cited by the study’s author, Nik Theodore of the University of Illinois at Chicago, concluded that 26 percent of low-wage workers in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles were paid less than the legal minimum wage, and 76 percent of workers who worked overtime were not paid the legally required overtime rate.
Here’s one account from the report (available here in PDF format):
For six years Modesta has worked as a cashier in a retail store in Brooklyn, New York. When she started at the job she was paid $5 an hour. She worked 60 hours, 6 days a week, but received no overtime pay. Last year she was given a “raise” and now earns $6.60 an hour—still well below the state minimum wage. Most of her co-workers are paid even less, but she says her employer has been able to continue this practice because the workers are too scared to complain.
Getting Back to School and Back to Work
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In this excerpt of a cross-post from the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), Jeremy Hedlund and Isaiah Toney, SLAP members at the University of Oregon and George Washington University, respectively, explain that students have real power.
As summer winds down and schools across the nation start back up, students are being forced to ask themselves many tough questions. “How will I pay for my school? Will I be able to get a job when I graduate? And will that job be a good paying, family wage job, or will I have to work weekends just to make ends meet?”
King’s Dream of Economic Justice Still Far From Reality
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| Rep. John Lewis called for working people to “make some noise.” |
Devon Lomax, a member of the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 9 in New York, hasn’t worked for more than a year. One of his colleagues lost his home and ended up panhandling in the subways.
Katie Hofmann, a teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, says more and more of her students are homeless. Teachers who have not had a pay raise for five years regularly go into their pockets to buy lunch for children who are hungry and whose families have no money.
Lomax and Hofmann were two of the panelists who spoke at the AFL-CIO and The King Center symposium on “Jobs, Justice and the American Dream” this morning. Participants in the first panel, Jobs and the American Dream, agreed that 48 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the nation is still far from achieving his vision of a nation where everyone who wants to work has a good job and the freedom to achieve to the best of his or her abilities.
Hershey Sit-In Exposes Employers’ Use of Subcontracts to Thwart Workers’ Rights
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A courageous group of foreign students in the United States on a cultural exchange program joined with union members and members of Jobs with Justice last week to expose the U.S. labor market’s dirty little secret: the web of subcontracting that prevents workers from exercising their rights because they don’t know exactly who employs them.
The students, who led a sit-in at a factory that is subcontracted by the Hershey Chocolate Co. in Palmyra, Pa., are on a State Department cultural exchange program (called the “J-1 Visa” program) that allows companies to hire students for summer work.
Although the students’ work directly benefits Hershey, the company claims it has no responsibility for their working conditions or pay. According to news reports, they work at a factory operated by Excel, a third-party logistics company, which passed the buck to SHS Staffing, a temp service contracted by Excel. SHS, in turn, says it only handles payroll and the workers were supplied by an outfit called the Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA), which supplied the workers to SHS.
Join Jobs With Justice’s National Conference and Fight Back Against Corporate Agenda
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There’s still time to register online to join hundreds of activists from Jobs with Justice (JwJ) and stand together to “Build Power and Fight Back” against the attacks on America’s working people by corporate executives and politicians.
At JwJ’s national conference Aug. 5–7 in Washington, D.C., workers, students, religious leaders, community activists and many others will plan strategies to build a powerful movement of working people to defeat the corporate agenda. Register for the conference online here.
In the spirited, creative JwJ style, they will carry their fight to one of the world’s largest corporations with a march Friday on Wal-Mart’s corporate offices in Washington. They will join with members of the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) to let the giant retailer know that its workers deserve a decent living and a voice on the job.
Portland Rising Events Teach Union Summer Interns About Solidarity
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AFL-CIO Union Summer interns learned what labor solidarity is all about recently when they joined the Portland (Ore.) Day of Rising sponsored by Jobs with Justice. In a series of seven actions in one day, nearly 200 people traveled across Portland to lend support to workers embroiled in contract disputes and to speak out on trade issues.
Kelsey Jorgenson, an intern working with the Communication Workers of America (CWA), said
Portland Rising gave me an experience of true solidarity. I’ve been to many rallies, but this was the first time that I saw people coming together to support each other at multiple sites and taking on other’s struggles as their own.
Flash Mob Sings for Respect at Wal-Mart
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Shoppers at a Laurel, Md., Wal-Mart yesterday got some unexpected entertainment while Wal-Mart managers got a serious message in the form of a rousing, revamped version of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” from a flash mob and brass band.
Wal-Mart is planning to open four stores in nearby Washington, D.C., but the retailer hasn’t met with community members to talk about standards for respecting workers and the neighborhoods, said D.C. Jobs with Justice (JWJ) and the coalition Respect DC.
Wal-Mart drives down standards and wages, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) President Joe Hansen said yesterday.
When Wal-Mart opens in a community, it regularly displaces existing jobs with poverty-level jobs.
