Workers Push for Fair Wages in Asian Garment Industry
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Workers in Asia, the United States, United Kingdom and throughout Europe are mobilizing to secure a living wage for garment workers in Asia. The Asia Floor Wage is focused on making sure that the more than 100 million mostly women workers in the Asian garment industry receive adequate wages for what they produce.
Launched on Oct. 7, World Day for Decent Work, the Asia Floor Wage is pushing for a minimum wage equivalent to $475 for a month with a 48-hour workweek. That’s twice what Indonesian laborers get. It’s three times the minimum rate of pay in Sri Lanka and more than six times the wage in Bangladesh.
Red Cross Cost-Cutting Endangers Blood Supply, Workers, Donors
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Millions of Americans contribute blood and money to the Red Cross with the belief that the organization is well run and the blood supply is protected. But a new Jobs with Justice report raises serious concerns about donor safety and the security of the nation’s blood supply.
During a Jobs with Justice telephone press conference yesterday, Mary McDougal, who has worked for a decade at the Red Cross in Buffalo, N.Y., said the Red Cross must improve the way it treats workers and donors.
Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C., thinks it can run a blood drive like you run a McDonald’s. [They need to] hire the right people, give them proper training and listen to us.
The Missouri Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board released the report, “Labor Relations at the American Red Cross and Its Impact on Employee and Donor Safety,” after hearing from front-line Red Cross workers across the country. The investigative report outlines practices that jeopardize blood donors’ safety and the integrity of the blood supply, including long work hours that lead to fatigue and mistakes; sharp pay cuts that cause dramatic increases in employee turnover and hiring non-qualified workers instead of certified nurses.
Today Is World Day for Decent Work
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Today is World Day for Decent Work, and union members in more than 100 countries are mobilizing to address the global economic and employment crisis and demand fundamental reform of the world economy.
The deepest global recession since the 1930s has led to a jobs crisis with millions of people out of work. The International Labor Organization (ILO) predicts that as many as 50 million more workers could be kicked out of jobs worldwide in the next year and could lead to a dramatic increase in the number of working poor.
Live online coverage of the activities around the world, including videos, photographs and messages from events in every continent, will be broadcast on a special website, www.wddw.org, which will be updated via a 24-hour live feed.
Jobs with Justice Week of Action: Demanding Real Economic Recovery
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This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Wall Street bailout, and Jobs with Justice (JwJ) is launching a Week of Action to demand that the banks use our taxpayer dollars to finance the recovery and not their own corporate agenda.
During the Sept. 24-Oct. 1 week of action, working people will join with students, activists, community leaders and others across the country to highlight Big Banks’ misuse of tax dollars. So far, few of the billions in taxpayer money that went to Big Banks have reached Main Street. Instead, executives of banks that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars have lined their pockets with stock options that guarantee them huge windfalls for years. While they get richer, they have laid off more than 160,000 employees since Jan. 1, 2008.
To top it all off, Bank of America, which received $45 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout support, has spent more than $1.5 million lobbying on Capitol Hill against the reforms that would protect consumers from a future financial crisis, such as restrictions on executive compensation, home mortgage lending and credit card fees. The bank also is lobbying on a consumer rights bill, on student lending issues, on a bill that would’ve allowed bankruptcy judges to alter mortgages and on a proposed federal regulatory oversight agency.
Rite Aid’s Anti-Worker Tactics Show Need for Employee Free Choice
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Across the country, union members and allies are protesting Rite Aid’s unfair treatment of warehouse workers and demanding that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act to end management abuses and restore the freedom to bargain.
On Monday, supporters of the freedom to form unions gathered in seven cities, including outside a pharmacy industry conference in Boston, to demand that Rite Aid workers and all workers be able to form a union and bargain free of intimidation, coercion and illegal firing.
Jobs with Justice Launches New Blog
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Our activist friends at Jobs with Justice (JwJ) have joined us in the blogosphere.
The just-launched Jobs with Justice Blog—www.jwjblog.org—highlights the group‘s actions and campaigns around the country. JwJ says it hopes the blog will help build a strong progressive labor movement
“by providing a space for Jobs with Justice staff, leaders, and allies who are building the movement for workers’ rights and economic justice to write about and discuss the campaigns and issues we are working on locally, nationally, and globally. We hope this blog creates space to explore new ideas and strategies for JwJ.”
This past week’s line up included JwJ health care reform actions in Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Utah, Vermont and elsewhere; an update on the battle community groups in Chicago are waging against Wal-Mart and; and a look at a Coney Island New York coalition’s work to ensure that a massive redevelopment plan there includes affordable housing, local preference for jobs, prevailing wages, improvements to sewer infrastructure, the local school, and more.
It’s a great resource and a way to keep up to date on grassroots, boots-on-the-ground, activism. Check it out here.
Colombian Workers Pay High Price for Flowers
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This Mother’s Day, remember the mothers in Colombia who grew, cut and trimmed the flowers you receive. Six days a week, Amanda Camacho and thousands of her co-workers at flower plantations in Colombia cut and trim at least 350 flowers an hour. In the weeks before holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, the work extends deep into the night—all for about $8 a day, less than the cost of a bouquet of carnations in the United States.
Speaking today at a brown bag luncheon at the AFL-CIO in Washington, Camacho, a Colombian union leader and activist, said the mostly female flower workers in Colombia are treated like slaves and the flower companies’ claims that they are treating their workers well are simply “lies.’
Camacho begins a national tour next week sponsored by the International Labor Rights Forum’s (ILRF) Fairness in Flowers campaign, Jobs with Justice (JwJ), the Coalition of Labor Union Women and U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP).
Show Your Love for Working Mothers this Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day, May 10, is one of the biggest days in the year for flower sales. Yet thousands of women who pick most of the flowers, many of them mothers themselves, will be working in egregious conditions for poverty wages.
More than 60 percent of the flowers sold in the United States come from Colombia. Two-thirds of the nearly 100,000 flower workers in Colombia are women, many working mothers. They often are required to work 12-to-15-hour days with few breaks, especially in the weeks before holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. As a result, many have been injured on the job and suffer health problems related to overexposure to pesticides and humiliating and degrading treatment by management. All for poverty-level wages.
This Mother’s Day, U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), an advocacy group promoting labor rights in Latin America, is bringing the story of the Colombian flower workers to American consumers. Along with the International Labor Rights Forum and Jobs with Justice in South Florida, USLEAP is sponsoring “A Mother’s Day Story” tour. Amanda Camacho, a Colombian flower worker and union leader, is touring various cities in this country to raise awareness about labor rights violations in the cut-flower industry, especially during high-selling seasons like Mother’s Day.
Low-Wage Workers Need Employee Free Choice to Join Middle Class
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Low-wage workers would benefit the most from the better benefits, wages and on-the-job treatment that come with forming a union and bargaining—yet these workers are also the most vulnerable to anti-union coercion and intimidation from their bosses. So Jobs with Justice (JwJ), along with a broad coalition of community groups, is hitting Capitol Hill today to push for the Employee Free Choice Act and the freedom to bargain.
Workers and advocates from around the country are visiting senators and letting them know the facts about why this bill is critical to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain. JwJ kicked off the day with a briefing featuring author Barbara Ehrenreich, experts on labor policy and the workforce and workers who have fought to form unions.
Read the rest of this entry »
From the Field: Employee Free Choice Actions Everywhere
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| USW members Ed Sadusky and Ken Matz struggled for three years to form a union and get a first contract. |
With members of Congress at home for the April congressional recess, the grassroots campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act is in high gear, with more than 300 events taking place around the country in support of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain. Here are some highlights of this nationwide effort.
Last Tuesday, hundreds of workers rallied for Employee Free Choice in Harrisburg, Pa. Among the speakers were Ed Sadusky and Ken Matz, two workers at a steel plant in Cressona, Pa., who were subjected to intimidation, harassment and management roadblocks in their attempt to form a union. Their efforts to bargain for a better life were thwarted by corporate pressure and delays, and it took them two and a half years to get a fair first contract. Their story illustrates why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
