In These Times

By Diana Novak

This holiday season, give gifts that only come at a cost to you by thinking about who made them. The next four weeks or so are a perfect time to consider those who labor to make what sits on America's shelves.

When you head off to the mall with your list of who has been naughty and nice, don't forget to read the "Shop With a Conscience Consumer Guide" from Sweat Free Communities and take along this "Sweatshop Hall of Shame report " (PDF link). The resources, compiled by the International Labor Rights Forum and SweatFree Communities, respectively, make it easy to support fair labor during this stressful time.

The big names in the "Hall of Shame"? Ikea, Abercrombie and Fitch, Wal-Mart (of course), Hanes, L.L. Bean, among others. As the ILRF reports:

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By Art Levine

John D. Rockefeller gave out dimes to little kids to burnish his image, helping launch the modern PR industry. Andrew Carnegie started a foundation after looting his way to the top with his industrial monopolies. Now Goldman Sachs, after helping wreck the economy by pumping up the subprime maket and then swindling investors, says, in the words of CEO Lloyd Blankfein, "I apologize."  It's giving away $500 million to assist and train leaders of small businesses.

In fact, this bogus business assistance stunt is especially cruel because Goldman Sachs's market maninpulations helped spur the credit crisis that's now crushing small businesses and helped cause over 10% in unemployment—while requiring yet another stimulus to salvage the economy Goldman Sachs nearly destroyed.

Indeed, the $500 million is just chump change for Goldman Sachs executives, who are on track to receive over $20 billion in bonuses and added pay this year.

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(Photo by Rainer Ebert via flickr)

By Michelle Chen

The Obama administration is enlisting the nation's schools in a "Race to the Top," but teachers and politicians are still figuring out where to draw the finish line. The program offers a $4.35 billion pot of funding to spur “innovation” and boost student achievement. The premise is simple: lofty goals aren't enough, and money talks.

The recently released criteria for the funding provide a bunch of carrots that seem designed to undercut bureaucracy and union protections, which are often viewed as barriers to reform. The program rewards states that adopt tighter curriculum standards and revamp methods for evaluating teachers. Grant applicants score "points" for measures like “Using data to improve instruction” and developing charter schools.

Not everyone is eager to jump through these hoops. The initiative has been clouded by labor and political tensions, with teacher groups running up against hardliners who equate school reform with underming union power.

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President Barack Obama bids farewell to Chinese ministers in the White House after the first U.S.-China "Strategic and Economic Dialogue" in July 2009.   (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

By Roger Bybee

"We cannot go back," President Barack Obama said in September, "to an era where the Chinese...just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit-card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them."

If only that were true.

Unfortunately, there seems to be insufficient political will to radically restructure our relationship with China, given the clout that China has gained by purchasing U.S. dollars and charming U.S. corporations. The stage for our current relationship was the passage of the Permanent Normalization of Trade with China, passed in 2000.

It probably represents the most shameful short-ciruciting of democracy via legal pay-offs in our lifetime, and its effects continue to be felt during the current "jobless recovery."

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Westin St. Francis Hotel employees, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, protest while on strike outside of the hotel in San Francisco, Calif.   (Photo by Carl Finamore)

By Carl Finamore
 
SAN FRANCISCO—The name St. Francis generally invokes serene images of the devout canonized Catholic aesthetic, who is a favorite even among the non-religious because of his professed humility and sincerity.

But not so in this city, where the name St. Francis brings howls of anger and disapproval—sometimes amplified with a bullhorn. On Wednesday, November 18, 650 Westin St. Francis Hotel workers— all UNITE-HERE Local 2 members—walked off the job and began a loud, moving picket line in front of the hotel.

It will continue all day and all night for three days, and will be followed by a boycott. This is the same strike/boycott pattern targeted the city’s Palace and Grand Hyatt hotels during the last two weeks.

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A wind turbine at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) outside of Boulder, Colo. The NREL is the chief research and development center in the U.S. for renewable energy.   (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

By Lindsay Beyerstein

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis yesterday announced $5.8 million in green capacity building grants through the economic stimulus program—just a fraction of the $500 million set aside for green jobs creation under the stimulus.

The green capacity building grants will fund "training opportunities to help individuals acquire jobs in expanding green industries," according to a Department of Labor statement. Training programs will target American Indians, women, at-risk youth and farm workers.

The money will go to expand 62 programs that are already receiving DOL training grants. Recipients include Women in Non Traditional Employment Roles (WINTER) a nonprofit economic development agency in Los Angeles  serving women and youth; the Southern Appalachian Labor School of Montgomery, West Va.; and the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council of Browning, Mont.

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United Students Against Sweatshops members protest the actions of Russell Athletics in Honduras, where the company closed a factory employing 1,200 people after they unionized.   (Photo Courtesy of United Students Against Sweatshops )

By Jeremy Gantz

Honduras hasn't exactly been full of good news since June, when President Mel Zelaya was ousted from power and ushered abroad, throwing the country into political chaos.

But a huge victory was scored yesterday for 1,200 workers in the country who were fired by Russell Athletics early this year after unionizing. The apparel company, which has fought off unions for years, shut down the factory.

But soon the workers will be back to work at a new plant. Better yet, Russell has pledged not to fight the organizing efforts of employees at its seven existing factories in Honduras—a major victory for the U.S. anti-sweatshop student movement, which has been fiercely and creatively pressuring Russell to reverse its anti-union stance since the factory closed in January.

As the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse reported today:

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students protest on campus Monday.   (Photo courtesy of Benseese via Flickr)

By Akito Yoshikane

Graduate instructors at the University of Illinois are back in the classrooms Wednesday following protests over tuition waivers that brought the Urbana-Champaign campus to a near standstill this week.

The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) unanimously voted to suspend the two-day strike Tuesday night after tentatively agreeing to a new three-year contract with the university earlier in the day. Its decision was the culmination of more than six months of negotiations that came to a head Monday.

The new agreement secures all four "pillars” of the union’s original contract tenets:

• Protections for tuition waivers (the sticking point that prompted the protests).
• Two weeks of unpaid parental leave.
• Increased healthcare subsidies.
• Minimum salary raises totaling 10 percent over three years.

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A truck stands idle on the Interstate 15 freeway northwest of San Bernardino, Calif.   (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

By Stephen Franklin

You're tired. It’s dark. This part of the highway is tough driving. And the humongous truck trailing you far too closely has you worried. It keeps wandering back and forth in its lane.

Cross your fingers that the driver can make it to a rest stop. He’s probably fighting hard to stay awake.

And cross your fingers again that the Obama administration fixes a bad decision on truckers’ driving hours that Bush and Co. slapped on the books in its waning days.

The rule lets truck drivers put in up to 11 hours per day, and trimmed as well the rest time they must get between work weeks. Previously drivers could only put in 10 hours behind the wheel each day.

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Anti-WTO protesters march in Seattle, 1999.   JOHN G. MABANGLO/AFP/Getty Images

By Roger Bybee

Ten years ago, U.S. labor—led by the Steelworkers and West Coast Longshoremen—and a vast alliance of students, environmentalists, faith groups, farmers and NGOs from around the globe rocked the world with massive protests in Seattle at the first meeting of the World Trade Organization, forcing the founding conference of "the masters of the universe" to shorten their event.

For the AFL-CIO, then led by John Sweeney, involvement in the Seattle protest was a remarkably bold departure from the past, a step reportedly not taken eagerly, according to long-time labor activist, author and academic Stanley Aronowitz writing in The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization.

Still, labor took to the streets in massive numbers (estimates of the labor contingent were in the tens of thousands) against a central pillar of the Democratic Clinton administration: a corporatist form of globalization that minimizes labor rights, environmental sustainability, food security and democracy.

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Protesters rally outside Boston's Hyatt Regency hotel in October.   (Photo courtesy of Flickr)

By Emily Udell

Hyatt's efforts to woo fired housekeepers back have been mostly unsuccessful, with only six taking up the hotelier's offer of employment with the company that replaced them.

Hyatt says the new jobs will extend their pay through 2010 and healthcare through May 2010. But workers aren't buying the company's efforts to assuage the public-relations disaster they set off when they fired the 98 housekeepers in August. Luz Aquino, who worked at the Hyatt Harborside told Reuters: "Hyatt, I think, is playing games because they think we're stupid."

A Boston news station reported yesterday that a worker said the hotel had not kept its promise to continue health coverage through March, after her son was denied care during a hospital visit. Hyatt said this was just a clerical error and the problem was fixed. But the report also said Emerson College yanked its holiday party from being held at the Hyatt to protest the company’s treatment of workers.

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By Lindsay Beyerstein

We're accustomed to reading statistics from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration about workplace injuries. Every year, for instance, there are 4 million work-related injuries.

But ever wonder where OSHA gets those numbers?

According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Labor and OSHA may not be doing enough to make sure these numbers reflect reality. For one thing, inspectors don't always talk to the workers they're supposed to be protecting.

OSHA gets its information about workplace accidents and injuries from employers. Employers have incentives to downplay injuries on their job sites. A high injury rate makes a company look bad. Reporting too many injuries could open the door to a lawsuit or an investigation. (See below for a new video from Brave New Foundation on the fatal effects of lax enforcement of OSHA regulations.)

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