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:

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.)

Millions of Americans know how tough it is to break out of unemployment. Few can imagine how hard it is to get back to work after living behind bars.

They don't get much airtime in Beltway debates on job creation, but a significant swath of the unemployed population comes from the estimated 700,000 people released from state and federal prisons annually, plus millions cycling through local jails.

Roughly one percent of the population is tied to the country's burgeoning prison system, though this is not the one percent that lawmakers particularly care about. They represent distressed, underserved communities; millions of them have been restricted from voting; and America has gradually become sensitized to seeing Black and Brown faces behind bars--a sad fixture of our race and class hierarchy.

More to the point, they might actually hurt efforts at union growth. When forced to conjure up an image of workers, the average American thinks of burly, middle-aged blue-collar workers: auto, mine or longshore workers circa 1950.

But today's typical union member is more educated, more female and less white than at any time in American history. This diversity is a strength we should  celebrate and make known.

A business group is honoring Roger Agnelli, the CEO of Vale, one of the largest mining companies in the world, which, coincidentally, is in the midst of its longest ever labor dispute. The award is for exceptional accomplishments in corporate social responsibility.

The Business Council for International Understanding will give Agnelli the Dwight D. Eisenhower Global Citizenship Award, feting him for his corporate behavior five months after he provoked the strike by more than 3,000 miners, mill workers and smelters in my hometown of Sudbury and neighboring Port Colborne, Canada.

The strikers now include 450 Vale nickel and copper workers from Voisey’s Bay, also represented by my union, the United Steelworkers (USW).

SEIU President Andy Stern is joining hundreds of progressives—maybe more—in a newly organized protest outside the Washington, D.C., offices of Goldman Sachs on Monday at noon. SEIU is part of a co-sponsoring coalition, Americans For Financial Reform, that also includes the AFL-CIO and the advocacy groups Public Citizen and National People's Action.

Fury is mounting over Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's comment that he's just a banker "doing God's work." SEIU said in a press release:

President Andy Stern and hundreds of taxpayers will converge on the Washington headquarters of Goldman Sachs to demand an end to multi-billion dollar bonuses and the Too Big To Fail Doctrine and call for immediate Congressional action on real financial reform. This is the latest in a national mobilization launched last month as 5,000 taxpayers from 20 states converged on the American Bankers Association convention in Chicago to demand Wall Street and big banks stop fighting reforms that will protect our families from the next crisis

The battle between SEIU and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) over organzing home healthcare workers in northern California got even uglier recently with charges filed alleging SEIU organizers intimidated and threatened workers and even told Latino workers they would be deported if they didn't vote for SEIU in a June election between the two unions. 

SEIU won the election to represent 10,000 home healthcare workers in Fresno, but NUHW is challenging the result in charges filed Nov. 6 with the California Public Employment Relations Board.

The charges cite a former SEIU organizer alleging he was pressured to change ballots from the June election between the two unions, and did change a ballot himself.

Just about a week ago, when the House health reform bill included a tax-the-rich provision to boost purchasing insurance subsidies, that feature  was dismissed as a "non-starter" by pundits and some legislators. Policy wonks, from The Washington Post's respected Ezra Klein to influential White House economic adviser Christina Roemer, had all hailed the Senate Finance Committee's excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans as the essential financing mechanism necessary to pay for reform.

The implicit spin offered by some of Obama's advisers, including Rahm Emanuel, centrists, and several policy experts was that anyone who disagreed with the value of the excise tax on insurers—later to be passed along to as many as 40% of workers through higher taxes or out-of-pocket costs— was somehow just a self-serving union leader seeking to preserve cushy, needless benefits.

But, lo and behold, by mid-week, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid was sending signals that he was looking instead at various proposals to raise Medicare taxes on those earning over $250,000, and Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, was considering taxing investment income to help pay for Medicare and health reform. 

What happened? Unions, other progressives, some independent experts and a majority of Democratic House members continued to favor the House approach of essentially taxing millionaires, rather than placing the burden on working families. 

On Thursday, Sholom Rubashkin, former manager of the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, was found guilty of 86 felony fraud charges.

Agriprocessors was the site of the notorious immigration raid in May 2008 that brought to light widespread charges of labor abuses including child labor and highly dangerous working conditions. Starting December 2, Rubashkin faces another trial on 72 immigration-related charges.

Advocates of immigrants and workers' rights are likely to see the conviction and the possibility Rubashkin will spend the rest of his life in prison as vindication and a strong message to other employers.

But this is cold comfort for many residents of Postville and former and current employees of the meatpacking plant.

Blacks and Latinos experience unemployment rates that are 70 and 50 percent higher, respectively, than the rate for whites. This is the green promise, that those communities most devastated by the recession—women and people of color–can mobilize to ride the green wave.
]]> Yvonne Liu Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:56:43 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5172/not_just_tools_that_breathe_labor_activism_steps_forward_in_china/ http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5172/not_just_tools_that_breathe_labor_activism_steps_forward_in_china/ By Michelle Chen

As Obama embarks on a tense diplomatic visit to Asia, the political buzz surrounding China has reached a fever pitch lately. U.S. labor is up in arms over currency and offshoring, activists decry human rights abuses, and lawmakers wring their hands over the yawning trade deficit. Beneath all the political anxieties, though, there is a massive and often misunderstood population of working people.

When they challenge China, American activists tend to focus on excoriating Beijing's political heavyweights. Yet, as we've reported before, China has its own nascent labor movement, whose struggles have helped frame many of the key issues facing the government, from freedom of speech to fair wages to environmental justice.

China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based rights organization, sees new potential and new threats for the workers at the core of the world's economic engine.

MILWAUKEE—With the rapid spread of the H1N1 "swine flu" virus in southeastern Wisconsin, the 47% of Milwaukee workers who lack paid sick days now confront some unpalatable choices.

"Right now, people have to choose between a pandemic and a paycheck," says Sangita Nayak, lead organizer for the 9 to 5 Working Women's organization in Milwaukee.

Workers are forced to decide between losing income—and possibly their jobs, for taking time off—if they or their children become ill, or risk exposing others to a serious illness.  "Particularly for our area, it's a great concern because Milwaukee and this state have been hit by especially virulent forms of swine flu."

La Colectiva de Mujeres (Women's Collective) in San Francisco has launched a media campaign unveiling striking posters, billboards, bus ads and postcards depicting domestic workers as strong, independent and "green" savvy.

The campaign, the theme of which is "Communicating Strength and Hope" ("Comunicando poder y esperanza"), aims to alter the perception of often undervalued domestic workers to one of respect, dignity and economic importance.

Campaign ads, which will run for one month, focus on the benefits of green cleaning and a call to action for employers to use non-toxic products that protect the workers and the families where they work.

The tempification of the American workforce continues apace. While job losses make headlines, we don't hear as much about an equally insidious trend: real jobs with benefits are being replaced by "contracting opportunities" and temporary placements.

In October, the U.S. economy created 34,000 new temp jobs, while posting a net loss of 190,000 jobs. Some media reports have hailed local upticks in temporary employment as portents of an improving job market. The idea is that employers are using temporary workers until they feel secure enough in the recovery to hire full-time workes back.

That's one hypothesis. The other possibility is that employers are ditching permanent employees and replacing them with long-term temps.

What is a good job? According Algernon Austin, an Economic Policy Institute economist and author of the brand-new report “Getting Good Jobs to America’s People of Color,” a good job provides an above-poverty wage, health insurance and adequate retirement income.

Consistent with proposed new U.S. poverty standards and international comparative standards, Austin sets the “good job” wage at 60 percent of the median household income—about $14.50 an hour, or $30,000 a year.

In their new report, “The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008," John Schmitt and Kris Warner of the Center for Economic and Policy Research crunch the numbers and find well-recognized trends changing the face of labor: declining unionization rates, de-industrialization, increased immigration, higher average education, growing entry of women into the wage workforce, and greater relative ease of organizing in the public sector.

This week seems all about celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the defeat of communism. Stories heroizing political leaders abound, and that line by Ronald Reagan, you know the one—“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall”—has been heard on every network.

There is a growing history of this period, but the story of U.S. workers still remains to be told. This effort to remember our recent past has started me thinking about the late 1980s and my many friends then in the U.S. labor movement (organizers and functionaries). Many were involved with union movements abroad.

If you didn’t live through the ‘80s, though, and are relying soley on the mass media to educate you (which readers of ITT and this blog are certainly not doing) you are missing this important piece: labor mattered. Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev et al. were important, but without the push from below, would history have changed so quickly?

While you are considering a hamburger tonight, let me tell you something you probably weren’t thinking about.

That chunk of bright red meat in the plastic wrapper probably came from Nebraska. One out of every five steaks or hamburgers comes from Nebraska, the number one state in terms of red meat production. And the meatpacking industry has grown in Nebraska as our budgets, diets and time demands have changed, leading more of us gobble up hamburgers.

That hamburger meat probably comes from a small Nebraska town where a large meat processing plant got off the ground not too long ago, a plant in which most workers probably earn today about the same as meat packers did 40 years ago when you adjust costs.

Motown is now known as "Notown," according to a Time magazine cover headline from a few weeks ago.

The visual symbols of Detroit's decline are stunning. Factories that supplied tanks, planes, and trucks for the U.S. victory in World War II are vacant, windowless shells—or have been leveled, leaving behind pieces of scarred concrete and twisted metal among the weeds. Some areas have had vast expanses return to nature, with pheasants returning to Detroit to roost among the wild, uncontrolled brush that has replaced rows of demolished homes.

Official unemployment stands at 28.9%, according to Time, breeding widespread hopelessness and seething, undirected rage. Fully 70% of homicides go unsolved.
 
This in the city that had once been the capital of Working Class America.

Browsing the news headlines, you might get the impression that women aren't doing as badly in this economy as men. Technically, they have a lower unemployment rate, reports the Wall Street Journal, and have seen a larger growth in median wages. But the numbers don't tell the whole story of the recession's ugly toll on the fairer sex.

A gendered perspective on the recession reveals that some women—namely those who were poor and disempowered to begin with—have fallen further behind as workers, mothers, and community members. The Center for American Progress reports that unmarried women have been hit from all sides by job loss, the foreclosure epidemic, and the health care crisis.

Unmarried women are more exposed to the volatility of the labor market. They generally have higher workforce participation rates (this includes women who are never-married, divorced and separated). They also tend to have lower education levels, and often come from poor communities of color. In other words, they're a vital part of the economy, but are overlooked and underrepresented when it comes to economic equity.

Workers at a luxury hotel in San Francisco walked off the job today, beginning a three-day strike. The action by Palace Hotel workers is the second of such demonstrations in the past week, which aim to block hotel chains' efforts to squeeze employees in a down economy.

The new stoppage, involving 350 workers, will last until the first shift on Friday morning.The Palace Hotel is managed by Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which in turn is owned by Cerberus Capital Management, the major Wall Street investment firm, according to UNITE-HERE, the union which is organizing the walkout.

Workers at another luxury hotel are back on the job after a weekend walkout, and more actions against 29 other San Francisco-area hotels may be on the horizon. Grand Hyatt workers demonstrated on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

On paper, the worst recession in 70 years came to an end in the third quarter of 2009. On the streets, things are as bad as ever. Unemployment rose from 9.8% to 10.2% in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.

The economy lost 190,000 jobs in last month. So, on the bright side we've "only" been losing an average of 188,000 jobs per month for the past three months, compared to an average of 357,000 jobs per month for the three  months before that.

Wall Street sees progress: Stocks went up on Friday. Financial journalists said it was because everyone was so upbeat about only losing 190,000 jobs. But averages can be misleading. October's numbers still represent the biggest payroll drop in four months.

The bill "is a fiscally responsible bill that will cover 96 percent of Americans, end insurance company discrimination and denials of care and equip health care providers with the tools they need to lower costs for families and the country as a whole,"  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. "The bill...does not attempt to finance reform on the backs of the working middle class... But we still have a long way to go."

Indeed, as this blog and other observers point out, the real sticking point in the Senate probably won't be the public option or even the extreme anti-abortion language passed in the House, but the critical issue of how to pay for the legislation. Will it be by taxing the rich, as the House does, or burdening the middle-class with new taxes and costs? That's what union advocates and the Congerssional Joint Committee on Taxation say will happen as a result of the Senate's tax on insurers that offer high-cost plans.

ATLANTA, GA.—The Fort Hood shooting has once again focused national attention on the various and often violent ripple effects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on the "home front." Michelle Chen's Saturday post examined the severe economic challenges facing vets, including unemployment and foreclosure.

In Atlanta, where thousands of mental health professionals from around the world gathered for the annual International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference from Thursday to Saturday, a few days ahead of Veterans Day, the Fort Hood shooting became a possible example of the subject under discussion: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Could the Fort Hood shooter have suffered from PTSD given his work experience so far? Evidence and research discussed at the conference show how the triggering and manifestation of PTSD as an occupational hazard can be much more complicated than people might realize.

The tragedy at Fort Hood may strike Americans as a singular, incomprehensible horror. But the shock of the killings may recenter Americans' perspectives on the quieter challenges that befall military men and women every day, even when they're stateside.

Countless soldiers are returning from the battlefield to a world that seems alien to them, and a hostile economy often impedes their reintegration into civilian life.

According to federal data, unemployment for post-9/11 era veterans in the past year has surged past of the national rate, to over 11 percent.

Despite the military's promises of upward mobility, unexpected hardships pushes many vets into a devastating downard spiral. For some, being back home doesn't mean having one. The Washington Post reports that, according to federal data, “Roughly 131,000 of the nation's 24 million veterans may be homeless on any given night, and about twice as many are homeless each year.”

If that's what Republicans are for, yesterday's rally showed just how much extremism is driving what they're against. As David Corn reported in Politics Daily:

The angry folks at the protest -- which attracted several thousand conservatives -- held up signs with messages of hate: "Get the Red Out of the White House," "Waterboard Congress," "Ken-ya Trust Obama?" One called the president a "Traitor to the U.S. Constitution." Another sign showed pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust. A different placard depicted Obama as Sambo. Yes, Sambo. Another read, "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" -- a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory holding that one evil Jewish family has manipulated events around the globe for decades.

Taking candy from a baby: A consortium of Chinese and American companies goes to Washington and announces plans to build a $1.5 billion windmill farm in West Texas using $450 million in U.S. Stimulus funds, which will create 2,330 jobs – 2,000 of them in China.

The baby – Washington — doesn’t cry or whine or spit in the consortium’s face. That’s what’s really wrong with this story.

So accustomed to being bought and sold, Washington simply begins processing forms so it can hand over your tax dollars to create jobs in a turbine factory in the city of Shenyang, China at a subsidy of $193,133 each.

It’s like these bureaucrats live in Wonderland. Or an America where the unemployment rate isn’t 10.2 percent. Or where 40,000 American manufacturing facilities didn’t disappear in the past decade. Or where banks didn’t repossess nearly a quarter million American homes in the past three months.