This story originally appeared at Alternet.

Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that 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. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.

Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, told AlterNet that “Foxconn is conspiring with government officials and universities in China to run what may be the world's single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative. Students at vocational schools – including those whose studies have nothing to do with consumer electronics – are literally forced to move far from home to work for Foxconn, threatened that otherwise they won't be allowed to graduate. Assembling our iPhones and Kindles for meager wages, they work under the same conditions, or worse, as other workers in the Foxconn sweatshops.” 

Ontario's loss is new 'right-to-work' state's gain—but Hoosiers won't make as much as northern neighbors

After locking out 465 members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 27 in London, Ontario, Caterpillar decided last Friday to close its 62-year-old locomotive facility there and move production to newly “right-to-work” Indiana, where American workers will work for half of what Canadian workers would make. Caterpillar's decision to close the plant  after workers refused to agree to major wage concessions has provoked outrage across Canada in light of the fact that Illinois-based Caterpillar made a record $4.8 billion in profits in 2011.

CAW members, who have already been blockading a completed locomotive from leaving the London plant, have vowed to continue blocking any products from leaving there as they attempt to extract a better severance from the company. The CAW local is also considering occupying the plant. “The CAW has occupied workplaces when employers have shown disrespect,” Canadian Auto Workers Union President Ken Lewenza told Bloomberg. “It’s a tool. It’s an option.”

As I reported last week, under the Investment Canada Act, foreign companies taking over Canadian companies must demonstrate a "net benefit" to Canada. Critics claim that the government allowed a foreign-owned company (Caterpillar) to buy a Canadian company without having any intention of providing any “net benefit” to Canada.

MILWAUKEE—If one more dime gets added to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s already-overflowing campaign war chest, it may cause the Governor's Mansion in Madison to collapse under its weight.

Walker has been running around the nation to gather cash from corporate and right-wing sources, raising an astonishing $12.2 million in his effort to fend off a statewide recall election demanded by 1.1 million residents.

But Walker not only faces voters furious over his role in revoking public employee union rights. Later this week, the governor will be meeting with Milwaukee County District Attorney to answer questions about his role as Milwaukee county executive from 2002 to 2010. It's part of a John Doe probe that has already produced the arrest of four former Walker staffers, including longtime close associate Tim Russell. Walker has hired two lawyers in preparation.

Progressives are piecing together evidence about Walker's operation as Milwaukee county executive and wondering if the current investigation will explode into a major "Walkergate" scandal. 

SAN FRANCISCO—Raul Zapata never had a chance. When the carpenter and construction worker eased down the 12-foot trench he was working in on January 28, a chunk of earth shook loose, pushing him into a cement wall. More piles of dirt fell on top of him, suffocating him.

He didn’t know about the stop-work order issued three days earlier by the city of Milpitas, Calif., located near San Jose in the Bay Area. Neither did the foreman. Neither did his co-workers.

Inspectors issued the order after they determined that the foundation for the 5,800 square-foot home needed strengthening, and that a soil inspector needed to check out the site. Keyvan Irannejad, Milpitas' chief building official, told the Mercury News, "They just ignored our stop-work notice."

The area was so unstable Zapata’s body could not be pulled out until two days later. Zapata, a husband and father of three children, had been on the job just two weeks.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Tuesday, Senate Democrats averted another Federal Aviation Administration shutdown by passing a "compromise" funding bill that will fund the agency through 2014 and modernizes the country's air traffic control system. The FAA partially shutdown last summer when negotiations over the bill delayed its passage.

It passed 75 to 20—and has incensed union leaders, who condemn its provisions making it harder to organize workers in the airline and rail industries.

On the surface, the compromise bill passed by Senate Democrats doesn't appear to hurt union organizing efforts since it requires 50 percent of airline or railway workers to  sign a petition for a union election, instead of the current 35 percent. Many union organizers often file for elections when 65-70 percent of workers have called for an election, in order to ensure victory.

But here's the catch: The bill would require organizers to gather signatures from 50 percent of all employees in a potential bargaining unit, including those who have been laid off during the past 10 years. In other words, it redefines the word "employee," raising the threshhold pro-union workers must reach if they want to hold a unionization election.

Watch Communication Workers of America President Larry Cohen's fiery remarks above. 

The fundamental injustice of the tax system grows clearer as tax day looms ominously over working people and a few horde more and more of the nation’s wealth. Short of a total collapse of capitalism, the primary redistributive remedy for this would be progressive taxation. But our tax policy gets it exactly backward, and its about to get a bit worse. And as with so many wars of attrition against the working class, this one begins by shafting disenfranchised communities, especially immigrants.

While the rich are rolling in tax giveaways, a few credits actually give poor folks a break. One of these, the refundable child tax credit (CTC), applies to middle-class and poor parents alike and was claimed by some 21 million taxpayers in 2011, “which averaged about $676 per child and totaled $26.1 billion,” according to Politico. For poor families, the CTC, together with its big sister the Earned Income Tax Credit, provides a lifeline to keep them from plunging below the poverty line.

Now some lawmakers advocate cutting off the child tax credit for tax filers who lack of Social Security number. The move is unabashedly aimed at making life harder for undocumented workers, even taxpaying ones, specifically by punishing their children.

Obama administration argued decision 'would critically undermine' Americans With Disabilities Act

In a unanimous ruling last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld for the first time a “ministerial exception” limiting the rights of some employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a church-run elementary school asserted that such an exception protected its decision to fire "called teacher" Cheryl Perich following her medical leave and threat to file an ADA lawsuit. Prominent organizations weighed in on both sides: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Jewish Committee, and the Muslim-American Public Affairs Council were among those filing briefs backing Hosanna-Tabor; the NAACP, People for the American Way, and the Anti-Defamation League backed Perich.

Perich's conflict with the Lutheran Church and School began in January 2005, when she told her principal that she was ready to return to work following a medical leave for narcolepsy. The principal questioned whether Perich was healthy enough to work, and told her that she had already been replaced. The church’s congregation, which is vested with decision-making powers, offered to pay a portion of Perich’s health insurance costs if she would voluntarily resign.

Perich declined the offer, and instead showed up at the school on the first day her medical leave was over, declaring she wouldn’t leave without a note documenting that she had shown up ready to work. According to the Supreme Court, when her principal told Perich the school was likely to fire her, “Perich responded that she had spoken with an attorney and intended to assert her legal rights.” A letter from the School Board Chairman to Perich charged that her “insubordination and disruptive behavior,” and “threatening to take legal action” had “damaged, beyond repair, [her] working relationship” with Hosanna-Tabor. Perich’s status as a “called teacher” was withdrawn in a congregational vote, and the school fired her.

Tomorrow (February 8), Chicago residents will promenade into Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office with the golden toilet that many credit for the announcement last week by the CME Group that it will forgo $33 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funds awarded by the city in 2010 to rehab bathrooms and build a fitness center at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The labor-community group coalition Stand Up! Chicago and the Grassroots Collaborative, which is organizing tomorrow’s march, count it as a victory that the CME Group will not collect the funds, which a CME spokesman said were never actually accepted or received. Now residents are demanding that the $33 million be spent on creating jobs and community services in the low-income and working-class neighborhoods that the TIF program was meant to serve.

Emanuel has pledged to increase accountability and transparency in the use of TIF funds; former Mayor Richard M. Daley was widely criticized for allocating TIF funds to some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods and large corporations or politically-connected developers. As Mike Elk reported here last fall, United Airlines and Miller-Coors both received millions in TIF funds to convince them to locate corporate headquarters in Chicago.

The Grassroots Collaborative—which includes the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union—is also asking Emanuel to impose a moratorium on TIF funds spent in the LaSalle TIF district, a downtown area home to some of the city’s wealthiest businesses and residents. 

In a very rare move last Thursday, a group of 120 nonunion Bronx-based cable technicians walked off the job in a wildcat strike. The workers, Corbell Installations employees who work as subcontractors for Cablevision, were demanding that the company not impose a 30 percent wage cut. The workers are also demanding that they be recognized by their employers as members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

Last December, a majority of workers voted against joining the electrical workers union (IBEW) in an election that the IBEW is challenging with the National Labor Relations Board. The workers were inspired to join the IBEW as a result of a unionization campaign by 282 Brooklyn-based Cablevision workers, who successfully voted to join CWA in late January in a heavily publicized campaign as I recently reported on for In These Times.

“We'll stay out until they recognize we are somebody, that we as a people have rights,” employee Omar Hutchinson told Crain’s New York. “That's the whole idea. I might lose my job, but that's the whole idea.”

If you scan the resumes of corporate executives on LinkedIn, you can identify who has attended General Electric’s union avoidance courses. GE's  Union Avoidance Department, headed by Mark Guthrie, is known to be one of the most effective anti-labor departments in American. Unions almost never win elections at the company.

So it's surprising that a group of workers at GE Transportation in Kansas City, Mo., recently voted 44-41 to join IBEW Local 1464. It was the first time that a union had organized a GE bargaining unit in 10 years; the last was a small service shop in Florida containing a dozen workers. According to the IBEW, it was the first time anyone has organized a large-scale GE facility in 20 years.

The key to this success seems to be workers' perseverance. Despite three previous failed attempts in four years to organize the plant, workers strategically countered the talking points of GE’s anti-union campaign. In 2010, workers at the Kansas City plant attempted to organize a union with IBEW after seeing a worker die on the job in a horrific accident. But in a December 2010 election, pro-union workers lost by a mere 11 votes.