michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jun 20, 2006 14:19:31 GMT 4
WORKERS OF THE WORLD: UNITE!I'm starting this thread because labor needs a voice here too. Although I am beginning with a story on the United Auto Workers of the United States, I will look for and post any stories which highlight the plight of workers worldwide.
Citizens of the United States must stop blaming other countries for the outsourcing of our jobs and look at the real reason behind our loses and falling wages: Multinational Corporate Greed. We in the US are only beginning to feel the effects of this greed; our brothers and sisters in the Third World have been kept in poverty and damn near slave labor forever. And well, you have supported this by turning a blind eye to horrendous worker conditions and continuing to buy from companies that exploit labor and devastate human health and welfare, land, and precious natural resources. [Imagine the possibilities if Labor and the Environmentalists joined forces!]
I will also post here boycotts for worker solidarity. And yes, boycotts do work if you write the companies and tell them why you will no longer purchase their products and/or services. On the flip side, I will also post companies and co-ops which raise the standard of living for their workers so you may make thoughtful and meaningful purchases.
To our European friends here: I am unaware of conditions in your countries. Are you feeling the cuts too? If so, please, feel free to post any relevant stories here. We are, after all, one BIG family who the Multinationals fear if we would only unite in common cause.....MichelleThe end of an era for UAWBy Jane Slaughter Published 12:01 am PDT Friday, June 16, 2006 On June 20, Ford Motor Co. and the United Auto Workers will celebrate the bittersweet 65th anniversary of their first national contract. They achieved this feat after years of sometimes-violent company repression.Henry Ford had sworn never to recognize the union, but he finally gave in after a series of strikes. His company was the last of the Big Three automakers to do so. Ironically, on July 1, contract givebacks that Ford executives demanded will take effect. Management had asked the union to reopen the contract in midterm and union leaders agreed. These two events mark the beginning and the end of an era. Union power once compelled corporations to pay their blue-collar employees fairly and to provide security after retirement. No more.Active workers at Ford will give up $1 an hour in planned raises and see their wages frozen. A retired couple will pay $752 a year for health insurance, after being promised that Ford would fully pay their coverage for life. Historically, as the UAW goes, so has gone the American labor movement. In the 1940s through the 1960s, the union led in establishing benefits for its members: health insurance, supplemental unemployment insurance, pensions and tuition reimbursement. Then, when employers demanded concessions during the downturn of the early 1980s, the UAW acquiesced to the Big Three. What followed was an avalanche of wage reductions throughout blue- and white-collar America.This time around, employers in other industries have already forced cuts on both retirees and active workers. Airline workers and Steelworkers have seen their contracts ravaged. Retirees have been hit hard, with companies sometimes defaulting on their pensions. And both Ford and General Motors made clear three years ago that young autoworkers could no longer expect to do as well as their parents. The companies spun off their parts-making divisions, and the UAW agreed that new hires there would make $10 an hour less. The path to the newest concessions at Ford was not smooth. Union officials said the rank and file approved the cuts by 51 percent, but leaked vote totals show a margin of less than 100 votes out of tens of thousands, and widespread ballot irregularities. In a letter to fellow workers, Ron Lare and Judy Wraight, skilled trades workers at Ford's flagship Rouge plant outside Detroit, warned against concessions. "After we retire, the next generation may ask, 'Why should we defend your pensions? You didn't defend our pay when we were young!' Not only is our neighbor's house on fire, but they're moving our children into it." Ford and Wall Street analysts like to say that global competition forces them to demand lower wages from their employees. But if that were the case, European and Japanese automakers wouldn't be rapidly building new factories here and paying union scale (while avoiding unionization). They are clearly making money in the United States.Unions need to organize the European and Japanese companies, whose U.S. facilities are thriving, as well as the auto parts industry that the UAW left for dead more than 20 years ago. The union needs to practice the solidarity and tenacity that caused Henry Ford to back down 65 years ago.Source: tinyurl.com/fbs29
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jun 25, 2006 8:09:54 GMT 4
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR: Another Public Watchdog Institution Turned Over To Command By Corporate Cronies. For Immediate Release: June 22, 2006 Contact: Naomi Seligman Steiner - 202-408-5565 CREW FORCES DEPT. OF LABOR TO RELEASE ANTI-UNION DOCS AND E-MAILS – DETAILS COZY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEPT. OF LABOR AND ANTI-UNION LOBBYIST RICHARD BERMANDept. Of Labor Marketing Anti-Union Propaganda to Employees Washington, DC – Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released 108 pages of documents it received from the Department of Labor (DOL) in response to a CREW Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit over records DOL has regarding contacts between DOL and conservative lobbyist and executive director of the anti-union group Center for Union Facts, Richard Berman. On March 14, 2006, CREW requested from DOL all records related to or mentioning Richard Berman and the Center for Union Facts, the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, and the Center for Consumer Freedom. CREW sent the FOIA request after reading a March 13, 2006 column by Al Kamen in The Washington Post reporting that Lynn Gibson, an aide in DOL’s public liaison office, sent an email to DOL employees identifying unionfacts.com as a website “dedicated to providing information on labor unions and their expenditures.” Because DOL refused to comply with CREW FOIA’s request, on April 25, 2006, CREW sued DOL for the records, compelling DOL to provide the records. The email correspondence between DOL and unionfacts.org staff show a close and supportive relationship between the two entities. For example, the documents include correspondence showing that DOL Secretary Elaine Chao agreed to be profiled for one of Richard Berman’s many conservative organizations, the First Jobs Institute. The documents include an email indicating that Lynn Gibson set up a meeting between Berman and DOL staff. In another, Ms. Gibson tells a CUF staff person that she will send out emails related to CUF’s website to her “network.” Additionally, the e-mails obtained by CREW and sent out by DOL staff, include an op-ed drafted by Berman, anti-union newspaper accounts as well as anti-union blogs and news releases. Claiming privilege, DOL has withheld e-mail correspondence including correspondence from Secretary Chao, that directly refer to Berman and his organizations. CREW will litigate this issue and press for the release of all documents responsive to its request. “These documents make it clear that under the leadership of Secretary Chao, the Department of Labor has become anti-labor,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. “It is disgraceful that the very department designed to focus on improving the lives of American laborers is disseminating anti-union propaganda and developing relationships with anti-union organizations. American workers deserve better.”A copy of the DOL documents and CREW’s FOIA are available on CREW’s website, www.citizensforethics.orgCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions. For more information, please visit www.citizensforethics.org or contact Naomi Seligman at 202.408.5565 or press@citizensforethics.org. Source: tinyurl.com/qq6pu
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jun 30, 2006 13:05:38 GMT 4
Police attack in Oaxaca sparks mass protest Mexico teachers resist crackdownBy Elizabeth Lalasz | June 30, 2006 TENS OF thousands of public school teachers and their supporters clashed repeatedly with riot police in the Mexican state of Oaxaca in a battle over the future of education.On June 16, more than 300,000 people marched through Oaxaca City in support of the 70,000 teachers, who have been on strike since May 22. The demonstration--reportedly the largest in the history of Oaxaca--also called for the resignation of state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz of the right-wing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is widely accused of corruption. The march was a response to a police attack two days earlier on the striking Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE). Around 5 a.m. on June 14, close to 3,000 state police with riot shields and clubs stormed the teachers’ encampment (known as the plantón in Spanish) in the zocalo, the main city center. Strikers were brutally beaten, and there were reports that at least one helicopter dropped tear gas. Eyewitness reports said 11 people died, including two children asphyxiated by the tear gas. Up to 100 people were detained, and many went “missing.” Leading members of Section 22 were also imprisoned. Police also raided the union hall and destroyed “Radio Plantón,” the pirate station broadcasting from the encampment since the beginning of the strike. In response to the repression, university students at the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca began a radio broadcast round-the-clock to inform residents about what had just happened. At one point, police tried to shut down the station, but the broadcaster declared over the air that the police “will have to pass over our bodies in order to take away the microphones from us.” Strikers fought back--and by 10 a.m., five hours after the police attack, the zocalo was retaken by about 5,000 strikers and supporters armed with sticks and batons. The imprisoned union leaders were released within hours. The plantón has since been rebuilt and strikers continue to occupy the zocalo. The “mega-march” on June 16 to protest this repression was supported by college students, local health and university workers, and other unions. Also backing the strike were popular, left-wing organizations, including supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Front’s “Other Campaign,” which rejects all candidates in the upcoming July 2 presidential elections. The crackdown in Oaxaca is part of a “strategy of tension” stoked up by the current Mexican President Vicente Fox, leading into the elections.
Fox wants to whip up fear of social chaos if the presidency is won by Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the center-left Revolutionary Democratic Party, rather than Felipe Calderón, the candidate of Fox’s conservative National Action Party.
This strategy has involved the violent May 4 police attack on residents of the town of San Salvador Atenco, where residents had resisted displacement in an airport expansion plan. There have been similar attacks on striking copper miners and on citizens of Isla Mujeres, who are protesting against the building of a rubbish dump on their island for the garbage from the nearby tourist resort of Cancun.Meanwhile, there were solidarity pickets at the Mexican consulates in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco with university faculty unions, Chicago public school teachers and immigrant rights groups. The struggle has highlighted the problems of teachers in Oaxaca, who can earn somewhere between $600-700 per month, frequently less. They are calling for an increase for students receiving grants, which now amount to 450 pesos per month--$40 in U.S. money. The union is also demanding decent schools, classroom supplies and government funding for uniforms, which are out of reach for so many poor families that the children stay at home. The Oaxaca teachers’ union, Section 22, has a 26-year history of social and workers’ struggles to defend gains and win improvements in education and teachers’ salaries. Their strategy has been to hold a strike every year as their contracts are renewed, but this year, the strike has lasted longer than usual, due to the government’s defiance of the teachers’ demands. The teachers have come from all over the state of Oaxaca and engage every day in civil disobedience, including shutting down tollbooths and tearing down electoral propaganda around the city for the upcoming July 2 elections. With negotiations with the federal Department of the Interior going nowhere, Section 22 held a Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca June 17 to create a permanent space for citizens to debate and discuss strategies for going forward with their struggle. About 170 people representing 85 organizations attended, including SNTE delegates, union members, social and political organizations, non-governmental organizations, collectives, human rights organizations, parents, tenants farmers, municipalities, and citizens of the entire state of Oaxaca. Follow-up meetings took place June 20 and 24, and the teachers threatened to mobilize a popular boycott of the July 2 elections. Whatever the outcome of the strike, the mobilization and organization of hundreds of thousands of teachers and their supporters will not be quickly forgotten--and points the way forward for building the left and popular struggles in Mexico. Source: www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_16_Oaxaca.shtml
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 3, 2006 19:17:28 GMT 4
This would be a good case for boycotting a company. I've included Smithfield Foods web site for you to view their products and contact the company. I think they are the world's largest manufacture of pork products. When you boycott, make sure you contact the company and tell them you can no longer purchase their products in good conscience while workers continue to be threatened and abused at the Tar Heel facility. Companies like Smithfield may very well cause a surge in the publishing of the book "The Jungle."..... Michelle Open Letter from UFCW President Joe Hansen to Smithfield Foods CEO Joseph Luter, IV6/30/2006 7:24:00 PM Contact: Leila McDowell, 202-306-7947 or Jim Papian, 202-255-3373, both of UFCW WASHINGTON, June 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following is an open letter from Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to Joseph Luter, IV, CEO, Smithfield Foods:Dear Mr. Luter, In the past, if you or your father wanted to discuss an issue with me, you sent a private letter or put in a telephone call. In fact, we have had substantive conversations over the years on any number of important issues. Since your latest communication with me was part of a public relations effort, I have serious doubts as to whether you want to substantively address the situation of the workers in your Tar Heel, North Carolina, plant, Nevertheless, I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the welfare of workers at the Tar Heel facility. If you are truly interested in exploring ways to help workers at the plant achieve the dignity and respect they deserve, we should meet as soon as possible. I am troubled by your comments suggesting that the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union's (UFCW) efforts to inform people of the truth about the working conditions at your Tar Heel plant are somehow counterproductive. How exactly can the truth be counterproductive?It is absolutely truthful that workers who are injured at your plant are frequently fired and denied workers' compensation. There is no question that your supervisors attempt to stir up racial animosity between African American and Latino workers. Workers who speak up in your plant are threatened and assaulted. Your security force is used to create a climate of fear and violence. I cannot, and will never, agree with your position that the public has no right to know the truth about how workers at your plant are treated. Conversely, you don't seem to have a problem when the UFCW informs the public that there are plants where Smithfield has a good relationship with UFCW-represented workers and where that relationship has benefited everyone-workers, communities, and the company-as it especially has in Denison, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The more than 15,000 workers who have a union contract at your plants nationwide are proof positive that while the packing industry has some of the most physically demanding jobs in the country, they do not have to be jobs that degrade the people who perform them. Mr. Luter, the future well-being of workers at the Tar Heel facility demands that you deal with their current and past working conditions. It is impossible to truly look forward without understanding and acknowledging the past. I am especially dismayed that you refuse to acknowledge that there is, and has been, a very serious and systematic cancer that is at the root of the abuse workers must endure at your Tar Heel plant. It is a decade-long cancer, and it has completely poisoned the way Tar Heel workers are treated. Certainly, you cannot expect me to take seriously your suggestion that the Tar Heel operation can suddenly transform itself overnight into a harmonious situation where plant supervisors obey the law and workers are respected. I would only note that the company, in a July 1997 letter, made similar promises, even agreed to have an outside monitor, only to egregiously break those promises and the law resulting in ongoing physical and psychological abuse of Tar Heel workers to this day. It is going to take more than a PR campaign to address the abusive situation which currently exists in Tar Heel. It is going to take a sustained effort to excise the poisonous working conditions in Tar Heel. You can begin by ending the current worker abuse in the Tar Heel plant. The UFCW stands ready to fully cooperate with you. Together we would be well suited to develop a process for transforming the working conditions at Tar Heel. Rest assured, the UFCW will vigorously continue to inform the public about the worker abuse that takes place at your plant. And we will pursue that effort until workers in Tar Heel gain the respect they deserve. Sincerely, Joseph T. Hansen --- Background Information from UFCW SMITHFIELD AND NLRB ELECTIONS: A PATTERN OF ABUSE Smithfield has a long history of flagrantly violating the law in elections at Tar Heel and other North Carolina plants. -- The letter of June 29, 2006 from Smithfield Foods' Joe Luter IV to UFCW President Joe Hansen mirrors a similar letter sent by Smithfield Chairman Joe Luter III on July 8, 1997 promising to abide by a fair election process. Following the 1994 elections in Tar Heel, characterized by egregious violations of labor law, the company in the 1997 letter, agreed to an election including a provision for both sides to select a representative to monitor the process. Instead of the promised "fair" election, the 1997 election was worse, marred with company violence, threats and intimidation against the workers, with over 50 violations according to the NLRB. Smithfield Packing, the area's largest employer, also threatened the entire community with economic dislocation through a letter in the local paper warning of dangerous economic consequences if employees voted for a union. The tactics both inside and outside the plant created a climate of fear and intimidation for Smithfield workers. -- The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in May, 2006, upheld the findings that Smithfield assaulted, intimidated, coerced, spied on, threatened, confiscated union literature, threatened employees with plant closure and job loss, illegally fired union supporters, unlawfully arrested an employee and interfered with their employees' legal right to choose a union in a free and fair election. Smithfield asserts that it will abide by the decision but has done nothing wrong and that it "strongly disagrees" with the court's decision. -- In a similar 2003 case, Smithfield continues to appeal the NLRB ruling finding Smithfield used its company police force (now defunct) to assault and falsely arrest third shift sanitation workers who walked out of the plant in the middle of the night in protest. The workers were engaged in protected concerted activity yet Smithfield greeted their protest with assault, false arrest and threats of deportation by federal immigration authorities. The head of that disbanded company police force, Danny Priest, was rewarded with a promotion to head of Smithfield's corporate security force. -- In yet another election in 1999 in the Wilson Plant in North Carolina, an NLRB Administrative Law Judge set aside the election result because of Smithfield's unlawful activities including threatening its workers with the closure of the plant, job loss, and a wage freeze. The judge also concluded that the company illegally suspended, denied worker's compensation to and fired pro-union workers -- Human Rights Watch has issued two reports (2003 and 2005) which cite Smithfield for serious human rights violations, including denying worker's compensation to injured workers and retaliating against workers who report injuries. Serious injuries in the plant are rampant and workers frequently report that they are told to go back to work when injured and often fired when they attempt to collect worker's compensation. The towns around the plant are filled with the walking wounded, workers who have been permanently disabled from working at Smithfield, becoming injured, denied worker's compensation and left with no health care, or a job. -- All the workers are asking for is a process to stop the abuse. They are asking for the same rights as other Smithfield employees in union plants: A safe place to work where their dignity and rights are respected and they can be protected by a union contract. Also See:Corporate Web Site: www.smithfieldfoods.com/home.aspUnion Rally Targets Smithfield FoodsCHICAGO, June 20 Snip:"The story is the same," said Rigo Valdez, an organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has been trying for more than a decade to organize a Smithfield subsidiary, Smithfield Packing in Tar Heel, N.C. That facility is the world's largest pork processing plant, slaughtering about 32,000 hogs a day and employing about 5,500 workers. It has been cited for numerous violations by the National Labor Relations Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and was highlighted in a 2005 report by Human Rights Watch about abuses in the meat industry. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/20/AR2006062001364.htmlJustice at SmithfieldUnion rallies against Smithfield Foods - 6/26/2006 Smithfield Foods Inc.'s 12-year battle with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.. ... www.smithfieldjustice.com/
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 4, 2006 17:01:30 GMT 4
A New Assault on Workers' Rights Commentary: A ruling by Bush's NLRB could weaken labor protections for hundreds of thousands of workers. By Stewart Acuff and Sheldon Friedman June 28, 2006 Just when the last thing America's workers need is another economic kick in the groin, the Bush labor board is poised to deliver what could be its lowest and most devastating blow yet. The Bush National Labor Relations Board is easily the most anti-worker labor board in history and has lost few opportunities to turn back the clock on workers' rights*but even against this sorry backdrop, the scope of what they now are contemplating is breathtaking. In a series of pending cases known as Kentucky River, the National Labor Relations Board could strip what remains of federal labor law protections from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of workers whose jobs include even minor, incidental or occasional supervisory duties. The pending cases involve charge nurses in a hospital and a nursing home and lead workers in a manufacturing plant, but these workers, though they constitute a large group, could be just the tip of the iceberg. The consequences of bad labor board rulings in these cases will reverberate far and wide, potentially stripping coverage in every nook and cranny of the workforce and creating innumerable new opportunities for mischief by employers and their hired gun consultants bent on denying workers' their fundamental human right to form a union. Long established unions and collective bargaining relationships will also unravel, as employers emboldened by the Bush labor board's rulings assert that they no longer have a duty under federal labor law to recognize or bargain with their employees' unions. It will be back to the law of the jungle in industries like health care, where disruptions from labor disputes became so severe in the early 1970s that Congress passed special legislation to bring employees of private non-profit hospitals under federal labor law coverage.The stakes are high for the public, too. In health care, for example, solid scholarly research has documented that heart attack survival rates are higher for patients in hospitals where nurses have a union than in hospitals where nurses do not have a union. Bad rulings in Kentucky River may be good news for morticians, but they will be very bad news for everyone else. Already in 2000, months before George Bush was declared President, Human Rights Watch issued a powerful report that found U.S. labor laws were grossly out-of-compliance with international human rights norms and were failing utterly to protect workers' basic freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. HRW's bill of particulars was lengthy, but it is noteworthy that the first item on their list was the failure of the United States to extend coverage of its labor laws to so many millions of workers*including, among others, managers and supervisors in the private sector. As the HRW report made clear, there is no valid excuse in human rights terms for such enormous exclusions from coverage. Two years later when the Government Accountability Office put a pencil to it, they estimated that fully 32 million federal, state and private sector workers lacked coverage under U.S. labor laws and thus were denied even the minimal protections afforded by these laws of their human right to form unions and bargain collectively. Included in this number were nearly eleven million private sector managers and supervisors, even before the Bush labor board's rulings in Kentucky River. The ink was barely dry on the GAO report before the huge numbers they reported became out of date, in the wake of a full-scale assault on workers' rights by the Bush administration, its labor board, and right-wing Republican governors in several states. In the private sector, the Bush labor board stripped coverage from graduate student employees, certain disabled workers, and employees of temporary help agencies. These retrograde rulings harmed large numbers of workers, but are a drop in the bucket compared with the probable impact of Kentucky River. Congress opened the door in 1947 by excluding supervisors from labor law coverage as part of the notoriously anti-worker Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. Even the reactionary Congress that passed Taft-Hartley, however, made it clear that it did not intend to deny coverage under U.S. labor law to professional workers, lead workers or others whose jobs do not include major managerial responsibility to hire, fire and discipline other employees. Ever since Taft Hartley, a shameful series of decisions by unelected judges and NLRB members has steadily expanded the supervisory exclusion. In its notorious 1980 Yeshiva decision, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that because professors in private universities tend to participate in campus governance via their membership in faculty senates, they were supervisors and therefore not eligible for federal labor law protection of their freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. Henceforth private universities could and did snuff out faculty organizing campaigns with complete impunity. Within a few years of Yeshiva, collective bargaining for faculty had vanished at some two dozen private universities where it had previously been established. The pending decisions in Kentucky River could be Yeshiva on steroids for workers in every state, occupation and industry who have ever given incidental direction to a colleague or coworker in the performance of their job. The United States is already paying a high economic, social and political price for its failure to protect workers' freedom to form unions; the Bush labor board's rulings may be about to make a bad situation dramatically worse. For America's workers, the stakes could not be higher. When it comes to wages, benefits and other terms and conditions of employment, collective bargaining plays a critical role. It raises wages, not only for union members, but for all workers. It reduces race and gender pay gaps by bringing the wages of women and workers of color closer to parity with white males. In the United States, the only industrialized nation without universal public health insurance, collective bargaining enables workers and their families to have decent affordable health care; only 2.5% of union members lack health insurance coverage, versus 15% of non-union workers. Retirement income security has become virtually non-existent for workers who lack the protection of a union contract, but is still widespread for union members. Workers without a union contract rarely have recourse if their employer disciplines or fires them unjustly; union members are nearly always protected against wrongful discipline or discharge by strong contract language. Collective bargaining gives workers a voice in their workplace and dignity on the job. Society as a whole benefits when workers' freedom to form unions and bargain collectively is protected. In states where unions are stronger, wages are higher for all workers than in states where unions are weaker. Important social and economic indicators are more favorable for all residents than in states where unions are weaker. Where unions are stronger, the percentage of people without health insurance is lower; life expectancy is higher and infant mortality is lower; and there is less poverty. These higher union density states devote more resources per pupil to public education; they have lower workplace fatality rates; and safety net programs such as unemployment insurance and Workers' Compensation are more protective for everyone. Without strong unions there is no effective counterweight against unbridled corporate power. It is no accident that as legal protections for workers' freedom to form unions have diminished and collective bargaining coverage has eroded, an ever-larger share of the federal tax burden has shifted from corporations to individuals.For all these reasons and more, we must push back against the Bush labor board's assault on workers' rights. We in labor invite, encourage and urgently need support in this fight from people of good will throughout our country, in every major institution of American life. If you want a better, fairer and more just economy and society, please stand with workers in this important struggle.Stewart Acuff is Director, AFL-CIO Organizing Department; Sheldon Friedman is Research Coordinator, AFL-CIO Voice@Work Campaign.Source: Mother Jones: tinyurl.com/msqr2
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 10, 2006 15:30:28 GMT 4
Measuring the Full Impact of Minimum and Living Wage Laws Workers who were earning less than the new wage floor are not the only ones who benefit from a higher minimum wage.BY JEANNETTE WICKS-LIM This article is from the May/June 0506toc.html">May/June 2006 issue of Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice available at www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0506wicks-lim.htmlRaising the minimum wage is quickly becoming a key political issue for this fall's midterm elections. In the past, Democratic politicians have shied away from the issue while Republicans have openly opposed a higher minimum wage. But this year is different. Community activists are forcing the issue by campaigning to put state minimum-wage proposals before the voters this fall in Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, and Missouri. No doubt inspired by the 100-plus successful local living-wage campaigns of the past ten years, these activists are also motivated by a federal minimum wage that has stagnated for the past nine years. The $5.15 federal minimum is at its lowest value in purchasing-power terms in more than 50 years; a single parent with two children, working full-time at the current minimum wage, would fall $2,000 below the poverty line.Given all the political activity on the ground, the Democrats have decided to make the minimum wage a central plank in their party platform. Former presidential candidate John Edwards has teamed up with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and ACORN, a leading advocacy group for living wage laws, to push for a $7.25 federal minimum. Even some Republicans are supporting minimum wage increases. In fact, a bipartisan legislative coalition unexpectedly passed a state minimum wage hike in Michigan this March. Minimum-wage and living-wage laws have always caused an uproar in the business community. Employers sound the alarm about the dire consequences of a higher minimum wage both for themselves and for the low-wage workers these laws are intended to benefit: Minimum wage mandates, they claim, will cause small-business owners to close shop and lay off their low-wage workers. A spokesperson for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), commenting on a proposal to raise Pennsylvania's minimum wage in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, put it this way: "That employer may as well be handing out pink slips along with the pay raise." What lies behind these bleak predictions? Mark Shaffer, owner of Shaffer's Park Supper Club in Crivitz, Wisc., provided one explanation to the Wisconsin State Journal: "...increasing the minimum wage would create a chain reaction. Every worker would want a raise to keep pace, forcing up prices and driving away customers." In other words, employers will not only be forced to raise the wages of those workers earning below the new minimum wage, but also the wages of their co-workers who earn somewhat more. The legally required wage raises are difficult enough for employers to absorb, they claim; these other raises—referred to as ripple effect raises—aggravate the situation. The result? "That ripple effect is going to lay off people." Ripple effects represent a double-edged sword for minimum-wage and living-wage proponents. Their extent determines how much low-wage workers will benefit from such laws. If the ripple effects are small, then a higher minimum (or living) wage would benefit only a small class of workers, and boosting the minimum wage might be dismissed as an ineffective antipoverty strategy. If the ripple effects are large, then setting higher wage minimums may be seen as a potent policy tool to improve the lives of the working poor. But at the same time, evidence of large ripple effects provides ammunition to employers who claim they cannot afford the costs of a higher wage floor. So what is the evidence on ripple effects? Do they bloat wage bills and overwhelm employers? Do they expand the number of workers who get raises a little or a lot? It's difficult to say because the research on ripple effects has been thin. But getting a clear picture of the full impact of minimum and living wage laws on workers' wages is critical to evaluating the impact of these laws. New research provides estimates of the scope and magnitude of the ripple effects of both minimum-wage and living-wage laws. This evidence is crucial for analyzing both the full impact of this increasingly visible policy tool and the political struggles surrounding it. Why Do Employers Give Ripple-Effect Raises?Marge Thomas, CEO of Goodwill Industries in Maryland, explains in an interview with The Gazette (Md.): "There will be a ripple effect [in response to Maryland's recent minimum wage increase to $6.15], since it wouldn't be fair to pay people now making above the minimum wage at the same level as those making the new minimum wage." That is, without ripple effects, an increase in the wage floor will worsen the relative wage position of workers just above it. If there are no ripple effects, workers earning $6.15 before Maryland's increase would not only see their wages fall to the bottom of the wage scale, but also to the same level as workers who had previously earned inferior wages (i.e., workers who earned between $5.15 and $6.15). Employers worry that these workers would view such a relative decline in their wages as unfair, damaging their morale—and their productivity. Without ripple effect raises, employers fear, their disgruntled staff will cut back on hard-to-measure aspects of their work such as responding to others cheerfully and taking initiative in assisting customers. So employers feel compelled to preserve some consistency in their wage scales. Workers earning $6.15 before the minimum increase, for example, may receive a quarter raise, to $6.40, to keep their wages just above the new $6.15 minimum. That employers feel compelled to give non-mandated raises to some of their lowest-paid workers because it is the "fair" thing to do may appear to be a dubious claim. Perhaps so, but employers commonly express anxiety about the costs of minimum-wage and living-wage laws for this very reason. The Politics of Ripple EffectsInevitably, then, ripple effects come into play in the political battles around minimum-wage and living-wage laws—but in contradictory ways for both opponents and supporters. Opponents raise the specter of large ripple effects bankrupting small businesses. At the same time, though, they argue that minimum-wage laws are not effective in fighting poverty because they do not cover many workers—and worse, because those who are covered are largely teens or young-adult students just working for spending money. If ripple effects are small, this shores up opponents' assertions that minimum-wage laws have a limited impact on poverty. Evidence of larger ripple effects, on the other hand, would mean that the benefits of minimum-wage laws are larger than previously understood, and that these laws have an even greater potential to reduce poverty among the working poor. The political implications are complicated further in the context of living-wage laws, which typically call for much higher wage floors than state and federal minimum-wage laws do. The living-wage movement calls for wage floors to be set at rates that provide a "livable income," such as the federal poverty level for a family of four, rather than at the arbitrary—and very low—level current minimum-wage laws set. The difference is dramatic: the living-wage ordinances that have been passed in a number of municipalities typically set a wage floor twice the level of federal and state minimum wages. So the mandated raises under living-wage laws are already much higher than under even the highest state minimum-wage laws. If living-wage laws have significant ripple effects, opponents have all the more ammunition for their argument that the costs of these laws are unsustainable for employers. How Big are Ripple Effects?My answer is a typical economists' response: it depends. In a nutshell, it depends on how high the wage minimum is set. The reason for this is simple. Evidence from the past 20 years of changes to state and federal minimum wages suggests that while there is a ripple effect, it doesn't extend very far beyond the new minimum. So, if the wage minimum is set high, then a large number of workers are legally due raises and, relatively speaking, the number of workers who get ripple-effect raises is small. Conversely, if the wage minimum is set low, then a small number of workers are legally due raises and, relatively speaking, the number of workers who get ripple-effect raises is large. In the case of minimum-wage laws, the evidence suggests that ripple effects do dramatically expand their impact. Minimum wages are generally set low relative to the wage distribution. Because so many more workers earn wages just above the minimum wage compared to those earning the minimum, even a small ripple effect increases considerably the number of workers who benefit from a rise in the minimum wage. And even though the size of these raises quickly shrinks the higher the worker's wage rate, the much greater number of affected workers translates into a significantly larger increase in the wage bills of employers. For example, my research shows that the impact of the most recent federal minimum-wage increase, from $4.75 to $5.15 in 1997, extended to workers earning wages around $5.75. Workers earning between the old and new minimums generally received raises to bring their wages in line with the new minimum—an 8% raise for those who started at the old minimum. Workers earning around $5.20 (right above the new minimum of $5.15) received raises of around 2%, bringing their wages up to about $5.30. Finally, those workers earning wages around $5.75 received raises on the order of 1%, bringing their wages up to about $5.80. This narrow range of small raises translates into a big overall impact. Roughly 4 million workers (those earning between $4.75 and $5.15) received mandated raises in response to the 1997 federal minimum wage increase. Taking into account the typical work schedules of these workers, these raises translated into a $741 million increase to employers' annual wage bills. Now add in ripple effects: Approximately 11 million workers received ripple-effect raises, adding another $1.3 billion to employers' wage bills. In other words, ripple-effect raises almost quadrupled the number of workers who benefited from the minimum-wage increase and almost tripled the over-all costs associated with it. Dramatic as these ripple effects are, the real impact on employers can only be gauged in relation to their capacity to absorb the higher wage costs. Here, there is evidence that businesses are not overwhelmed by the costs of a higher minimum wage, even including ripple effects. For example, in a study I co-authored with University of Massachusetts economists Robert Pollin and Mark Brenner on the Florida ballot measure to establish a $6.15 state minimum wage (which passed overwhelmingly in 2004), we accounted for ripple-effect costs of roughly this same magnitude. Despite almost tripling the number of affected workers (from almost 300,000 to over 850,000) and more than doubling the costs associated with the new minimum wage (from $155 million to $410 million), the ripple effects, combined with the mandated wage increases, imposed an average cost increase on employers amounting to less than one-half of 1% of their sales revenue. Even for employers in the hotel and restaurant industry, where low-wage workers tend to be concentrated, the average cost increase was less than 1% of their sales revenue. In other words, a 1% increase in prices for hotel rooms or restaurant meals could cover the increased costs associated with both legally mandated raises and ripple-effect raises. The small fraction of revenue that these raises represent goes a long way toward explaining why economists generally agree that minimum-wage laws are not "job killers," as opponents claim. According to a 1998 survey of economists, a consensus seems to have been reached that there is minimal job loss, if any, associated with minimum-wage increases in the ranges that we've seen. Just as important, this new research revises our understanding of who benefits from minimum wage laws. Including ripple-effect raises expands the circle of minimum-wage beneficiaries to include more adult workers and fewer teenage or student workers. In fact, accounting for ripple effects decreases the prevalence of teenagers and traditional-age students (age 16 to 24) among workers likely to be affected by a federal minimum-wage increase from four out of ten to three out of ten. In other words, adult workers make up an even larger majority of likely minimum-wage beneficiaries when ripple effects are added to the picture. The Case of Living-Wage LawsWith living-wage laws, the ripple effect story appears to be quite different, however—primarily because living wage laws set much higher wage minimums. To understand why living-wage laws might generate far less of a ripple effect than minimum-wage hikes, it is instructive to look at the impact of raising the minimum wage on the retail trade industry. About 15% of retail trade workers earn wages at or very close to the minimum wage, compared to 5% of all workers. As a result, a large fraction of the retail trade industry workforce receives legally mandated raises when the minimum wage is raised, which is just what occurs across a broader group of industries and occupations when a living-wage ordinance is passed. My research shows that the relative impact of the ripple effect that accompanies a minimum-wage hike is much smaller within retail trade than across all industries. Because a much larger share of workers in retail receive legally required raises when the minimum wage is raised, this reduces the relative number of workers receiving ripple effect raises, and, in turn, the relative size of the costs associated with ripple effects. This analysis suggests that the ripple effects of living wage laws will likewise be smaller than those found with minimum-wage laws. To be sure, the ripple effect in the retail trade sector may underestimate the ripple effect of living-wage laws for a couple of reasons. First, unlike minimum-wage hikes, living-wage laws may have ripple effects that extend across firms as well as up the wage structure within firms. Employers who do not fall under a living-wage law's mandate but who are competing for workers within the same local labor market as those that do may be compelled to raise their own wages in order to retain their workers. Second, workers just above living-wage levels are typically higher on the job ladder and may have more bargaining power than workers with wages just above minimum-wage levels and, as a result, may be able to demand more significant raises when living-wage laws are enacted. However, case studies of living-wage ordinances in Los Angeles and San Francisco do suggest that the ripple effect plays a smaller role in the case of living-wage laws than in the case of minimum-wage laws. These studies find that ripple effects add less than half again to the costs of mandated raises—dramatically less than the almost tripling of costs by ripple effects associated with the 1997 federal minimum-wage increase. In other words, the much higher wage floors set by living-wage laws appear to reverse the importance of legally required raises versus ripple-effect raises. Do the costs associated with living-wage laws—with their higher wage floors—overwhelm employers, even if their ripple effects are small? To date, estimates suggest that within the range of existing living-wage laws, businesses are generally able to absorb the cost increases they face. For example, Pollin and Brenner studied a 2000 proposal to raise the wage floor from $5.75 to $10.75 in Santa Monica, Calif. They estimated that the cost increase faced by a typical business would be small, on the order of 2% of sales revenue, even accounting for both mandated and ripple-effect raises. Their estimates also showed that some hotel and restaurant businesses might face cost increases amounting to up to 10% of their sales revenue—not a negligible sum. However, after examining the local economy, Pollin and Brenner concluded that even these cost increases would not be likely to force these businesses to close their doors. Moreover, higher productivity and lower turnover rates among workers paid a living wage would also reduce the impact of these costs. Ultimately, the impact of ripple-effect raises appears to depend crucially on the level of the new wage floor. The lower the wage floor, as in the case of minimum-wage laws, the more important the role of ripple-effect raises. The higher the wage floor, as in the case of living-wage laws, the less important the role of ripple-effect raises. Making the CaseThe results of this new research are generally good news for proponents of living- and minimum-wage laws. Ripple effects do not portend dire consequences for employers from minimum and living wage laws; at the same time, ripple-effect raises heighten the effectiveness of these laws as antipoverty strategies. In the case of minimum-wage laws, because the cost of legally mandated raises relative to employer revenues is small, even ripple effects large enough to triple the cost of a minimum-wage increase do not represent a large burden for employers. Moreover, ripple effects enhance the somewhat anemic minimum-wage laws to make them more effective as policy tools for improving the lot of the working poor. Accounting for ripple effects nearly quadruples the number of beneficiaries of a minimum-wage hike and expands the majority of those beneficiaries who are adults—in many instances, family breadwinners. However, ripple effects do not appear to overwhelm employers in the case of the more ambitious living-wage laws. The strongest impact from living-wage laws appears to come from legally required raises rather than from ripple-effect raises. This reinforces advocates' claims that paying a living wage is a reasonable, as well as potent, way to fight poverty. Jeannette Wicks-Lim is an economist and research fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She specializes in labor economics, with an emphasis on the low-wage labor market. She has co-authored several living-wage and minimum-wage studies. SOURCES Fairris, D. et al. Examining the evidence: The impact of the Los Angeles living wage ordinance on workers businesses. (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, 2005); Fuchs, V. et al. "Economists' Views About Parameters, Values and Policies: Survey Results in Labor and Public Economics," Journal of Economic Literature (Sept. 1998); Pollin, R., Brenner, M. and Wicks-Lim, J. "Economic Analysis of the Florida Minimum Wage Proposal" (Center for American Progress, 2004); Pollin, R. and Brenner, M. "Economic Analysis of the Santa Monica Living Wage Proposal," (Political Economy Research Institute, 2000); Reich, M. et al. Living wages and economic performance. (Institute of Industrial Relations, 2003); Wicks-Lim, J. "Mandated wage floors and the wage structure: Analyzing the ripple effects of minimum and prevailing wage laws." (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 2005).
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 1, 2006 15:22:30 GMT 4
Minimum Wage GamesmanshipNote from Michelle: The Democrats would like us to believe that a raise in the minimum wage is blocked solely by the Republican Party. Stop right there and think. If you will notice the one sentence in the article that I've highlighted in red, you will see that the Dems aren't going to do anything either. The same game is played by both parties folks: "Good Cop, Bad Cop." The Democrats are currently giving lip service to many issues so they can take control. The Powers That Be will give us a Majority Leadership by the Democrats in upcoming elections; they have to the masses are getting angry. But that's all part of the game; time to change to the one and only other party we are allowed to vote for. The Dems will give us a different spin on the lies while serving the same masters. Minimum Wage GamesmanshipIsaiah J. Poole Monday, July 31, 2006 1:05 PM The latest House Republican game was nakedly plain for all to see by mid-afternoon Friday, and yet House GOP leaders played along as if they honestly believed people would not see through it. The game, of course, is to convince the public that Republicans want to increase the minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour. The reality, of course, is that they do not. The only reason House Majority Leader John A. Boehner even entertained a vote is because frightened Republican moderates, as veteran reporter Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press reported, demanded that the issue be brought to the floor. But, in the Republicans’ inexorable quest to match every half-hearted good deed for ordinary Americans with a generous gift to the wealthy, House Republicans decided in a mid-afternoon caucus to try coupling a minimum wage increase to a bundle of tax cuts, including a reduction in the estate tax for multimillionaires. (The final bill, in typical Republican fashion, was passed literally in the dead of night—actually 1:41 a.m. Saturday morning—by a vote of 230-180.) They think that the public won’t ask this basic question: Why can’t Congress raise the wage of a service worker making $5.15 an hour without simultaneously granting a big tax break to the wealthiest Americans, people for whom $5.15 is the price of a venti coffee drink at Starbucks. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in a Friday conference call with progressive bloggers, said she thinks the public will see the scam for what it is. “This is designed to be dead on arrival going into the U.S. Senate,” she said, because efforts to increase the estate tax have already repeatedly failed there. She noted that some House Republicans have openly bragged about their ability to keep ordinary Americans from getting an increase in the federal minimum wage, even as they have pocketed—shamelessly—$35,000 in raises in that time. A worker making $5.15 an hour and working a 40-hour work week would have to be on the job almost 170 weeks just to earn what an average member of Congress received in raises over a nine-year period. Business lobbyists have gone into overdrive to block a minimum wage increase. Both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business have put big bucks and lobbying muscle into blocking the increase and, failing that, extracting big tax breaks as a concession. As of Monday, the Senate has tentative plans to bring up the House bill before its summer recess, but Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said over the weekend that he will fight the estate tax provisions. Effective opposition by Senate Democrats on the estate tax will delay meaningful action on the minimum wage issue at least until Congress resumes business after Labor Day.Ironically, on Friday Oprah Winfrey aired on her syndicated talk show tales of what it is like to live on the minimum wage. Material from the show is featured on her Web site. Many of Oprah’s fans are people the Republican Party hopes to fool with their faux advocacy for working people. But no amount of fancy political footwork will cover the nakedness of this political game with people’s lives. SOURCE:www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/31/minimum_wage_gamesmanship.php
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 15, 2006 17:23:24 GMT 4
STOP SWEATSHOP LABOR....BOYCOTT L.L. Bean. Back your boycott up by telephoning or writing a letter to L.L. Bean [address/telephone listed below], state that you are aware of workers' conditions at the Saidan Factory, and that you will not continue to buy their products. Demand corrective action from them and ask that they give you a follow up on what's been done to stop the abuse. Tell your friends and acquaintances! Put your money where your mouth is! I will be posting other companies which are gulity of labor abuse and also listing companies who have a good track record so you may make meaningful purchases. The time for this type of action is ripe; back to school clothes buying is in full swing now. Later....MichelleL.L. Bean has carved out a solid place for itself in retail, appealing to lovers of the outdoors. The company has created an environmental image for itself through its product line and by forging partnerships with groups such as the Student Conservation Society and the Rippleffect Youth Leadership Expedition. However, labor watchdog groups have exposed L.L. Bean suppliers for instituting sweatshop conditions as recently as in 2006. With workers suffering a laundry list of abuses in supplier factories, L.L. Bean can hardly be viewed as a responsible clothing company. Bottom line: contact L.L. Bean about enforcing a supplier code of conduct that protects vulnerable workers from abuse and exploitation. In the meantime, read on to learn the details of recent reports on L.L. Bean suppliers.-- Profile Updated 07/07/2006 About L.L. Bean, Inc.L.L. Bean is an outdoor apparel and gear maker, whose products include outerwear, sportswear, housware, camping and hiking gear, and footwear. In 2005 the company reported $1.4 billion in revenue and 3,900 employees. Contact L.L. Bean, Inc.L.L. Bean, Inc. 15 Casco St Freeport, ME 04033 USA Phone: 207-865-4761 Web: www.llbean.com Complaints, Abuses, and Scandals Sweatshop LaborThe National Labor Committee report entitled "Saidan Factory: Human Trafficking and Involuntary Servitude Continue," documented a series of workers' rights violations in the Saidan factory, which sews t-shirts for L.L. Bean. The lack of respect for workers’ basic human rights include: Human trafficking and involuntary servitude of guest workers Confiscation of workers’ passports and denial of legally required identification cards Routine work shifts of 16 to 17.5 hours, with workers typically logging 118 hours of work a week No sick days, paid vacations, or government holidays allowed. Workers received only one Friday off every other month Wages below the legal minimum without overtime pay Workers denied 60 percent of the wages legally due to them Sporadic pay Inadequate and unsanitary working conditions Workers subject to pay reduction, humiliation, violence and threats if production goals not met The report exposed gross violations of the most basic labor standards. According to one source, "The situation at the Saidan factory remains tense and threatening. The workers believe that Mr. Saidan cannot be trusted. An atmosphere of fear prevails and the workers are asking for immediate help."-- National Labor Committee, 06/12/2006 Source URL: www.nlcnet.org/live/admin/media/document/Saidan_report.pdfHealth and Safety Vegetarian Times criticized L.L. Bean for selling clothing treated with a synthetic pesticide called permethrin, classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a possible carcinogen. L.L. Bean's BUZZ OFF apparel is said to repel ticks, flies and other pests. However, according to the magazine It can be especially dangerous to children if used in combination with DEET, an insect repellent.-- Vegetarian Times, 04/01/2005 Source URL: none available Worker RightsL.L. Bean is affiliated with the Fair Labor Association, which has been criticized by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and the ecumenical Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility as being biased in favor of the companies. However, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the National Consumer League, the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights, and the International Labor Rights Fund support the FLA. -- Clean Clothes Campaign, 06/23/1905 Source URL: www.cleanclothes.org/codes/01-01-codupdate.htmBrands and AffiliatesBrands: Bean's, L.L. Bean
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 17, 2006 8:42:01 GMT 4
I LOATHE WAL-MART! Part 1 of 2 Wanna know why? How much time have you got?.....Michelle"Always low prices", always low standards for corporate responsibility. Wal-Mart dominates the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican markets and is currently China's eighth-largest trading partner. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart confines its leadership to the realm of sales and in other areas promotes the attitude that virtually everything can be reduced to that which is disposable, whether that means products, workers, or even communities themselves. Wal-Mart drives down prices and drags the quality of life for millions of people down with it. With hundreds of employees dependent on public assistance to meet their basic needs, American taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart's low prices at the rate of roughly $420,750 a year for every 200-employee store, paying for low-income services. Women working for Wal-Mart have been denied equal opportunities for advancement. Wal-Mart hurts U.S. communities by undercutting local merchants and heightening the problem of urban sprawl, and the company's suppliers are cited for labor and human rights violations. The company announced the decision to sell only sustainably harvested fish and the introduction of organic cotton products at Wal-Mart stores. While important, these gestures are merely a drop in the ocean of corporate responsibility for a company with the power to impact global retail standards. -- Profile Updated 08/10/2006 Contact Wal-Mart Wal-Mart 702 SW Eighth St. Bentonville, AR 72716 USA Phone: 800-WAL-MART Web: www.walmartstores.com Current Campaigns Wal-Mart Watch Wal-Mart Watch, a campaign of The Center for Community and Corporate Ethics, supports ongoing community action campaigns against the giant retail company. Wal-Mart Watch is calling for public action to oppose Wal-Mart’s bank charter application in the state of Utah. Wal-Mart’s attempts to acquire bank charters in other states have failed; however, critics fear that the retail giant stands a much higher chance of achieving lender status due to particular laws in the state of Utah. Community activists are concerned that a bank of Wal-Mart will adversely affect local economies and effectively eliminate any opportunities that small businesses currently have to compete against Wal-Mart. www.walmartwatch.orgWake-Up Wal-Mart In April of 2005, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union launched the Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign, criticizing Wal-Mart for inadequate wages and health care, discrimination and failing to meet fair labor standards. Wake-Up Wal-Mart calls for consumer pledges against shopping Wal-Mart, appeals to state legislators for “Fair Share for Health Care,” legislative action designed to protect taxpayers from the medicare burden of Wal-Mart’s workforce, and to act locally against Wal-Mart stores by organizing community members and local media. The campaign is embarking on a tour across the U.S. to increase pressure on Wal-Mart to improve its practices. For more information and to get involved, click on the URL below. www.wakeupwalmart.com/tour/splash.htmlOutdoor Furniture Campaign Rainforest Relief is calling for consumer action against Wal-Mart for distributing furniture made of precious wood from endangered old-growth forests. Wal-Mart stores carry three brands of outdoor furniture built using nyatoh, a tropical hardwood that has increased in demand due to global crackdowns on teak harvesting. Nyatoh comes from ecologically sensitive rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia that are in danger of disappearing forever. Rainforest Relief is asking consumers to call and email Wal-Mart, to request the company to stop purchasing furniture containing endangered tropical hardwoods. www.rainforestrelief.org/Campaigns/Outdoor_Furniture/Target.htmlOhio Citizen Action Ohio Citizen Action is urging Kroger and Wal-Mart to take the lead in making sure the Teflon chemical "C8" is eliminated from food packaging. The group is calling on citizens to send an email to H. Lee Scott, President and CEO of Wal-Mart and Kroger CEO David Dillon. The chemical "C8", which is used to make non-stick and greaseproof coatings, has been linked to cancer and reproductive defects and has been found in the blood of 95% of Americans. Take action to support this effort by clicking on the link below. www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/dupont_c8/kro_mart.htmNo Dirty Gold The No Dirty Gold campaign sponsored by Oxfam America and Earthworks focuses on changing the destructive practices of the gold mining industry by using consumer pressure. Gold mining often destroys clean environments, harms workers, contaminates drinking water and displaces communities simply to supply the developed world's demand for jewelry. No Dirty Gold calls on consumers to sign its campaign pledge and to demand that jewelers source their gold responsibly. Sears/Kmart, JCPenney, Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer Jewelers have been identified as "laggard" retailers that fail to make a commitment to purchasing more responsibly produced gold. Click on the URL below to take action. www.nodirtygold.orgEnd Wal-Mart Sweatshops Campaign The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) is calling for consumer action to stop Wal-Mart's use of sweatshops. Workers in Wal-Mart supplier factories are routinely subjected to forced labor, minimum wage and overtime pay violations, health care violations and more. Wal-Mart's international purchasing power can be used to change such conditions, and consumer pressure will help make this happen. To take action and send a message to Wal-Mart, click on the URL below. www.unionvoice.org/campaign/WalMartsweatshopsBe Safe PVC The Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and a growing network of organizations are launching PVC consumer campaigns to encourage major corporations to phase out their use of PVC and to support policies that phase out PVC. They have already convinced Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Victoria’s Secret, and Bath and Body Works to phase out their use of PVC in their packaging! They want to leverage these victories to build momentum for further commitments to safer products in the year to come. www.besafenet.com/pvc/Green Shopping Pledge Sign the Green Shopping Pledge and let the Walton Family, founders of Wal-Mart, know that you and your family will not be shopping at their stores, and get your friends and co-workers to join you in taking this pledge. www.coopamerica.org/takeaction/walmart/Complaints, Abuses, and Scandals Cultural Impact Co-op America recently published "Beyond the Wal-Mart Economy," a comprehensive guide to strategies and resources for helping consumers and communities address the impact of Wal-Mart on workers, communities and the environment . The action guide is available as a free PDF download from www.coopamerica.org/PDF/WalMart_Guide.pdf or by calling 1-800-58-GREEN. -- Co-op America, 04/18/2006 Source URL: www.coopamerica.org/PDF/WalMart_Guide.pdfLegal Disputes U.S. District Judge Frederick Motz overturned Maryland state law which would have required Wal-Mart and other retailers with more than 10,000 workers in the state to fund employee health care. The district judge ruled that "State laws which impose employee health or welfare mandates on employers are invalid," citing the U.S. Employee Retirement Income Security Act. In Maryland, the “Wal-Mart law” was widely popular; a Washington Post poll conducted in June found 77 percent of registered voters in support of such a provision. The law was challenged by the Retail Industry Leaders Association, represents roughly 400 retailers, including Wal-Mart. -- Washington Post, 07/20/2006 Source URL: none available Ethics With growing criticism surrounding Wal-Mart’s practices, the discount retailer has hired lobbyists in Washington and a team of 35 consultants from Edelman, the world’s largest independently owned public relations company to clean-up the Wal-Mart image. The website www.paidcritics.com was launched, in hopes of changing public opinion on the issues raised by Wal-Mart Watch, a nationwide public education campaign comprised of numerous local, national, and international organizations. Contentious issues include Wal-Mart’s employee pay, health care, ethical sourcing and environmental impacts of its operations. -- Center for Media and Democracy, 06/14/2006 Source URL: www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wal-Mart_StoresSweatshop Labor The National Labor Committee’s May 2006 report entitled “US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement: Descends into Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude,” documents violations of workers’ rights in numerous Jordanian factories. Factories included Al Cap Factory, Al Nahat, Al Shahaed Apparel & Textile, Caliber Garment, Centear Clothing Ltd., Fashion Craft, Hi-Tech, Honorway Jordan Ltd., Ivory Garment , Needle Craft Est., Petra Apparel, Sari Factory Southern Apparel, Topaz, United Garment, and Western Factory, all of which sew garments for Wal-Mart’s discount brand names. The lack of respect for workers’ basic human rights includes: Human trafficking and involuntary servitude of guest workers Confiscation of workers’ passports and denial of legally required identification cards Routine work shifts of 14.5 to 19 hours. In the Caliber Factory, 10 percent of the workers were obligated to participate in all night shifts No sick days, paid vacations, or government holidays allowed Wages below the legal minimum. At Hi-Tech, workers were cheated of 45 to 80 percent of their wages. Workers at the United Garment factory earned below 10 cents for each shirt shown under Wal-Mart’s labels Inadequate and unsanitary working conditions Reports of sexual abuse and rape Workers subject to violence and threats if production goals not met A worker at the Ivory Factory said: “We feel like we are dead… worn out, broken and exhausted. Just work, work, work, but no wage, no dollars. Just work, eat poorly and then sleep a few hours. People are getting sick and their health is deteriorating.” Those who spoke out about such conditions were forcibly deported. An Ivory Garment factory worker stated: “No one can speak. Many have been sent back already.” -- National Labor Committee, 05/01/2006 Source URL: www.nlcnet.org/live/article.php?id=10Worker Benefits On January 12, 2006 the Maryland State Senate overrode Governor Erlich's veto of the so-called "Wal-Mart Bill" requiring Wal-Mart to increase employee health care spending. The bill orders companies with more than 10,000 employees to either spend a minimum eight percent of payroll on worker health benefits or make a contribution to the public health care program. The legislation comes in the wake of widespread criticism of Wal-Mart's failure to provide adequate health care benefits to employees, passing responsibility onto state and local governments. -- Progressive Grocer, 01/13/2006 Source URL: om/progressivegrocer/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001843515... Sweatshop Labor A report released on January 5, 2006 by China Labor Watch and the National Labor Committee revealed that workers at the Donguan Hongyuan shoe factory, making products for New Balance and Wal-Mart, are subject to a range of labor abuses. Workers are paid 41 cents per hour, they work mandatory 14 to 15.8 hour shifts seven days per week including night shifts and they have no regularly scheduled days off. They are required to work 36 hours of overtime without receiving the legally required overtime pay. Housing conditions are poor. Food is contaminated. Female workers have no private showers and must bathe in front of men. -- China Labor Watch, 01/05/2006 Source URL: www.chinalaborwatch.orgLegal Disputes A California court found Wal-Mart guilty of breaking a state labor law requiring employers to allow 30-minute unpaid lunch breaks to employees working shifts longer than 6 hours. The class of plaintiffs numbering 116,000 was awarded $207 million in general and punitive damages. -- Associated Press, 12/22/2005 Source URL: none available Health and Safety Wal-Mart is the focus of a criminal investigation into whether the company has been violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Federal prosecutors are looking into accusations that Wal-Mart has been improperly transporting hazardous waste from its retail sites to waste facilities, failing to utilize certified vehicles that safely carry hazardous materials directly to specially designated sites. -- Reuters, 12/20/2005 Source URL: ters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx?type=consumerProducts&storyID=nN20149078... Human Rights The Lungcheong Toy Factory in Dongguan, China employs 3,000 workers and supplies battery-operated toy cars and trucks to Mattel and Wal-Mart. According to the National Labor Committee (NLC), workers at the Lungcheon factory are denied basic rights through mandatory overtime labor, illegally low wages, lack of health care and termination in the case of injury. A 2005 NLC report states that required 13 hour shifts, six or seven days a week at Lungcheon exceed China's legal limitation on work hours by 300 percent. Workers are forced to work overtime and earn only 33 cents an hour, a rate that is 20 percent below minimum wage according to Chinese law. "Wal-Mart Sweatshop Toys Made in China: 'Always Low Prices' Means Rolling Back Respect for Human Rights" -- National Labor Committee, 12/01/2005 Source URL: www.chinalaborwatch.org/upload/Wal-MartLungcheongReport.pdfWorker Rights In December 2005, the Ethical Trading Action Group (ETAG), in association with Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) and AccountAbility, released a report entitled "Coming Clean on the Clothes We Wear: Transparency Report Card." This report evaluates and compares 25 apparel retailers and brands in their efforts to address worker rights in their global supply chain. Retailers were rated in areas such as their compliance with International Labor Organization standards (ILO), methods of monitoring code compliance, steps taken to communicate thoroughly, effectively, and transparently to the public, and so forth. Retailers and brands were given a score 0 to 100. Walmart earned a score of 30. -- Maquila Solidarity Network, 12/01/2005 Source URL: darity.org/campaigns/reportcard/pdf/Report%20Card%20Executive%20Summary.pdf... Ethics An internal Wal-Mart memo to the board of directors was published containing controversial proposals for keeping company health care spending low while simultaneously repairing its damaged public image. Proposals ranged from making employees withstand a longer waiting period before joining the company's policy to changing all job descriptions to include some level of physical activity, thereby ensuring the hiring of only healthier workers. -- New York Times, 10/26/2005 Source URL: none available Worker Benefits According to the Washington Post, Wal-Mart employs approximately 1.3 million workers, of which more than 600,000 are estimated to be without company health insurance. Wal-Mart critics claim that employee wages are too low and insurance premiums so high that even some full-time workers needed and qualified for public assistance such as medicare. In response to such complaints, Democrats in the U.S. Senate introduced the Health Care Accountability Act on June 23, 2005, which would require state governments to report the names of companies with at least 50 workers dependent on government assistance for their health care needs. The Washington Post reports that Wal-Mart leads the corporate world in terms of employee enrollment in public health care services. The introduction of this act is a major step toward holding Wal-Mart and other large corporations accountable for their employees’ basic health needs, rather than relying on taxpayers to absorb resultant costs. In April of 2005, the state of Maryland passed a bill requiring Wal-Mart to invest more in employee health care. The bill was subsequently vetoed by the state’s governor, however the legislature brought the bill back and successfully overrode the veto. Other states, such as New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, are taking similar action to change Wal-Mart’s benefits policies. Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts stated, "Every member of Congress has health insurance because they understand the importance of providing for themselves and family. If it's good enough for Congress . . . it's good enough for everyone. Except for Wal-Mart. Every worker in America is paying a part of their taxes to pay for Wal- Mart." -- Washington Post, 06/23/2005 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes According to the non-profit organization Sweatshop Watch, Wal-Mart is facing legal action from a former employee on the grounds of “wrongful discharge, libel, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” James W. Lynn worked as an inspector for Wal-Mart’s garment factories in Central America before being fired on the grounds of fraternizing with another Wal-Mart employee, which is a violation of company policy. Sweatshop Watch reports that Lynn claims his termination happened for a very different reason. Upon investigation of Wal-Mart’s facilities in Central America, Lynn found conditions that were in gross violation of Wal-Mart’s own labor standards, including mandatory 24-hour work shifts, padlocked exits, extreme heat, no available drinking water and no toilet paper. Lynn claims that as he diligently reported these violations, it became clear that he was creating a problem for the company. Lynn argues that Wal-Mart relieved him of his duties so as to silence reports of unacceptable working conditions at supplier factories in Central America. -- New York Times, 06/01/2005 Source URL: www.sweatshopwatch.org/index.php?s=49&n=39Worker Rights In January 2005 a lawsuit filed in Alameda County, California alleges that Wal-Mart stores in that region violated labor law as store managers deleted overtime hours from employee pay records and erased timecard entries. The plaintiffs, who are seeking back wages and damages, claim that the store managers were pressured to "shave time" from employee records in order to minimize labor costs and maintain the chain's low prices. -- SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle), 01/20/2005 Source URL: none available Discrimination In June, 2004 a federal judge approved class-action status for a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart that could represent as many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of the company. The suit assert that female employees of Wal-Mart have been assigned to the lowest paying positions, which, in turn, provide the least opportunity for advancement. Wal-Mart is accused of habitually denying women the chance for promotion by not informing them of openings and by not giving them the necessary support to advance. The company is further being accused of offering better pay to males, and of assigning women to certain areas of the store based on their sex, such as baby clothes instead of hardware. -- Associated Press, 06/22/2004 Source URL: none available Corporate Welfare In May, 2004, Good Jobs First showed that Wal-Mart has received more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from states for its stores. The subsidies have come as many states are forced by White House tax cuts and reductions in federal grants to make tough budget decisions. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows states are cutting subsidies for publicly funded health insurance, child care, federal employment, both higher and lower education, and programs aimed at public safety and people with disabilities. Taxpayer dollars continue to subsidize Wal-Mart, who took in more than $200 billion in revenue and netted nearly $9 billion in profits last year, while paying worker near-poverty wages, and violating environmental regulations -- Progress Report, 05/28/2004 Source URL: none available Child Labor In January 2004 the Associated Press reported that a Wal-Mart internal audit had warned top executives three years prior that employee records at 128 stores showed extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations. A spokesperson for the company told the paper the audit was meaningless, since what looked like violations could simply reflect employees' failure to punch in and out for breaks and meals they took. The audit shows one week's time-clock records for about 25,000 employees. The audit found 1,371 instances in which minors worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day, 60,767 apparent instances of workers not taking breaks, and 15,705 apparent instances of employees working through meal times. -- Associated Press, 01/13/2004 Source URL: none available Sweatshop Labor According to the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), Wal-Mart workers from around the world came together to sue Wal-Mart in a California Superior Court on September 13, 2005, citing a wide range of labor abuses. Plaintiffs in the case included men and women from California, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Swaziland who recounted numerous violations of international labor standards under the responsibility of Wal-Mart. The ILRF claims that Wal-Mart “failed to meet its contractual duty to ensure that its suppliers pay basic wages due; forced [workers] to work excessive hours seven days a week with no time off for holidays; obstructed [workers’] attempts to form a union; and, made false and misleading statements to the American public about the company’s labor and human rights practices.” According to the ILRF, Wal-Mart presents foreign suppliers with a Supplier Standards Agreement that makes compliance with Wal-Mart’s corporate code of conduct a prerequisite for any supplier-purchaser relationship. The code of conduct inclusion is intended to serve as a built-in protection for workers at foreign factories. Workers have the right to enforce these standards if employers fail to do so, and the ILRF states that the governments of countries represented in this case lack the necessary legal infrastructure to adequately redress grievances related to labor abuses. -- International Labor Rights Fund Source URL: www.laborrights.orgSweatshop Labor Wal-Mart has been Criticized for its Involvement in Sweatshops: On March 22, 2004 workers at King Yong, a large Taiwanese owned garment export factory in Nicaragua producing clothing for export to Wal-Mart and Kohl's, organized a legal union. Shortly after, the facility started firing scores of workers, including several of the newly elected union leaders. King Yong continues to defy repeated demands by the government of Nicaragua to immediately reinstate the over 400 workers fired, end excessive mandatory overtime, pay the legal overtime wage, and to correct numerous health and safety violations including inadequate lighting, excessive noise, poor ventilation and failure to conduct health and safety trainings. Lee Kil-Soo, owner of the Daewoosa factory in American Samoa, was convicted in February 2003 of human trafficking for illegally confining workers in "involuntary servitude," holding their passports, and threatening deportation in retaliation for any acts of non-compliance. A US Department of Labor (DOL) investigation reported that workers at Daewoosa were often beaten, deprived of food, and forced to work without pay. Clothing produced by the Daewoosa factory was sold with the "Made in the USA" label, because American Samoa is a US territory. Before Mr. Lee's arrest and the closing of the factory, Daewoosa supplied clothing to J.C. Penney, Kohl's, Sears, Target, and Wal-Mart. According to the Manchester Guardian Weekly , only J.C. Penney has paid back wages to the Daewoosa workers. In January 2003 workers at the WINS facilities of California were paid $337,000 of the more than $900,000 owed them in back wages. In July 2001, Wins was prohibited from shipping goods because of labor violations, including the failure to pay its workers promptly. By August, however, Wins was permitted to resume shipping goods, although all proceeds were paid into the special "lock box" fund to be distributed to the unpaid workers. Efforts to pay the workers with the funds were thwarted when Wins filed for bankruptcy, prompting creditors to lay claim to the lock box money. The release of those funds has been delayed by bankruptcy court proceedings. WINs made clothing for Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears and JC Penney. Workers at the Beximco Factory in Bangladesh which makes shirts and pants sold in Wal-Mart stores work 12 hour days seven days a week and are paid wages ranging from 9 to 20 cents an hour. In April 2001, Nicaraguan court ordered Chentex—a Taiwanese-owned maquila that was making jeans for Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Kmart, and Wal-Mart—to rehire nine illegally fired union leaders. Chentex had been targeted by the National Labor Committee for its union-busting activity, while workers earned just 18 cents for each $24 pair of pants they sewed. In December 2003, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch reported that US retailers J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart, and Kmart did business with the Confecciones Ninos factory before it closed in March 2002. Workers at the plant reported being denied overtime wages, drinking water, bathroom visits, and sick days, in addition to being threatened with termination for union activity. -- Human Rights Watch Source URL: none available CONTINUED
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 17, 2006 8:46:48 GMT 4
I LOATHE WAL-MART! Part 2 of 2Discrimination The supermarket group Asda, which is owned by Wal-Mart, was ordered to pay £27750 in a discrimination case involving a group of 37 Asian workers. According to the suit, the workers were singled out and forced to produce proof that they could legally work in Britain because they were of Asian descent. Some of the workers had been with Asda for as many as 18 years. -- The Independent (London), 03/09/2006 Source URL: news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article347966.ece Pricing Michigan's attorney general Mike Cox initiated legal action against Wal-Mart after an investigation revealed the company's failure to comply with state pricing laws. Michigan statutes require retailers to label the individual price of each item in order to protect consumers from being overcharged. The investigation found compliance rates at between roughly 75 percent and 20 percent, those being the highest and lowest figures. Wal-Mart agreed to pay $25,000 in January when Wisconsin customers accused the store of overcharging by having scales that did not subtract the weight of containers used to hold bulk items. -- Progressive Grocer, 03/02/2006 Source URL: none available Worker Benefits Wal-Mart announced plans to open over 50 in-store health clinics and to alter employee insurance plans in an effort to increase access to health care for its workers in 2006. Changes are to include a reduced waiting period for part-time employees, designating children of part-time employees as eligible for health coverage, and expanding the availability of the lowest cost health care option. Wal-Mart critics argue that these plans are merely a publicity stunt to improve Wal-Mart's increasingly negative public image. -- Progressive Grocer, 02/24/2006 Source URL: none available Equal Opportunity According to the Social Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN), ten years after the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission recommended disclosure of diversity data as a way to remove barriers and promote women and minority advancement, most US companies still fail to fully disclose EEO data to the public. Wal-Mart is listed as one of the companies that does not provide full public disclosure. The company provides only partial disclosure. -- Social Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN), 12/07/2005 Source URL: www.siran.orgDiscrimination In February 2005 Wal-Mart was ordered to pay $7.5 million to a former employee with cerebral palsy and who claimed he was reassigned from a job in the company's pharmacy department to garbage duty. A Wal-Mart spokesperson stated, "Wal-Mart does not tolerate discrimination of any kind. We are optimistic that the award will be substantially reduced or eliminated altogether." -- United Food and Commercial Workers, 02/25/2005 Source URL: none available Child Labor In January 2005 Wal-Mart paid $135,540 to settle charges it violated child labor laws in three states. The settlement covered 24 violations mainly involving workers under the age of 18 operating dangerous machinery including cardboard balers and chain saws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. Wal-Mart agreed in the settlement not to employee any worker under the age of 14 and will not allow any worker under age 18 to operate cardboard balers. The company denied any wrongdoing in the settlement with the Labor Department. -- Reuters, 02/12/2005 Source URL: none available Unionization In February 2005 Wal-Mart announced it planned to close a Canadian store whose workers were on the verge of becoming the first ever to win a union contract from the company. Wal-Mart said it would close the store in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators, that would make it impossible for the store to sustain its business. The United Food & Commercial Workers Canada had previously asked Quebec labor officials to appoint a mediator, saying that negotiations had reached an impasse. The store became the first unionized Wal-Mart store in North America in September of 2004, after the bargaining unit was certified by provincial labor officials. Shortly afterwards another Canadian Wal-Mart become certified. Neither store reached a contract. (see related Alert item.) -- Associated Press, 02/07/2005 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes In February 2005 Wal-Mart won an appeal on a 1995 lawsuit which argued that the company should pay millions of dollars in overtime to company pharmacists which the company had classified as salaried employees, which was against federal law. A three-judge appelate panel said federal labor regulations allow employers to adjust salaries based on economic conditions but if those changes are made too frequently, the salary could be declared a "sham" and allow employees to be reclassified as hourly employees. -- Associated Press, 02/02/2005 Source URL: none available Special Awards In 2004 Multinational Monitor named Wal-Mart as one of the "10 Worst Corporations of 2004." The company earned this listing over a 2004 report filed by Rep. George Miller (D-California) which illustrated how the company blocks unionizing efforts, pays employees $8.23 per hours--as opposed to the over $10 an hour for an average supermarket worker, extracts off-the-clock work from employees, and provides unaffordable and inadequate healthcare. Additionally, according to Miller's report documents how the company hurts communities and taxpayers: "The report estimated that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year -- about $2,103 per employee." These costs include free and reduced lunch programs, housing assistance and tax credits and deductions for low-income families. -- Multinational Monitor, 12/01/2004 Source URL: none available Worker Benefits According to the New York Times "A survey by Georgia officials found that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state's health program for children at an annual cost of nearly $10 million to taxpayers. A North Carolina hospital found that 31 percent of 1,900 patients who described themselves as Wal-Mart employees were on Medicaid, while an additional 16 percent had no insurance at all." And activists in California also claim that the company's employees without company insurance are costing state health care programs an estimated $32 million a year. Wal-Mart disputes the California figures and says it cannot verify the Georgia and North Carolina data. -- New York Times, 11/01/2004 Source URL: none available Cultural Impact In May 2004, the National Trust for Historic Preservation released its list of endangered historic sites, which included the entire state of Vermont. According to the trust, the primary reason for this designation was Wal-Mart's aggressive plans for expansion in the state, which would threaten its unique small-town character. They further contend that the arrival of new Wal-Marts would decimate small businesses and town centers, create poverty-level jobs, and have severe negative environmental impact. -- Associated Press, 05/25/2004 Source URL: none available Labor On October 23, 2003, 250 illegal workers were arrested outside of 61 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states. Immigration officers also took boxes of documents from Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, in an effort to determine whether or not Wal-Mart should be charged with knowingly employing contractors who were using illegal workers. Nine of the employees arrested during the raids have filed a lawsuit claiming Wal-Mart was aware they were illegal immigrants and violated federal racketeering laws by conspiring with cleaning contractors to pay them low wages. -- CNN Money, 10/23/2003 Source URL: none available Worker Rights According to Business Week The average Wal-Mart sales clerk earned $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 a year, in 2001, according to documents filed in a pending lawsuit. At the time, the federal poverty line for a family of three was $14,630. The company claims it pays competitively and cites a privately commissioned survey that found that it "meets or exceeds" the total remuneration paid by rival retailers in 50 U.S. markets. -- Business Week, 10/06/2003 Source URL: none available Health and Safety n April 2003 Wal-Mart agreed to pay a $750,000 penalty to settle a government lawsuit that said the company failed to report safety hazards from defective exercise "glider" machines. In May 2001, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Justice Department accused Wal-Mart of failing to report hazards with Weider and Weslo brand exercise gliders, despite knowing of at least 29 consumers who were injured while trying the equipment in Wal-Mart stores. Injuries included fractured vertebrae, herniated discs and a compression injury to a woman's spine. -- U.S. Department of Justice, 04/25/2003 Source URL: none available Weapons In April 2003 California announced Wal-Mart would temporarily halt firearms sales within the state after justice officials found nearly 500 violations of gun laws by just six stores in one month. Investigators found the stores guilty of illegal sales to felons, releasing firearms to buyers before the 10-day waiting period and background checks were completed, and failures to identify purchasers through thumbprints and a driver's license - as required by state law. -- Christian Science Monitor, 04/11/2003 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes As of June 2002, Wal-Mart employees and former employees in 28 states had filed a series of class-action and individual lawsuits against the company for forcing or pressuring them to work unpaid overtime. The employees say that they are forced or pressuring into working off-the clock despite the fact that the company's own policy prohibits such actions. In the suits the workers claim that overtime practices helped Wal-Mart undersell its competition and push up profits. The company paid $50 million to settle a class-action suit filed by 69,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in Colorado in 2000 that alleged Wal-Mart pressured them to work off the clock. However, the company denies that the problem is more than a few isolated incidences. According to a Wal-Mart spokesperson, "Off-the-clock work is an infrequent and isolated problem, which we correct whenever we become aware of it." -- CBS News, 12/20/2002 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes In August 2001, a New York Wal-Mart worker filed a class-action suit against Wal-Mart on behalf of 20,000 workers in the state claiming that the company forced them to work overtime without pay, sometimes by locking them inside the store after they had clocked out. The lawsuit also claims that the retailer required employees to work through meals and rest breaks. The plaintiffs are asking for unpaid overtime wages, attorneys' fees and the costs of the action. Lawyers for the plaintiff say employees would be intimidated into working the extra hours by being given fewer hours to work or by not getting promotions. -- Labor Research Association, 10/01/2001 Source URL: none available Unionization In August 2001, the National Labor Relations Board started an investigation into allegations that a Texas Wal-Mart harassed employees who tried to start a union. The United Food & Commercial Workers Union claimed that the store's managers told employees they would lose profit-sharing bonuses for signing union cards and restricted employees from soliciting for the union during their breaks. -- United Food and Commercial Workers, 09/01/2001 Source URL: none available Corporate Influence In the first decade after Wal-Mart arrived in Iowa, the state lost 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women's apparel stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drugstores, and 111 men's and boys' apparel stores. -- Iowa State University Study Source URL: none available Cultural Impact In September 2004 residents of Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, protested over the construction of a warehouse-style Bodega Aurrera, a unit of Wal-Mart, on the edge of archaeological ruins. The construction site is less than a mile from the gated tourist park housing the main ruins and is visible from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, a structure that has stood on the site for more than 2,000 years. Opponents are taking legal action to stop construction -- Ethical Corporation Source URL: www.ethicalcorp.comHuman Rights Since December 1999, Wal-Mart Canada imported almost 70 tons of garments from Burma. Despite Wal-Mart claims that it broke its Burma connection in January 2000, Wal-Mart was identified in a Thai newspaper as buying garments from a factory owned by Burmese drug thug, Lo-Hsing-han. -- Wal-Mart Watch Source URL: www.walmartwatch.com/bad/internal.cfm?subsection_id=110&internal_id=287Labor The Wall Street Journal reported that Thomas M. Coughlin, former board member and Vice Chairman of Wal-Mart, claims to have operated an “illegal anti-union slush fund” while employed at the company. The fund, he alleges, was part of an actual Wal-Mart program to prevent workers from unionizing in the workplace. According to the Wall Street Journal, if these allegations prove to be true, Wal-Mart would be guilty of violating the federal Taft-Hartly Act, which outlaws efforts to discourage employees from participating in a workers union vis-à-vis monetary coercion. -- United Food and Commercial Workers Source URL: www.ufcw.org/press_room/fact_sheets_and_backgrounder/walmart/andunions.cfmToxic Emissions or Discharges In May 2004 Wal-Mart was fined $3.1 million for violations of the Clean Water Act at 24 construction sites. The violations involved excessive storm water runoff, which carries sediment, pesticides, chemicals, solvents and other toxic substances into waterways. The settlement covered allegations that the company failed to get permits before construction, had not developed plans to control polluted runoff water and did not install required controls to prevent discharges.The company had been fined $1 million for violations of the Clean Water Act at different construction sites in 2001. -- Ethical Corporation Source URL: www.ethicalcorp.comUnionization According to an internal Wal-Mart document, "Wal-Mart is opposed to the unionization of its associates. Any suggestion that the company is neutral on the subject or that it encourages associates to join labor organizations is not true." -- UNI Global Union, 03/01/2005 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes In November 2004 Wal-Mart was ordered to pay $765,000 in fines for violating state petroleum storage tank laws at its automobile service centers in Florida. According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection the company failed to register with the state the above ground fuel tanks at all 75 of its Tire & Lube Express service centers in Florida and didn't install devices that prevent overflows, among other problems. -- Associated Press, 11/18/2004 Source URL: none available Health and Safety In June 2004 Wal-Mart was one of 13 major retailers named in a lawsuit filed in California claiming that the companies failed to inform customers that some of the costume jewelry they sell contains lead. In the suit, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer alleged that state tests showed high levels of lead in both metal and nonmetal parts of the costume jewelry, which retailers have been marketing primarily to teenagers and young children. The levels were above that which requires a warning to consumers under California law, according to Lockyer. -- Center for Environmental Health, 06/01/2004 Source URL: none available Unionization A supervisor at Wal-Mart store 589 in Hillview, Kentucky stated that he was required to report staff members who mentioned trade unions to his manager. -- Los Angeles Business Journal, 02/09/2004 Source URL: none available Child Labor In January 2004 the Associated Press reported that a Wal-Mart internal audit had warned top executives three years prior that employee records at 128 stores showed extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations. A spokesperson for the company told the paper the audit was meaningless, since what looked like violations could simply reflect employees' failure to punch in and out for breaks and meals they took. The audit shows one week's time-clock records for about 25,000 employees. The audit found 1,371 instances in which minors worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day, 60,767 apparent instances of workers not taking breaks, and 15,705 apparent instances of employees working through meal times. -- Associated Press, 01/13/2004 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes In December 2002 a federal jury in Oregon found Wal-Mart guilty of violating federal and state wage laws by forcing employees to work unpaid overtime between 1994 and 1999. Over 400 employees from 24 Wal-Mart stores in Oregon sued the company. It was the first of several similar suits across the country to come to trial. The lawsuit claimed managers got employees to work off the clock by asking them to clean up the store after they'd clocked out and by deleting hours from time records. The suit also said Wal-Mart reprimanded employees who claimed overtime. An attorney for Wal-Mart had no comment on the verdict. -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12/20/2002 Source URL: none available Worker Benefits A coalition of labor groups organized November 21, 2002 as a national "day of action" against Wal-Mart to encourage the company to provide higher wages and lower-cost health care benefits for its more than 1 million American workers. The groups claim Wal-Mart, which owns more than 3,300 stores across the country, has opposed its efforts to unionize Wal-Mart employees. -- The Nation, 11/26/2002 Source URL: none available Legal Disputes In August 2001 Wal-Mart announced it had agreed to comply with Wisconsin's fair pricing law as a settlement to a complaint filed by the state in 2000 alleging the retail giant was selling some items below cost to drive out competitors. The retailer will also donate $15,000 to a high school consumer education contest. Wal-Mart did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement. -- Associated Press, 08/13/2001 Source URL: none available Discrimination According to Business Week, "Based on filings Wal-Mart made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ...72 percent of the company's sales staff are women but only one-third of them make it into management, despite Wal-Mart's promote-from-within policy. That means, according to EEOC data, that Wal-Mart doesn't just rank below its current retailing peers, which have an average of 56 percent women managers, but it also ranks below rivals' levels of 25 years ago." -- Business Week, 07/16/2001 Source URL: none available Toxic Emissions or Discharges In June 2001, Wal-Mart announced it would pay $1 million in fines to settle charges that it violated environmental laws while building stores in four states. The company, which builds more than 300 stores a year, was accused by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of violating Clean Water Act regulations and illegally discharging dirt from 17 construction sites in Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Wal-Mart also agreed to better monitor future construction. (See related Alert item.) -- Associated Press, 07/07/2001 Source URL: none available Discrimination In June 2001, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed its 16th federal lawsuit against Wal-Mart. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Wal-Mart "greeter" who said she was fired after the company refused to let her sit occasionally while working due to her knee problems, violating the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Earlier in the month, Wal-Mart was ordered by a federal judge to air commercials in Arizona admitting it violated the Americans With Disabilities Act after the judge ruled it didn't fulfill terms of a settlement of a suit filed by the EEOC over the company's refusal to hire two deaf men. -- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 06/01/2001 Source URL: none available Ethics Wal-Mart has been accused by a Galveston, Texas judge of inappropriate behavior during a number of lawsuits filed against the company. In a lawsuit involving a girl who was burnt after her clothes purchased at Wal-Mart caught fire, the judge found that the company had "repeatedly concealed documents and witnesses." The judge acknowledged nine additional cases in where Wal-Mart was found of noncompliance of court rules. -- Associated Press, 02/14/2001 Source URL: none available Discrimination In February 2001, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) accused Wal-Mart of violating the American with Disabilities Act by failing to provide qualified interpreters for deaf applicants and employees. The EEOC is seeking an order that would force the company to offer equal job opportunities to disabled applicants, as well as compensation, including punitive damages and legal fees, to deaf employees. -- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 02/01/2001 Source URL: none available Unionization In 2000, Wal-Mart was charged with illegally telling hourly-paid department managers in a super-center in Texas that they could not engage in union activities. The complaint also cited Wal-Mart for unlawfully creating the impression among employees that their union activities are under surveillance, interrogating employees about their union activities, and soliciting employee grievances. "For years, Wal-Mart has tricked hourly department managers into thinking they were part of the management team and, therefore, obligated to report any signs of union activity in their departments so that union-busters from Bentonville can be summoned to put out the fire," said Michael Leonard, a vice president of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). -- United Food and Commercial Workers, 11/01/2000 Source URL: www.ufcw.org/press_room/press_releases_2000/wmrespectmangerright.cfm... Executive Compensation In 2005, President and CEO H. Lee Scott made $17,542,908 in total compensation including stock option grants from Wal-Mart. From previous years' stock option grants, with $121,063 in stock option exercises. Scott has another $4,537,582 in unexercised stock options from previous years. -- AFL-CIO, 06/27/1905 Source URL: www.aflcio.orgDiscrimination Wal-Mart received a "C+" grade on the 2004 NAACP Economic Reciprocity Initiative report. The grade reflects a measurement of corporate America's commitment to the African American citizenry and other people of color. Companies were surveyed for their activity in employment, vendor development and contracting, advertising and marketing, dealerships and philanthropy. -- NAACP Source URL: www.naacp.orgDiscrimination The National Organization for Women (NOW) declared September 28 2002 a National Day of Action Against Wal-Mart. NOW also declared Wal-Mart a Merchant of Shame. Among the complaints against the company were charges of unequal pay and promotion for female employees, the exclusion of contraception coverage in the employee's health benefits, and the fact that the retail chain does not sell Preven, commonly known as "morning-after pill" for women, but it does carry Viagra. -- National Organization for Women Source URL: none available Fair Employment Wal-Mart received a score of 57 out of 100 on the 2005 Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. The Index grades companies on the implementation of laws and policies that discourage sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, and that provide same-sex partner benefits. -- Human Rights Campaign Source URL: fm?Section=Search_the_Database&Template=/CustomSource/WorkNet/srch_list.cfm... Lobbying Expenditures In 2000, Wal-Mart spent $1,020,000 in total lobbying expenditures. From 2000 through 2002 Wal-Mart gave $976,169 in soft money contributions, all but $100,000 of which went to the Republican Party and candidates. -- Center for Responsive Politics Source URL: www.opensecrets.orgWorker Benefits Since November 2000, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local Union 1000, which represents about 5,600 Oklahoma Homeland employees, is encouraging people to boycott local Wal-Mart "Neighborhood Markets" stores. The union accuses the new stores of not insuring enough workers, paying wages below the industry average and returning most of its profits to Arkansas without backing local communities. The union claims, "Wal-Mart calls its new stores 'Neighborhood Markets,' though they're anything but neighborly to workers and the community. They take without giving much back." -- United Food and Commercial Workers Source URL: none available Discrimination Wal-Mart scored 57 out of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. The Corporate Equality Index is a tool to measure how equitably companies are treating their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. -- Human Rights Campaign, 09/20/2005 Source URL: www.hrc.orgBrands and Affiliates Brands: Neighborhood Market, One Source, Sam's American Choice, Sam's Club, Sasson, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart Supercenter Affiliates: - ASDA Group Limited - Leeds, United Kingdom - Bompreco S.A. Supermercados do Nordeste - Recife, Brazil - Sam's Club - Bentonville, AR WHY WOULD ANY ETHICAL PERSON BUY FROM THESE BLOOD SUCKERS?
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Oct 31, 2006 12:08:59 GMT 4
Labour Laws Trampled at New US Embassy, Ex-Foreman SaysDavid Phinney* WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (IPS) - Things began looking sketchier than ever to John Owen as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back to Iraq in March 2005 following some downtime in Kuwait City. Employed by First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, the lead builder for the new 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Owen remembers being surrounded at the airport by about 50 company labourers freshly hired from the Philippines and India. Everyone was holding boarding passes to Dubai -- not to Baghdad. "I thought there was some sort of mix-up and I was getting on the wrong plane," said the 48-year-old Floridian, who was working as a general construction foreman on the embassy project. He buttonholed a First Kuwaiti manager standing nearby and asked what was going on. The manager waved his hand, looked around the terminal and whispered to keep quiet. "'If anyone hears we are going to Baghdad, they won't let us on the plane,'" Owen recalled the manager saying. The secrecy struck Owen as a little odd, but he grabbed his luggage and moved on. Everyone filed out to the private jet and flew directly to Baghdad. "I figured that they had visas for Kuwait and not Iraq," Owen said in an interview. The deception had all the appearances of smuggling workers into Iraq, but Owen didn't know at the time that the Philippines, India and other countries had banned or restricted their citizens from working in Iraq because of safety concerns and growing opposition to the war. After 2004, many passports were stamped "Not valid for Iraq". Nor did Owen know that both the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon were quietly investigating contractors such as First Kuwaiti for labour trafficking and worker abuse. In fact, the international news media had accused First Kuwaiti repeatedly of coercing workers to take jobs in battle-torn Iraq once they had been lured to Kuwait with safer offers. The Kuwait-headquartered, Lebanese-run company has billed several billion dollars on U.S. contracts since the war began in March 2003. Much of its work is performed by cheap labour largely hired from South Asia and the company has an estimated 7,500 foreign labourers in the theatre of war. Now, with a highly secretive contract awarded by the U.S. State Department, First Kuwaiti is in the midst of building the most expensive and heavily fortified U.S. embassy in the world. Scheduled to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size. But Owen says that working on the project proved to be one of the worst jobs he has ever had in his 27 years of construction work. Not one of the five different U.S. embassy sites Owen had worked on around the world previously compared to the mess he describes. Armenia, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon and Cambodia all had their share of dictators, violence and economic disruption, but the companies building the embassies were always fair and professional, he says. First Kuwaiti is the exception. Brutal and inhumane, he says "I've never seen a project more f*cked up. Every U.S. labour law was broken." Seven months after signing on with First Kuwaiti in November 2005, he quit. In his resignation letter last June, Owen told First Kuwaiti and U.S. State Department officials that his managers physically assaulted and beat the construction workers, demonstrated little regard for worker safety, and routinely breached security. And it was all happening smack in the middle of the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, he said -- right under the nose of the State Department that had quietly awarded the controversial embassy contract in July 2005. Owen also complained of poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and medical malpractice in the labour camps where several thousand low-paid migrant workers lived. Those workers, recruited on the global labour market from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and other poor south Asian countries, earned as little as 10 to 30 dollars a day. As with many U.S.-funded contractors, First Kuwaiti prefers importing labour because it views Iraqi workers as a security headache not worth the trouble. Despite numerous emails and phone calls about such allegations, neither First Kuwaiti general manager Wadih Al Absi nor his lawyer Angela Styles, the former top White House contract policy advisor, have responded. After a year of requests, State Department officials involved with the project also have ignored or rejected opportunities for comment. However, on Apr. 4, 2006, the Pentagon issued a new contracting directive following a secret investigation that officially confirms what many South Asian labourers have been complaining about ever since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some contractors, many working as subcontractors to Halliburton /KBR in Iraq, were found to be using deceptive, bait-and-switch hiring practices and charging recruiting fees that indebted low-paid migrant workers for many months or even years to their employers. Contractors were also accused of providing substandard, crowded sleeping quarters, serving poor food, and circumventing Iraqi immigration procedures. While the Pentagon declines to specifically name those contractors found to be doing business in this way, it also acknowledged in an Apr. 19 memorandum that it was a widespread practice among contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan to take away workers' passports. Holding onto employee passports -- a direct violation of U.S. labour trafficking laws -- helped stop workers from leaving war-torn Iraq or taking better jobs with other contractors. Contractors engaging in the practice, states the memo, must immediately "cease and desist". "All passports will be returned to employees by 1 May 06. This requirement will be flowed down to each of your subcontractors performing work in this theater," it said. The Pentagon has yet to announce any penalty for those found to be in violation of U.S. labour trafficking laws or contract requirements. *David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com. This article is part one of two on allegations of forced labour and abuse of workers in the construction of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. (END/2006) Source: ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35239
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 18, 2006 15:31:12 GMT 4
Bye-bye, Posse Comitatus! And US citizens, welcome to Metropolis where "Work is Freedom!"............Michelle
US Army might break Goodyear strikeBy Bernard Simon in Toronto Updated: 10:12 p.m. ET Dec 15, 2006 The US Army is considering measures to force striking workers back to their jobs at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Kansas in the face of a looming shortage of tyres for Humvee trucks and other military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan.A strike involving 17,000 members of the United Steelworkers union has crippled 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada since October 5. The main issues in dispute are the company's plans to close a unionised plant in Texas, and a proposal for workers to shoulder future increases in healthcare costs. An army spokeswoman said on Friday that "there's not a shortage right now but there possibly will be one in the future". According to Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives armed services committee, the strike has cut output of Humvee tyres by about 35 per cent. Mr Hunter said that the army had stopped supplying tyres to units not related to the Central Command, which is responsible for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tyres were also not being provided to army repair depots. While concern has centred on the Humvees, tyres are also critical to aircraft and other military equipment. Goodyear brushed off concerns of looming shortages, saying that production at the Kansas plant, where the Humvee tyres are made, "is near normal levels and will be back to 100 per cent in the near future." It added that "we're in daily contact with the military to ensure delivery of the required Humvee tyres". The company said it was using salaried and temporary workers to keep the Kansas plant running. It has taken similar measures at other plants, as well as stepping up imports from overseas factories to maintain supplies to the car and truck industry. The union claims that the strikebound plants are running at about 20 per cent of capacity. Goodyear has said that North American output is at about half normal levels, including non-union plants. According to Mr Hunter, the army is exploring a possible injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act to force the 200 Kansas workers back to their jobs. He proposed that they return under their current terms of employment, on the understanding that any settlement would be extended to them. Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16226231/
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Feb 15, 2007 16:54:38 GMT 4
Cheney asks manufacturers to push free trade Vice president sees tough battle with Democrat-controlled CongressUpdated: 1:47 p.m. ET Feb 14, 2007 WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday urged the nation’s top manufacturers to lobby Congress in what he says will be a difficult battle to extend trade promotion authority to President Bush.This authority, which expires on July 1, allows the president to negotiate trade agreements that must be considered by Congress on an expedited basis that bars any amendments. “I think it’s going to be a tough fight,” Cheney said in a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers. “We’re strongly supportive of it. It’s very important for us to continue to have that authority, but we’re going to need help on Capitol Hill.” Cheney said the president would veto legislation that would make it easier to form unions. Labor activists have said they believe they can get the Employee Free Choice Act through the Democratically controlled Congress. But they have acknowledged that it might not be signed into law under the current administration, and Cheney affirmed their fear.The legislation would require formation of a union after a majority of workers signs an authorization card. Under current law, 30 percent of workers can request an election to form a union, a process that usually takes from six weeks to six months, said AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff. Currently, a company would have to agree to allow a union to be formed based on a majority signing an authorization card. The proposal, which comes up for a vote on Wednesday in the House Education and Labor Committee, would also impose stronger penalties on employers who violate labor laws, and allow for arbitration to settle first contract disputes. Leading business lobbies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce oppose the legislation, saying workers should be allowed to vote on forming a union by secret ballot, rather than signing a card or petition. In his brief speech, which was followed by a question-and-answer session, the vice president said the administration was making inroads on a dispute over China’s currency policy. U.S. manufacturers contend the Chinese yuan is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, making Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and U.S. products more expensive in China. Cheney called on the Democratic Congress to make tax cuts permanent, saying it’s time for skeptics to acknowledge that tax relief has driven U.S. economic growth.* He pushed the president’s energy, immigration and health care initiatives that were outlined in last month’s State of the Union address, and pledged to work with Congress to reduce the use of earmarks — a common Capitol Hill practice of slipping pet projects into spending bills. [*yes, economic growth for the rich!...Michelle]The group of businessmen were especially receptive to his comments on trade. [I'll bet they were!]Bush makes fresh pitch for free-trade policiesThe administration won passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement in 2005. But, Cheney said, it was one of the hardest votes he has been involved in during his six years as vice president. The 217-215 House vote on CAFTA showed how tough it has become to get a trade deal through Congress. It required personal appearances on Capitol Hill by Bush and Cheney and — with Democrats united in opposition — some arm-twisting of wavering Republicans to avert what would have been a devastating defeat. [CAFTA has given corporations greater ability to ride roughshod over citizens to do as they please....take your land, pollute your land, air, and water, take away alternative health treatments so you can only buy their pharmaceuticals, and so on.... it also has been detrimental to the poor in Central and South America; it aims to keep them in poverty in order to be able to churn out cheap products to produce...of course, manufacture's savings in costs isn't really being passed on to the consumer...their profits are huge. BUY FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS where ever you can, folks]“Our ability to move forward and to continue to advance the trade agenda that we’ve had in the past is dependent on having trade promotion authority extended,” Cheney said. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17149513/
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 24, 2007 11:35:56 GMT 4
Bush Poised to Veto Long-Sought Labor Reform By Joshua Holland AlterNet.org Monday 23 April 2007 For years, companies have been keeping workers from exercising their legal rights to organize and exacerbating America's income and wealth inequality. A new bill could help reverse that trend, but does it stand a chance against Bush's veto pen? One of the most important bills for working Americans of the last 10 years is likely to go down in defeat, even though Democrats control Congress. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is an anti-union-busting measure that would restore the right to form unions, a right working people have enjoyed mostly on paper since the "Reagan revolution" stacked the deck against workers trying to organize. The House passed the bill last month, but it's widely expected to be defeated in the Senate, and if it does survive, it will almost certainly fall to George Bush's veto pen.
If EFCA is defeated, it will carry little or no political cost, largely because America's corporatocracy has done a bang-up job of framing the debate. A coalition of big business groups conducted a wildly misleading poll, one that gave respondents the (false) idea that the bill will diminish rather than protect workers' rights - specifically, their right to a fair vote about whether to unionize. They've taken that spin and synchronized it across the whole of the conservative communications infrastructure - from business-funded think tanks to right-wing blogs, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to lawmakers walking the halls of Congress. But while the right's rhetoric has been in perfect lockstep, the bill's been pushed almost exclusively by organized labor, with too little outreach to the broader progressive movement and little in the way of a coordinated and effective message. As a result, the media's characterized it as a "union bill" - which plays to the idea that it's driven by "special interests" - and it's likely to die a quiet death with little notice among the general public. Given the Democratic control of Congress and the debilitated state of working America, this is a tragedy. The need for reform is urgent. Union busting has reached a high art form in the United States. Companies no longer need thugs and gun-toting Pinkertons to keep workers from exercising their legal rights to organize; now they have high-priced, Armani-wearing lawyers, who simply brainwash workers into silence. The tactics are as subtle as they are insidious. A study by Cornell University labor scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner found that: nine in 10 employers facing a union campaign force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent train supervisors on how to attack unions and require them to deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee; half of employers threaten to shut down the plant if workers organize; and three out of four hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, "often based on mass psychology and distorting the law." Increasingly, cunning forms of intimidation are often enough to produce a "no" vote. If organizers manage to get and win a vote among workers to unionize, management is able to dispute the outcome, and the case can drag on, often for years. While it's pending, pro-union workers lose their jobs: A study published this year (PDF) by economists John Schmidt and Ben Ziperrer found that "almost one in five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign." That's illegal - workers are guaranteed the right to organize - but since the Reagan administration gutted U.S. labor protections, companies that cross the line pay modest penalties that can be written off as part of the cost of remaining union-free. The result has been predictable: Between 1975 and 2004, the rate of union workers in the private sector fell by almost two thirds (PDF). In 2000, only one in seven American employees were covered by a collective bargaining agreement, while two-thirds of all workers in the rest of world's highly advanced economies enjoyed that protection. The decline in union membership can account, at least in part, for exploding income and wealth inequality. As economist Dean Baker writes in his new book, "The United States Since 1980," in the 20 years following the election of Ronald Reagan, "the share of national income that went to the richest 5 percent of families rose by more than one-third ... [while] the share of income going to the poorest 20 percent of the population fell by more than 25 percent." A stronger labor movement would go a long way towards reversing that trend. Unionized workers earn 15 percent more than their non-union counterparts, have more vacation time and are more likely to have employer-funded pensions and health insurance (PDF). A strong labor movement isn't only vital for union members; labor's decline over the past three decades is at least partially to blame for American workers' loss of benefits and job security, for a dysfunctional immigration system, for the near absence of family and medical leave and for the easy passage of NAFTA-style corporate investment deals, despite Americans' widespread unhappiness with their outcomes. Healthy unions lift up all working people; economists have long discussed the "union threat effect" - that employers offer higher pay and better benefits to workers who don't belong to a union in order to keep them from joining one. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is simple: It beefs up penalties for employers who violate workers' rights under the law, creates a mediation and arbitration system for disputes, and allows workers to form a union if a majority simply sign a card saying they want representation (a summary of the measure can be found here). This bill alone won't reverse the long decline of American labor - union organizers say more is needed to create a truly level playing field - but it would be a huge step in the right direction. EFCA is an enormous threat to the leisure class - in 2004, the share of national income going to workers was the lowest since they started tracking the data in 1929, while corporate profits were at an all-time high - and the campaign they've mounted to kill the measure shows that, regardless of how much George W. Bush's presidency damaged the conservative movement, the Right still has significant advantages in steering the debate. According to "RollCall," "Deep-pocketed corporate lobbying groups have joined together [to kill EFCA], today announcing the launch of a new coalition to coordinate their activities." The industry group, called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, "has the backing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others." The group sponsored a series of ads attacking lawmakers who supported the measure in key House districts and is expected to ratchet up the campaign in the Senate. The coalition's spin makes no mention of beefing up penalties for violating workers' rights or creating new dispute-settlement procedures; instead, they seized on a compelling talking point tailored to America's political culture: That the "card-check" provision of the EFCA does away with the secret ballots that Americans have come to expect when casting their votes. Big Business commissioned a Zogby poll that's dangerously close to the political "push-polls" of campaign infamy. The questions were remarkably dishonest, and the results were what the pollsters and their clients were looking for. Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: "Every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union." Nine out of ten respondents agreed, including 87 percent of Democrats. That's to be expected; the strategy is to depict management's assault on the ability to organize as protecting "workers' rights." Seven out of ten respondents said they'd be less likely to vote for a member of Congress "who voted in favor of taking away a worker's right to have a federally supervised secret ballot election to decide whether to organize a union." Armed with their push-poll, the right's noise machine has been typically disciplined; all corners of the conservative movement are on message: Big Labor wants to do away with secret ballots, and it's pulling the Democrats' strings to make it happen. Perhaps EFCA will defy expectations and become law (you can help out here). If it doesn't, it will be, in part, because progressive institutions - the blogosphere, labor, liberal Democrats - haven't yet developed the kind of close coordination the Right can still muster. Missing is a nice, easy-to-understand alternative narrative - something like: "End the Stalinist election process," or "the Soviets also had secret ballots" - and the infrastructure needed to repeat that message over and over again. Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. Source: www.truthout.org/issues_06/042307LA.shtml------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tell Your U.S. Senators to Support the Employee Free Choice Act America’s middle class is disappearing, good jobs are vanishing and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach. To get ahead economically, working people need the freedom to choose for themselves whether to join together in unions to bargain for better wages and benefits. But the current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken. Corporations routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire workers for trying. The Employee Free Choice Act would change that by restoring workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain—without management interference. The legislation would strengthen penalties for companies that coerce or intimidate workers, establish mediation and binding arbitration when the employer and workers cannot agree on a first contract and enable workers to form unions when a majority signs union authorization cards. Please sign the petition below to urge your U.S. senators to support the Employee Free Choice Act.
Send this petition to: Your Senators I am signing this petition to urge you to support the Employee Free Choice Act. Working people are struggling to make ends meet these days, and our middle class is disappearing. The best opportunity for working people to get ahead economically is to unite and bargain with our employers for better wages, benefits and working conditions. But the current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken. Corporations routinely block workers' freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing workers. The Employee Free Choice Act would restore workers' freedom to make our own choice about whether to have a union and bargain for a better life--without interference from management. The legislation, which the House has passed, would: * Strengthen penalties for companies that coerce or intimidate workers; * Establish mediation and binding arbitration when the employer and workers cannot agree on a first contract; and * Enable workers to form unions when a majority signs union authorization cards. Today, CEOs get contracts that protect their pay and benefits--but they fight tooth and nail to keep workers from having the same opportunity. As a result, good jobs are vanishing and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach. Only 38 percent of the public say their families are getting ahead financially, and less than a quarter believe the next generation will be better off. I urge you to support the Employee Free Choice Act to give working families an opportunity for a better life, to level the playing field for workers and employers and to help rebuild America's middle class. Signed by: [Your name] [Your address] Go to: www.unionvoice.org/campaign/EFCAsenate
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michelle
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Post by michelle on May 21, 2007 8:50:58 GMT 4
Big banana firms paid off terrorists, Colombian ex-warlord tells inquiry In testimony to investigators, Salvatore Mancuso named multinationals Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole as having made regular payments to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union. Call me bananas but.... if funding/supporting terrorists is covered under the USA Patriot Act, shouldn't the CEOs of Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole be thrown a military tribunal party at Guantanamo Bay?As in former times, a privileged class never surrenders its tyranny, neither can it be expected that the capitalists of this age will give up their rulership without being forced to do it....
From the manifesto drawn up for an anarchist congress which took place in Pittsburgh, PA in 1883And thus the merry war---the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears goes on, and it will go on brothers and sisters, forever, unless you, the consumer, stop it, end it, crush it out. BOYCOTT Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole; write them and tell them why you refuse to buy any of their products....send them this article........MichelleBig banana firms paid off terrorists, Colombian ex-warlord tells inquiryDARCY CROWE IN BOGOTA, COLOMBIA SOME of the world's best-known banana firms financed right-wing Colombian militias that killed thousands of people during a decade-long reign of terror, a jailed warlord has claimed. In testimony to investigators, Salvatore Mancuso named multinationals Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole as having made regular payments to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union. Mancuso, once second-in-command of the AUC, did not specify why the companies paid the militias, but the illegal groups often exacted "war taxes" from businesses and ranchers in areas where they operated. Wealthy landowners and drug traffickers created the paramilitaries in the early 1980s to protect them from rebel extortion and kidnapping but the groups have since largely degenerated into murderous gangs. They were also union busters, and killed hundreds of labour rights activists. Colombia's prosecutor's office estimates the paramilitaries left at least 10,000 bodies in mass graves. The AUC has been recognised as a "foreign terrorist organisation" by the US government since 2001. Jesus Vargas, a lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence who was at the hearing, said Mancuso told investigators that "each one paid one cent for each box of bananas they exported". The press was barred from the hearing but Mancuso's lawyer, Hernando Benavides, confirmed his client's testimony. A spokesman for US-based Dole Food denied the accusation. "Recent press accounts implicating Dole with illegal organisations in Colombia are absolutely untrue," Marty Ordman said. No one was available for comment at other fruit companies that operate in Colombia. However, Chiquita Brands International has acknowledged paying the paramilitaries $1.7 million (£862,000) over six years under a deal with the US justice department. The company also paid a fine of $25 million (£12.7 million). Chiquita says the payments were made to protect its workers, but Colombia's chief prosecutor has said companies that made such payments shared the responsibility for paramilitary murders. Trade unions and human rights activists say Colombian firms and multinationals routinely paid paramilitaries to act as union busters, killing labour leaders and making the country the most dangerous in the world for organised labour officials. The AUC were formed in April 1997 to consolidate many local and regional paramilitary groups in Colombia. They were estimated to have as many as 20,000 fighters. Backers claimed their primary objective was to protect sponsors and supporters from insurgents whose activities, included kidnap, murder and extortion, because the Colombian state failed to do so. However, senior AUC officials have admitted that as much as 70 per cent of their earnings were drug-related. Mancuso, who is testifying as part of a peace deal with the government, also accused Colombians beverage giants Postobon and Bavaria of paying "taxes" to the paramilitaries in return for permission to operate along the Atlantic coast, long a stronghold of the illegal militia. Mr Vargas, a lawyer for the Mothers of the Candelaria - which represents victims of paramilitary terror, said Mancuso alleged that high-ranking executives of both companies were aware of the payments, which began in the 1990s. Bavaria denied the claim. This article: thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=778332007Last updated: 18-May-07 00:44 BST------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a telling older piece on Chiquita. If they aren't a terrorist organisation, what is? AND, guess what family they have links to? I ain't beatin' around the BUSH; check the comment to this article at the end....MHonduran Leaders Murdered by Chiquita Subsidiaryauthor: DOGSPOT CESAR VIRGILIO PINOT never made it to the community meeting. He was attacked by the private elite security forces of the Tela Railroad Company, armed with AK47s...One year later: Is there justice in Honduras? Honduras is one of the most impoverished countries in the americas: kept poor by well organized death squads that thrived under the protection of former US Ambasador John Negroponte. Large corporations like Chiquita Brands also thrive here, and their interests extend far beyond the banana plantations as they maintain an absolute hedgemony over resources including every thing from palm oil to... gold mining. The following story is a typical vignette: and it most likely remains unresolved today, kept carefully out of mainstream press. Alert: Activist Killed in Honduras Chiquita Subsidiary Security Guards Kill Activist in Honduras! Send your urgent appeals to authorities in Honduras and the US!April 7, 2004 Information for this alert provided by Rights Action [www.rightsaction.org]. On March 13, 2004, CESAR VIRGILIO PINOT was shot and killed by the private security forces of the Tela Railroad Company in the palm plantation Toloa Empalme, municipality of Tela, department of Atlantida, Honduras. The plantation is owned by Agro Oriental - a palm oil production unit until last year owned by the Tela Railroad Company, which is a subsidiary of the US-based multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International, Inc - through which one has to pass in order to reach the communities of Kilometro 32, La Tomasa, Villafranca and La Union.Inhabitants of these 4 communities are organized in an Association of Independent Palm Producers, allowing them to obtain better prices for their product and to work and to maintain their independence from the transnational corporation.Virgilio was on his way to the community of Kilometro 32 to participate in a community meeting to address the impacts of mining on the environment and the numerous mining concessions owned by transnational mining companies in the departments of Yoro and Atlantida, as well as across the country. The 'Martires de Guaymas' cooperative has recently been involved in organizing and raising awareness about the dangers of open pit mines using cyanide solution extraction methods on human health and the environment, part of growing opposition movement in different regions of Honduras. CESAR VIRGILIO PINOT never made it to the community meeting. He was attacked by the private elite security forces of the Tela Railroad Company, armed with AK47s (illegal weapons for private individuals, including private security companies). Another Martires de Guaymas member, who heard the shooting and came to see what was going on, JOSE NEPTALY LOPEZ, was shot twice in the leg and subsequently captured. Although the closest police post is Tela, 2 hours away - the time it usually takes for police to transport themselves to the community - police agents arrived at the site only 15 minutes after the attack began. The following day, national police agents - accompanied by members of the same private security force, more accurately known in the region as 'paramilitaries' - entered the house of OSMAN ALEXANDER BLANCO DUARTE, whom they arrested along with WILTON RENE BLANCO DUARTE and ANTONIO BAQUEDANO RAMO, who were also present. All three are independent palm producers from the communities of Kilometro 32 and Villafranca and are also Martires de Guaymas members. The four detainees were originally admitted into police custody, originally for the homicide of Virgilio, according to national police records. At the same time, however, the police put out a public communique announcing that a cattle rancher from the region had died, but that the motives of the crime were unknown. Also, individuals from the paramilitary force admitted to killing Virgilio, although they claimed that it was an act of self-defense, that they had been ambushed. These individuals were not required to testify; instead, DGIC (Criminal Investigation) agents testified about the declarations of these individuals, while protecting their identities. The self-declared killers were only ever identified as Marzo 13, Marzo 14 and Marzo 15. Although there were differing stories about the murder, no case file was opened, nor was an autopsy performed, although both are routine procedures for all homicide cases in the region. In fact, Virgilio's body virtually disappeared for over a week; authorities denied all knowledge of his whereabouts until 10 days later when they admitted to Virgilio's family that the body had been buried in the general cemetery in Tela. Meanwhile, the accusations against the prisoners had changed. They have been charged by public prosecutor JACOBO DE JESUS ERAZO with 'illicit association,' more commonly known as the 'anti-gang law,' reformed last year to give police and judicial authorities almost unbridled power to determine who is guilty of this 'illicit association,' without requiring concrete proof of any other crime. The reformed law clearly violates several constitutional guarantees and is currently being challenged on this basis. A further arrest was made on March 18th, when JOSE MEDARDO REYES MONDOZA was detained for the same charge. The five are accused of belonging to a band of car thieves, armed with AK47s, who rob, assault and terrorize the local population. The local population, however, has shown their complete support for the political prisoners. Community organizations, local authorities and even political party candidates have come forward to attest to their honesty, innocence and leadership. The judge, however, accused the defense - Martires de Guaymas activist and lawyer Marcelino Martinez - of orquestrating the show of community support and ordered the detention of the five prisoners until trial. On the other hand, national and international attention and pressure seems to have made some headway. On March 26th, an arrest warrant was ordered for one of the company security agents involved in the murder, JOSE CAYETANO VARGAS, who was detained. State authorities also announced an 'independent' investigation into the case. Prospects for an objective investigation or the impartial application of justice, however, continue to look rather bleak. Events to date have shown that authorities from different police and judicial institutions have worked to cover up the case instead of investigate it. DEMONSTRATE YOUR SOLIDARITY It is clear that repression and manipulation continues in this case. Please send urgent appeals to Honduran government authorities, as well as to your diplomatic representatives, demanding: - that an exhaustive and impartial investigation be conducted into the death of CESAR VIRGILIO PINOT, and that those found responsible be brought to justice; - that a similar investigation be conducted into the actions of national police agents and criminal investigation (DGIC) agents involved in the case, as well as of public prosecutor JACOBO DE JESUS ERAZO, and that all those found guilty of abuse of authority be removed from their positions; - that JOSE NEPTALY LOPEZ, OSMAN ALEXANDER BLANCO DUARTE, WILTON RENE BLANCO DUARTE, ANTONIO BAQUEDANO RAMOS and JOSE MEDARDO REYES MONDOZA be freed; - that repression cease against Martires de Guaymas members, in particular MARCELINO MARTINEZ ESPINAL, as well as against the communities of Kilometro 32, Villafranca, La Tomasa and La Union. SEND COPIES TO: Martires de Guaymas/COPINH, marcelinomartinezespinal@yahoo.es AND copinhonduras@yahoo.es. fax: (504) 783-0817 HONDURAS AMBASSADOR TO USA, Mario Canahuati, 3007 Tilden Street, NW, Suite 4M, Washington, DC 20008, T: 202-966-7702, F: 202-966-9751, E: embassy@hondurasembassy.org CHIQUITA BRANDS INTERNATIONAL CORP, 250 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202, T: 513-784-8000. To send an email to Chiquita Brands, go to and follow instructions as to how to email them directly. HONDURAS EMBASSY IN CANADA, T: 613-233-8900, F: 613-232-0193, E: embhonca@magma.ca HONDURAN MISSION TO UNITED NATIONS: 866 UN Plaza Suite 417 New York, NY 10017, T: 212-752-3370, e: m.suazo@worldnet.att.net CANADIAN AMBASSADOR FOR HONDURAS, Louise Leger, 3d Floor, Bulevar San Juan Bosco, Colonia Payaqui,Tegucigalpa,Honduras, t: (011 504) 232 4551, f: (011 504) 239 7767, tglpa@dfait-maeci.gc.ca , USA AMBASSADOR TO HONDURAS, Larry Palmer, 011 [504] 236-9320 / 238-5114, Fax. (504) 236-9037 Vilma Cecilia Morales, Honduran Supreme Court President, f: 011 [504] 233-6784 (or 7921) Ricardo Maduro, President of Honduras, f: 011 [504] 221-4552 Dr. Oscar Alvarez, Minister of Security, f: 011 [504] 220-4352 DOGSPOT homepage: americas.electromagnet.usadd a comment on this articleOK! that does it for me...I'm on a 11.Apr.2005 16:35 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- boycott of CHIQUITA brand link banana's and anything else they market. Safeway & Fred Meyer has sales this week, so let's vote with our pocketbook and tell these Korporate ameriKan Kapitalist we don't approve of such wantonly evil tactics by letting their shit rot in the bins! It won't take long for CHIQUITA to get the fucking "message", for that stuff they sell is highly time sensitive and it not like they can put back in the warehouse and bring it back out to try to sell again when the boycott has blown over...so, it is now time to boycott all things with the CHIQUITA brand labal on it...now is the time>>>what do we do>>>>boycott CHIQUITA brands! I haven't finished with "Chiquita Brands" yet.....you'll want to yell BOYCOTT!! 11.Apr.2005 17:26 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- roknich link (1)they (Chiquita Brands) visited my site via a google: searching for a journalist who was driven out of Columbia by the type of death squads THEY USE to remove foes and gain territory
(2)they (Chiquita Brands) are operating with impunity in Honduras to eliminate foes of mining projects linked to THE BUSH FAMILY (who else?) and also to prevent communities to organize and sell their products in a "fair trade" environment. Negroponte pioneered this during the contra era, and now is is the most powerful "intelligence" director the US has had: bia a power grab similar to that made by George HW Bush under Gerald Ford in the wake of the Church committee hearings!!!
(3)they (Chiquita Brands) used to be called United Fruit Company, the insiration for the CIA coup against Arbenz w subsequent genocide: United Fruit Company was purchased by Zapata Offshore: a company founded by George HW Bush and used as a CIA front. When HW became VP, he destroyed all records of Zapata from 1960-1966. They were a lynchpin in the US coup d etat.
(4)they (Chiquita Brands)obtain land in Columbia through terrorism against indigenous people, which has accelerated under Bush's friend Velez, whose main business was not bananas. need I say more? -dave Source: portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/04/315309.shtml
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