Salon.com > AFL-CIO

Safety inspections in U.S. supply chains a “facade”

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:14:00 +0000

A new 60-page report from the AFL-CIO condemns corporate-funded auditing programs, which are intended to assess working conditions along the supply chains of major American companies. According to the scathing review, auditors enable corporations to run factories in places like Pakistan, Indonesia, China and Latin America with poor, unsafe working conditions, while paying low wages. The audits, says the report, are a "facade" that provide "public relations cover for producers whose disregard for health and safety has cost hundreds of lives."

Via the report, titled "Responsibility Outsourced":

The failure of governments to protect workers’ rights in the global economy has left a yawning gap of regulation and helped spawn an $80 billion industry in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social auditing. yet the experience of the last two decades of “privatized regulation” of global supply chains has eerie parallels with the financial self-regulation that failed so spectacularly in 2007 and plunged the world into deep and lasting recession...

Many of the best-established CSR brands, such as the Fair Labor Association and Social Accountability International, are funded by big corporations and sometimes even by government subsidy. This report shows how the overwhelming influence of the company bottom line has dominated the agendas of the FLA, SAI and similar groups, while the workers who are supposed to benefit from CSR have been marginalized or altogether ignored.

The fact that a garment factory in Pakistan could get SAI certification based on some phone calls and some meetings outside Pakistan, and yet be so dangerous that a September 2012 fire killed nearly 300 workers, should have led to a complete overhaul of the CSR industry. But there is no sign the root and branch reform needed will actually happen. All the indications are that it is business as usual for CSR.

Can immigration reform save the American workforce?

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:39:00 +0000

Their agreement on is very preliminary and hasn’t yet even been blessed by the so-called Gang of Eight Senators working on immigration reform, but the mere fact that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue agreed on anything is remarkable.

The question is whether it’s a good deal for American workers. It is, and I’ll explain why in a moment.

Under the agreement (arrived at last weekend) a limited number of temporary visas would be issued to foreign workers in low-skilled occupations, who could thereafter petition to become American citizens.

The agreement is an important step toward a comprehensive immigration reform package to be introduced in the Senate later this month. Disagreement over allowing in low-skilled workers helped derail immigration reform in 2007.

The unions don’t want foreign workers to take jobs away from Americans or depress American wages, while business groups obviously want the lowest-priced workers they can get their hands on.

So they’ve compromised on a maximum (no more than 20,000 visas in the first year, gradually increasing to no more than 200,000 in the fifth and subsequent years), with the actual number in any year depending on labor market conditions, as determined by the government. Priority would be given to occupations where American workers were in short supply.

Your iPhone kills jobs

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Today, workers trying to eat cheap at lunch order dollar pizza slices. But a few decades ago, they might have dined at an automat -- cafeterias with rows of coin-operated food displays between the dining room and kitchen. Meals were cheap, usually a nickel.

The customers saved, but the workers paid. Behind the glass, cooks and dishwashers often had to work 12-hour shifts at below average wages. Tensions simmered until 1937, when several shops representing anywhere between 500 and more than 1,000 workers lined up behind the AFL-CIO and won a unionization vote.

The automat workers faced a lot of the same challenges as other service workers at the time, but with one major spin: total invisibility. Without a front-of-house, the automat workers became unsympathetic toilers, not unlike the wretched underclass portrayed in Fritz Lang’s film "Metropolis."

Your vacation is unethical

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:45:00 +0000

Spring break is almost upon us, and you know what that means: It's easy to feel guilty.

To begin with, any time you fly anywhere for the fun of it, the resultant carbon spillage pollutes your friendship with the environment. As somebody who has been writing about travel for most of the last 20 years, I’m more guilty in this area than most. And the idea of buying offsets doesn't make me feel any less responsible. Instead, I tell myself that by traveling we widen our minds, and as Americans abroad, we might be helping spread wealth and perhaps bringing home a lesson or two.

But that means paying attention when you plan a trip, and understanding where your money is going, what the local labor laws are, and how American tourism dollars might do some good. Some trips make me feel less guilty than others, and that's usually because I've done some easy homework before leaving home.

Let's start right here: If you’re sleeping in a hotel, any hotel, and not tipping the maid $2 a night or more, you’re not entitled to complain about anybody’s exploitation of anybody anywhere. Wherever you are in the world, Detroit to Djibouti, you can be sure that generously tipping the maid is going to help the working poor get richer. There are no political complications, no middle man, just you, your wallet, the top of the dresser, and the person who will be dusting that dresser-top in an hour or two.

The art of labor

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

The video is brought to you by the AFL-CIO. To read the other stories in this series, click here.

Despite the common stereotype that unions only serve workers in manufacturing, construction and service industries, organized labor has a long history protecting the livelihoods of artists and performers. Jennifer Mondie, a veteran violist with the National Symphony Orchestra, puts it succintly: "There's no way I could be half the artist I am without the support of the union."

In the video above, Mondie explains how being a member of the American Federation of Musicians allows her to excel at her craft -- and she shares some beautiful music, as well.

Sweatshops still make your clothes

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:36:00 +0000

It’s been 16 years since Charles Kernaghan made Kathie Lee Gifford cry on national television, revealing that her Wal-Mart-sold clothing line was produced by Honduran children working 20-hour shifts. It was an essential moment in bringing labor conditions in the developing world -- specifically in the garment industry -- to the attention of the American public.

But not that much has changed. Looking back on the movement and its achievements in an interview, Kernaghan sounds defeated, even as he reels off the list of horrific factories exposed by his Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.

Kernaghan’s gloomy mood stems from the report he is writing now on a recent trip to Northern Bengal, where the Institute secretly met with workers from the Rosita and Megatex factories to follow up on a previous exposé. The two factories produce expensive sweaters for an array of European apparel companies, companies which assure their customers that the workers are guaranteed the core rights established by the International Labor Organization (ILO), including freedom of association and the elimination of child labor.

Can unions save the creative class?

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:25:00 +0000

Being a musician is a good job, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to go broke doing it. --David Byrne

They’re just for hard hats. They peaked around the time Elvis was getting big. They killed Detroit. They’ve got nothing to do with you or me. They’re a special interest – and they hate our freedom.

That’s the kind of noise you pick up in 21st century America – in politics and popular culture alike – when you tune your station to the issue of trade unions. Union membership, and ensuing muscle, have been in steep decline in both the public and private sectors. Just look at Wisconsin’s “right to work” push, the anti-teachers union “reform” movement, corporate union-busting, P.R. “messaging” firms hired by management to smear striking workers, hostility from the Republican right and indifference from a Democratic Party that’s reoriented itself around professionals and Silicon Valley.

Restaurant horror show: How waitstaffs are mistreated

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:08:00 +0000

Lynn’s Paradise Cafe in Louisville, Ky., was a monument to the power of kitschy sculptures and loud colors. Coverage in magazines like Bon Appetit and from TV personalities like Oprah and Bobby Flay brought tourists, and tourists ate fare like bourbon ball French toast and Hot Brown sandwiches. Weekend mornings, you could count on the place being packed with people whose idea of a good place for brunch involved a collection of ugly lamps and $13 Bloody Marys.

But then in January, a former server named Leila DiFazio accused Lynn’s management of firing her over a new policy that paid servers credit card tips on their paychecks rather than in cash at the end of the night, and required waiters to bring $100 cash to work every day to share tips with untipped staff members. DiFazio refused to comply.

“Bringing in $100 each shift is unrealistic for me because I am [a] single mother of a 2 and a half year-old-boy,” DiFazio wrote on the website of an organization called Kentucky Jobs With Justice, part of the national group Jobs with Justice.

LeBron James might improve your pension

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:00:00 +0000

John Montgomery Ward was a pioneering baseball star: In 1880, he became the second pitcher ever to hurl a perfect game. Ward was also a lawyer who was the first to recognize that the reserve clause embedded within each contract bound players to the teams that signed them -- and that gave team owners an enormous, inherent advantage over players that lasted for decades.

"In the enactment of the reserve-rule the clubs were probably influenced by three considerations," wrote Ward in a seminal essay titled "Is the Base-Ball Player a Chattel?" in 1887. "They wished to make the business of base-ball more permanent, they meant to reduce salaries, and they sought to secure a monopoly of the game."

"Chattel" was entirely appropriate because, for much of the 20th century, baseball players and other professional athletes were among the most exploited labor forces in the United States. Team owners dictated artificially low salaries; benefits (pension, medical care and the like) were inadequate. Athletes did not employ agents nor have an organized, certified union to represent their rights, on and off the field.

Will Obama cave on Social Security?

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0000

A top official at the nation’s largest union federation slammed a Social Security cut proposal that’s been floated by President Obama, but stopped short of calling it a deal-breaker in the next round of budget wars.

“We remain strongly opposed” to chained CPI, AFL-CIO government affairs director Bill Samuel told Salon. “It’s a very substantial benefit cut.”

“Chained CPI” is a proposed alternative method of calculating cost of living adjustments, which would reduce future increases in Social Security benefits. Samuel said that for many seniors on fixed incomes, even “the current system may not be adequate.” He called the claim that chained CPI could be implemented in a way that would be fair to such retirees “sort of ludicrous.”

Obama has repeatedly touted chained CPI as an aspect of a potential “Grand Bargain” with Republicans to reduce the deficit. In a “Meet the Press” interview aired on Dec. 30, the president highlighted it both as an example of his willingness to make concessions to the GOP and part of his “pursuit of strengthening Social Security for the long-term.”

Unions flexed muscles in state campaigns

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:02:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — From California to Maine, unions used their political muscle in the recent elections to help install Democratic governors, build labor-friendly majorities in state legislatures and defeat ballot initiatives against them.

The combination of union money and member mobilization helped Democrats take control of state legislatures in Maine and Minnesota.

In Michigan, voters repealed a law that allowed cities in financial distress to suspend collective bargaining contracts. But unions lost there on an effort to make collective bargaining rights a part of the state constitution.

In New Hampshire, unions helped Maggie Hassan win the governor's race. Unions spent millions backing Hassan with television ads and an extensive get-out-the-vote operation because she opposes a right-to-work bill to ban labor-management contracts that require affected workers to be union members or pay union fees.

In perhaps their most important victory, unions defeated a California ballot measure that would have prohibited them from collecting money for political purposes through payroll deductions.

Time to march on Washington again for jobs and freedom

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:46:00 +0000

Dear Brother Trumka:

Next year will mark the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Rallied by the great black union leader A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, with the assistance of civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin and UAW president Walter Reuther, 250,000 Americans of every color and creed turned out on the National Mall on August 28, 1963 to demonstrate their support for guaranteeing equal rights and affording “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all Americans. And it is a day that generations will forever remember because of the words spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I have a dream.”

No doubt plans are already underway to commemorate that event. But we who believe in America’s purpose and promise of extending and deepening freedom, equality, and democracy must do more than commemorate it. We must truly honor it. And to do that, we cannot wait until August, 2013.

Labor chief Richard Trumka: “We won’t be taken for granted”

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Unions had a good night last Tuesday. “I think we were the margin in states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada, and probably three or four other ones,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told Salon in a Wednesday interview. In Ohio, said Trumka, AFL-CIO members are 83 percent white. 40 percent are evangelicals, and 53 percent own guns. “And they voted 70 percent for Barack Obama.”

Building on last year’s successful referendum campaign to overturn collective bargaining attacks in Ohio, the AFL-CIO racked up 80,000 volunteer shifts and 2 million voter contacts in the state. An all-out labor effort also helped deliver victory for labor stalwarts like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin. While unions’ effort to write collective bargaining rights into Michigan’s constitution fell flat, they beat back well-funded anti-union measures in Michigan and California that their enemies would love to take national.