Labor is Not a Commodity

Military Coup in Honduras as Obama meets with Colombian Human Rights Violator

By Eva Seidelman, ILRF Program Assistant

A right-wing military coup continued to ravage Honduras yesterday as President Obama met with Latin America's most right-wing president, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia (and one of the only right-winger left in the region) at the White House. As trade union murders climbed last year and continue to remain high, President Obama took a turn from his campaign promise to oppose the FTA with Colombia saying, "I'm confident that ultimately we can strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States."

What's wrong with this picture?

Immigration Rights are a Labor Issue

By Catherine Ammen, Intern, International Labor Rights Forum

Economic crises are one of those times that predictably drum up anti-immigrant fears. The usual charges vary from overwhelmed social services, taking Americans jobs - or for the ambitious immigrant, taking down the economy. Not only are these statements ingenious, they are simply false.

Even though the economic benefit of exploited labor misses the point, these claims are disputed by the Immigration Policy Center with an exhaustive catalog of studies.  Some snapshots include:

• Urban Institute, 2007:  “less than 1 percent of households headed by undocumented immigrants receive cash assistance for needy families, compared to 5 percent of households headed by native-born U.S. citizens.”
• White House Council of Economic Advisers, 2007:  “concluded that immigration increases the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by roughly $37 billion each year.”

The net positive effect on the federal budget could be used to compensate the costs that states incur.  This net positive effect is due, as noted above, to the relatively low use of social services, sales tax  and even social security tax payments – which undocumented workers do not get back. 

Obama: Don't Let Uribe Convince You of Progress in Colombia

By Eva Seidelman, ILRF Program Assistant

Obama has taken the bold step of hosting a White House meeting with the President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe on Monday, June 29th. Uribe will undoubtedly try to convince Obama that Colombia has progressed enough on human rights to deserve the pending Free Trade Agreement signed by President Bush. Many hope Obama will see through Uribe's rhetoric and recognize that human rights issues are getting worse, not better.

The international labor rights and human rights groups, unions and members of Congress have communicated to Obama that he must make harsh demands on Uribe. Today's Boston Globe editorial brings up many important concerns. Obama must address the egregious Watergate-like scandal and evidence that Uribe's administration has ties to the rights wing paramilitaries that have killed thousands of union leaders and activists in the last two decades. There's no evidence that Uribe is making any progress on dismantling paramilitaries: since January of 2008, 70 union leaders have been killed, a higher number than the previous two years.

Fair Expectations: Rainforest Alliance v. Fairtrade

This article was originally published on the website of the Organic Consumers Association here.

By Justin Trauben, Organic Consumers Association

McDonald's, Chiquita, Mars, Wal-Mart, and Kraft apparently now all have products certified "sustainable," sharing, among other things, the little green frog label of the Rainforest Alliance. On the other side of the labeling world, we have Fair Trade, the original product certification initiative aimed at building equitable and sustainable trading partnerships and creating opportunities to alleviate poverty.

Fair Trade and "sustainable" labeling organizations, are private non-profits that have no stockholders, and are therefore not legally obligated to provide information to the public. Combined with the fact that the state lacks the power to ensure that certifiers comply with their own standards, consumers must rely on independent evaluation to assess these labeling initiatives. Can consumers trust that the labels that make our food more expensive actually make a difference?

Moving Toward Transparency in the Electronics Industry

By Tim Newman, Campaigns Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum

ILRF has recently been working with human rights organizations and socially responsibly investors to address a range of abuses occurring in the mining of metals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that are used in many of the electronics products we use here in the US.  Minerals like coltan, cassiterite, wolframite, tungsten and tin are necessary parts of many products like cell phones, iPods, computers, cameras and more, but they are also mined under exploitative labor conditions and the proceeds from the sale of these minerals often ends up funding conflict in the Congo.

In order for electronics companies to institute stronger labor, environmental and human rights standards in the production of the metals they use, it is necessary for the companies to be able to determine the location of the mines these metals come from.  The supply chain can be complex, but some companies are starting to research their metals sourcing more closely.

Fighting for Their Jobs, Eagle Workers & Allies Rally in New Bedford

By Kathryn Rehm and Bonnie Stinson, Interns, SweatFree Communities

The struggle to save a factory in New Bedford, MA began on May 29, 2009 when Minneapolis-based Alliant Techsystems (ATK), under contract with the U.S. Army to produce equipment for soldiers in Eagle Industries’ plant in New Bedford, announced its decision to close the facility and relocate to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. If successful, the plan will eliminate 350 jobs. According to Peter Howe of New England Cable News, “New Bedford faces plenty of other challenges, - crime, poverty, blight, and toxic PCBs in the river north of Route 195 that could take decades more to clean up.” In a town with an already sluggish economy that experienced a mass immigration raid in 2007, the factory shut-down will further increase pressure on the strained New Bedford community.

On June 6, 120 Eagle workers came together in a mass meeting to make plans to save their jobs. A rally on June 9 brought together workers, community allies and political figures to express their support for the efforts currently underway to save the jobs and keep the Army’s MOLLE contract (Modular Lightweight Load-Carrying Equipment) in New Bedford. On June 20, a follow-up meeting was held to continue the fight and provide a space for local politicians and Eagle workers to communicate with and support the community. The Eagle Workers Committee, Workers United, and SweatFree Communities worked together to plan these events.

After My Time At International Labor Rights Forum

By Adriane Chavarria, high school intern, International Labor Rights Forum

As of today I have been a part of ILRF for about 6 months now. My time at ILRF has been great. I’ve learned about a lot of the things that Trina and her co-workers fight for. I learned about many laws that I didn’t know before. I was a junior but now I’m officially a senior at Bell MHS. Becoming this was very hard in a sense that I had to make sure all my work and grades were in tip top shape. I took time away from ILRF because school was getting hectic. While being gone I’ve noticed a change in how I see things.

Chocolate, bitter sweet chocolate; I was never really a fan of chocolate but I do admit to eating it, only now not so much. Every time I see a chocolate bar I think of ILRF. I think and wonder to myself of how this non-profit organization is trying to protect the rights of those who grow this very chocolate. One of my friends, Margarita plays a big role in me having to think so much, which isn’t bad. She loves chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, she loves it all. When she offers me some I sometimes say no only because I wonder where it came from and if I’m eating the chocolate that people have suffered to make.

Africa and the Global Economic Crisis

By Tim Newman, Campaigns Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum

While the global economic crisis began in the US, it is of course affecting people all around the world.  In developing global strategies to address the crisis and institute a just recovery, we need to examine how various groups of people around the world have been impacted by the economic policies that led to the crisis.  Yesterday, I attended a roundtable discussion in DC focused on the impact of the global economic crisis on Africa.

There were a lot of interesting ideas, analysis and solutions discussed.  Keep reading to find out more!

Changing the Economy through Decent Work and Sustainable Jobs

Eva Seidelman, ILRF Program Assistant

The International Labor Organization (ILO) just released its Global Jobs Pact at its annual conference. The pact outlines how promoting decent work and sustainable jobs will lead to a stable economy and pull us out of the economic crisis. Workers in developing countries have been exploited for years but the crisis has made conditions much worse. Unskilled sweatshop and manufacturing workers rarely have the opportunity to pull themselves out of poverty with low-wages and disposable, temporary jobs. Many workers don't have the ability to bargain for better conditions through a union, contributing to a cycle of poverty. 

The ILO Pact explains how radical free market model is unsustainable and will never provide workers with the good jobs needed to lift themselves out of poverty and the economic crisis. A new proposal based on a high-road approach is proposed, instead.

Take action to support Lipton Tea Workers in Pakistan who have seen their jobs become temporary and disposable under this model.

Are Mexican Workers 'stealing our jobs'?

The Crisis in the Mexican Auto Sector

This was first published Maquila Solidarity Network

When the last truck rolled off the assembly line at the General Motors (GM) plant in Oshawa, Ontario on May 14, some workers arrived at the "closure ceremony" wearing sombreros to protest the loss of 1,500 Canadian jobs and the announcement of the opening of new GM plants in Mexico.

"It's not right. They just put the plants in places where people are willing to work for slave wages," one worker was quoted as saying in the Globe and Mail.

Clearly, Canadian auto workers are being unfairly victimized by an economic crisis that they had no role in creating, but the perception that Mexico workers are gaining because of the crisis would appear to be mistaken.

The devastation of the North American auto industry is also being felt in Mexico, a country heavily dependent on exports to the U.S., and where the auto sector employs some 600,000 workers.