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News :: Labor |
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Labor Headlines 1-17-04 |
Current rating: 2 |
by Peter Miller
(No verified email address) |
17 Jan 2004
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Headlines broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 am on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. Globalization Abuses: Let the Market Solve the Problem, ICFTU Condemns US Labor Rights Record, Southern California Grocery Strike Drags On, Wal-Mart in a Heap of Trouble, Study Concludes Tech Wages & Jobs Decline as Offshoring Continues |
Globalization Abuses: Let the Market Solve the Problem
In the debate on globalization and its abuses of the environment and workers, a group of business leaders and non-governmental organizations are saying, "let the market solve the problem." A report released by a study group whose members include corporate executives from Starbucks and Levi-Strauss, as well as representatives of Oxfam America, the AFL-CIO, and the Sierra Club says that the US government can do more to bring transparency to global trade practices, allowing consumers to decide whether to buy products or not. The group says that existing federal policies send mixed signals. One example cited in the Washington Post story is the government forbids use of certain pesticides in the United States because they are hazardous to workers or the environment, but the government permits importation of fruit and vegetables grown overseas with the assistance of those same chemicals. The idea put forward in the plan is to require disclosure of practices, allowing market forces to help drive companies to act responsibly. Now, many companies are willing to take the competitive advantage that may come with practices that are inhumane or pollute the environment because few Americans know about the practices and the companies may not be held liable for them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8314-2004Jan11.html
http://www.workersrights.org/
http://www.usasnet.org/
ICFTU Condemns US Labor Rights Record
In a related story, a new report on labor conditions in the US denounces a serious record of continuing labor rights violations involving some of the world’s best-known companies such as Wal-Mart. The report, from the world’s largest trade union body, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, has been produced to coincide with the January 14-16 WTO review of the trade policies of the US. The United States has ratified just two of the eight core labor standards of the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) -- one of the worst rates of ratification in the world. The ICFTU report notes the many limitations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) which excludes many categories of workers from the right to union representation and collective bargaining, including agricultural workers, domestic workers, supervisors, and independent contractors. Only 40% of all public sector workers have the right to bargain collectively. The report also notes that enforcement of existing rights is both limited and ineffective, allowing employers to regularly break labor laws and limiting the right of workers to strike. Child labor and forced labor also remain problems in the United States, according to the report.
http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991218864&Language=EN
Southern California Grocery Strike Drags On
A grocery store strike involving 70,000 workers in Southern and Central California appears no closer to resolution, three months after the strike began. The Los Angeles Times reported last Monday that secret talks between the United Food and Commercial Workers and three supermarket companies ended with little progress. Spokespeople say the talks were planned to build some common ground before resuming negotiations with a federal mediator. During the last formal negotiating session a few days before Christmas, the union reluctantly offered what its leaders called major concessions -- a bitter pill that they agreed to swallow in hopes it might end the deadlock. Instead, the grocery chains rebuffed the offer. There were no negotiations over the holidays, normally one of the busiest and most profitable seasons for supermarkets. The LA Times examined the issues in the dispute. Health care tops the list, with the union wanting to maintain benefits, and the supermarkets wanting to limit their costs, forcing employees to pick up added expenses. Currently, the employees have almost no out-of-pocket medical expenses. On wages, the companies want to lower wages to be closer to those paid by Wal-Mart and Target. They aim to get there, in large part, by introducing a lower pay scale for new employees. Union leaders don't buy it. They maintain that the grocery chains are financially strong and still growing and that they are seeking to slash labor costs merely to pad their profits. A union spokesperson commented, quote "We have worked for years and years to get our members to where they are. Why should the lowest common denominator be what we use as a gauge of employee compensation?" Employees at the top of the scale earn about $37,000 per year.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=3&u=/latimes_ts/20040112/ts_latimes/3monthsandstillnodeallatestgrocerytalkscollapse
Wal-Mart in a Heap of Trouble
The New York Times reported that an internal audit at Wal-Mart revealed extensive violations of child labor laws and state regulations. The audit which is now under court seal looked at time-clock records over a one week period for about 25,000 employees found 1,400 instances in which minors worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day. It also found 61,000 apparent instances of workers not taking breaks, and 16,000 apparent instances of employees working through meal times. The Times said there are more than 40 current lawsuits charging Wal-Mart with making employees work without pay through lunch and rest breaks. Meanwhile, on January 12, the United Food and Commercial Workers issued a press release announcing that Wal-Mart will have to defend itself before a National Labor Relations Board judge on charges of illegal intimidation, harassment, and retaliation against workers involved in a union organizing campaign. The hearing will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, where workers have been working to organize a union at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club for the past three years. A former Wal-Mart Supercenter produce clerk in Nevada, was fired after giving testimony to the NLRB and spending two of his vacation days to speak alongside Democratic presidential candidates in a forum on health care at the UFCW Convention in San Francisco in August 2003. His dismissal followed a well-documented track record of intimidation and coercion at the Supercenter. The NLRB will hear testimony on charges that Wal-Mart managers: Prohibited employees from talking about the union and distributing information in break rooms and on store property; Made employees feel that they were under surveillance for union activities; Asked employees to spy on co-workers on behalf of the company; Refused to allow union representatives on the property; Confiscated union literature from employees and threatened workers with reprisals for accepting literature; Asked the police to remove union organizers from the property; And illegally fired Larry Allen for his pro-union support.
http://www.ufcw.org/press_room/index.cfm?pressReleaseID=76
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040113/ts_nm/retail_walmart_dc_1
Study Concludes Tech Wages & Jobs Decline as Offshoring Continues
A Connecticut salary research group said on Wednesday that as more companies move their information technology work to low-wage foreign countries, salaries for many IT jobs in the US have fallen, and the trend is expected to continue. Overall, the premium paid for technology workers who have specific skills dropped by nearly 25 percent between 2001 and 2003. The pay for certification in particular skills dropped 11 percent. The survey company found that while the general economic downturn contributed to salary deflation, outsourcing pushed compensation down even further. In a yearlong study of 400 Fortune 1000 companies, researchers found that by 2006, the organizations expected from 35 percent to 45 percent of their current full-time IT jobs to go to workers overseas. The exodus of jobs has caused U.S. salaries in many IT areas to plummet, including application development and maintenance, call centers for tech support and some database work. In general, jobs that are related to implementation of IT strategies are the most severely affected. The report's authors expect the trends to accelerate in coming years.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=74&e=14&u=/cmp/17300972
Chubb Security Fires Striking Workers in E. Timor
Chubb Security in East Timor recently decided (without consultation with their workers) to cut the wages of their East Timorese employees guarding and cleaning the World Bank offices from $US 133 a month to $94 a month. After 8 days of peaceful protest, the 32 workers then began a legal strike on December 3rd 2003. On December 4th, Chubb issued termination letters to the striking workers.
http://www.apheda.org.au/news/1073611986_6128.html |
See also:
http://www.labourstart.org
http://www.lii.uiuc.edu/lii/
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This work is in the public domain |
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Re: Labor Headlines 1-17-04 |
by B
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Jan 2004
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As important as high wages may be to people who have thought their job was safe with some big corporation and no union protection, there are plenty of people out there who do not do the best job and arguing that high tech jobs must be american jobs is a joke. The reality is that in order to succeed in technology, there is also a huge amount of business savvy that is needed. This issue looks like the same kind of dot com bust we saw in 2000. A lot of computer science people also major with a business minor and are making their decisions off of the business ideology. Why not change the argument and just pick a fight with capitalism? Look at the NY Times technology section and you will not see much outside of big business issues. Technical perspectives on this issue are currently more valuable than labor based perspectives, look at slashdot.org's massive ammount of comments on the subject. Here is a comment from an Indian programmer:
Just something about myself - I am an Indian - I head the technology division at my firm based out of India - I am also the lead programmer.
I have worked in programming jobs for over 9 years now.. both within US as well as many other nations across the world. Right now I am living in India.
All I see in this discussion group are rehashed stereotypes. Let me address these;
Misconception 1 - American programmers are better.
Not necessarily. Indian programmers aren't necessarily better either. The averages are about the same. But there are exceptional programmers in both camps and then there are a lot of duds.
Misconception 2 - Indians are not innovative.
One of the aspects of being in a developing world is that budgets for research and development are always very hard to come by.. But not any more. Indian companies are throwing money at research and development now...Everyone here knows that the service industry for pure outsourcing cannot last for ever.. So there is a desire to innovate and get into new areas.. to innovate as much as possible when money is not a problem. This is not just true of India - look at China, see how fast they are innovating .. in all fields. See the number of headlines on Slashdot about new products under development or new ventures being planned. You didn't see this much before, did you?
I have played a lead role in a very large project for an American publishing company - this project would not have had the slightest chance of even taking off the ground if it weren't for our team.
The American end of the programming team was quite antogonistic when we started - had some really racist remarks thrown my way. But within a month, we had won their confidence and I have had multiple mails from the same people about what wonderful work we had done. One of these projects later went on to win a Java Developer Journal award.
PWC was involved in another part of the same project and there was a desire within the American programmers to have PWC thrown out and have us take their place. NOTE: Not from the management but from the programmers. The only reason this didn't happen was because there was an ex-PWC chap in the management team.
I have worked on other projects as well which were being managed and programmed by American teams - which were floundering. Since we have taken over, these companies now have a product they can sell.
This is not to say that we haven't had failures - we have had our share. But please don't make it seem like we are incompetent idiots who can only obey orders and even then do the job badly.
link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/05/1159249&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=156&tid=98&tid=99 |
