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Plays: 12
Ethical Fashion: Is The Tragedy In Bangladesh A Final Straw?
http://n.pr/1067H56Check out this great podcast with Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion on the tragic factory collapse in Bangladesh.
Posted on May 17, 2013 with 1 note
Source: n.pr
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I am fully in support of subsidized state run services, like healthcare and food stamps but its damn time for companies to pay a living wage so their workers are not forced to go on these subsidies when they are fully employed! Social safety networks should not be an excuse for corporations to under pay their workers. It’s time to raise the minimum wage, pay people enough to survive, stop supporting corporate welfare!
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Take Action Today! Check out new economy projects and social justice / labor rights organizing around the country (and around the world) and get involved as a consumer and a citizen:
- Learn: Story of Stuff Project: http://www.storyofstuff.org/
- Climate Action: 350.org: http://350.org/
- Get inspired about new stories of solutions & change: Yes! Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/
- Be a Localist: Business Alliance For Local Living Economies: http://bealocalist.org/
- Opt Out with your Daily Decisions: Personal Divestment: http://personaldivestment.tumblr.com/
- Support Labor Organizing & Social Justice: International Labor Rights Forum: http://www.laborrights.org/
- Promote People Centered Globalization: Global Exchange: http://www.globalexchange.org/
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Happy International Workers’ Day (May Day) Workers around the world deserve fair pay, safe working conditions and the right to unionize!
Today stand in solidarity with Bangladeshi garment workers:
SIGN: this petition from the International Labor Rights Forum: Walmart, H&M and Gap: Do your part to stop the murders of garment workers in Bangladesh http://action.laborrights.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6280
AND this petition from Sum Of Us: Walmart Sign the Bangladesh Fire Safety Agreement http://bit.ly/RnA93Z
DONATE: to the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity http://fundly.com/mxxos2cq OR
https://action.sumofus.org/a/bangladesh-building-collapse/3/2/?sub=homepageWATCH & LISTEN:
- Democracy Now ‘As Bangladesh Toll Hits 400, Calls Grow to Grant Workers the Same Protections as Labels They Make: http://bit.ly/11D2lQk
- Democracy Now ‘Survivor of Bangladesh’s Tazreen Factory Fire Urges US Retailers to Stop Blocking Worker Safety: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/25/survivor_of_bangladeshs_tazreen_factory_fire
- Interview with International Labor Rights Forum’s Liana Foxvog: http://fsrn.org/audio/hundreds-still-missing-bangladesh-building-collapse-calls-rise-accountability-garment-industry
- Interview with the Solidarity Center’s Tim Ryan & Richard Locke discussing working conditions in Bangladesh and race to the bottom production: http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp130430the_high_price_of_ch#idc-container -
The owner of the building that collapsed in Bangladesh appeared in court today wearing a bulletproof jacket and helmet. Mohammad Sohel Rana was arrested yesterday as authorities said he attempted to flee across the border to India.
Rescue efforts continued today at the site near Dhaka, where the eight-story building housing garment factories collapsed last week, though government officials said hope was fading of finding more survivors, according to the Daily Star.
The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, which has an office in Dhaka, said more than 400 were killed and about 1,000 remain missing.
For more, we’re joined by Liana Foxvog, organizing director International Labor Rights Forum. (CLICK HERE FOR GREAT RADIO INTERVIEW!!!)
For more on the campaign from the International Labor Rights Forum:
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For continuing coverage of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh check out these great articles & actions:
- SIGN this petition: Walmart, H&M and Gap: Do your part to stop the murders of garment workers in Bangladesh http://action.laborrights.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6280 (learn more at International Labor Rights Forum: http://www.laborrights.org/)
- WATCH this great video: Survivor of Bangladesh’s Tazreen Factory Fire Urges US Retailers to Stop Blocking Worker Safety (Democracy Now) http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/25/survivor_of_bangladeshs_tazreen_factory_fire
- LISTEN: to this great interview with Liana Foxvog from International Labor Rights Forum on the situation in Bangladesh: http://fsrn.org/audio/hundreds-still-missing-bangladesh-building-collapse-calls-rise-accountability-garment-industry
- Bangladesh Needs Strong Unions, Not Outside Pressure. Great article by http://nyti.ms/188KG8n
- Why aren’t Bangladesh factories safer? For one reason, companies like Wal-Mart and Gap have nixed proposals for independent inspections as being too costly and binding. http://on-msn.com/14lzdD4
- ‘Bargain Basement’ Clothes To Blame for Bangladesh Factory Collapse, and Other Deadly Disasters: NGOs say http://huff.to/XZhmgq- Statement by Human Rights Watch: Bangladesh - Tragedy Shows Urgency of Worker Protections http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/25/bangladesh-tragedy-shows-urgency-worker-protections
- DONATE: I have started a fundraiser on Fundly, SOLIDARITY WITH BANGLADESHI GARMENT WORKERS —- the money will go directly to labor organizing efforts in Bangladesh! http://fundly.com/mxxos2cq
or for general support work you can donate directly to the International Labor Rights Forum https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4058/c/607/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=70 - -
This is a photo of my visit to the Grameen Knitwear factory outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2009… I lived there for just over 3 months and spent time traveling and working with alternative development organizations. The trip had a profound impact on my life. I have been deeply concerned about the tragic factory collapse at Rana Plaza last week I have started a fundraiser to support labor organizing and education of garment workers in Bangladesh, please consider supporting, no donation is too small! Read all about it here: http://fundly.com/mxxos2cq
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Love Bernie Sanders!!! Love him.
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In the movement to consume less, and live more sustainably we talk a lot about the importance of recycling. But recycle is actually the last step in use - first we reduce consumption, then we reuse things, and then at the end we recycle them.
Shoe repair is an amazing example of treating your goods with sincere respect, buy good shoes, get them repaired and treat them with care and they will last many years. So many shoes these days are made to last three months and then get tossed out and replaced, cheap fashion is a huge driver of sweatshop production systems and mass over consumption as well as the accumulation of trash in landfills.
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Walmart Sues Groups for Protesting Its Poor Working Conditions
“Rather than creating good jobs with steady hours and affordable healthcare, Walmart’s pattern is to focus its energies on infringing on our freedom of speech,” says defendant.
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
In what some see as an attempt to muzzle critics, Walmart is suing a union and other groups over protests that sought to highlight the retail behemoth’s low pay and poor working conditions.
The lawsuit targets the 1.3 million-strong United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), OUR Walmart, which is made up of “associates” of Walmart, and another group over repeated protest actions in over a dozen states, Bloomberg reports.
Walmart’s suit seeks to stop the groups from being able to picket or protest on its property, Bloomberg reports. Reuters adds:
Wal-Mart alleged that the defendants violated Florida law through coordinated, statewide acts of trespass in several Walmart stores over the last eight months.
What the suit is really about, say some of the defendants, is silencing criticism of Walmart’s corporate, and union-preventing, model.
“Rather than creating good jobs with steady hours and affordable healthcare, Walmart’s pattern is to focus its energies on infringing on our freedom of speech,” Reuters reports OUR Walmart as saying in a statement.
Denise Diaz, executive director of Central Florida Jobs With Justice, said, “This is another attempt on Wal-Mart’s behalf of … silencing their employees and also the communities that support them.”
And Walmart may indeed see OUR Walmart as a thorn in its side, as Andy Kroll writes in Mother Jones:
On Black Friday last year, it helped organize protests at nearly 100 Walmart stores in 46 states. An estimated 500 associates walked off the job on the biggest shopping day of the year. Walmart, already facing allegations of bribery in Mexico and unsafe working conditions at its Asian suppliers, asked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to block the protests, saying OUR Walmart was a union front. Store managers received a confidential memo (PDF) on dealing with restive employees (talking point: “I don’t think a walkout is a good way to resolve problems or issues, especially because it interferes with customer service and other associates who want to work”). A company spokesman said on national TV that if workers didn’t show up on Black Friday, “there could be consequences.”
The case, Wal-Mart Stores Inc v. United Food and Commercial Workers International Union et al, merits wide attention, as Josh Eidelson has previously written in The Nation:
Even though Walmart employs just under 1 percent of the American workforce, most of us live in the Walmart economy. Its model has been forced on contractors and suppliers, adopted by competitors and mimicked across industries.
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One way to tell that something is fundamentally wrong with our economy - corporate profits soar while unemployment stays high. The well being of individuals is separated from the money made in business, a few can succeed in accumulating great profit and wealth without it effecting the many at all. We already knew trickle down economics doesn’t work, but here is further proof of the disconnect.
Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs
With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months as federal budget cuts take hold.
That gulf helps explain why stock markets are thriving even as the economy is barely growing and unemployment remains stubbornly high.
With millions still out of work, companies face little pressure to raise salaries, while productivity gains allow them to increase sales without adding workers.
“So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.”
The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India…
…With $85 billion in automatic cuts taking effect between now and Sept. 30 as part of the so-called federal budget sequestration, some experts warn that economic growth will be reduced by at least half a percentage point. But although experts estimate that sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, Wall Street does not expect the cuts to substantially reduce corporate profits — or seriously threaten the recent rally in the stock markets… -
This year, we are partnering with the Pratt Institute to bring Hello Etsy home to Brooklyn. Hello Etsy at Pratt: Reimagine the Marketplace will address the future of consumption, new methods of production, alternative approaches to work, and more purposeful ways of doing business. Together, we will discuss building the creative economy of the future — one that is connected, human-scaled, joyful, and lasting. We hope to prove that business does not have to be brutal to be successful and fulfilling.
The conference will include inspirational speakers as well as workshops that will offer unique experiences in an atmosphere of inspired thinking.
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