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Cocoa Activism Moves to the Next Level!

February 6, 2012

It is important to recognize Hershey’s first step, but our goal is to have Hershey’s be a leader in child-labor-free chocolate instead of just barely keeping pace with its competitors.  This is a company that has built its reputation on caring for children and communities – and we will continue to push Hershey’s to be a leader in caring for West African cocoa kids too!

While we support Hershey’s move toward accountability, its partnership with Rainforest Alliance also presents several concerns:

Inspired by Visit to Alta Gracia

February 1, 2012

Yenni’s sacrifice and the sacrifices made by the workers were worth the struggle. Rosa, the daughter of one of the workers at Alta Gracia explained, “Before Alta Gracia, we weren’t able to pay for any schooling beyond a public university, but now we can. We’ve been able to improve our nutrition too, and our stability. Before my mom didn’t have time to talk and check-in with me. She was tired and we’d often fight. Now we have time to share and talk around the dinner table and spend time together.”

Haitian Garment Union, SOTA, Perseveres Despite Uphill-Odds

January 27, 2012

The reinstatement of the union leaders is also significant to international solidarity efforts, as it is a testament to our power to successfully support workers’ organizing for their rights.  After the International Labor Rights Forum called on its supporters to take action, nearly 5000 people sent letters to Gildan.  These actions, combined with the Worker Rights Consortium’s report— that documented the ways that the dismissal of SOTA-union leaders violated laws and university codes, and that recommended reinstatement of the workers as an urgent priority—have shown SOTA and its supporters that they are not alone.

The New Face behind Unionized (and Feminist) Bananas in Latin America

January 24, 2012

Iris for blogI’m sure I don’t speak for myself when I say that Iris is the kind of leader every woman strives to be. Everything about her demeanor says luchadora, yet she emanates so much kindness and wisdom. She’s precise and strategic about her work and how it affects banana and agriculture workers everywhere, especially women workers. She’s a globetrotter unionist and a single mother.

Boycott of Philippine Airlines and AirPhil Continues

January 11, 2012

Founded in 1941, PAL and its unionized workforce have a 65 year history of working together collaboratively to ensure the company’s success. In fact, to help PAL recover from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, its workers agreed to suspend their collective bargaining agreement and accept across the board salary and benefit freezes for more than a decade. To reward its employees' loyalty and sacrifice, in 2009 PAL management announced it would implement a “fire and rehire” outsourcing scheme that would slash workers’ salaries and benefits in violation of the collective bargaining agreement PAL has signed with its workers. The scheme, announced during a routine meeting with elected union leaders, would have allowed the company to illegally fire more than 3,500

One year after fire, more workers die on the job in Bangladesh

December 15, 2011

As a result of the tens of thousands of emails that we generated on the International Labor Rights Forum's website and at Change.org, and the ongoing advocacy of unions and labor rights groups, JC Penney, VF Corporation, Gap, Carters, Philips Van Heusen, Abercrombie & Fitch, Target, and Kohl's have all contributed to the fund for compensating injured workers and the families of the deceased.

Newt Gingrich: This Year’s Grinch

December 13, 2011

US child labor laws are the product of hard won gains in this country’s economic development.  Current child labor laws around the world are the product of decades of hard work by venerable organizations such as UNICEF and the International Labour Organization’s IPEC program to eradicate child labor. These organizations and others have extensively documented how child laborers lose opportunities twice over:  they lose educational opportunities as children and they lose opportunities to prosper as adults.  The US Department of Labor has likewise played a critical role in supporting programs to end child labor worldwide, and has identified how often child labor goes hand in hand with forced labor.

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