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| SERBIA: One-Dollar Steel Mill Exposes Cracks In Privatisation
by Vesna Peric Zimonjic, Inter Press Service
February 16th, 2012
In 2003, U.S. Steel bought up the bankrupt Sartid steel mill in the eastern Serbian town of Smederevo for $33 million, the first private enterprise to enter the country after the downfall of former leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. On Feb. 1, U.S. Steel sold the mill back for a dollar.
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| CHINA: Slump Tilts Priorities of Industry in China
by Jonathan Ansfield, New York Times
April 18th, 2009
Less than a year ago, officials pressed mines and factories in northern China to shut down or move away to clear the air for the Beijing Olympics. Now, amid the global economic downturn, priorities have shifted. Cumbersome environmental reviews have been accelerated, and China’s powerful state oil companies are pushing hard to postpone nationwide rollout of clean air standards due to the billions of dollars required to invest in their refineries to produce clean diesel. |
| AFRICA/CHINA: As Chinese Investment in Africa Drops, Hope Sinks
by Lydia Polgreen, New York Times
March 25th, 2009
As global commodity prices have plummeted and several of China’s partners in Africa have stumbled deeper into chaos, China has backed away from some of its riskiest and most aggressive plans. China has sought to secure minerals in Africa through agreements to build huge projects in exchange for minerals. African governments are now realizing that these deals are loans against future revenue, and falling prices could leave them saddled with debt. |
| US: Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests
by Leslie Kaufman, New York Times
February 25th, 2009
The U.S. obsession with soft toilet paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra. But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. |
| JAPAN: Nissan to Slash Payroll, Pare Japanese Output
by John Murphy, Wall Street Journal
February 9th, 2009
Nissan Motor Co. Monday announced plans to slash more than 20,000 jobs world-wide, shift production out of Japan and seek government assistance from Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere, part of a broad new effort by the Japanese car maker to weather the economic downturn. |
| SWITZERLAND: Davos Scales Back Glitz
by Associated Press, New York Times
January 25th, 2009
The economic crisis that emerged out the collapse of securities based on shaky U.S. mortgages poses challenges for the Davos World Economic Forum, an arena that has championed market-driven approaches. |
| US: In Factory Sit-In, an Anger Spread Wide
by MONICA DAVEY, New York Times
December 7th, 2008
In a glimpse at how the nation’s loss of more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs this year is boiling over, workers laid off from Republic Windows and Doors, said they would not leave, after company officials announced that the factory was closing. The workers were owed vacation and severance pay and were not given the 60 days of notice generally required by federal law in lay-offs. |
| US: An Inconvenient Bag
by ELLEN GAMERMAN , Wall Street Journal
September 26th, 2008
It's manufactured in China, shipped thousands of miles overseas, made with plastic and could take years to decompose. It's also the hot "green" giveaway of the moment: the reusable shopping bag. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: Apartheid lawsuit back in US court
SABC News
September 25th, 2008
After six years of battling, the plaintiffs must prove whether certain multinationals enabled the apartheid government to commit acts of gross human rights violations. Among the 21 defendants are oil, vehicle and financial companies which continue to operate in South Africa -- the likes of BP, Shell, Chevron Texaco, Barclays, Daimler Chrysler and Rio Tinto. They stand accused of supporting the former regime with arms and ammunition, financing, fuel, transportation and military technology. |
| COLOMBIA: To die for
by Mark Thomas, Guardian (UK)
September 20th, 2008
Being a trade union organiser in bottling plants used by Coca-Cola in Colombia is a dangerous business - they are prime targets for death squads. Can Coke be held responsible? Mark Thomas follows the trail from Bogotá to New York |
| US: Files Show Governor Intervened With Court
by Ian Urbina, New York Times
August 13th, 2008
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III filed a friend-of-the-court brief in June, arguing the State Supreme Court should review a $382 million judgment against DuPont. The case involves thousands of residents in the area of a DuPont-operated zinc-smelting plant, and the largest civil penalty ever levied against the company, for the dumping of toxic arsenic, cadmium and lead at the plant. |
| UK-Zimbabwe: BAE linked to Zimbabwean arms dealer
by Christopher Thompson and Michael Peel , Financial Times/UK
July 31st, 2008
According to documents seen by the Financial Times, BAE Systems has been linked to Zimbabwean arms trader John Bredenkamp. BAE reportedly paid at least £20m to Bredenkamp via offshore entities in the British Virgin Islands between 2003 and 2005. The payments raise fresh questions about bribery in BAE's dealings. |
| US: Toxic Smoke and Mirrors
by Jim Morris, Mother Jones
Filed in federal District Court in Cleveland, their claim joined thousands of others pending against welding-products manufacturers in state and federal courts. (Employers have not been among the targets because lawyers generally concluded they were ignorant of the metal's dangers.) |
| EUROPE: Chemical Law Has Global Impact
by Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post
June 12th, 2008
Europe this month rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems. The changes follow eight years of vigorous opposition from the U.S. chemical industry giants like DuPont, and the Bush administration. |
| FRANCE: Ex-EADS chief charged in French probe
by INGRID ROUSSEAU, Associated Press
May 30th, 2008
A former co-CEO of Airbus parent company EADS, Noel Forgeard, was hit with preliminary insider trading charges Friday in an extensive probe into stock sales by more than a dozen former and current executives at the European planemaker. |
| US: BAE chief detained as US turns up heat in bribes case
by Nick Clark and Stephen Foley, The Independent (U.K.)
May 19th, 2008
BAE Systems admitted yesterday that American authorities investigating corruption claims over an arms deal with Saudi Arabia had issued a series of subpoenas to senior executives, as the investigation continues to gather pace. Two bosses of the defence giant were also detained after they landed at a Houston airport last week |
| US: America for Sale: 2 Outcomes When Foreigners Buy Factories
by PETER S. GOODMAN, The New York Times
April 7th, 2008
As foreign buyers descend upon the United States, capturing widening swaths of the industrial landscape and putting millions of Americans to work for new owners, these two cities offer sharply competing narratives for a nation still uneasy about being on the selling end of the global economy. |
| INDONESIA: Indonesia's Commodity Boom Is a Mixed Bag
by Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal
March 24th, 2008
Indonesia's economy is riding the recent wave of high global commodity prices. But local pressure is arising towards steel makers and power producers in China and India who have diverted coal supplies abroad by locking in 20-year supply contracts with Indonesian miners. |
| CHINA: Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China
by Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post
March 9th, 2008
The Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co. of Henan, China, is a green energy company, producing polysilicon for solar energy panels. But the byproduct -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards. |
| CHINA: China Plant Played Role In Drug Tied to 4 Deaths
by ANNA WILDE MATHEWS and THOMAS M. BURTON, The Wall Street Journal
February 14th, 2008
A Chinese facility that hasn't been inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the active ingredient in much of the widely used Baxter International Inc. blood-thinner that is under investigation after reports of hundreds of allergic reactions and four deaths among the drug's users, the agency said yesterday. |
| US: Giuliani Had Ties to Company Trying to Sell Border Technology
by RUSS BUETTNER, New York Times
January 18th, 2008
On the presidential campaign trail, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani often promotes the installation of electronic monitoring devices at the border to stem illegal immigration, without mentioning that until a few months ago, he was partner in a company trying to market such technology. |
| US: A Mission to Rebuild Reputations
by Dana Hedgpeth, Washington Post
January 17th, 2008
Now those promises -- and the public's perception of the Air Force's ability to spend its money prudently -- are being tested by new contracting and public relations challenges. The Air Force is about to award two key contracts worth a total of about $55 billion, and Boeing is in the running for both deals. |
| CHINA: In Chinese Factories, Lost Fingers and Low Pay
by DAVID BARBOZA, New York Times
January 5th, 2008
Nearly a decade after some of the most powerful companies in the world — often under considerable criticism and consumer pressure — began an effort to eliminate sweatshop labor conditions in Asia, worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies, according to labor rights groups. |
| US: Suit says IBM dumped chemicals in New York state
by Dan Wilchins and Philipp Gollner, Reuters
January 3rd, 2008
Neighbors of a former IBM plant in New York state sued the company on Thursday, saying it released chemicals into the air, ground and water for nearly 80 years that caused birth defects and cancer. |
| CHINA/US: The Recalls’ Aftershocks
by Louise Story and David Barboza, New York Times
December 22nd, 2007
Toy makers are investigating whether they need to treat their tainted products with stabilization chemicals or if they must seal the toys in giant polyethylene bags. |
| EUROPE: Europe Proposes Binding Limits on Auto Emissions
by James Kanter, New York Times
December 20th, 2007
European Union officials told leading automakers to make deep cuts in tailpipe emissions of the cars they produce or face fines that could reach billions of euros. Companies including Volkswagen and Renault immediately promised a fight to weaken the proposed legislation.
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| US: US green groups urge Toyota U-turn
by John Reed, Financial Times
October 15th, 2007
Toyota is scrambling to protect its green reputation in the US, its largest market, where environmental groups are urging it to drop its opposition to a draft fuel economy bill. |
| US: UAW Workers Walk Off the Job
by John D. Stoll and Jeffrey McCracken, Wall Street Journal
September 24th, 2007
The decision Monday by the United Auto Workers to walk off the job at General Motors highlights yet again the divisive element of healthcare in labor relations, and how what began as a historic accident is now the single biggest liability for both businesses and workers. |
| US: Cribs Recalled After Deaths of 2 Children
by Michael M. Grynbaum, nytimes
September 24th, 2007
One million cribs designed by Simplicity for Children, a manufacturer based in Pennsylvania, have been recalled after the suffocation deaths of at least two children, the government said yesterday. It was the company’s fourth recall in a little more than two years. |
| US: In Turnaround, Industries Seek Regulations
by Eric Lipton and Gardiner Harris, New York Times
September 16th, 2007
After years of favoring the hands-off doctrine of the Bush administration, some of the nation's biggest industries are pushing for something they have long resisted: new federal regulations. |
| US: '60s Figure Says He Financed Donor Hsu
by Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Brody Mullins, Wall Street Journal
September 12th, 2007
A company controlled by Democratic Party donor Norman Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing. |
| CHINA: U.S. Group Accuses Chinese Toy Factories of Labor Abuses
by David Barboza , New York Times
August 21st, 2007
A workers’ rights group in the United States released a report on Tuesday detailing what it called brutal conditions and illegal practices in Chinese toy factories, many of which supply some of the world’s biggest brand-name toy makers, including Walt Disney and Hasbro. |
| INDIA: Indian Activists' Rising Clout
by Jackie Range, Wall Street Journal
August 16th, 2007
India's Supreme Court is poised to decide whether a British
company has the right to mine in a sacred tribal forest, a case that underlines the complexity of undertaking large-scale industrial projects here. The case's hearing by the court reflects the growing clout of activist groups in India. |
| WORLD: We must count the true cost of cheap China
by Richard McGregor, Financial Times
August 2nd, 2007
In the wake of the multiple scandals over tainted Chinese food and drug exports in recent months, Chinese goods now have an indelible image of being not just cheap, but life-threatening as well. But the fact that wrongly labelled foods, liquor and pharmaceuticals have routinely sickened and even killed people en masse in China has been largely overlooked. |
| US: Mattel Recalls One Million Toys
by Louise Story , New York Times
August 2nd, 2007
Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, is recalling nearly one million toys in the United States today because the products’ surfaces are covered in lead paint. According to Mattel, all the toys were made by a contract manufacturer in China. |
| COLOMBIA: Suing Multinationals Over Murder
by Ken Stier, TIME Magazine
August 1st, 2007
Organized labor often complains of its treatment at the hands of corporate America, but its accusations pale in comparison to those made recently by the widows of Colombian mine workers in an Alabama courtroom. During a two-week trial, a Birmingham jury weighed charges that the local Drummond Coal Company bore responsibility for the murders of three union leaders who represented workers at its Colombian mine - the world's largest open pit mine. |
| COLOMBIA: Drummond Union: Govt Muffles Key Witness
by Frank Bajak, Forbes.com
July 24th, 2007
The union activists suing U.S. coal company Drummond Co. Inc. in Alabama in the 2001 murders of three labor leaders say deliberate foot-dragging by Colombian authorities is preventing the jury from hearing their star witness. Concerned by the delay, 12 Democrats in the U.S. Congress wrote Colombia's vice president last week asking him to intercede. |
| CHINA: Lead Toxins Take a Global Round Trip
by Gordon Fairclough, The Wall Street Journal
July 12th, 2007
High levels of toxic lead turning up in cheap jewelry from China are prompting recalls in the U.S. But some of the lead used by these Chinese manufacturers comes from an unconventional source: computers and other electronic goods discarded in Western countries and dumped in China. |
| US: Buying Into the Green Movement
by Alex Williams, The New York Times
July 1st, 2007
Consumers have embraced living green, and for the most part the mainstream green movement has embraced green consumerism. But even at this moment of high visibility and impact for environmental activists, a splinter wing of the movement has begun to critique what it sometimes calls “light greens.” |
| CHINA: The Growing Dangers of China Trade
by Jyoti Thottam, TIME Magazine
June 28th, 2007
Growing concerns over the safety of everyday goods manufactured in China and imported to the US have thrown into relief the problematic (and dangerous) differences in safety and regulatory standards between the two countries. |
| CHINA: Hundreds of workers protest company beatings
Asia News
January 5th, 2007
Hundreds of workers yesterday held a protest in Pingshan (Shenzhen) outside DeCoro, an Italian sofa company, accusing supervisors of severely beating three employees who dared to ask for respect of the minimum wage. In November 2005 disputes had already taken place between the employees and the company with mutual accusations of violence made. |
| TRINIDAD: Trinidad's Smelter Switcheroo
by Peter Richards, Inter Press Service
January 4th, 2007
After years of community protests, including a semi-permanent tent camp, the Trinidad and Tobago government abruptly announced that it was backing away from plans to construct aluminium smelter plants in the southwest peninsula villages of Cedros and Chatham. |
| SWEDEN: Low Prices, High Social Costs: The Secrets in Ikea's Closet
by Olivier Bailly, Jean-Marc Caudron and Denis Lambert, Le Monde Diplomatic
December 29th, 2006
Despite Ikea's current claims, low prices always incur a high social cost. Between 1994 and 1997 three documentaries screened by German and Swedish television accused the firm of using child labor under degrading conditions in Pakistan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines |
| US: OSHA Cites Tool Maker
Hartford Courant
December 27th, 2006
A West Hartford tool manufacturing plant has been cited for widespread safety and health hazards for the third time in six years by the Hartford office of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency said Tuesday. |
| WORLD: Safety of Nanotechnology Needs More Attention
Environment News Service
November 28th, 2006
The number of consumer products made with nanotechnology is exploding, with a 70 percent increase in the past eight months. While recognizing the value of these molecular-level advances, critics say the Bush administration is doing too little to ensure the safety of nanotechnology for workers and the public. |
| US: Unwanted Imports: Goods deemed toxic elsewhere shipped to U.S.
Associated Press
October 15th, 2006
Destined for American kitchens, planks of birch and poplar plywood are stacked to the ceiling of a cavernous port warehouse. The wood, which arrived in California via a cargo ship, carries two labels: One proclaims "Made in China," while the other warns that it contains formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical. |
| US: Watchdog Group Blasts Ford for Ethanol Loophole
Environment News Service
October 13th, 2006
The Ford Motor Company is misleading the public and the government about several of its vehicles that claim to operate on ethanol, according to letters sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by the watchdog group Public Citizen. |
| US: Dump site back on Superfund list
by Laura Incalcaterra, The Journal News
September 27th, 2006
Pollutants dumped by Ford Motor Co. and others have led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to restore the Ringwood mines and landfill to the Superfund National Priorities List of the country's most-contaminated sites. |
| US: Regulator Says Civil Suit Likely For Raines
by Terence O'Hara, Washingtom Post
September 14th, 2006
Fannie Mae's top regulator yesterday said it is "more than likely" the federal government will sue former chief executive Franklin D. Raines and other former company officers, seeking to recover bonuses and salary and perhaps impose fines for the mortgage finance company's accounting debacle. |
| WORLD: Has Coke become the new McDonald's?
by David Teather, The Guardian (UK)
August 18th, 2006
Welcome to the Coke side of life. Africa's planned legal action is just the latest in a litany of alleged human rights and environmental abuses in developing markets that has made Coca-Cola a cause celebre. |
| US: Activists protest DuPont releases
by Julie Goodman, The Clarion Ledger
July 17th, 2006
The $10.25 million DuPont paid to resolve recent federal environmental complaints is fueling at least one resident's suspicions that the chemical company's discharge of a Teflon-related by-product into Pascagoula's wastewater treatment system is not as benign as it maintains. |
| US: The 100 Worst Corporate Citizens
by Phil Mattera, The Corporate Research Project
July 1st, 2006
For the past 52 years, Fortune magazine has been publishing a list of the largest U.S. corporations, an annual chance for chief executives to brag that "my revenue is bigger than yours." For the past seven years, Business Ethics magazine has issued another kind of ranking -- a list of what it calls the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" -- that promotes virtue over size in the perennial game of corporate comparisons. |
| US: Caterpillar Pressured Over "Weaponised Bulldozers"
by Emad Mekay, Inter Press News Service
June 15th, 2006
The parents of a U.S. peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer built by the global machinery giant Caterpillar confronted the company Wednesday for the first time and urged shareholders at its annual meeting to end sales of "weaponised bulldozers to Israel". |
| US: U.S. Sues Goodyear
The Chicago Tribune
June 15th, 2006
The Labor Department has sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., alleging hiring discrimination against hundreds of women who sought jobs at one of its plants in Virginia in the late 1990s. |
| US: Judge Grants Tyco Investors Class-Action Status
by Katharine Webster, Associated Press
June 14th, 2006
Former shareholders of Tyco International Ltd., whose former chief executive and chief financial officer were convicted of fraud, have been certified as a class to sue the company and its accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers. |
| UZBEKISTAN: Coca-Cola accused over Uzbek venture
by Edward Alden in Washington and Andrew Ward in Atlanta, Financial Times
June 13th, 2006
Coca-Cola has been hit with an arbitration claim seeking more than $100m in damages, alleging that the the world's largest soft drinks maker conspired with the government of Uzbekistan against a joint venture partner who fell out of favour with the country's authoritarian ruler, Islam Karimov. |
| GERMANY: Clash with Unions Looms at VW
by David Gow, Guardian Unlimited (UK)
June 13th, 2006
Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, is heading for a showdown with its 100,000-strong German workforce after trade unions rejected company proposals to increase the working week to 35 hours without extra pay late on Monday. |
| US: Polo Ralph Lauren Accused of Labor Violations
Bay City News Service
May 30th, 2006
Four former employees of Polo Ralph Lauren filed a lawsuit today in San Francisco Superior Court against the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, alleging that the company repeatedly violated the rights of its employees, according to Patrick Kitchin, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. |
| JORDAN: An Ugly Side of Free Trade - Sweatshops
by Steven Greenhouse and Michael Barbaro, The New York Times
May 3rd, 2006
Workers from Bangladesh said they paid $1,000 to $3,000 to work in Jordan, but when they arrived, their passports were confiscated, restricting their ability to leave and tying them to jobs that often pay far less than promised and far less than the country's minimum wage. |
| ARGENTINA: Bolivian Community Divided Over Sweatshops
by Marcela Valente, Inter Press News Service
April 6th, 2006
The Buenos Aires city government's new offensive against slave labour has resulted in the closure of 30 clandestine textile sweatshops in the Argentine capital. But it has also caused divisions in the Bolivian immigrant community: some denounce the exploitative labour conditions, while others desperately want to keep their jobs, however precarious. |
| URUGUAY: Mixed Reactions to Truce in Pulp Mill War
by Gustavo González, Inter Press Service News Agency
March 11th, 2006
Activists who have been blocking international bridges between Argentina and Uruguay for the past month to protest the construction of two paper pulp factories on the Uruguayan side of a river separating the two countries expressed mixed reactions to news that the two governments had reached an agreement for a temporary freeze in construction on Saturday.
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| EL SALVADOR: Fraying of the Textile Industry
by Ginger Thompson, New York Times
March 25th, 2005
Employment in El Salvador's garment industry declined in 2004 for the first time in a decade. Thousands more jobs will be lost this year, threatening to drive up El Salvador's largest export to the United States: its people. |
| CAMBODIA: Police Open Fire to End Factory Protest
by Ek Madra, Reuters
February 22nd, 2005
Cambodian riot police fired assault rifles and used electric batons on Tuesday to break up a protest by 1,300 workers demanding redundancy payment from a garment factory that shut down in January. |
| AUSTRALIA: Unions Take Hardie Asbestos Protest to U.S.
by Barbara Adam, Bloomberg
September 15th, 2004
Australian labor unions will take their protest over James Hardie Industries NV's funding shortfall for asbestos victims to the U.S. today, seeking to extend their boycott of the company's building products to its largest market. |
| US: A Record Year for Shareholder Activism
by G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Christian Science Monitor
June 28th, 2004
Question: What single force can get Tyco International to strive for cleaner emissions, inspire PepsiCo to study the impact of AIDS in developing nations, and even get Merck & Co. to declare its intentions to not manufacture an abortion pill? Answer: shareholders. |
| JAPAN: Former Mitsubishi Boss Arrested
BBC
June 10th, 2004
Japanese police have arrested a former head of Mitsubishi Motors and five other executives as part of a probe into the death of a truck driver. |
| LAUSD Adopts Anti-Sweatshop Code
Los Angeles Times
March 25th, 2004
The Los Angeles Unified School District has adopted one of the nation's most sweeping anti-sweatshop measures, requiring suppliers of everything from desks to scissors to disclose where and how those products were made and guarantee that workers making them earn a "non-poverty" wage. |
| China: Workers Demand Wages, Security
by Eva Cheng, Green Left Weekly
March 3rd, 2004
Some 2000 workers and their retired counterparts from the Tieshu textile factory in Suizhou, Hubei province, staged an angry protest on February 8 denouncing the now-defunct plants management for cheating workers of savings and benefits. They also accuse management of corruption. |
| Nike vs. Kasky: Corporations Are Not Persons
Truthout
June 11th, 2003
The case of Nike v. Kasky, currently before the Supreme Court, involves a fundamental question about corporations that unfortunately has not been raised by either the parties in the case or the media. |
| US: Bush Top Gun vs. S.F. Activist
by Zachary Coile, San Francisco Chronicle
April 24th, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's top Supreme Court lawyer urged the high court Wednesday to toss out a San Francisco consumer activist's suit against Nike Inc. because it could discourage corporations from defending themselves in public against their critics. |
| USA: Levis is Lone Hold Out in Saipan Suit
by Victor Narro, Sweatshop Watch
March 3rd, 2003
This month, an important event is taking place that should change the lives of workers on Saipan, an island in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and impact the way we address issues of sweatshop throughout the world. |
| ARGENTINA: Workers Take Factories into Their Own Hands
by Pablo Waisberg, Latin America Press
November 21st, 2002
Last December, overwhelmed by debt and the countrys economic chaos, the Brukman brothers left their high-end suit factory in Buenos Aires and never returned. They also left more than 100 employees awaiting back pay. |
| US: Sweatshop Case Settles for $20M
by Alexei Oreskovic, The Recorder
September 27th, 2002
Three overseas sweatshop lawsuits involving dozens of the United States' largest retailers and a 30,000-member class of garment workers have settled for $20 million. |
| MALAYSIA: Dark Twist in WTC Scraps' End
Associated Press
September 9th, 2002
In a twist of commercial fate, metal chunks from the World Trade Center are being melted down and recycled at a Malaysian factory -- an hour's drive from a spot where some of the Sept. 11 hijackers plotted. At the huge mill in Banting, outside Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur, shredded pieces of the fallen twin towers are among scrap headed for furnaces to be rolled into coils of flat steel used to make automobile panels and pipe, among other products. |
| Football Dreams Stitched with Children's Hands
Global March Against Child Labour
May 30th, 2002
Child labour and highly unfair labour conditions for adult stitchers in the football industry are still common practices, despite the fact that the contracts between FIFA and sporting goods companies promise the opposite. This was revealed by the Global March Against Child Labour in a presentation of three new reports on China, India and Pakistan. |
| US: Court Says Nike Must Defend its PR
by Harriet Chiang, San Francisco Chronicle
May 3rd, 2002
The California Supreme Court delivered a stiff warning to businesses Thursday, ruling that a San Francisco man can sue Nike Inc. for false advertising for allegedly lying about working conditions at Asian factories where its athletic shoes and clothes are made. |
| US: Gap Admits Strategic Errors After $34m Loss
by Mariko Sanchanta and Lina Saigol, Financial Times
February 27th, 2002
Millard ''Mickey'' Drexler, Gap's chief executive, on Tuesday admitted that the company had ''misread fashion tea leaves'' and violated its own principle of ''keeping things simple'' in making a series of fashion mistakes that led to its reporting a $34m loss. |
| TAIWAN: Businesses Said to Run Sweatshops In Central America
by Andrew Perrin, San Francisco Chronicle
August 15th, 2001
This island nation has long been famed for its transformation from a developing country to an industrial colossus. But a recent labor dispute at a Taiwanese-owned textile factory in impoverished Nicaragua has cast a spotlight on what U.S. activists say is Taiwan's least admired export: labor rights abuses. |
| US: Nike Capitalizes on the Anti-Capitalists
by Alicia Rebensdorf, AlterNet
August 7th, 2001
An angry mob gathered around a train station, passing out photocopied flyers and shouting protests against an unjust company. Scrappy stickers were slapped on billboards, directing passers-by to a crudely designed website. The company they were railing against was a frequent target of grassroots activism: Nike. And the group running this guerilla-style anti-advertising campaign? None other than Nike itself. |
| MEXICO: Economic Downturn Deepens
by Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
July 1st, 2001
From farms and automotive plants on the outskirts of Mexico City to the industrial heartland of Monterrey and the wineries and electronics firms in Tijuana and Guadalajara, signs are that this nation's recession is becoming more entrenched. |
| New Study: Mexicans Unable to Live on Sweatshop Wages
Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, et al.
June 28th, 2001
Workers in foreign-owned export assembly plants in Mexico are not able to meet a family's basic needs on sweatshop wages, according to a comprehensive study conducted in fifteen Mexican cities. |
| US: My Nike Media Adventure
by Jonah Peretti, The Nation
April 9th, 2001
Nike's website allows visitors to create custom shoes bearing a word or slogan -- a service Nike trumpets as being about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are. Confronted with Nike's celebration of freedom and their statement that if you want it done right, build it yourself, I could not help but think of the people in crowded factories in Asia and South America who actually build Nike shoes. |
| SRI Lanka: Overtime Law Hurts Sweatshop Workers
by Renuka Senanayake, Inter Press Service
March 2nd, 2001
Rights activists are unhappy with the Labour Ministry's plan to amend labour laws to introduce 80 hours of overtime every month for factory workers, including those in export processing zones (EPZ). |
| US: Nike Sued for Greenwash
SocialFunds.com
March 2nd, 2001
Marc Kasky, a self-described environmentalist, viewed the Ernst and Young audit as an opportunity. Enlisting the support of San Francisco attorney Alan Caplan, he filed a suit against Nike in April of 1998. The suit claims that Nike's assertions about the labor conditions in its Asia factories amounted to false advertising. |
| AMERICAN SAMOA: Abuses Cited at Apparel Plant That Supplied U.S. Retailers
by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times
February 6th, 2001
Workers at a factory in American Samoa that made apparel for the J. C. Penney Company and other retailers were often beaten and were provided food so inadequate that some were ''walking skeletons,'' a Labor Department investigation has found. |
| US: Shoe Manufacturer Latest Casualty to Free Trade
by Justin Pope, The Associated Press
January 22nd, 2001
Sneaker maker Converse Inc., best known for its basketball and ''Chuck Taylor'' brand shoes, is closing three North American production plants and shifting production to Asia as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. |
| US: Activist Group Links Pentagon, Firms to Child Labor
Washington Post
December 22nd, 2000
The Defense Department and five companies, including Sharper Image Corp. and Kohl's Corp., sell goods produced at factories in Asia and Central America that exploit workers, a labor rights group claimed. |
| NICARAGUA: Pentagon Contracts Nicaraguan Sweatshops
by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times
December 3rd, 2000
An arm of the Pentagon has come under fire for procuring large quantities of apparel from a Nicaraguan factory that labor rights groups say is a sweatshop and that the United States trade representative has voiced serious concerns about. |
| US: Roundup of Student Activism Against Sweatshops
by Keith Meatto, Mother Jones
October 1st, 2000
This year's cause celebre was the campaign to end the use of sweatshop labor by the $2.5-billion collegiate apparel industry. Undergraduates nationwide demanded their colleges quit the Fair Labor Association (FLA) -- an industry-backed watchdog that opponents liken to a fox guarding the hen house -- and join the Worker Rights Consortium. Founded by students, academics, and labor unions last October, the WRC promises strict workplace oversight, free from industry influence. |
| US: Report Says Global Accounting Firm Overlooks Factory Abuses
by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times
September 28th, 2000
In a rare inside look at the auditing firms that inspect overseas factories to see whether they are sweatshops, an M.I.T. professor contends that the world's largest factory-monitoring firm does a shoddy job and overlooks many safety and wage violations. |
| AUSTRALIA: U.S. Soccer Players Confront Nike Protestors
Times of India
September 12th, 2000
This was Sunday, the day before the start of the three-day World Economic Forum in Melbourne, the same type of meeting that sparked riots in Seattle last year. The two players just happened to pass one of the demonstrations at a park. |
| JAPAN: Police Raid Mitsubishi Motors
Business Recorder
August 28th, 2000
Japanese police investigators raided the offices of Mitsubishi Motors Corp on Sunday on suspicion of concealing customer complaints and recalls from government inspectors for decades, Kyodo news agency reported. |
| NICARAGUA: US Retailers Contract with Sweatshops
by Carrie Antlfinger, Associated Press
August 22nd, 2000
Gonzalez was one of two workers invited Monday to recount conditions at two Nicaraguan factories that human rights, religious and labor groups claim supply Kohl's Department Stores with cheap garments. |
| EU: Anti-Sweatshop Campaign Targets Adidas
by Peter Dhondt, Inter Press Service
June 9th, 2000
Anti-sweatshop pressure groups are protesting against sporting goods manufacturer, Adidas, being one of the major sponsors of Euro 2000, the European Football Championship that kicks off here Saturday. |
| US: Anti-Sweatshop Student Sit-Ins Continue
UNITE Stop Sweatshop News
March 9th, 2000
As students celebrated anti-sweatshop victories at Wisconsin, Indiana, and other schools, sit-ins began at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Macalester College in Minneapolis. |
| US: Chicago Sweatshop Plan May Be Model
by Martha Irvine, Associated Press
February 19th, 2000
They sound like stories from another time. But a survey of the working poor in Chicago and surrounding suburbs has found otherwise. More than a third of the 800 workers questioned many of them immigrants described conditions in factories, restaurants and other workplaces that the federal government would deem ''sweatshops.'' |
| US: Activists Resign from University Panel on Sweatshops
by Sharif Durhams, Journal Sentinel
February 2nd, 2000
Student activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have split with university administrators on how to prevent abuse of workers in factories that make Badger-licensed clothing. The students say Chancellor David Ward is ignoring their concerns. |
| US: University President Now on Flip Side of Protests
by James M. O'Neill, Philadelphia Inquirer
February 1st, 2000
As a student at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University in the 1960s, Judith Rodin was caught up in the social activism of the era. Last week, Penn's president found the tables turned as she negotiated with students who spent the entire week staging a sit-in in her outer office. |
| Bordering Injustice
by Traci Griggs and Martha Valds, La Jornada
December 9th, 1998
Non-profit environmental justice groups such as the San Diego-based Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), are trying to remove the rose colored glasses and expose the harsh reality of the U.S/Mexico border in an attempt to protect public and environmental health. EHC's battle against an abandoned maquiladora turned toxic dump, serves as a microcosm of what's wrong with border health and how NAFTA, for the most part, has exacerbated the problem. |
| Nike Must Stop Exploiting My Students
by Yvonne H.D. Noble, Los Angeles Times
July 26th, 1997
Last fall, a reporter from The Times asked me about the relationship between Crenshaw High School boys' basketball program and Nike in terms of what the corporations donates to the basketball players. To my knowledge as the principal, I told him, the company gave each member of the boys' team a pair of tennis shoes, just as Karl Kani, a smaller African American ownedbusiness, gave shoes to members of the girls' team. |
| Double Standards: Notes for a Border Screenplay
by Debbie Nathan, Texas Observer
June 6th, 1997
The case had been settled only minutes ago, and now jurors for Mendoza v. Contico were seated in a room outfitted with movie theater chairs and plugs for devices like VCRs. They were in the ''Ceremonial Court'' in El Paso, where victorious lawyers often hold post-trial press conferences. |
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