by Chris Thompson, East Bay Express
April 7th, 2004
First California semiconductor firm AXT, Inc. exposed its workers to arsenic. Then it fired them and sent their jobs to China.
| Poison and Profits by Chris Thompson, East Bay Express April 7th, 2004 First California semiconductor firm AXT, Inc. exposed its workers to arsenic. Then it fired them and sent their jobs to China. |
 | The Smell of Money: British Columbia's Gas Rush by Shefa Siegel, Special to CorpWatch March 13th, 2004 In Canada's British Columbia, ExxonMobil, Talisman, Shell, and other energy giants are racing to tap the region's "sour gas". But the potential toxicity of the gas is being ignored. |
 | Money for Nothing and Calls for Free by Nidhi Kumar and Nidhi Verghese, Special to CorpWatch February 17th, 2004 As the outsourcing of jobs has become a hot election year issue in the US, call centers in India continue to multiply. Local workers answer calls for US corporations at a fraction of the cost of an American worker. |
 | Operation Sweatshop Iraq by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch February 12th, 2004 Halliburton is hiring temps to work in Iraq: $100 a month for locals, $300 for Indians and $8,000 for Texans. Meanwhile taxpayers are getting charged top dollar, prompting investigations from the United States military. |
 | Jordan's Sweatshops: The Carrot or the Stick of US Policy? by Aaron Glantz, Special to CorpWatch February 26th, 2003 While the world braces for a US war against Iraq, Washington is using its newly inked Free Trade Agreement with Jordan to open sweatshops and secure an ally in the region. |
 | Sweat-Free School Purchasing Resolutions: A New Trend? by Ben Plimpton, Special to CorpWatch February 6th, 2003 School Districts and city governments are promising to purchase "sweat-free" uniforms and sports equipment. Organizers say the grassroots initiatives are a cutting edge in the fight against sweatshops. |
 | West Coast Dockworkers: Victory in the Face of the Bush Doctrine by David Bacon, Special to Corpwatch January 2nd, 2003 West Coast Dockers negotiate a contract despite federal intervention on the side of business. But the Bush administration has fired a warning shot at labor. |
| The Prison Industry: Capitalist Punishment by Julie Light, CorpWatch October 28th, 1999 The CMT Blues scandal and the host of human rights and labor issues it raises, is just the tip of the iceberg in a web of interconnected business, government and class interests which critics dub the ''prison industrial complex.'' |
| La Linea: Gender, Labor and Environmental Justice on the US-Mexico Border by Julie Light, Special to CorpWatch June 30th, 1999 TECATE, Mexico -- Tecate's coat of arms dubs this Mexican town ''Baja California's Industrial Paradise.'' About 30 miles from Tijuana, the city is home to the Tecate brewery and also houses an industrial park filled with assembly plants, or maquiladoras. This ''industrial paradise'' is one of several Mexican border boomtowns that is part of a global production system. |
| Engendering Change by Julie Light, Special to CorpWatch June 26th, 1999 For women working in Mexican assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, insisting on their legal rights takes what are colloquially referred to as cojones. It indicates that Mexico's low wage feminine labor force may not be as docile as foreign employers would like to believe. It also is a harbinger of an incipient movement inside Mexico's expanding export-processing sector. |
| Tijuana Police Defy Court Protection of Maquiladora Strike by David Bacon, Special to CorpWatch May 16th, 1999 TIJUANA -- For two weeks, Tijuana has teetered on the brink of official lawlessness, as city and state police continue to defy Baja California's legal system. Raul Ramirez, member of the Baja California Academy of Human Rights, warned last week that ''the state is in danger of violating the Constitution and the Federal Labor Law... as it succumbs to the temptation to use force.'' |
| MEXICO: Standing up for Health Rights on the Job Special to CorpWatch May 1st, 1999 First hand accounts of two workers who sued a San Diego-based medical manufacturer after a workplace accident. |
| MEXICO: University Professors Photos Draw the Wrath of Border Industrialists by Julie Light, Special to CorpWatch April 29th, 1999 It wasn't just the politically provocative photographs that got Fred Lonidier's exhibit at Tijuana's public university taken down. It was the fact that he had the audacity to leaflet maquiladora workers outside the factory gates and invite them to the gallery that got his show yanked. |
| MEXICO: Miners' Strike Broken in Revolutionary Cananea by David Bacon, Special to CorpWatch March 12th, 1999 In the mile-high mountains of the Sonora desert, just 25 miles south of the border between Arizona and Mexico, over two thousand miners have been locked in a bitter industrial war since mid-November. Here Grupo Mexico operates North America's oldest, and one of the world's largest copper mines -- Cananea -- in a town which has been a symbol of anti-government insurrection for almost 100 years. |
| US: Oregon's Prison Slaveocracy by Dan Pens, Prison Legal News May 1st, 1998 When "get tough" voter measures requiring inmates to work for free, undermined the Oregon State Constitution, lawmakers simply amended it. Prison Legal News co-editor and inmate Pens looks at the impacts on prisoner and labor rights. |
| VIETNAM: Smoke From a Hired Gun by Dara O'Rourke, Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) November 10th, 1997 TRAC is pleased to be able to shed some light on this subject by releasing the first audit of this kind ever to be made public: a confidential Ernst and Young assessment of the Tae Kwang Vina plant, a factory which employs 9,200 workers who produce 400,000 pairs of shoes a month exclusively for Nike in Vietnam. |
| CorpWatch Interviews Lora Jo Foo CorpWatch September 22nd, 1997 Here is an interview with Laura Jo Foo of the Asian Law Caucus and President of Sweatshop Watch on the issue of a Living Wage. |
| Clinton's New ''No Sweatshop'' Agreement by Tim Connor, Community Aid Abroad September 22nd, 1997 In April this year, with much fanfare, US President Bill Clinton announced the introduction of a new ''No Sweatshop'' Code of Conduct for US Apparel and Footwear companies. The code is voluntary, but high profile companies like Nike Inc., Reebok International Ltd. and Liz Claiborne Inc. were among the ten initial signatories. These companies agreed that a set of minimum standards for working conditions in factories would be adhered to in the production of their goods -- wherever that production occurs. |
| Profiting from Punishment by Paul Wright, Prison Labor News March 1st, 1997 The co-editor of Prison Legal News, a Washington State prisoner himself, Wright reports on private companies, like Boeing, that are making out like bandits by using prison labor. |
| Organizing the High Tech Industry CorpWatch February 10th, 1997 CorpWatch interviews John Barton, Organizing Coordinator, Building Service Division, of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and links up with other groups organizing for worker health and safety. |