Background
| Measuring the Full Impact of Minimum and Living Wage Laws by Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Dollars & Sense June 28th, 2006 Critics of minimum wage increases say they cause a "ripple effect" that leads to lay-offs and closures of small business. What's the evidence? |
| Labor issues in Tourism by Chris Beddoe, Tourism Concern January 30th, 2004 This is a excerpt of a report put out by href="http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/campaigns/ssss.html">Tourism Concern . The entire report highlights labor abuses in Gran Canaria, Bali, Korea, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Mexico, Egypt, and Thailand. |
| Maquiladoras at a Glance CorpWatch June 30th, 1999 What exactly are maquiladoras? What do they produce and do they pay a living wage? Which companies operate on the border? These are just a few of the questions answered in our fact sheet and map. |
| Health and Environmental Issues by Rachel Kamel and Anya Hoffman, The Maquiladora Reader (American Friends Service Committee) June 30th, 1999 Maquiladora workers voice constant fears about their safety on the job. In the electronics industry alone, workers are exposed to a variety of substances which include xylene, trichloroethylene, zinc and lead oxides, and nitric acid. Not only electronics assembly but other industries as well expose workers to the materials used in thinners, paints, solvents, resins, solders, dyes, flux, and acetone. Exposure to such substances without proper protection can cause cancer, reproductive problems, skin diseases, vision problems, respiratory impairments, gastrointestinal and nervous disorders, and headaches and fatigue. |
| Mexican Evolution for Women's Rights by Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor June 8th, 1999 Guadalupe Aguirre had recently moved to Ciudad Juarez, a US-Mexico border city known for a NAFTA-fed manufacturing boom -- and dozens of murders of poor working women -- and she was frightened and frustrated. |
| MEXICO: Girl's Murder Sad Symbol of Corporate Power, Child Labor, Female Exploitation on the Border by Dan La Botz, Mexican Labor News and Analysis March 2nd, 1999 Irma Angelica Rosales, a 13-year-old girl, was raped and murdered on February 16 in the town of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, just a cross the border from El Paso, Texas. Her very brief life and violent death symbolize everything that is wrong with the social system which U.S. multinational corporations and the U.S. and Mexican government have created on our common border. |
| US: Texas Prison Labor Union Prison Legal News May 1st, 1998 The Texas Prison Labor Union (TPLU) was established in 1995 by Texas prisoners and outside supporters. The state had just completed a $1.5 billion prison expansion program, and it now incarcerates close to 150,000 prisoners in a vast network of more than 100 prisons. |
| Kasky v. Nike, Inc. Superior Court of the State of California April 20th, 1998 Here is a copy of the lawsuit filed by Marc Kasky against Nike, Inc. alleging labor abuses in its overseas manufacturing operations and seeking compensation to California consumers under state laws against false advertising and unfair business practices. |
| Codes of Conduct and Carmelita: The Real Gap by Gerard Greenfield, Asia Monitor Resource Center September 22nd, 1997 During a two-week period in September 1996, U.S. Department of Labor Officials travelled to six countries -- the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India and the Philippines -- as part of a major study of codes of conduct in the garment industry. The outcome was a report, The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct: A Solution to the International Child Labor Problem? (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 1996). |
| Working Conditions in Sports Shoe Factories in China Asia Monitor Resource Centre and Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee September 1st, 1997 This report was produced by two non-governmental organizations in Hong Kong: the Asia Monitor Resource Centre and the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee. During 1995 and again in 1997, we examined workers' rights and working conditions in the factories of five major subcontractors producing sports shoes in China: Yue Yuen, Nority International, KTP Holdings and Wellco. These factories produce shoes for Nike and Reebok. The first two are Taiwanese companies with factories in southern China, while KTP Holdings is a Hong Kong-based company and Wellco is a South Korean-owned company. |
| The Ordeal of Labor by Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future February 10th, 1997 The impact of technology on employment in all industrial nations has been dramatic and severe for the last two decades, but by the mid-1990s it was clear that what had been happening was evidence not of ''a transitional or temporary or cyclical problem,'' as Stephen Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, has put it, but of ''a lasting and structural problem.'' The problem is technology. |
| Ernst & Young Environmental and Labor Practice Audit Ernst & Young January 13th, 1997 A confidential Ernst & Young audit of labor and environmental conditions inside a Nike factory in Vietnam was leaked to the Transnational Resource & Action Center (TRAC) in 1997. This is the first time that an accounting firm's labor and environmental audit of any apparel company has ever been made public. This internal audit reveals that Nike workers continue to work in hazardous and unjust working conditions. TRAC's report, Smoke From A Hired Gun is an analysis and critique of the Ernst & Young audit that shows that things are even worse than Nike admits. |
| US: Out-Celling the Competition by Dan Pens, North Coast Xpress May 1st, 1996 Was your Microsoft Windows 95 packed and shrink-wrapped by a Washington State prisoner? According to one prisoner who works for Exmark, a company specializing in product packaging, approximately 90 prisoners at the Twin Rivers Correctional Center (TRCC) in Monroe shrink-wrapped 50,000 units of Windows 95. |
| In the Name of Fashion: Exploitation in the Garment Industry by Hector Figueroa, NACLA Report on the Americas January 1st, 1996 As you read this article, there is a good chance that you or someone close to you is wearing clothing imported from Latin America. A quick check of the label may reveal that it is a shirt from the Gap made in Honduras, a pair of Lee Ryder jeans made in Brazil, Bali underpants made in Guatemala, a Levi's golf shirt made in the Dominican Republic, or a Haggar sports jacket made in Colombia. |