Labor

“Signing up to work at Amazon is strangely easy, it really isn’t much of a hiring process. Liam*, a 34-year old worker in the city of Edmonton in the Canadian province of Alberta, told CorpWatch. “You just have to put your name and SIN number [Social Insurance Number] on the internet and you’re hired.” Read More

Workers at JNB Global’s factory in Guatemala made clothes for U.S. mega retailer Target. In 2020, JNB demanded that all workers sign new contracts that would have wiped out benefits from the years of service they had put in. Seven workers refused to sign and were fired. Read More

The United States is the only wealthy country that does not guarantee paid sick leave. By contrast France offers 21 days a year and Germany offers up to 84 weeks of paid sick leave at 70 percent of salary. So, when 5,000 workers at the U.S. rail giant CSX negotiated a guarantee for four paid days of sick leave a year, the unions rejoiced at the ‘significant accomplishment.’ Read More

Workers at construction materials company Saint Gobain’s factory in Cuaulta, Morelos, Mexico, defeated company-backed union Confederation of Workers & Peasants (CTC) to set up a new union named the Independent Union of Free and Democratic Workers of Saint-Gobain. The victory over CTC was a result of major labor law reforms enacted in 2019. Read More

Workers at Vald’or, a garment factory in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, made clothes for PVH (formerly known as Phillips-Van Heusen), that owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands. The factory abruptly shut down in December 2021 and failed to pay severance or pension benefits to the 1,100 workers. With the help of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the workers got a collective payout of $1 million. Read More

A group of 230 workers in the San Francisco Bay area sued Golden Gate Restaurant Group Inc., a franchisee of Burger King, for forcing them to work off the clock including during their meal and rest breaks. The California Labor Commissioner’s Office ordered the company to pay $724,000 in unpaid wages and interest, plus a fine of $1.2 million.  Read More

When Hurricane Fiona, a Category One storm, hit Puerto Rico last September, all three million people on the island were plunged into darkness. Members of the U.S. Congress questioned why LUMA Energy, the company that was awarded the power system management contract in 2020, was unable to cope. Read More

The Pakistan Accord on Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry signed in December 2022 is designed to prevent tragedies like the Ali Enterprises factory fire in 2012 in Karachi, Pakistan that killed some 260 workers. It is modeled on a similar initiative that was created in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza Fire that killed over 1,100. Read More

Three workers at PT Tainan Enterprise, a garment factory in Jakarta, Indonesia, were fired in August 2021, allegedly for joining a branch of the Federasi Serikat Buruh Garment Tekstil (FSB Garteks or Federation of Textile and Garment Workers Union). In May 2022, PT Tainan fired Rahmawati, the next president of the union. Tainan agreed to rehire Rahmawati in November 2022, after government mediators intervened as well as international buyers and IndustriALL Global Union. Read More

Photographs and interviews with dozens of Indonesian fishermen by the Environmental Justice Foundation, a UK based investigative NGO, and Mongabay have revealed that Dalian Ocean Fishing is using banned equipment to harvest shark fins, in violation of international law. Read More