Labor

Protests over working conditions are mounting against Coupang, the biggest e-commerce website in South Korea. In July, workers took an air conditioner on a 50 kilometer march from the company headquarters to a Hwaseong warehouse to bring attention to their demands for respite from record high temperatures this summer. Read More

Employees of an Apple sales outlet in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, voted to unionize in June 2022 to become the Big Tech company’s first unionized store in the U.S. This is part of a larger movement across the country, with workers at many companies like Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s expressing their interest in joining a union. Read More

In July 2020 Maria Aparecida de Souza visited the JBS slaughterhouse outpatient clinic in Sidrolândia, in the southern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, to complain of body aches and a cough, afraid that she might have caught COVID-19, according to Brasil de Fato, a Brazilian news site. Read More

Clover Group’s Brilliant Alliance Thai factory in Samut Prakan province used to manufacture lingerie for brands like Lane Bryant, Torrid, and Victoria’s Secret. Over a third of the workers were women aged 45 and older and many had worked at the factory for over a decade. The owners abruptly shut down the factory in March 2021 and fired 1,250 workers. After a successful campaign, Victoria’s Secret agreed to lend the owners U.S. $8.3 million to pay severance to the workers. Read More

Facebook’s parent company has been sued in Kenya over mental health trauma suffered by Daniel Motaung, a former content moderator who worked for Sama, a contractor hired to remove graphic and violent content on the social media site. Moutang is seeking compensation for all others who faced similar problems. Read More

On May Day, food delivery couriers at Deliveroo in the United Arab Emirates, went on a rare strike against pay cuts. A short video of hundreds of workers milling around in their turquoise-colored work uniforms went viral, encouraging workers at Talabat, a rival food delivery platform, to follow suit. Read More

Workers have been organizing to form unions at: Read More

“The living conditions – catastrophe: Mice running around the kitchen. When I tried opening the fridge, the door came off. You’d get a better sleep on the floor than on the beds provided,” Maria*, a Polish worker in the Netherlands employed by T&S Flexwerk, told CorpWatch. Read More

A Starbucks store in Buffalo, NY successfully voted to unionize at the end of 2021, becoming the first coffee shop in the chain to become part of a union. This created an unprecedented wave of unionizing efforts among Starbucks workers across the US.  Read More

An email titled “Why gas increase is good for hiring”, sent out by Wayne Pankratz, an executive director of operations for Applebee’s franchise Apple Central LLC, detailed how inflation and soaring gas prices are a great opportunity for lowering employees’ wages. Read More