Labor

Water that is undrinkable. Air that is better left unbreathed. A community impoverished, living above mountains of gold. These are some of the contradictions of Andalgalá, a town of 17,000 inhabitants in Catamarca, Argentina, 240 kilometres from the provincial capital, home for ten years now to the largest gold and copper mine in the country, and one of the largest in the world. Read More

West African cotton farmers are among those hardest hit by government subsidized corporate agriculture. This week in Hong Kong, trade ministers from the 148 members of the World Trade Organization meet to discusss this and other global free trade issues. Read More

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders. Read More

Six current and former employees of Best Buy filed a race- and sex-discrimination lawsuit Thursday against the consumer electronics chain in federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of denying better-paying sales and managerial jobs to African Americans, Latinos and women in favor of white men. Read More

Firestone, a multinational rubber manufacturing giant known for its automobile tires, has come under fire from human rights and environmental groups for its alleged use of child labor and slave-like working conditions at a plantation in Liberia. Read More

Today, thanks to a slew of questionable concessions offered by the local government to global investors, Gurgaon is on the addresses of some the world's best-known names in garments, automobiles, and information technology (IT). Read More

Oil giant Total is to compensate Burmese villagers who claimed they were used as forced labour during the building of a major gas pipeline. Read More

Customer-support call-centers based in India are suffering a barage of abuse - often racist - from Western callers angry about jobs moving overseas. Read More

A number of South African mining companies, long a pillar of the country's economy, are now primed for take-off to countries with lower mining standards and labour regulations. Read More

A pattern is emerging as the cleanup of Mississippi's Gulf Coast morphs into its multibillion-dollar reconstruction: Come payday, untold numbers of Hispanic immigrant laborers are being stiffed. Read More