U.S. gives Cuba cold shoulder over prisoners and their suffering families April 27, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Cuba, Foreign Policy, Labor.Tags: adriana perez, alan gross, bob menendez, Criminal Justice, Cuba, cuban five, fidel castro, foreign policy, john kerry, Latin America, oakland ross, raul castro, roger hollander
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The Cuban Five, who were convicted in Miami of espionage, are portrayed on a billboard near Havana as then Cuban president Fidel Castro delivers a speech, in this photo from June 23, 2001
She’s 43 years old, childless, and lives in Cuba, while her husband of a quarter-century is incarcerated in a U.S. maximum-security prison, having served just 14 years of a soul-crushing sentence — two life terms plus 15 years.
So what are the odds that Adriana Perez and her spouse, Gerardo Hernandez, will ever have a child together?
Right now, those chances are looking extremely slim.
Or, as Perez put it just the other day: “It’s another one of our rights that is being violated.”
In this case, the right to bear children.
An intense, somewhat diminutive woman with dark, striking features and a crown of wavy black hair, the Cuban activist was in town last week to address an assembly of about 160 mostly left-leaning Torontonians. They crowded into the United Steelworkers Hall at 25 Cecil St. to hear a tale of American hard-heartedness and duplicity, at least as it’s framed by one of its victims.
In the United States, however, the same individuals are vilified as foreign spies, criminals who broke the law and who richly deserve to be behind bars.
Behold the core configuration of Cuba-U.S. relations in the early years of the third millennium: a tale of five Cuban convicts — plus one yanqui detainee.
The gringo in this story is a 63-year-old American by the name of Alan Gross, who is currently doing time in a Cuban jail.
Put them together, and what you’ve got is possibly the main obstacle to progress on what may well be the most bizarrely dysfunctional bilateral relationship in the world, a state of bitter enmity that has alternately fumed and flared for more than 50 years, pitting Washington and Havana in what some regard as the final battleground of the Cold War.
The Cold War, of course, is over — and ideological disagreement no longer has much to do with the stubborn antipathy that continues to dominate U.S.-Cuba relations.
Even the experts seem stymied by the remarkable and seemingly illogical persistence of the dispute.
“There is no explanation,” says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based think-tank. “This is the war without end — the war against Cuba.”
To some degree, that war can now be reduced to a conflict over prisoners — five Cubans and one American.
Where the Cubans are concerned, time is fast running out.
“The real fear is that the United States is essentially destroying the prospects of these families to have children,” says Birns. “The inability to have children confronts all of them.”
It is certainly staring Adriana Perez straight in the face, as she travels the world trying to drum up support for her husband and his four comrades.
In fact, her hopes for children may already be moot.
Here’s the story so far.
Dispatched to south Florida in the 1990s, the five Cuban men were on a long-term clandestine mission — no one denies that — but they were not spies in the conventional sense, according to their defenders. They were not interested in undermining the U.S. government or its institutions. Instead, they spent their time monitoring the activities of radical Cuban-American groups fiercely opposed to the government of Fidel Castro and not averse to violence.
Later, Havana offered to share its intelligence with the U.S. government.
That was a mistake.
Instead of saying gracias, compañeros, American authorities responded by arresting the five Cubans and charging them with a raft of espionage-related crimes.
Lawyers for the five sought to move the trial out of Miami, with its volatile anti-Castro community, but those efforts were rebuffed.
“That was quite shocking,” says Birns. “In south Florida, it’s hard to imagine you could get an impartial jury.”
Impartial or not, the Miami jurors subsequently convicted the defendants on all counts, and the men were sentenced in 2001 to sometimes astoundingly long prison terms, most notably the sentence meted out to the husband of Adriana Perez.
With one exception — Rene Gonzalez, who was released from a federal prison in 2011 but is still serving three years of parole — the Cubans have remained behind bars ever since.
“In spite of this, they have not lost their optimism that they will return to Cuba,” said Perez, who hasn’t seen her husband since the 1990s — and not for lack of trying.
On at least 10 occasions, she has sought a U.S. visa in order to visit Hernández in jail, only to be turned down each time.
This past week, she called on a highly sympathetic Toronto audience to step up their efforts to win the release of the five.
“I ask each one of you, when you leave here, to think, ‘What would I do if it was my son or brother or father who was in jail?’ ” she said. U.S. President Barack Obama “is not going to give freedom to the five spontaneously or because he is a good person.”
What’s needed, she said, is political pressure.
That pressure could take many different forms, but it seems unlikely they will include a prisoner exchange, although the Cubans have earnestly sought one.
Cue Alan Gross, a possibly somewhat naive American who was arrested in Havana in 2009, while working on a “pro-democracy” project funded by the United States Agency for International Development, a contract that involved providing electronic communications equipment to the island’s minuscule Jewish community.
For that activity, the Cubans arrested the American and put him on trial. He is now serving a 15-year sentence for crimes against the Cuban state.
Havana has left no doubt that it would agree to a swap — Gross’s freedom in return for the release of some or all of the five. But Washington says no.
“The U.S. position is these are not comparable detainees,” says Christopher Sabatini, policy director at the Council of the Americas, a research and analysis forum based in New York. “I don’t think the United States is going to budge on this.”
As a result, the two neighbours remain suspended in the same state of mutual hostility and diplomatic paralysis that has prevailed for almost as long as Cuba has been governed by someone named Castro.
Nowadays, the man in charge in Havana is Raul Castro, Fidel’s slightly younger brother and a considerably more pragmatic individual than his elder sibling ever was.
By most accounts, Raul badly wants to ease tensions with Washington — for economic reasons, above all, given the dilapidated state of the island’s economy. But his government also seems deeply committed to securing the release of the Cuban Five.
“They have tried every conceivable measure to show they are conciliatory,” says Birns in Washington. “They are giving away the store in terms of the concessions they are granting. You would think that Washington would want to dance around the maypole.”
Instead, the Obama administration continues to include Cuba on its list of “terrorist” states — a tired anachronism at best — and to maintain its long-running economic embargo against the island.
“We’re in a complete stalemate,” says Sabatini.
It sometimes seems that nothing short of the Second Coming could inspire a change in the official U.S. stance on Cuba.
Consider the recent appointment of John Kerry as U.S. secretary of state. Many observers expected the former Democratic presidential candidate to provide a fresh new look to Washington’s outmoded policy toward the island. After all, he has long advocated a range of measures that would reduce tensions between the two sides. So far, however, there is little sign that Kerry is sparing much time pondering the fate either of the Cuban Five or of the remaining 11 million islanders still sweltering in the Antillean sea breeze roughly 100 kilometres across the Straits of Florida from Key West.
“That’s the shamefulness of it,” says Birns. “This is the great curse. It’s an unvisited policy.”
According to Sabatini, Cuba receives little attention from the State Department in Washington at least partly because the U.S. has far bigger foreign-policy concerns, from North Korea to China to the Middle East.
Besides, he says, improved relations with the island would spell only minor economic and political benefits for the United States, while risking a much more formidable downside — the outrage of Cuban-Americans in south Florida.
“The amount of noise they would cause is huge,” he says. “So why do it?”
In the absence of a clear directive from the White House, he believes it is inevitable that Cuba policy will remain mired in bureaucratic inertia and outdated thinking.
After all, the U.S. Senate’s foreign affairs committee is chaired by Bob Menendez, a retrograde Cuban-American who would not look fondly on ambassadorial candidates with a history of progressive-minded ideas about his ancestral island home.
“The problem is that, for career people in Washington, being behind a Cuba change is a death sentence,” says Sabatini. “They want to be ambassadors. They’d never be approved.”
Still, there may be at least a glimmer of change on the short-term horizon, as Obama prepares to travel to the region next month, a trip that will include stops in Mexico and Costa Rica.
The United States is now the only country in the Americas that does not have normal diplomatic relations with Havana, and Latin American leaders are impatient with what they see as U.S. foot-dragging.
That frustration might be enough to produce a shift in Washington’s tone, if not something more concrete.
“There are rumblings of change,” says Sabatini. “But it will have to come from the White House.”
Meanwhile, Adriana Perez continues to traverse the globe, on an increasingly urgent campaign to secure the release of her husband.
“We hope it comes soon,” she said in Toronto last Saturday, “because it’s already too late.”
For more about Cuba — the good, the not-so-good, and the downright glorious — check out Oakland Ross’s eRead, Cuba Libre. Simply go to stardispatches.com and subscribe for $1/week. Cuba Libre is also available for single-copy purchase at itunes.ca or starstore.ca for $2.99.
As Death Toll Rises, Report Shows Big Retail Brands Chose Profit over Safety in Bangladesh April 26, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Asia, Bangladesh, Labor.Tags: bangladesh, bangladesh facdory, benetton, child labor, Gap, garment industry, J.C. Penney, jacob chanberlain, labor, labour, Loblaws, Primark, roger hollander, sweatshop, sweatshop leabor, wal-mart
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Hundreds of thousands protest dangerous “sweatshop” conditions as police fire tear gas, rubber bullets
A Bangladeshi woman was lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed in Bangladesh. (Kevin Frayer/Associated Press)
As the death toll soared past 300 in the aftermath of Wednesday’s garment factory disaster in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and over 1,000 remained unaccounted for on Friday, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at hundreds of thousands of mourning protesters fed up with an international garment industry that continues to place profit over workers’ lives.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports Friday that in 2011 several major western retailers rejected a proposal made by a group of Bangladeshi and international unions that outlined a way to clean up Bangladesh’s garment factories. The plan would have established an independent inspectorate to oversee all factories in Bangladesh “with powers to shut down unsafe facilities as part of a legally binding contract signed by suppliers, customers and unions.”
“The proposal was presented at a 2011 meeting in Dhaka attended by more than a dozen of the world’s largest clothing brands and retailers — including Wal-Mart, Gap and Swedish clothing giant H&M — but was rejected by the companies because it would be legally binding and costly,” AP reports.
At the time, Wal-Mart’s representative told the meeting it was “not financially feasible … to make such investments,” according to minutes of the meeting obtained by AP.
‘Not Financially Feasible…’: Inspections would have been funded by contributions from the companies of merely $500,000 per year, compared to the $20 billion Western brands such as Walmart, the Gap and H&M make from the garment industry in Bangladesh per year.
The inspections would have been funded by contributions from the companies of merely $500,000 per year, compared to the $20 billion Western brands such as Walmart, the Gap and H&M make from the garment industry in Bangladesh per year. All told, garment manufacturing is a $1 trillion global industry.
Five garment factories were housed in the eight-story building that collapsed on Wednesday in Dhaka. The factories have been sub-contracted to supply clothing for Wal-Mart in the past, but Wal-Mart officials said that they are still investigating whether their products were being produced in the factory at the time of the disaster.
Among the factory owners in the building were Phantom Apparels Ltd., New Wave Style Ltd., New Wave Bottoms Ltd. and New Wave Brothers Ltd. garment factories, who at the time were making clothing for a number of brands including Benetton, Primark, Loblaws, The Children’s Place and Dress Barn.
On Friday, the New York Times reports, labor groups distributed photos showing that they had discovered garments with labels from J.C. Penney and El Corte Inglés, a Spanish retailer, at the site of the collapse.
The collapse is the latest in a series of factory disasters in Bangladesh tied to western brands including a massive blaze which broke out in the Tazreen factory in November, killing 112 workers. Clothes made for Disney, Wal-Mart and other western labels were found at that factory.
Factory owners from the building ignored a warning not to allow their workers into the building after a crack was detected in the building’s structure on Tuesday.
On Friday, hundreds of rescuers continued to dig through the masses of factory rubble for the third day in a row as “the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers’ relatives gathered outside the building,” AP reports.
Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of workers and relatives from the hundreds of garment factories continued to protest throughout the day Friday.
Bangladeshi media reported that two factories have been burned by protesters demanding the death penalty for the owner of collapsed building, said to have broken many building codes, as well as the owners of the factories inside the building.
However, as Dara O’Rourke, an expert on workplace monitoring at the University of California, Berkeley, reminded the New York Times, it is important to remember the source of labor exploitation in places such as Bangladesh: “Even in a situation of grave threat, when they saw cracks in the walls, factory managers thought it was too risky not to work because of the pressure on them from U.S. and European retailers to deliver their goods on time,” O’Rourke, said, adding that the prices Western companies pay “are so low that they are at the root of why these factories are cutting corners on fire safety and building safety.”
“Improvement is not happening,” said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh, who said a total of 600 workers have died in factory accidents in the last decade. “The multinational companies claim a lot of things. They claim they have very good policies, they have their own code of conduct, they have their auditing and monitoring system,” Amin said. “But yet these things keep happening.”
Rescue workers, army personnel, police and members of media run after they heard someone shouting that a building next to Rana Plaza is collapsing during a rescue operation in Savar, 30 km (19 miles) outside Dhaka April 26, 2013. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj
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Care about Your Food? Then Care about Your Farmworkers Too January 31, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Agriculture, Food, Human Rights, Labor.Tags: fair food, farm workers, farmworker, farmworker wages, food, food justice, labor, labour, laura-anne minkoff-zern, organic farming, organic farms, organic food, roger hollander, worker rights
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It’s organic. It’s local. But did the workers who picked it have health insurance?
These days, most people involved in buying and advocating for local and organic food say they want to support their farmers. They imagine 
(Photo: MRader)
the people that grow their vegetables as sweating in the fields, cheerfully smiling as they pull carrots from their own land, which they till until the sun goes down.
The image of the independent and industrious farmer is upheld in places where “alternative” or sustainable food is sold and promoted, such as farmers markets and food stores, which often encourage consumers to “get to know their farmer.” Grocery stores that carry natural, local, and organic foods, such as Whole Foods and food purchasing cooperatives, commonly post large, glossy photographs of local growers.
But who, exactly, is a farmer? Is it the person who owns a farm? The person who sells food at a farmers’ market? Or could a farmer be the immigrant who follows the work from place to place and picks the fruit of the season?
Almost all farms, even small and organic ones, require hired help. In most cases, that consists of immigrant farmworkers who are paid less than a living wage.
People need to ask not only, where does my food come from, but also, who performs the labor to grow this food? For a food system to be truly sustainable, we must prioritize the well-being of workers as well as consumers.
For a food system to be truly sustainable, we must prioritize the well-being of workers as well as consumers.
Who’s behind your food?
Farm labor is one of only a few occupations exempt from most federal and state minimum wages and work-hour limitations. Of the farmworkers who responded to the most recent National Agricultural Workers’ Survey (NAWS), about one-third earned less than $7.25 an hour and only a quarter reported working more than nine months per calendar year. The California Institute for Rural Studies found that one-fourth of farmworkers live below the federal poverty line, and 55 percent are food insecure on average. (An individual or family is considered food insecure when members of a household lack access to enough food for an active, healthy life at all times, according to the USDA.)
In reality, however, farmworker conditions are even worse than those numbers suggest. Much of the research concerning farm labor is based on information gained from formal systems of employment, such as labor contractors. That leaves the majority of farm laborers who work informally, such as daily workers, unaccounted for.
Are conditions better on organic farms? Not as much as you’d think. Entry-level workers on organic farms in California make only 29 cents an hour more than their counterparts on non-organic farms do. That’s still less than a living wage.
And those workers on organic farms are actually less likely to have paid time off, health insurance for themselves and their families, and retirement or pension funds. Certified organic farmers have proven resistant to including labor standards in organic certification, according to a study published in 2006 in the journal Agriculture and Human Values.
Looking beyond the city
Some in the sustainable food movement work with the goal of directly addressing human rights issues in the food system. These groups and individuals make up what many call the “food justice movement.” Yet even in these circles, some organizations seem to have trouble focusing on the rights of farmworkers.
The Student/Farmworker Alliance has worked to bring farmworker injustice into the picture on college campuses.
Why are these workers so hard to see? Maybe it’s because most of our organizations are located in cities and staffed by young people attracted by urban life. Consider a group like Planting Justice, an organization in Oakland, Calif., which describes its work as “democratizing access to affordable, nutritious food.” It does this by “empowering disenfranchised urban residents with the skills, resources, and inspiration to maximize food production, economic opportunities, and environmental sustainability in our neighborhoods.”
Groups such as Planting Justice often work on initiatives to encourage and popularize urban gardening and to increase the availability of fresh food in poor urban neighborhoods. Although these are important efforts to improve the health of often underserved urban residents, they tend to limit the conversation to the urban core. Issues that affect rural places—including the plight of farmworkers—are left out of the discussion.
If the growing food justice movement is to truly confront injustice in the food system, it must address the rural poor as well as the urban poor. The fact that the workers who actually grow and harvest the food we’re talking about are also poor provides a natural opportunity for solidarity and makes this even more important to the movement.
Good news and next steps
Some in the food justice community are starting to work more broadly on issues of farm and food system labor, coordinating with farm, food processing, and restaurant worker unions. These new coalitions include The Food Chain Workers Alliance, The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, The Rural Coalition, and the Student/Farmworker Alliance.
Working together, many groups are finding more power to motivate policy change and raise working standards, increasing the visibility of food worker issues in the mainstream food movement.
The Student/Farmworker Alliance, for example, has played a major role in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Campaign for Fair Food, bringing farmworker injustice into the picture on college campuses. In addition, The Food Chain Workers Alliance is working directly with rural as well as urban food justice groups, bringing labor issues into the conversations of foodies who may previously have thought only about whether their carrots were local and not about whether the people who picked them had health insurance.
By working in coalition, people who are used to advocating for healthier food in urban centers are beginning to learn from rural activists, as well as the other way around. If we are to truly see the creation of a more just food system, then organizations, individuals, and communities that claim sustainable and food justice ideals must start to expand their vision for a food system that is just in both environmental and social terms. That may mean pushing for revised agricultural trade and immigration policy, including stricter labor regulations and higher minimum wages.
Both sustainable food proponents and food justice organizers have shown interest in addressing labor-related injustice. But to truly make that change, those that care about our food system must broaden their views of food sustainability to include the rights and health of all producers and consumers of food.
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern has spent many years working on farms and with agriculture and food organizations in Guatemala, New York State, and California. She holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Goucher College in Maryland.
Boycott of Standardized Tests Spreads as Seattle Teachers Revolt January 14, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Education, Labor.Tags: academic progress, arne duncan, ballard high, education, garfield high, map, public education, roger hollander, school boycott, school reform, seattle schools, standardized tests
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Teachers in Seattle schools refuse to administer ‘specious’ standardized tests. Will others follow their lead?
Opponents of the nation’s relentless push for standardized testing in public schools have new champions in Seattle this week as teachers at one high school and now another have refused to issue such exams to their students, calling them a waste of “time and money” amid “dwindling school resources.”
The entire teaching faculty at Garfield High School (with only three abstentions) voted to support a boycott against administering the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) this week or ever again. Garfield is the largest of thirteen high schools in the Seattle Public School (SPS) system.
In a press release, Kris McBride, Garfield’s academic dean and testing coordinator, said the test “produces specious results, and wreaks havoc on limited school resources” during the weeks the test is administered.
On Friday, teachers at Ballard High School said they would join the boycott as well. National support for the teachers was also growing online, as a petition circulated and a facebook page for the teachers materialized.
Following some fear that the Garfield teachers could face disciplinary action, well-known education policy expert Diane Ravitch was among those using social media to garner additional support for their cause on Saturday:
Support the Teachers of Seattle wp.me/p2odLa-3CA
Diane Ravitch @DianeRavitch In an interview with Seattle’s KUOW Radio, Ravitch said, “This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the entire staff of a school has said ‘no, we will not do this. It’s not good for the students, and it’s a waste of time and money.’”
A letter issued by the Garfield teachers said they would all “respectfully decline to give the MAP test” to any of their students this year.
“I’m teaching by example. If I don’t step up now, who will?” –Mario Shauvette, Garfield High math teacher
“We have had different levels of experiences with MAP in our varied careers, have read about it, and discussed it with our colleagues,” they said. “After this thorough review, we have all come to the conclusion that we cannot in good conscience subject our students to this test again.”
The Christian Science Monitor recounts the teachers’ press event in dramatic fashion:
Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers… at Seattle’s Garfield High School worked their way to the front of an already-crowded classroom, then turned, leaned their backs against the wall of whiteboards, and fired the first salvo of open defiance against high-stakes standardized testing in America’s public schools.
To a room full of TV cameras, reporters, students, and colleagues, the teachers announced their refusal to administer a standardized test that ninth-graders across the district are mandated to take in the first part of January. Known as the MAP test – for Measures of Academic Progress – it is intended to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math.
First one teacher, then another, and then more stepped forward to charge that the test wastes time, money, and dwindling school resources.
“Our teachers have come together and agreed that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” McBride told the crowded room. “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously. It produces specious results and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”
History teacher Jesse Hagopian discusses Garfield High School teachers’ decision to refuse to the give the MAP test to their students during a press conference in Seattle on Thursday. (Photo by Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
In addition to the detrimental impact on students, teachers also pushed back against the test as a way to evaluate teacher performance.
“To use this (MAP) as a tool to evaluate our teaching makes no sense,” said Jesse Hagopian, a history teacher at Garfield High. “They’re setting us up for failure. And Garfield High School is not a failure. We’re the home of (former students) Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee and Quincy Jones.”
Hagopian told Common Dreams that Garfield has a proud tradition of teaching to the “whole student” and that its faculty came together because they understand that test results do no adequately tell the story of who students are or will go on to be. “No one cares how Jimi Hendrix scored on a high school math test,” he said. “And no one should.”
“We really think our teachers are making the right decision,” said Garfield student body president Obadiah Stephens-Terry. “I know when I took the test, it didn’t seem relevant to what we were studying in class – and we have great classes here at Garfield. I know students who just go through the motions when taking the test, just did it as quickly as possible so they could do something more useful with their time.”
Asked if teachers were worried about what lessons students might take away from their defiant boycott chairman of the math department Mario Shauvette, stepped forward and said: “I’m teaching by example. If I don’t step up now, who will? I’m taking charge of what I do here.”
For his part, Wayne Au, former Garfield student and now assistant professor of education at the University of Washington, says teachers at his alma mater are offering their students—and others involved in the fight against corporate school reform—many valuable lessons.
Writing at ReThinking Schools, where he is assistant editor, Au explains:
At the most basic level, the national corporate school reform agenda requires teachers’ compliance. So regardless of individual motives, when a group of teachers collectively and publicly says NO, that represents a fundamental challenge to those pushing that elite agenda. The growing support for Garfield teachers’ resistance to the MAP test is a testament to just how much the collective action of teachers at one school means to the rest of the world.
Having all of the teachers at a school decide to support a boycott of a high-stakes, standardized test is a rare and beautiful thing, one that hasn’t happened since some Chicago teachers did it over a decade ago. That is powerful and inspirational stuff, and as far as I’m concerned, because we don’t yet know the district’s response, the teachers at Garfield are showing a level courage and heroism that I love and admire.
When nearby Ballard High School joined the boycott, teachers there cited numerous and various reasons for aligning with their colleagues at Garfield.
The test—teachers at Ballard said in a letter explaining their decision—has “been re-purposed by district administration to form part of a teacher’s evaluation, which is contrary to the purposes it was designed for, as stated by its purveyor, making it part of junk science.”
The Ballard High teachers, who spoke as one unit, said they were in full agreement with and would stand in support of those at Garfield. “Specifically,” they said, “the MAP test program throughout Seattle Public Schools ought to be shut down immediately. It has been and continues to be an embarrassing mistake. Continuing it even another day, let alone another month or year or decade, will not turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse.”
As Reuters points out: “The revolt… comes at a time of fierce political battles over teacher evaluations that has played out in cities from Chicago to Los Angeles.” And continues:
The MAP test that has become a point of contention at Garfield is given at schools around the country but is not required by Washington state.
Unlike the tests required by the state, which are the High School Proficiency Exam and the End-of-Course exams, it has no bearing on students’ grades or their ability to graduate.
Education journalist Valerie Strauss, writing at her Answer Sheet blog, adds:
The boycotts are part of a growing grass-roots revolt against the excessive use of standardized tests to evaluate students, teachers, schools, districts and states. The high-stakes testing era began a decade under No Child Left Behind, and critics say that the exams are being inappropriately used and don’t measure a big part of what students learn.
Parents have started to opt out of having their children take the exams; school boards have approved resolutions calling for an end to test-based accountability systems; thousands of people have signed a national resolution protesting high-stakes tests; superintendents have spoken out, and so have teachers. It has been building momentum in the last year, since Robert Scott, then the commissioner of education in Texas, said publicly that the mentality that standardized testing is the “end-all, be-all” is a “perversion” of what a quality education should be.
Raid Frees 14 Enslaved Indian Children Forced To Make Christmas Decorations December 9, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Asia, Human Rights, India, Labor.Tags: capitalism, child labor, Child Labor India, Delhi 14, Enslaved Children Christmas Decorations, Enslaved Workers Freed, Global March For Children Children Freed, Global March For Children Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown Child Labor, India, roger hollander, Sweatshop Christmas Decorations, Sweatshop Workers India, World News
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Roger’s note: The logic of capitalism is that if it is profitable, it is legitimate. Hundreds of years of labor activism have pushed governments to restrict some of its abuses of living human beings, but as this article demonstrates, it is like putting a finger in the dike. Capitalism, be it the capitalism of a so-called democracy or the cruelly misnamed socialism or communism of a Soviet Union or Chinese state capitalism, is inherently undemocratic and despotic. The reason that governments, even in so-called democracies, cannot control these abuses is that the massive concentrations of corporate capital control the flow of information and the very electoral process. Genuine socialism, which can be defined as “freely associated labor,” and which is the only road to genuine democracy, certainly would not generate the kind of abuses to children or other living human beings that we read about here.
The Huffington Post | By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 12/07/2012 3:31 pm EST | Updated: 12/07/2012 3:31 pm EST
A raid on an Indian sweatshop freed 14 children — some as young as 8 years old — who had been kept in slave-like conditions making Christmas decorations allegedly bound for the West, Yahoo! reports.
The children were kept in tiny rooms, working 19 hours a day to create the festive trinkets, according to the outlet.
Last week’s raid was led by human rights group Global March for Children, which according to its website is a long-time partner of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), as well as UNICEF.
Global March received support from former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who now serves as the United Nations’ special envoy for global education. Brown released a video of the conditions in the sweatshop, which he hopes will put pressure on India and the international community to put a stop to child labor, Yahoo! notes.
In a column written for the Huffington Post, Gordon went into further detail about the raid. He wrote:
The suffering of these young children, cruelly trafficked into slave labour, is the real Christmas story of 2012. Their plight must become a wake-up call for all concerned about the treatment of vulnerable children around the world. It demands we move immediately to ban all child labor.
“There is no parent in the world who would ever want their child to be subjected to conditions that you see in these films of children in dingy basements,” Gordon said, according to Yahoo!, “without air, without food, without proper care, being forced into child labor for all these hours of the day. I think every parent who sees these films will want this practice brought to an end as quickly as possible.”
The United Nations estimated that 55 million children aged 5 to 14 were currently employed in India, the Telegraph reported in 2007. That number has gone down, according to the Washington Post, which reported that a 2009 survey by the Statistics Ministry put the number at about 5 million. However, the newspaper also notes that UNICEF puts the number at about 28 million children.
Several child labor activists and organizations, including GMACL and Gordon Brown, are pushing the Indian Parliament to vote for an amendment to existing laws that would abolish all forms of child labor for those up to 14 years of age, according to GMACL
Until now, the country had stopped short of banning all child labor, due to a worry that it would hurt poor families that depend on their children’s wages to make ends meet, according to the Post.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Indian government is also under pressure to meet the 2016 International Labour Organization’s deadline for the abolition of the worst forms of child labor.
Inside the Invisible World of Domestic Work: An Interview with Ai-jen Poo December 7, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Labor, Women.Tags: ai-jen poo, childcare, Civil Rights, domestic work, domestic workers, eldercare, home care, immigrant women, labor, labor relations, labor standards, labour, lauren feeney, minimum wage, nlra, poor women, roger hollander, women, worker rights
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What we found is that the people, mostly women, who we count on to take care of the most precious elements of our lives — our homes and our families — do not earn enough to take care of their own families or themselves.
Domestic workers — the nannies, housekeepers, and home health aides who care for our young children and elderly parents — have traditionally been excluded from the most basic protections, like minimum wage. Their jobs are inherently insecure, ending abruptly when the child goes off to school or the patient passes on, yet few collect Social Security or are eligible for unemployment benefits. Working behind closed doors in private homes, they are vulnerable to abuse and unable to organize.
Enter Ai-jen Poo. The community organizer has been advocating for domestic workers’ rights for over a decade, and in 2010, led the campaign for the nation’s first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which theoretically guarantees overtime pay, paid vacation, and basic human and civil rights protections for over 200,000 workers in the state of New York. Now she’s working to bring the same rights to domestic workers nationwide.
This week, Poo’s organization, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, together with the University of Illinois at Chicago and the DataCenter, released the first-ever national survey of domestic workers, Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work. Poo sees it as a call-to-action for the nation to tackle the problems of this unregulated sphere, problems that in a Venn diagram would overlap with race, immigration, gender, and the modern, middle-class dual-income family.
Lauren Feeney: What are some of the most important findings in your report?
Ai-jen Poo: The fact that the report exists at all is important because for so long there hasn’t been any real data on domestic work, and that’s contributed to the invisibility of these workers and the Wild West nature of this industry. Now we have data from surveys of 2,086 domestic workers in 14 different cities from 71 different countries of origin.
What we found is that the people, mostly women, who we count on to take care of the most precious elements of our lives — our homes and our families — do not earn enough to take care of their own families or themselves. Twenty-three percent of domestic workers earn below minimum wage. That’s not counting live-in domestic workers. Among live-ins, sixty-one percent earn below minimum wage. And I think all of us know that even minimum wage is impossible to survive on.
Feeney: How is it that in 21st century America — after all the successes of the labor movement, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement — there is still this segment of the population that lacks even the most basic protections under the law? Why were these people left behind?
Poo: One reason is the legacy of racism in this country. In the 1930s, Southern members of Congress refused to support the labor laws within the New Deal if farm workers and domestic workers, who were largely African-American at the time, were included under those protections — protections like the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act.
The people who have done this work have historically been poor, working poor women — immigrant women, African-American women, white poor and working class women — socially disadvantaged people. Then there’s the fact that this work has been seen as women’s work and has never really been valued or recognized as real work — it’s a battle to even get recognition as work and as workers versus just help or companionship.
All of those factors connected have meant that this work is done in the shadows. Now, with the need for this work just growing exponentially and becoming so much a part of the lifeblood of this country and the economy, we have an opportunity to really turn the tide on that.
Feeney: What makes domestic work so important to the economy?
Poo: The economist Jared Bernstein calls it a “critical input.” We call it the work that makes all other work possible. It’s this invisible layer of work — raising families and taking care of homes — that allows other people to go into their public lives and work, achieve, build.
Feeney: You call for a living wage, paid sick days, paid vacation and health insurance for domestic workers, and I don’t think anyone would argue that these women don’t deserve these basic protections. And of course, it’s easy to point a finger at wealthy executives and politicians who don’t treat their nannies well. But what about middle-class working women with limited options for child and elder care who really can’t afford any more than they’re already paying?
Poo: We need to take a holistic approach that’s not just about workers’ rights but about a whole set of policies that will make it more possible for all of us to take care of the people that we love. So we also promote tax credits and paid family leave policies and all kinds of workplace flexibility policies for working parents.
We’re living in a 21st century economy where the majority of paid workers are women, yet they’re still responsible for the vast majority of caregiving responsibilities. Our society, in the rules and structures that currently exist, has not accounted for that whole arena of work. And the manifestation of that is the low wages and invisibility and abuse of domestic workers. But really every single family is impacted by the fact that we haven’t adequately accounted for the work that goes into caring for families. Families need help, they need childcare, they need eldercare, and they don’t always have the resources to afford it. Why don’t we have universal childcare? Why don’t we have workplace flexibility policies that account for the fact that people get sick and family members have to take care of them? It just seems very basic and it can absolutely be done. We really need to rethink the whole way we account for work and structure the economy in a way that works for everyone.
Feeney: In the meantime, what would you suggest concerned employers do to make sure that they’re treating their caregivers fairly, and what can domestic workers and their allies do to get involved in your campaign?
Poo: If you’re an employer, I would really encourage you to go to the Hand-in-Hand Domestic Employers Association website and sign up for their list. And for domestic workers, I would say join one of our affiliate organizations or the national alliance. We’re doing work in twenty-four cities in fourteen states and the District of Columbia, so we have affiliates all over the place, and if people want to form an organization in their town, we’ll support it. We’ve got big campaigns moving forward in California, Massachusetts and Illinois in 2013, so people can get involved in changing the policies and laws that will affect their lives in the future. That’s a call for employers too — we need employers to support our standards and guidelines, and their voices will be really important in that cause. Finally, there’s a measure that’s waiting in the wings at the Department of Labor that would bring 1.8 million home care workers under federal minimum wage and overtime protection, and we need people to write letters to their local Congress members and to the president himself saying that they want to see homecare workers included under basic protections. We’ve got to take care of our caregivers.
Walmart: “Not Financially Feasible” To Take Minimal, Legally Required Steps to Save Workers’ Lives December 6, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Bangladesh, Labor.Tags: bangladesh, capitalism, industrial safety, labor, labour, roger hollander, walmart, worker safety, workers, workers rights
1 comment so far
by Abby Zimet
In the wake of last month’s fire in a Bangladesh garment factory that killed over 100 workers, Bloomberg has gained access to notes from a 2011 meeting where Walmart officials decided against paying suppliers high enough prices to cover costs of needed safety improvements because they deemed it “not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.” The meeting was attended by more than a dozen retailers, including Gap, Target and JC Penney. Over 300 Bangladeshi garment factory workers have died since 2006. Walmart reported a 9% increase in third-quarter net income, bringing their earnings for that quarter to $3.63 billion. An estimated half of Bangladesh’s garment factories don’t meet legally required work safety standards. At a fire in a nearby warehouse two days after the Tazreen factory fire, workers had to climb down a bamboo pole because they couldn’t get to the stairs; graffiti on a restroom wall there read: “Work here and your life is a living hell.”
“Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories,” they said in the document. “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”
COMMENTS
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gardenernorcal
“It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”
Guess what if that is their firm position, then mine is: It’s no longer morally feasible for me to purchase your goods. I am thinking if fewer people buy their goods they may change their way of thinking.
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sLiM_mC_sHaDy
Yes, please do not shop there. I never have; they sicken me.
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Catherine Carre
People forget that it is precisely this type of immoral exploitation that led Marx and Engels to develop their communist philosophy…Engels’ “The condition of the working class in England” describes very similar conditions as suffered by those workers in developing countries employed by behemoths such as Walmart…communism is the child of capitalism..
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nveric
Show me how Communism works?
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Tom Carberry
Communism works fine in Cuba, despite over 60 years of a crushing blockade. Communism worked fine in the Soviet Union if you consider general equality and the absence of crime a good life. Muhammad Ali said he felt safer in Moscow than any other city in the world, because it had no crime.
Communism had its horrors, like Stalin’s gulags. But the American slavery system, followed by 160 years of Jim Crow, and the largest prison system in the history of the world (dwarfing Stalin’s gulags at their largest point), makes those horrors look like minor glitches.
And don’t forget the many tens of millions of people America has slaughtered in its wars for profit.
American capitalism works for the top 20% of the people, but not for the rest.
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Gubdeb
I dunno…which is worse?: 1: Walmart, or, 2: the MIC/American Capitalism that makes a “Walmart”possible? How many wars did we wage to get to this point. How many “Deals” were cut to have these products sold here? (see NAFTA & Robert Reich) The POINT is, until we face who we really are, things will never change. Walmart is just a symptom, not the problem.
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AmonVerite
Here is the problem: http://www.stateofnature.org/d…
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giovannalepore
Remember Bhopal India and now Bangladesh: Symbols of why they hate the USA. Your “democracy” and “freedom” are nothing but smoke screens for crimes against humanity.
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Gubdeb
I thought Indians loved the USA(?) Why, the MSM in recent years has woven Indians into the very fabric of American life. In network programming, ads, and they seem to all love Walmart. Yes, Walmart.
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giovannalepore
I doubt that this is the case with the overwhelming numbers of Indians IN India especially those who were the US victims. At the rate the US is going it will have the entire world despise it.
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Matthew Grebenc
Money is power, and corporations pursue it at any cost. They are psychopathic.
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wildcarrots
Well yes there is a sick mentality. Once a factory burns down it will have to been re-built or replaced. You either re-build it before or after the employees are there working. that is the sick really stupid part.
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theoldgoat
This is where we are, its emblematic of the massive shift that must be brought about in order to restore balance.
“Work here and your life is a living hell.”
… the system, owned by interests that value profit over life, scorn those who see from other perspectives – an absolutely essential aspect of life – yet do so brutally, without compunction, on the backs of BILLIONS OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD>
Boycott any brand you cannot identify and source to ethical satisfaction.
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itsthethird
Corporations and workers can take the heat while the stockholders, capitalists, consumers, and management, can take the profits. However the costs of profit are spread disproportionate to benefits if any exist the benefits are captured immediately while costs are avoided by all. The whole system is dysfunctional because cost avoidance or shifting is acceptable and or encouraged.
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greatbear215
Walmurder: Were they value profits over people!
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Shantiananda
Not just Walmart, but the whole American Empire, “value profits over people”! Walmart is just the paradigm of the American corportocracy.
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AmonVerite
As seen here: http://www.stateofnature.org/d…
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Gubdeb
Thank you, Shan.
We were unable to load Disqus. If you are a moderator please see our troubleshooting guide.
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18 comments
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gardenernorcal•3 hours ago “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”
Guess what if that is their firm position, then mine is: It’s no longer morally feasible for me to purchase your goods. I am thinking if fewer people buy their goods they may change their way of thinking.
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sLiM_mC_sHaDy gardenernorcal•3 hours ago Yes, please do not shop there. I never have; they sicken me.
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Catherine Carre•2 hours ago People forget that it is precisely this type of immoral exploitation that led Marx and Engels to develop their communist philosophy…Engels’ “The condition of the working class in England” describes very similar conditions as suffered by those workers in developing countries employed by behemoths such as Walmart…communism is the child of capitalism..
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nveric Catherine Carre•an hour ago Show me how Communism works?
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Tom Carberry nveric•6 minutes ago Communism works fine in Cuba, despite over 60 years of a crushing blockade. Communism worked fine in the Soviet Union if you consider general equality and the absence of crime a good life. Muhammad Ali said he felt safer in Moscow than any other city in the world, because it had no crime.
Communism had its horrors, like Stalin’s gulags. But the American slavery system, followed by 160 years of Jim Crow, and the largest prison system in the history of the world (dwarfing Stalin’s gulags at their largest point), makes those horrors look like minor glitches.
And don’t forget the many tens of millions of people America has slaughtered in its wars for profit.
American capitalism works for the top 20% of the people, but not for the rest.
-
-
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Gubdeb•an hour ago I dunno…which is worse?: 1: Walmart, or, 2: the MIC/American Capitalism that makes a “Walmart”possible? How many wars did we wage to get to this point. How many “Deals” were cut to have these products sold here? (see NAFTA & Robert Reich) The POINT is, until we face who we really are, things will never change. Walmart is just a symptom, not the problem.
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AmonVerite Gubdeb•37 minutes ago Here is the problem: http://www.stateofnature.org/d…
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giovannalepore•3 hours ago Remember Bhopal India and now Bangladesh: Symbols of why they hate the USA. Your “democracy” and “freedom” are nothing but smoke screens for crimes against humanity.
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Gubdeb giovannalepore•an hour ago I thought Indians loved the USA(?) Why, the MSM in recent years has woven Indians into the very fabric of American life. In network programming, ads, and they seem to all love Walmart. Yes, Walmart.
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giovannalepore Gubdeb•4 minutes ago I doubt that this is the case with the overwhelming numbers of Indians IN India especially those who were the US victims. At the rate the US is going it will have the entire world despise it.
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-
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Matthew Grebenc•3 hours ago Money is power, and corporations pursue it at any cost. They are psychopathic.
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wildcarrots Matthew Grebenc•2 hours ago Well yes there is a sick mentality. Once a factory burns down it will have to been re-built or replaced. You either re-build it before or after the employees are there working. that is the sick really stupid part.
-
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theoldgoat•3 hours ago This is where we are, its emblematic of the massive shift that must be brought about in order to restore balance.
“Work here and your life is a living hell.”
… the system, owned by interests that value profit over life, scorn those who see from other perspectives – an absolutely essential aspect of life – yet do so brutally, without compunction, on the backs of BILLIONS OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD>
Boycott any brand you cannot identify and source to ethical satisfaction.
-
itsthethird•3 hours ago Corporations and workers can take the heat while the stockholders, capitalists, consumers, and management, can take the profits. However the costs of profit are spread disproportionate to benefits if any exist the benefits are captured immediately while costs are avoided by all. The whole system is dysfunctional because cost avoidance or shifting is acceptable and or encouraged.
-
greatbear215•3 hours ago Walmurder: Were they value profits over people!
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Shantiananda greatbear215•2 hours ago Not just Walmart, but the whole American Empire, “value profits over people”! Walmart is just the paradigm of the American corportocracy.
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Gubdeb Shantiananda•an hour ago Thank you, Shan.
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A Death in the Family — and the Question Is: Whodunit? December 3, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Economic Crisis, Food, Labor.Tags: harvey milk, hostess, hostess brands, jim hightower, labor, labour, ripplewood, roger hollander, trade unions, twinkie, twinkie defense, unions
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Born in 1930 in Schiller Park, Ill., the deceased was 82 years old at the time of passing, which ironically was the day before Thanksgiving.
Having long enjoyed the sweet life, the end was a bit bitter, for the dearly departed’s estate had been mercilessly plundered in recent years by unscrupulous money managers. This left 18,500 surviving family members in dire straits. Indeed, the family contends that the octogenarian’s death was not due to natural causes, but to foul play — a case of corporate murder.
This is the drama behind the sudden death of Twinkies. Fondly remembered as “the cream puff of the proletariat” (and less fondly as a sugar-and-fat bomb that delivered a toothache in one bite and a heart attack in the next), this industrial concoction of 37 ingredients became, for better or worse, an icon of American food processing.
The father of the Twinkie was James Dewar, a baker at the old Continental Baking Co. who saw the goo-filled tube cake as a way to keep the factory’s confection machinery busy after strawberry shortcake season ended. Yes, the Twinkie was actually conceived as “food” for idle machines. How fitting is that?
But us humans happily swallowed this extruded marvel of comestible engineering. As a teenager, I probably downed my weight in Twinkies each year — and my long years on this Earth might well be due to the heavy dose of preservatives, artificial flavors and other chemicals baked into every one of those cellophane-wrapped two-packs that I consumed.
The Twinkie was the best-seller of Hostess Brands, a conglomerate purveyor of some 30 nutritionally challenged (but moneymaking) brand-name food products, ranging from Wonder Bread to Ho Hos. In the past year, Hostess racked up $2.5 billion in sales — yet it suffered a staggering $1.1 billion in losses. Thus, on Nov. 21, Ripplewood Holdings, the private equity outfit that had taken over the conglomerate in 2009, pulled the plug, solemnly announcing that Hostess simply couldn’t survive.
Why? Because it was burdened with overly generous labor contracts, the firm’s executives declared, adding that greedy union officials refused to save the company by taking cuts.
Wait a minute. They claim that the bereaved loved ones of the Hostess family killed the Twinkie? Holy Agatha Christie, that can’t be right.
Remember the horrible murders in 1978 of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk? At the killer’s trial, his lawyer argued for leniency on the grounds that his client subsisted on a steady diet of junk food, which had addled his brain. This claim entered the annals of American jurisprudence as the “Twinkie Defense.”
Even less defensible is the campaign by Ripplewood financial manipulators to lay the death of Hostess at the feet of loyal, longtime employees who, after all, need the jobs. In fact, far from greedy, Hostess workers and their unions have been both modest and faithful. Their wages are decent but not at all excessive — only middle class. And the charge that unions would not make sacrifices to help the company is a flat-out lie, for they had previously given back $100 million in annual wages and benefits to help it survive.
The true perfidy in this drama is not in the union, but inside Ripplewood’s towering castle of high finance in New York City. After buying Hostess in a bankruptcy sale, these equity hucksters proceeded to feather their own nests, rather than modernize Hostess’s equipment and upgrade its products, as the unions had urged. For starters, these profiteers piled an unbearable debt load of $860 million on Hostess, thus diverting its revenues into nonproductive interest payments made to rich, absentee speculators. Also, they siphoned millions of dollars out of Hostess directly into their corporate pockets by charging “consulting and management fees” that did nothing to improve the snack-makers financial health.
But it was not until this year that their rank managerial incompetence and raw ethical depravity fully surfaced. While the Ripplewood honchos in charge of Hostess were demanding a new round of deep cuts in worker’s pay, health care, and pensions, they quietly jacked up their own pay. By a lot! The CEO’s paycheck, for example, rocketed from $750,000 a year to $2.5 million.
Like a character in a bad Agatha Christie whodunit, Ripplewood — the one so insistently pointing the finger of blame at others — turns out to be the one who killed the Twinkie. Along with the livelihoods of 18,500 workers
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–>
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Walmart Relentless as Thousands Set to Lose Out in New Health Care Policy December 2, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Labor.Tags: health, health care, health insurance, healthcare, labor, labor rights, labor violations, labour, roger hollander, walmart, walmart wdarehouse, worker rights
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Box store implicated in federal wage-theft lawsuit
Walmart will continue to disappoint workers and labor rights activists in the coming months as it continues to ignore the current widespread workers’ strike and protest movement against its labor policies and implements a new health insurance program that will deny healthcare coverage to employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.
Photo via Facebook / Overpass Light Brigade.
Walmart is known for employing many of its workers part time and less than 30 hours per week, meaning a large majority of its employees is set to lose insurance through their employer.
In response to the Huffington Post, Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers will lose their insurance under the new policy, which is set to begin in January. Company spokesman David Tovar told Huffington that Walmart had “made a business decision” not to respond to questions from the paper.
“For Walmart employees, the new system raises the risk that they could lose their health coverage in large part because they have little control over their schedules. Walmart uses an advanced scheduling system to constantly alter workers’ shifts according to store traffic and sales figures,” the Huffington Post reports.
The discovery comes shortly after thousands of Walmart workers across the country walked off the job over the course of the week leading up to the national shopping day Black Friday. Workers continue to organize and speak out against the company’s attempts to silence employees’ complaints regarding the “company’s manipulation of hours and benefits, efforts to try to keep people from working full-time and their discrimination against women and people of color.”
In other Walmart labor news, Walmart warehouse workers in Southern California filed a petition in court this week in a bid to sue Walmart in a federal wage-theft lawsuit.
Walmart’s warehouses in California and Illinois have accused their employer of labor violations in the past; however, Friday’s filing was the first time Walmart has been directly implicated in the claims of abuse, rather than the company’s warehouse subcontractors, the Huffington Post reports.
“Walmart’s name does not appear on any of these workers paychecks, and the Walmart logo does not appear on the t-shirts they’re required to wear,” Michael Rubin, the workers’ lawyer, said on Friday. “But it has become increasingly clear that the ultimate liability for these workplace violations rests squarely on the shoulders of Walmart.”
Comments
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oldblue63
A) Why does anyone shop at Walmart? We shoppers could bring them around in a few weeks if we all just QUIT shopping there. They need our business …we are in the driver’s seat if we use our power. B) This is a perfect example of why health care should not be provided through employers. Part-time employment is extremely common and it makes the employee constantly up in the air about health care benefits…and many employers do not begin coverage until 3-6 months of employment anyway, so people are going without insurance for long periods. We are all FULL-TIME citizens and that is where we should be getting our health care benefits.
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gardenernorcal
We weren’t offered national health care.
Many people are forced to shop Walmart because when they move in many local shops close up. Before Walmart moved into my town we had a Wards, Penneys, KMart and Sears store and assorted small shops like dime stores. Today we have Walmart a couple high end furniture stores, 1$ Store, a Staples and a Home Depot.
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BuddhaNature
Your story is very similar to our town with one exception. Our town refused a Wal-Mart, so they built in everytown around us and sucked the business away. We too had a JC Penneys, and Sears. And they try and tell you that capitalism is about competition? I won’t shop in there. They keep their wages down to assure themsleves of a customer base.. Henry Ford paid his workers the then good wage of $5.00 dollars a day so that could afford to buy the car they were producing, Wal- Mart on the otherhand, under pays their workers to assure they can’t afford to shop anyplace else.
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natureschild3
“Henry Ford paid his workers the then good wage of $5.00 dollars a day so that could afford to buy the car”
yes! he expressed the opinion that assembly line workers should earn enough to buy an auto. also he insisted the employees show up in a christian church…and never, ever drink a beer or any alcohol–even at home.
then one day ford had a great business idea–”I can grow my own tires in honduras!” there, too, henry made sure the brown people of honduras appeared his his church, but adequate pay? “naw. we don’t need a bunch o’ darkies driving cars!” if you can, watch or read transcript here:
“Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City”
http://www.democracynow.org/20…
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Amurkan
Henry Ford was obliged to pay his workers $5 hr because they quit in droves when they realized that they would be demeaned by his new assembly line. He didn’t do this from the kindness of his heart. No one seems to know this.
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natureschild3
yes! and doesn’t that $5 an hour allowing his faithful to buy a model t speak volumes about the ongoing devaluation of the paper dollar?
“you load 16 tons of #9 coal and what do you get? “anothe day older and deeper in debt. “lord, don’tcha call me ’cause i can’t go…
“i owe my so-o-oul. . . to the company store!”
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gardenernorcal
Yeah Ford was not quite the big stalwart supporter of labor as he’s painted today.
But for years Ford also resorted to legal as well as thug tactics to prevent workers in Ford plants from unionizing.
In December 1937, the company was found in violation of the Wagner Act and was ordered to cease interfering with workers’ efforts to unionize. In 1941, when wages at Ford were in fact lower than the average wage for the industry, Henry Ford continued to insist that “we do not intend to submit to any union.”
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Yunzer
That’s what you get for living in Kalifornia. Even the pre-Wal-Mart stores you listed are big-box chains! Is there ANY part of you state that isn’t totally dominated by big chain-crap? The Summer of Love ended 43 years ago, and the last Doobie Brothers hit was 35 years ago. You should consider moving back here to the unfashionable mid-atlantic/northeast.
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gardenernorcal
But consider this pre Walmart my community of approximately 500,000 supported 4 large chain stores, whose employees were organized and received full benefits including health care and retirement. People had choices. I know I shopped Penneys for clothes, Wards for furniture, Sears for tools and KMart for miscellaneous little stuff. Today I have basically one choice Walmart and they say they can’t pay their employees a living wage or provide them with health care and other benefits. Why is that? They are one of the largest and most profitable US corporations.
And I was born in California. It’s my home. I wouldn’t be moving back to anywhere.
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nveric
You being Snobbish? Don’t you know the oceans are rising?
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Lorenzo LaRue
….And your only entry here is smart ass? Don’t you know that everyone doesn’t live on the beach?
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Yunzer
Fortunately all Wal-Marts are out in the public transit-hostile suburban sprawl-land and require a car, or incredibly crappy bus service to get there. I’ve sworn off all car use except for the occasional long-haul intercity, hiking or hang gliding trip.
The only reason I would set foot in a Wal-Mart of Sam’s Club would be to burn one to the ground. Don’t worry, I’d give plenty of warning to evacuate first.
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Dem. Socialism
“Too Big To Care”…”Too Immoral To Share”.
(Wal-Mart’s new slogan.)
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N30rebel
Perhaps better?: “Too Big To Care”…”Too Immoral To Shame.”
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Matthew Grebenc
Too immortal to care.
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gardenernorcal
“But it has become increasingly clear that the ultimate liability for these workplace violations rests squarely on the shoulders of Walmart.”
No actually the responsibility lies with all of us that worry more about the DOW every morning than we do the moral and humane treatment of every worker on this planet. When Reagan fired those air traffic controllers it wasn’t victory for anyone but big finance and Wall St..
I remember a time when the financial news was the last thing reported on and only given a few moments at that. We also didn’t have our TV waves saturated with ads by big pharma or attorneys. And is it just me or am I seeing more and more alcohol ads as well? Weren’t they outlawed? How is it some companies are allowed to campaign but Spuds Mckensey was torpedoed into oblivion.
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69Tuscany
The US and New Zealand are the only countries in the world who allow pharmaceutical advertising.
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adiantum
I think NZ recently disallowed it.
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Dem. Socialism
Also, gardenernorcal, have you noticed the amount of smoking done in movies lately? Rather blatant.
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Amurkan
The excuse given for smoking actors is the ‘in character’ thing. It’s baloney. The studios are complicit in the death later by millions of kids who start smoking because their film heroes do it. Disgusting and criminal.
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Richard_William_Posner
Let’s not overlook the amount of advertising being done by the military. It’s sickening.
There’s also more than one show that is being used as a propaganda tool to reinforce acceptance of the phony war on terror.
Additionally, the existence of chemtrails is being normalised through increasing visibility in programming and ads. Pay attention to scenes with nice blue skies in them.
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gardenernorcal
There’s a lot of infuriating advertising I didn’t mention like BP’s telling how their actions have improved life on the Gulf.
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Richard_William_Posner
Not being critical gardener, just reinforcing your observations.
The Bernaysian ministries of propaganda, both commercial and political (is there really any difference?) are manufacturing every aspect of our reality.
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gardenernorcal
I didn’t take it as a criticism. I find the additions to my list kind of interesting.
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Richard_William_Posner
I’m glad. Wasn’t really sure. And by the way, yes, I find those BP ads really outrageous and infuriating.
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Holygeezer
The whole stock market thing is pretty criminal. If one is honest and thinks about it at all, there is no way you can “earn” money by doing nothing, unless you are in effect stealing it from others somehow. The others in this case being workers. Some may say this is too simplistic of a view, but in essence, earning money from investments is glorified stealing.
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nveric
The 1970s changed reason into insanity.
Reagan was the tipper, not the gipper.
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gardenernorcal
Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours — something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers
…
Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.
How convenient the US’s largest employer can now foist off their overhead on the US taxpayer while receiving tax breaks and subsidies.
Interesting chart on this site:
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Doug_Terpstra
Yep, this was a predictable outcome of Obamacare, better known as “The Death Panel Profiteers Bailout Act.” WalMart employees (or rather, taxpayers) will now be forced to buy a defective-by-design product from protection racket extortionists that some call insurance companies. The full damage of this monstronsity won’t be understood until well after 2014, when its more onerous dictates are implemented.
Thanks, Obama.
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gardenernorcal
Not just that. Taxpayers will be subsidizing Walmart labor by providing them with medicaid, food stamps etc.. With their profits you’d think they could afford to pay their employees a living wage.
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Doug_Terpstra
Good point. The next logical step will be to lower corporate taxes even further and then repeal the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Mike_Strong
Yup! Repealing the Emancipation Proclamation is definitely on the agenda. Just slightly different job descriptions and this time with a paycheck. Sort of an upgrade on sharecropping.
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natureschild3
don’t just thank obama. top honors should go to lloyd blankfein, ceo of goldman sachs. lloyd is the real man behind the curtain pulling all sorts of political strings!
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Donna M Crane
Since my 41 year old son is already on ObamaCare for his pre-exisiting condition, I can assure you it is in no way defective, and is affordable. He is able to pay his monthly fee of $188 and co-pays even though he is only working about 30 hours a week currently. The excellent RX Plan that is included (unlike Medicare) allows him to get his medications at an affordable price that keeps him out of the hospital and able to work. In fact, as far as I can see, it works just like, and just as well as, my Medicare which I love. And in point of fact, we are already paying for all Walmart’s employees, even the full time ones who still qualify for food stamps and Medicaid. Most WalMart employees already don’t have health insurance thru the company. In fact pretty much only the top levels have it. ObamaCares is already benefiting many people like my son and here in AZ we are using the Federal Government Set Up Exchange, since AZ isn’t going to set up its own Exchange…I consider this a benefit for us as I’m sure AZ wouldn’t do as well. Before you start kicking around ObamaCare, you should talk to some people who are on it.
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Inspector47
Thank you! As far as Walmart being thieves they are the free market, capitalism at it’s best! The republicans are crying about the four people who were killed overseas, four thousand Americans die monthly due to the lack of health care. My daughter wreaked on her bike, she is a college student, at 23, she was able to be on our health ins for her injuries thanks to Obama care.
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Doug_Terpstra
Thanks. I’m glad it’s working for you, at least for now. Most of the perceived good provisions of the 2,000-page bill were implemented upfront, pre-election, by design. 2014 is when the kickers come, too late, by design.
[Adding: Walmart is the post-election coalmine canary. Dropping employeer-provided healthcare will become a corporate rush by 2014. Obamacare did nothing to cap runaway drug and sickcare costs. Enjoy the good times.]
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Inspector47
Like the 80/20 law that forces insurance companies to spend 80 percent of premimuns on the policy holder or return it?
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Doug_Terpstra
Not quite. The rebate does not apply to individual policy holders as you imply, but to collective policy holders within a state. IOW, you don’t get a refund as an individual customer if you’re healthy and the company spends little or no money on you. This is why Obama’s Death-Panel Profiteers Bailout Act is more than 2,000 pages of lobbyese. It’s designed to confuse most people while enriching the investor class that Obama really works for.
The theoretical rebate would be a share of whatever amount your insurer spends on health care that is less than 80% of aggregate premiums paid in by all of its customers in that state, and you can imagine how corporate attorneys will game that one).
So, if your employer (like Walmart) drops you—as many or most will do in the next year or two—forcing you (or taxpayers for you) to pay thousands in out-of-pocket in premiums (no choice under the mandate), you might get a $158 rebate at the end of the year like the lucky lottery winners of North Carolina ($7 in Utah). Partly, this depends on how successful the death-panel gatekeepers are at rationing care or denying claims in a particular state.
http://www.examiner.com/articl…
See also: Welcome to the Future of Your Health Insurance. It Sucks.
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Inspector47
Death panels in the affordable care act, Sarah Palin won lie of the year with that one.
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Doug_Terpstra
Thank you. Apparently, my use of the term for private versus public was unclear. Palin’s use of the term for her GOP handlers referred to government “death panels”, to scare people away from universal coverage by single-payer (for the same people waving signs reading “keep your government hands off my Medicare”). My use of the term refers to the private profiteers (insurance racketeers), whose gatekeepers are a far worse form of “death panel” — denying claims and rationing care for profit only.
The denial of coverage by for-profit gatekeepers is routine and far worse here than what occurs in civilized countries with single-payer universal coverage like Sweden, Canada and the UK. And Obamacare rejected single-payer and any public option thus institutionalizing profiteering by private racketeers with a captive market — with almost no limits on escalating costs, including prescription drugs that are explicitly protected from market competition (free trade is remarkably selective). It is the worst form of crony capitalism endorsed by the conservative Supine Court.
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wildcarrots
Well said.
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wildcarrots
I’m really glad it is working for your son, no doubt it will work better than standard insurance for some groups. Just remember that the system you are comparing it with really sucks. If you really think it is good try comparing it to one of the other systems in the world that deliver better care at half the cost.
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Kenneth C. Fingeret
Hello gardenernorcal,
Walfart has been doing this for decades. As I understand it part of the paperwork when you are hired is getting government assistance due to your lack of a living wage salary that does not include much if anything in the way of benefits. This makes you eligible for different programs such as Medicade, AFDC, etc. A special Walfart tax of 500% of all government payments that are made to Walfart employees due to lack of salary and benefits given to their employees. should be the minimum required for Walfart to pay. I call them Walfart because they leave a bad odor wherever they are located!
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nveric
Blood sucking death mongers run Walmart, their oozing puss filled sores covering their faces, acidic drool plops from their crusted puffy lips burning holes to the center of the Earth, necks as short as their ‘other’ parts and as wide as their hips, and below are stubby trunk-like legs incapable of independent motion.
You see, there’s no body and no heart for these Borg-like little people spawned from Sam Walton and an unknown surrogate, most likely an alien life-form kept in an undisclosed location in Nevada.
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wildcarrots
The U.S. is going to be a very unhealthy place to live and shop when you consider the number of people that do not have access to healthcare. Disease does not respect ideological boundaries. .
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Gubdeb
Look around. It already is.
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Poet
I don’t know who designed the portable lit sign, but it gives the graffiti of protest an entirely new frontier (drive through territory after or just before dark) and flexibility (how difficult would it be to change the message to “Tax the Wealthy for a Change”, or “Shrink the Pentagon Not Social Security”?).
It can be easily moved and, depending on the time, and location reach many people with a simple message they cannot avoid. Flash mobs just got an entirely new twist unique to the US motoring culture!
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69Tuscany
Great idea.
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d9rich
It’s been done with hand-made signs for over a decade or more.
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Poet
If by “hand made signs” you mean electrically lit like the one in the picture, then great–I have never seen any such example before the above photo.
What I meant to convey was that most “hand made signs” are invisible after dark to all but the cars slowing to a stop at a traffic light.
That one in the picture cannot be missed by passing motorists on their way to nowhere and as such expands both the potential audience and time of exposure to whatever message an activist wishes to present.
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81 comments
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41 reactions
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oldblue63•a day ago A) Why does anyone shop at Walmart? We shoppers could bring them around in a few weeks if we all just QUIT shopping there. They need our business …we are in the driver’s seat if we use our power. B) This is a perfect example of why health care should not be provided through employers. Part-time employment is extremely common and it makes the employee constantly up in the air about health care benefits…and many employers do not begin coverage until 3-6 months of employment anyway, so people are going without insurance for long periods. We are all FULL-TIME citizens and that is where we should be getting our health care benefits.
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gardenernorcal oldblue63•a day ago We weren’t offered national health care.
Many people are forced to shop Walmart because when they move in many local shops close up. Before Walmart moved into my town we had a Wards, Penneys, KMart and Sears store and assorted small shops like dime stores. Today we have Walmart a couple high end furniture stores, 1$ Store, a Staples and a Home Depot.
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BuddhaNature gardenernorcal•11 hours ago Your story is very similar to our town with one exception. Our town refused a Wal-Mart, so they built in everytown around us and sucked the business away. We too had a JC Penneys, and Sears. And they try and tell you that capitalism is about competition? I won’t shop in there. They keep their wages down to assure themsleves of a customer base.. Henry Ford paid his workers the then good wage of $5.00 dollars a day so that could afford to buy the car they were producing, Wal- Mart on the otherhand, under pays their workers to assure they can’t afford to shop anyplace else.
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natureschild3 BuddhaNature•9 hours ago “Henry Ford paid his workers the then good wage of $5.00 dollars a day so that could afford to buy the car”
yes! he expressed the opinion that assembly line workers should earn enough to buy an auto. also he insisted the employees show up in a christian church…and never, ever drink a beer or any alcohol–even at home.
then one day ford had a great business idea–”I can grow my own tires in honduras!” there, too, henry made sure the brown people of honduras appeared his his church, but adequate pay? “naw. we don’t need a bunch o’ darkies driving cars!” if you can, watch or read transcript here:
“Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City”
http://www.democracynow.org/20…
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Amurkan natureschild3•7 hours ago Henry Ford was obliged to pay his workers $5 hr because they quit in droves when they realized that they would be demeaned by his new assembly line. He didn’t do this from the kindness of his heart. No one seems to know this.
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natureschild3 Amurkan•6 hours ago yes! and doesn’t that $5 an hour allowing his faithful to buy a model t speak volumes about the ongoing devaluation of the paper dollar?
“you load 16 tons of #9 coal and what do you get? “anothe day older and deeper in debt. “lord, don’tcha call me ’cause i can’t go…
“i owe my so-o-oul. . . to the company store!”
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gardenernorcal natureschild3•6 hours ago Yeah Ford was not quite the big stalwart supporter of labor as he’s painted today.
But for years Ford also resorted to legal as well as thug tactics to prevent workers in Ford plants from unionizing.
In December 1937, the company was found in violation of the Wagner Act and was ordered to cease interfering with workers’ efforts to unionize. In 1941, when wages at Ford were in fact lower than the average wage for the industry, Henry Ford continued to insist that “we do not intend to submit to any union.”
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Yunzer gardenernorcal•21 hours ago That’s what you get for living in Kalifornia. Even the pre-Wal-Mart stores you listed are big-box chains! Is there ANY part of you state that isn’t totally dominated by big chain-crap? The Summer of Love ended 43 years ago, and the last Doobie Brothers hit was 35 years ago. You should consider moving back here to the unfashionable mid-atlantic/northeast.
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gardenernorcal Yunzer•11 hours ago But consider this pre Walmart my community of approximately 500,000 supported 4 large chain stores, whose employees were organized and received full benefits including health care and retirement. People had choices. I know I shopped Penneys for clothes, Wards for furniture, Sears for tools and KMart for miscellaneous little stuff. Today I have basically one choice Walmart and they say they can’t pay their employees a living wage or provide them with health care and other benefits. Why is that? They are one of the largest and most profitable US corporations.
And I was born in California. It’s my home. I wouldn’t be moving back to anywhere.
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nveric Yunzer•14 hours ago You being Snobbish? Don’t you know the oceans are rising?
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Lorenzo LaRue nveric•6 hours ago ….And your only entry here is smart ass? Don’t you know that everyone doesn’t live on the beach?
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Yunzer oldblue63•21 hours ago Fortunately all Wal-Marts are out in the public transit-hostile suburban sprawl-land and require a car, or incredibly crappy bus service to get there. I’ve sworn off all car use except for the occasional long-haul intercity, hiking or hang gliding trip.
The only reason I would set foot in a Wal-Mart of Sam’s Club would be to burn one to the ground. Don’t worry, I’d give plenty of warning to evacuate first.
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Dem. Socialism•a day ago “Too Big To Care”…”Too Immoral To Share”.
(Wal-Mart’s new slogan.)
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N30rebel Dem. Socialism•6 hours ago Perhaps better?: “Too Big To Care”…”Too Immoral To Shame.”
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Matthew Grebenc Dem. Socialism•15 hours ago Too immortal to care.
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gardenernorcal•a day ago “But it has become increasingly clear that the ultimate liability for these workplace violations rests squarely on the shoulders of Walmart.”
No actually the responsibility lies with all of us that worry more about the DOW every morning than we do the moral and humane treatment of every worker on this planet. When Reagan fired those air traffic controllers it wasn’t victory for anyone but big finance and Wall St..
I remember a time when the financial news was the last thing reported on and only given a few moments at that. We also didn’t have our TV waves saturated with ads by big pharma or attorneys. And is it just me or am I seeing more and more alcohol ads as well? Weren’t they outlawed? How is it some companies are allowed to campaign but Spuds Mckensey was torpedoed into oblivion.
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69Tuscany gardenernorcal•a day ago The US and New Zealand are the only countries in the world who allow pharmaceutical advertising.
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adiantum 69Tuscany•8 hours ago I think NZ recently disallowed it.
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Dem. Socialism gardenernorcal•a day ago Also, gardenernorcal, have you noticed the amount of smoking done in movies lately? Rather blatant.
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Amurkan Dem. Socialism•7 hours ago The excuse given for smoking actors is the ‘in character’ thing. It’s baloney. The studios are complicit in the death later by millions of kids who start smoking because their film heroes do it. Disgusting and criminal.
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Richard_William_Posner gardenernorcal•7 hours ago Let’s not overlook the amount of advertising being done by the military. It’s sickening.
There’s also more than one show that is being used as a propaganda tool to reinforce acceptance of the phony war on terror.
Additionally, the existence of chemtrails is being normalised through increasing visibility in programming and ads. Pay attention to scenes with nice blue skies in them.
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gardenernorcal Richard_William_Posner•6 hours ago There’s a lot of infuriating advertising I didn’t mention like BP’s telling how their actions have improved life on the Gulf.
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Richard_William_Posner gardenernorcal•5 hours ago Not being critical gardener, just reinforcing your observations.
The Bernaysian ministries of propaganda, both commercial and political (is there really any difference?) are manufacturing every aspect of our reality.
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gardenernorcal Richard_William_Posner•4 hours ago I didn’t take it as a criticism. I find the additions to my list kind of interesting.
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Richard_William_Posner gardenernorcal•43 minutes ago I’m glad. Wasn’t really sure. And by the way, yes, I find those BP ads really outrageous and infuriating.
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Holygeezer gardenernorcal•a day ago The whole stock market thing is pretty criminal. If one is honest and thinks about it at all, there is no way you can “earn” money by doing nothing, unless you are in effect stealing it from others somehow. The others in this case being workers. Some may say this is too simplistic of a view, but in essence, earning money from investments is glorified stealing.
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nveric gardenernorcal•14 hours ago The 1970s changed reason into insanity.
Reagan was the tipper, not the gipper.
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gardenernorcal•a day ago Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours — something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers
…
Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.
How convenient the US’s largest employer can now foist off their overhead on the US taxpayer while receiving tax breaks and subsidies.
Interesting chart on this site:
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Doug_Terpstra gardenernorcal•a day ago Yep, this was a predictable outcome of Obamacare, better known as “The Death Panel Profiteers Bailout Act.” WalMart employees (or rather, taxpayers) will now be forced to buy a defective-by-design product from protection racket extortionists that some call insurance companies. The full damage of this monstronsity won’t be understood until well after 2014, when its more onerous dictates are implemented.
Thanks, Obama.
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gardenernorcal Doug_Terpstra•a day ago Not just that. Taxpayers will be subsidizing Walmart labor by providing them with medicaid, food stamps etc.. With their profits you’d think they could afford to pay their employees a living wage.
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Doug_Terpstra gardenernorcal•20 hours ago Good point. The next logical step will be to lower corporate taxes even further and then repeal the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Mike_Strong Doug_Terpstra•4 hours ago Yup! Repealing the Emancipation Proclamation is definitely on the agenda. Just slightly different job descriptions and this time with a paycheck. Sort of an upgrade on sharecropping.
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natureschild3 Doug_Terpstra•9 hours ago don’t just thank obama. top honors should go to lloyd blankfein, ceo of goldman sachs. lloyd is the real man behind the curtain pulling all sorts of political strings!
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Donna M Crane Doug_Terpstra•16 hours ago Since my 41 year old son is already on ObamaCare for his pre-exisiting condition, I can assure you it is in no way defective, and is affordable. He is able to pay his monthly fee of $188 and co-pays even though he is only working about 30 hours a week currently. The excellent RX Plan that is included (unlike Medicare) allows him to get his medications at an affordable price that keeps him out of the hospital and able to work. In fact, as far as I can see, it works just like, and just as well as, my Medicare which I love. And in point of fact, we are already paying for all Walmart’s employees, even the full time ones who still qualify for food stamps and Medicaid. Most WalMart employees already don’t have health insurance thru the company. In fact pretty much only the top levels have it. ObamaCares is already benefiting many people like my son and here in AZ we are using the Federal Government Set Up Exchange, since AZ isn’t going to set up its own Exchange…I consider this a benefit for us as I’m sure AZ wouldn’t do as well. Before you start kicking around ObamaCare, you should talk to some people who are on it.
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Inspector47 Donna M Crane•14 hours ago Thank you! As far as Walmart being thieves they are the free market, capitalism at it’s best! The republicans are crying about the four people who were killed overseas, four thousand Americans die monthly due to the lack of health care. My daughter wreaked on her bike, she is a college student, at 23, she was able to be on our health ins for her injuries thanks to Obama care.
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Doug_Terpstra Donna M Crane•9 hours ago Thanks. I’m glad it’s working for you, at least for now. Most of the perceived good provisions of the 2,000-page bill were implemented upfront, pre-election, by design. 2014 is when the kickers come, too late, by design.
[Adding: Walmart is the post-election coalmine canary. Dropping employeer-provided healthcare will become a corporate rush by 2014. Obamacare did nothing to cap runaway drug and sickcare costs. Enjoy the good times.]
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Inspector47 Doug_Terpstra•6 hours ago Like the 80/20 law that forces insurance companies to spend 80 percent of premimuns on the policy holder or return it?
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Doug_Terpstra Inspector47•5 hours ago Not quite. The rebate does not apply to individual policy holders as you imply, but to collective policy holders within a state. IOW, you don’t get a refund as an individual customer if you’re healthy and the company spends little or no money on you. This is why Obama’s Death-Panel Profiteers Bailout Act is more than 2,000 pages of lobbyese. It’s designed to confuse most people while enriching the investor class that Obama really works for.
The theoretical rebate would be a share of whatever amount your insurer spends on health care that is less than 80% of aggregate premiums paid in by all of its customers in that state, and you can imagine how corporate attorneys will game that one).
So, if your employer (like Walmart) drops you—as many or most will do in the next year or two—forcing you (or taxpayers for you) to pay thousands in out-of-pocket in premiums (no choice under the mandate), you might get a $158 rebate at the end of the year like the lucky lottery winners of North Carolina ($7 in Utah). Partly, this depends on how successful the death-panel gatekeepers are at rationing care or denying claims in a particular state.
http://www.examiner.com/articl…
See also: Welcome to the Future of Your Health Insurance. It Sucks.
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Inspector47 Doug_Terpstra•3 hours ago Death panels in the affordable care act, Sarah Palin won lie of the year with that one.
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Doug_Terpstra Inspector47•2 hours ago Thank you. Apparently, my use of the term for private versus public was unclear. Palin’s use of the term for her GOP handlers referred to government “death panels”, to scare people away from universal coverage by single-payer (for the same people waving signs reading “keep your government hands off my Medicare”). My use of the term refers to the private profiteers (insurance racketeers), whose gatekeepers are a far worse form of “death panel” — denying claims and rationing care for profit only.
The denial of coverage by for-profit gatekeepers is routine and far worse here than what occurs in civilized countries with single-payer universal coverage like Sweden, Canada and the UK. And Obamacare rejected single-payer and any public option thus institutionalizing profiteering by private racketeers with a captive market — with almost no limits on escalating costs, including prescription drugs that are explicitly protected from market competition (free trade is remarkably selective). It is the worst form of crony capitalism endorsed by the conservative Supine Court.
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wildcarrots Doug_Terpstra•an hour ago Well said.
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wildcarrots Donna M Crane•an hour ago I’m really glad it is working for your son, no doubt it will work better than standard insurance for some groups. Just remember that the system you are comparing it with really sucks. If you really think it is good try comparing it to one of the other systems in the world that deliver better care at half the cost.
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Kenneth C. Fingeret gardenernorcal•7 hours ago Hello gardenernorcal,
Walfart has been doing this for decades. As I understand it part of the paperwork when you are hired is getting government assistance due to your lack of a living wage salary that does not include much if anything in the way of benefits. This makes you eligible for different programs such as Medicade, AFDC, etc. A special Walfart tax of 500% of all government payments that are made to Walfart employees due to lack of salary and benefits given to their employees. should be the minimum required for Walfart to pay. I call them Walfart because they leave a bad odor wherever they are located!
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nveric gardenernorcal•14 hours ago Blood sucking death mongers run Walmart, their oozing puss filled sores covering their faces, acidic drool plops from their crusted puffy lips burning holes to the center of the Earth, necks as short as their ‘other’ parts and as wide as their hips, and below are stubby trunk-like legs incapable of independent motion.
You see, there’s no body and no heart for these Borg-like little people spawned from Sam Walton and an unknown surrogate, most likely an alien life-form kept in an undisclosed location in Nevada.
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wildcarrots•a day ago The U.S. is going to be a very unhealthy place to live and shop when you consider the number of people that do not have access to healthcare. Disease does not respect ideological boundaries. .
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Gubdeb wildcarrots•a day ago Look around. It already is.
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Poet•a day ago I don’t know who designed the portable lit sign, but it gives the graffiti of protest an entirely new frontier (drive through territory after or just before dark) and flexibility (how difficult would it be to change the message to “Tax the Wealthy for a Change”, or “Shrink the Pentagon Not Social Security”?).
It can be easily moved and, depending on the time, and location reach many people with a simple message they cannot avoid. Flash mobs just got an entirely new twist unique to the US motoring culture!
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Poet d9rich•8 hours ago If by “hand made signs” you mean electrically lit like the one in the picture, then great–I have never seen any such example before the above photo.
What I meant to convey was that most “hand made signs” are invisible after dark to all but the cars slowing to a stop at a traffic light.
That one in the picture cannot be missed by passing motorists on their way to nowhere and as such expands both the potential audience and time of exposure to whatever message an activist wishes to present.
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Wendy’s, What Are You Waiting For?: Calling on the Fast Food Giant to Stand up For Farmworkers May 18, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Agriculture, Food, Human Rights, Immigration, Labor.Tags: agriculture, anna lappe, christina bronsing, fair food, farm labor, fast food chains, immokalee, immokalee workers, labor, labour, roger hollander, taco bell, wendy's, workers rights
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Who has freckles, pigtails, and is still holding out from joining the Fair Food Program? If you guessed the fresh-faced mascot of Wendy’s, give yourself a gold star. As part of its efforts to improve conditions in the fields, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group of farmworkers based in Florida, is calling on the fast food giant Wendy’s to step up for farmworkers and their families.
The Coalition has had an impressive wave of wins as many companies — eleven to date — have signed an agreement to improve conditions for farmworkers. Of the top five fast food chains, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and Yum! Brands (owners of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC and A&W) have all joined the Fair Food Program. In response to pressure from the Coalition and its allies, the list has grown to include Chipotle, food retailers (Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s), and food service companies (BAMCO, Aramark, Sodexo and Compass Group). The overwhelming majority of tomato growers now participate in this farmworker-driven commitment through the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents 90 percent of the industry.
By signing on to the agreement, companies must now comply with a code of conduct that includes protections for cases of wage theft, sexual harassment, and forced labor. Companies also agree to pay a small premium for tomatoes — just a penny more per pound. As a result, workers have safer working conditions and have started seeing increases in their paychecks for the first time in more than 30 years.
Think a penny a pound doesn’t sound like much? It adds up. Over $10 million has been paid out through these victories since January 2011. That number will only keep growing as more companies sign on.
Hey, Wendy’s, are you listening?
Wendy’s, of all companies, can afford paying this premium. One of the highest earning fast food chains in the country, Wendy’s comes in at number two behind McDonald’s. Nearly 6,600 restaurants in the U.S. and around the globe afford the company serious market power– influence that can go a long way to shift purchasing practices. Instead of leveraging that power to demand lower prices from suppliers, Wendy’s could be rewarding growers who respect workers’ rights.
Other fast food companies have stepped up, like Taco Bell. The fast food giant was the first company to sign on to the Coalition agreement back in 2005, after four years of pressure and organizing. In its announcement, Taco Bell said:
Brolick and Taco Bell showed that signing on to the agreement wouldn’t threaten a company’s bottom line. In fact, Brolick’s tenure is credited with boosting sales and ‘turning things around at Taco Bell. Proof that profits don’t come at the expense of workers’ rights.
Seven years later, Wendy’s is still dragging its feet instead of following Taco Bell’s example — or more accurately Brolick’s own example, since he has now taken over as CEO of Wendy’s.
This week, as Wendy’s convenes its annual shareholders’ meeting in New York City, the Coalition is in town to make sure the company has its priorities straight. On Saturday, May 18th, farmworkers and allies will march from Union Square to nearby Wendy’s locations, reminding shareholders that farmworkers aren’t an abstract budget line item, but hardworking women and men who deserve respect. (And, sure, to give Wendy’s CEO Emil Brolick a dose of déjà vu. He already has some experience with this, after all.)
Anna is the author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and co-author of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen and Hope’s Edge. She is a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute.
Christina Bronsing is an activist and researcher supporting social movements that protect the rights of producers and farmers in the face of a largely industrial, corporate food system. Based in New York, she is currently engaged in research, writing and web roles with Food MythBusters, ongoing research around the social and environmental impacts of global quinoa production with Food First, and editorial support for the Food Security Learning Center at WhyHunger.