Wal-Mart Stores cannot be held liable under United States law for labor conditions at some of its overseas suppliers, a federal judge has ruled.

A complaint filed last year in Los Angeles by the International Labor Rights Fund contended that employees of Wal-Mart suppliers in China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Swaziland and Nicaragua were forced to work overtime without pay and in some cases were fired because they tried to organize unions. The group sought to represent hundreds of thousands of employees of Wal-Mart’s overseas suppliers...

Excerpt from article:

 
When I asked Fisher-Price Toys, owned by Mattel, about a recent riot at a Chinese plant where Mattel toys are made, Fisher-Price shunted that and other questions to Mattel headquarters.

Mattel responded with an e-mail listing a number of purportedly do-good organizations it joined or helped found in countries like China.  

Included in the list are Business for Social Responsibility, Governance Metrics International, FTSE4Good and Domini 400 Socially Responsible Investment.

Excerpt from article: 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. uses Chinese factories that deny workers overtime pay and maternity leave and pay them less than the local minimum wage, according to three reports released today from labor monitoring groups.

CEBU CITY -- An American human rights lawyer has been banned from the Philippines ahead of next week’s summit of Southeast

Asian leaders in Cebu province, officials said.

Brian Campbell of the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund was detained at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport(NAIA) in Manila late Wednesday after flying in from the United States via Hong Kong.

Campbell, who wanted to attend a “jobs and justice” conference organized by activists on the sidelines of the Association of