Blog: December 2008

Blind Justice Gone Awry in the Philippines: "Please, no questions asked."

December 15, 2008

The case against Mr. Saladero and his fellow labor activists
carries all the hallmarks of political
prosecution, where prosecutors bring charges against political critics without
conducting any preliminary investigation or asking any questions.  Rather than operating independently as officers
of the court in pursuit of blind justice, the Government prosecutor in Mindoro
has blindly filed charges against the activists without conducting his own
independent investigation and without asking any questions at all about the
credibility of the only witness who allegedly places all 72 activists at the

Faith Leaders and the Republic Windows Victory

December 15, 2008

I can understand why those folks might be in a praying mood.

About
a week ago the owners of their company announced that they were closing
their doors for good, saying that orders for doors and windows had
dropped off. They gave their two hundred and fifty employees just three
days notice - even though the law requires sixty. They also withheld
the pay the workers had already earned, over a million dollars worth, I
am told.

The company claimed they couldn’t pay the workers
because their bank, Bank of America, refused to extend them any more
credit. Talk about adding insult to injury - this is the very same Bank
of America that had just been given 25 billion dollars of taxpayer
bailout money!

Japanese Autoworker Salaries in the US Should Equal Japanese Bankers Salaries in the US too

December 12, 2008

And Senator McConnell isn’t the only one. But if we are
going to focus on salaries, perhaps we should go back to the last bailout bill.
Have you ever wondered what Japanese bankers make?

According
to a November 28, 2008 Wall Street Journal Story, executives at banks in Japan make A LOT less than their US counterparts. The gap is huge, as Mitsubishi
UFJ Financial Group can attest. Japan's biggest bank by market
capitalization, paid a total of $8.1 million for 14 top executives in the
fiscal year ended March 31, according to a regulatory filing.

Why not reopen NAFTA?

December 9, 2008

Harper went on to assure Canadians that a free trade agreement with Colombia would actually help improve worker rights in a country that annually leads the world in murders of trade union leaders. According to Harper, a labour side agreement commits Colombia to respect and enforce core international labour rights on child labour, forced labour, discrimination and freedom of association.  

With all this anxious talk about election promises, trade agreements and workers’ rights, it’s worth reviewing the actual record of the original labour side agreement that was tacked on to NAFTA shortly after president Clinton replaced George Bush senior as the new resident in the White House.

Last-minute Bush rule endangers health of working Americans

December 4, 2008

The Department of Labor is now pushing through rules that
would drag out the creation of new safety standards by requiring the gathering
of "industry-by-industry evidence" of employees' exposure to different toxic substances.
 As Mike Hall writes at the AFL-CIO NOW blog,
the rules being contemplated would, in effect, "give corporations another tool
to fight and delay safety regulations and make it more difficult for a

Pages

Search form

Blog archive