Last year, DC city government began efforts to reform the current system used
to purchase goods and services for the District, known more formally as the
system of contracting and procurement.  Every year the city spends millions,
sometimes billions, of dollars (primarily tax payer dollars) to purchase, or
procure, the goods and services needed to keep the city up and running.   Early
this year, Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced the “Omnibus Procurement Reform
Amendment Act of 2010” and shortly after the administration introduced its own bill known as the

It resulted from the combined effects of authoritarian control and the liberalization policy. Despite its republic appearance, Egypt is an authoritarian state. The government exerts very restrictive control over civil society. Even though Egypt ratified core ILO conventions decades ago as listed in the following table, words have not been transformed into action. For instance, the government continues to suppress workers’ rights such as freedom of association and the right to organize and collective bargain. All NGOs are required to register with the Ministry of Social Solidarity. Permission from the Ministry of the Interior is required for any public meetings, and rarely given.

For example, in the King’s Land factory located in Cambodia, which produces for Walmart among others, workers get paid roughly $50 a month, however the daily pay can fluctuate from $1.08 to $2.16 a day.  That is far below a living wage or even a minimum wage; that is a poverty wage.  At the Menderes Tekstil factory in Turkey, which produces for IKEA, Walmart, Carrefour, Horizante, Mothercare, Otto, Ibena, Target and Kohl's, four workers have been killed due to unsafe working conditions.  In one incident a worker died when he fell into the fun

Commonly, the media offers propaganda that blames unions for corporate bankruptcies, or associates them, without basis, with dark forces. In September 2008, when almost ten thousand sugar cane cutters went on strike asking for better working conditions, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, without evidence, said that the FARC guerrilla infiltrated the sugar cane strike (in Spanish). These kinds of official statements are extremely irresponsible and dangerous, because they not only undermine the credibility of legitimate union struggles but also lead to justify -albeit indirectly- union violence.