In the News

Groups Promote Fair Trade Chocolate At ‘Charlie’ Screenings

The Lone Star Iconoclast
07/18/2005

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Willy Wonka may have been nice to his own chocolate factory workers, but a group of fair trade advocates are shining light on the real chocolate industry’s abusive child labor associations with cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast.

Global Exchange, International Labor Rights Fund, United Students for Fair Trade, and the Canadian Fair Trade Network are organizing creative actions to promote fair trade at screenings of Tim Burton’s summer blockbuster “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which hit U.S. theaters last Friday.

Sorry, Charlie: Johnny Depp's Not Much of a Treat In Tim Burton's 'Chocolate Factory'

Washington Post
07/15/2005

By Ann Hornaday

What will Johnny do?

That has been the question on filmgoers' minds since it was announced, just

after Johnny Depp's triumphant channeling of Keith Richards in "Pirates of

the Caribbean," that he would next play Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's "Charlie

and the Chocolate Factory." Would Depp channel Michael Jackson this time? Or

the role's 1971 originator, Gene Wilder? Or would he surprise the oddsmakers

with something completely, characteristically out there?

Child labour feeds chocolate trade

The Toronto Star
07/04/2005

Cocoa plantations still employ kids

TODD PITTMAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS

OUME, Ivory Coast—The message has travelled down red earth roads to tropical forests where green, fist-size cocoa pods hang from lush trees: Stop child labour on cocoa plantations, or the world may stop buying your cocoa.

But four years after the chocolate industry, under pressure from U.S. lawmakers, agreed to create standards to stamp out the worst practices, many children still labour to help produce 70 per cent of the world's raw material for chocolate.

Sweatshop Labour in Hip-Hop Apparel

Word Magazine
07/01/2005

By Jonathan Cunningham



UNVEILING THE TRUTH BEHIND MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS

Many urban consumers are secretly proud that hip-hop fashion and apparel has become a multi-billion dollar industry sprawling across most continents. The trendy designs, which have morphed from the awkwardness of Coogi in the early 1990’s to the chic urban couture of Sean John and Akademiks, have become accepted as “business attire” nowadays within certain offices and professions.

Senate Approves CAFTA

The Frontrunner
07/01/2005

The US Senate last night approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) by a 54-45 margin. The vote is being described this morning as a significant win for President Bush, though the treaty still faces an uncertain fate in the House.

Fired Officer Is Suing Wal-Mart

The New York Times
07/01/2005

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

A former Wal-Mart executive responsible for inspecting apparel factories in Central America has sued the company, accusing it of firing him for being too aggressive about finding workplace violations, like locked exits and mandatory 24-hour shifts.

Skip to next paragraph

Rollin A. Riggs for The New York Times

James Lynn sued Wal-Mart, contending he was fired for reporting labor abuses in factories abroad.

Report Criticizes Labor Standards in Central America

New York Times
07/01/2005

y JUAN FORERO

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, June 30 - As the White House lobbied Congress to win support for a Central American trade pact, the United States Labor Department tried for more than a year to block the release of reports that harshly criticized labor standards in the region.

The reports, by a labor advocacy group, the International Labor Rights Fund, were commissioned by the Labor Department, and concluded that working conditions in five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic were dismal, and that enforcement of labor laws was weak.

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