In the News

Kenya: Complaints by workers

The Nation (Kenya)
08/25/2005


Kenya's flower export industry is blooming, but there could be a worm gnawing it away at the core.

In the last four years, earnings from flower exports have been growing by leaps and bounds. But as some of the exporters smile all the way to the banks, many of their workers are weeping all the way to the hospitals. Some have been forced into early retirement prompted by ill health resulting from handling unsafe chemicals.

Many flower farm labourers have complained that their working conditions are far from rosy.

Food groups face child labour suit

Financial Times
08/25/2005

By Dino Mahtani in Lagos

A US-based labour rights group has filed a lawsuit against three big food companies after an industry pledge to establish a certification system to help eradicate child labour on West African cocoa farms passed its deadline.

The International Labour Rights Fund (ILRF) filed the suit against Nestlé, Archer Daniels Midland and privately held Cargill last month, on behalf of three Malian children who were allegedly

Redefining fair trade

Chicago Tribune
07/21/2005

By James Thindwa, Executive director, Chicago Jobs With Justice

The Tribune editorial board appears to have pulled out all stops to promote the

Central America Free Trade Agreement.

While you continue to make proclamations about CAFTA's promised benefits, you

will not acknowledge its serious flaws and risks.

A more honest assessment of CAFTA would recognize both its costs and benefits.

The question is not whether CAFTA will produce benefits but, rather, what the

Labor group sues Nestlé

Glendale News Press
07/19/2005

Glendale-based company under fire for allegedly using child laborers; Nestlé denies claims.

By Robert Chacon



DOWNTOWN GLENDALE -- Nestlé U.S.A. is one of three cocoa industry companies being sued by labor rights groups on behalf of former child laborers, who allege that the companies knowingly abetted in the torture and forced labor of children as young as 14.

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.

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