In the News

Making cotton as homework for Uzbek children

Asia News
05/26/2009

In Fergana province Uzbek children have odd school homework to do. Teachers recently gave them the assignment of making at least 200 paper funnels each, add soil and plant cotton seeds inside.

This is the latest experiment in cotton farming introduced by the government in a country where cotton is the main export product.

In fact schools and universities are closed from September to December, when cotton is picked, and students sent to the fields.

Uzbeks Sow Seeds Of Trouble In Cotton Industry Despite Official Ban On Child Labor

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
05/23/2009

By Farangis Najibullah

Students in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Province are busy these days working on an unusual homework assignment: Teachers have instructed them to make at least 200 paper funnels each, add soil, and plant cotton seeds inside them.

"They told us to take sheets of notebook paper, glue both sides, and leave its narrow end open," one 11-year-old tells RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, adding that he's spending most of his spare time these days making the things. "We made some the other day, but they told us to make more, and to make them differently."

Firestone Dragging Feet on CBA Implementation, Says Union Secretary

VOA News
05/22/2009

By James Butty

Nine months ago, the management of Firestone Rubber Plantation in Liberia and the workers union signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

Among the issues covered under the agreement was pay raise for the workers and the controversial high daily production requirement known as quota and child labor.

Now the workers say Firestone is moving slowly in implementing the agreement. Edwin Cisco, secretary general of the Firestone Agriculture Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL) told VOA it appears Firestone does not want change.

Hope for Pakistan's child workers

MinnPost
05/15/2009

By Sarah Stuteville

KARACHI, Pakistan (Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting) — Sher Shah is a hard-working neighborhood — a confusing knot of cramped lanes offering up a riot of rattling power looms, puttering motors and booming furnaces. This rough suburb, with its garment factories, machine shops and scrap metal smelters far from the imposing cement skyscrapers of the city center, forms the industrial gut of Karachi.

A Mother's Quest for Rights

El Diario NY
05/10/2009

Excerpt from article:

It is a tradition to give flowers on Mother's Day. But what many of us are not familiar with is the far from rosy story behind those flowers.

In Colombia, bouquets don't bring the same joy to Amanda Camacho and other workers in the flower industry. There, workers?the majority women?are paid an average of $8 a day to cut 350 to 400 flowers per hour. They have no health benefits yet are exposed to chemicals and pesticides. Workdays are as long as 12 to 15 hours with no overtime pay. And they are under threat for attempting to unionize.

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