In the News

Great advert for workers’ unity

Tribune Magazine (UK)
08/17/2010

 

Workers Uniting is the global union created by the Unite union in Britain and the United Steelworkers in the United States and Canada. It has taken the unprecedented step of placing a full-page advertisement in a Bangladesh newspaper to support garment workers in their campaign to raise the minimum wage and secure the right to organise in a trade union in an effort to combat the race of US and European companies to the bottom.

Bangladeshi Women Garment Workers Strike for $72 per month

Labor Notes
08/12/2010

updated August 16

Bangladesh’s 3.5 million apparel workers—who are mostly women—left their shops and took to the streets in August to demand that the minimum wage increase to $72 per month.

The current wage of 12 cents an hour, the lowest in the world, is a major draw for garment brands to source manufacturing from Bangladesh, with apparel making up over 75 percent of all exports.

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BANGLADESH: Labour groups urge end to worker repression

Just-style.com
08/06/2010

Labour and human rights groups in the US, Canada and Europe have accused the Bangladeshi government of repressing clothing workers after it tried to crack down on labour rights advocates leading public protests for better pay.
 
The groups say leaders of apparel workers organisations were last week forced into hiding to escape arrest and beatings.
 
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Fair Trade, shared space in Olympia

The News Tribune
07/11/2010

Excerpt from article:

OLYMPIA – Traditions Café & World Folk Art closed more than an hour ago. Still, owner Dick Meyer motions in a couple of people who were peeking through the windows.

The shop is geared to both the curious and the socially conscious, and features “fair trade” products by craftspeople, artisans and growers from more than 60 countries.

Bangladesh Workers Demand More Pay

Al Jazeera
06/26/2010

Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers demanding higher salaries were met with rubber bullets and tear gas during a recent protest ooutside Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

Garment workers are currently paid a minimum of just $24 a month following a 2006 agreement among manufacturers, unions and the government, but business is booming piling increasing amounts to work onto employees...

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As China Aids Labor, Unrest Is Still Rising

New York Times
06/20/2010

 

On a hot morning in late May, while some 2,000 workers at a Honda parts factory were striking in China’s south, 100 irate employees at a hotel in the heart of the capital staged their own protest.

The Honda workers got lots of publicity. The hotel employees were mostly ignored. But the undercurrent was the same: labor disputes are becoming a common feature of the Chinese economic landscape.

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