In the News

$3 Million for Super Bowl Ad. $3 for Workers Who Paid For It

AFL-CIO Now Blog
02/01/2009

By James Parks

Nearly 100 million football fans across the country will be tuning in to watch Bruce Springsteen belt out his trademark songs celebrating America’s workers during halftime at the Super Bowl this evening. They also will see two new 30-second commercials—estimated to cost at least $3 million each—from Bridgestone Firestone, the world’s largest tire company and the halftime sponsor.

No Sweat

Inside Higher Ed
01/28/2009

No Sweat

Student protesters have spent years at the forefront of the anti-sweatshop movement, and they may now be seeing some of the fruits of their labor.

The union way up

Los Angeles Times
01/26/2009

By Robert B. Reich

Why is this recession so deep, and what can be done to reverse it?

Hint: Go back about 50 years, when America's middle class was expanding and the economy was soaring. Paychecks were big enough to allow us to buy all the goods and services we produced. It was a virtuous circle. Good pay meant more purchases, and more purchases meant more jobs.

Funding Sweatshops Globally

Atlantic Free Press
01/25/2009

In July 2008, SweatFree Communities (SFC) released a report titled, "Subsidizing Sweatshops: How Our Tax Dollars Fund the Race to the Bottom, and What Cities and States Can Do" in which it studied 12 factories in nine countries that produce employee uniforms for nine major companies.

U.S. Department of Labor announces winner of Iqbal Masih Award for efforts to combat exploitive child labor

US Department of Labor
01/15/2009

Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs Charlotte M. Ponticelli today announced that the U.S. Department of Labor is presenting the first annual Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor to Maria Cecilia Flores-Oebanda of the Philippines. Flores-Oebanda, president and executive director of the Visayan Forum Foundation Inc. (VFF) based in Quezon City, Philippines, has dedicated her life to combating the use of child domestic workers and the trafficking of women and children for domestic servitude and commercial sexual exploitation in the Philippines and internationally.

Curbing Labour Brokers Main Tenet of ANC Manifesto in South Africa

ICEM news
01/12/2009

Some 60,000 South Africans filled Absa Stadium in East London on 10 January for unveiling of the African National Congress’s (ANC) 2009 election manifesto. And one of the main pieces of that five-year legislative plan – contained within a pledge to expand employment – is regulating the burgeoning number of labour brokers in the country.

Pages