How We Can Hold American Companies that Use Sweatshop Labor Accountable

[Cheese Sandwich]

A small news item in the Mumbai Mirror in late October caught my attention. A zipper sweatshop in the city of Ghatkopar was the home of several young boys who were routinely beaten and tortured by the owner. The story quoted an 11-year-old rescued from the sweatshop. Speaking about owner Rajdeep Chaudhary, the boy said:

He used to hit the other two boys with a thick stick. Just like me he did not take them to a doctor even when they were bleeding badly. Finally one day last month, the two boys somehow managed to escape from the factory. Chaudhary did not even bother to look for them, but he started locking me up during the nights after that.

The boys in this sweatshop worked 16-hour days, were rarely fed and even starved, and lived in horrible conditions all too common in the global apparel industry. Such conditions are, if anything, encouraged in the industry by the multinational corporations who have long looked to avoid responsibility for their actions by outsourcing and subcontracting work to ever poorer nations.

Without a system of global accountability for American corporations contracting in other nations, such horrors will continue to occur.

We as labor activists must begin to think about how to build international labor solidarity by fighting for legislation that would create this accountability—specifically giving workers around the world the right to sue in American courts if companies or their subcontractors violated basic labor rights such as workplace violence, avoiding paying a nation’s minimum wage, or pollution discharges that sicken and kill people.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17833/holding_companies_accountable_sweatshops

[yallerdawg]

1. International labor solidarity!

That is the big game!

There are two kinds of people in this world, those who work and those who don't.

The world won't change until workers are united. Until all workers have the same conditions and aspirations. Until all workers understand the exploitation by the economic elites, and how together we can change this and make a better world!

That, in fact, we are one big union!

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” The statement begs analysis.

I began to see that poverty is not only a symptom of economic inequality, but is a tool that is used to maintain economic and political inequality. I understood that people who possess great wealth, also have the luxury of exercising great political power. This is not a new proposition. We only need to look at historical examples. Royalty and elite classes of people in all parts of the globe have had the greatest influence over the destiny of people belonging to other classes.

Once a person possesses power over others, that person is loathe to relinquish even a small share of it. The most obvious result of this hunger to maintain and increase power is the presence of warfare. This might manifest in wars against other groupings of people such as international conflict. And it shows up in the need to control fellow members of the same tribe or nation.

Poverty-TibetanChildrenThis method of control is quite effective. It’s strength comes from the primal, survival instincts of the human animal. Observers know that when a person is poor, he or she must concentrate on acquiring adequate food and shelter for oneself and family. There is less time for obtaining educational enlightenment nor philosophical thoughts. Mental energies focus on survival. If there are other thoughts, they are of the type that cultivate resentment and anger. Overall, the impoverished person becomes “invisible” to the more prosperous members of a society.

Those people who do not starve to death sometimes formulate reactionary movements and revolutions. As a result, the individuals who enjoy the wealth and power, must suppress and defeat the revolutions. This struggle has been going on for many centuries across the world. It becomes the battle between those who can purchase political influence and military strength against those people who have nothing left to lose.


This has become evident, recently, with the attention being focused upon the 99% movement. The citizenry are angered at the actions of the billionaire class. Political infighting and wedge issues are brought into play as distractions so that energy against poverty can be dissipated. The result is more poverty and more concentration of wealth and power. More impoverished people means less empowered people.

The results are more political strife with poverty as one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal. The concentrated wealth enables a more effective means of armed control over the 99%. The resulting police state is nothing new. It is a symptom of human greed gone ballistic. This is why poverty is an extremely dangerous condition for any society and nation. It is a barbaric practice that ultimately leads to unhappy situations for all political and economic persuasions. When the “War on Poverty” became the “War on the Impoverished”, humanity crossed a dangerous threshold.

It will take a patient and wise group of people to steer us away from the abyss of totalitarian domination in the world. With advancing poverty, the struggle of power versus ethical compassion will be more difficult. In the meantime, we all must work towards the elimination of all forms of violence.


https://bluejayblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/poverty-is-the-worst-form-of-violence/

[Phlem]

3. I think we should legislate that if a

company off shores an American job, the person it goes still get's payed the American equivalent salary for work. There has been no talk of COLA for years and suspect there never will be again unless we do something because if this continues, hello "Victorian Era Economics." No good paying jobs here and cost of living will continue to rise.

Also call an end to all H-1B visa, off shoring tax loopholes. We're having to cover the tax that should be payed by huge companies, Apple, GE, the list goes on and on.