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Harry Wu and the Quality of Labor

admin — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 11:00:41 +0000

There has been a great deal of talk about jobs and China in the US presidential campaign this year. One of thethings that has not been addressed is the nature of that employment. There is a considerable difference between jobs done willingly by people treated humanely and forced labor under brutal conditions. Candidate rhetoricemphasizes the number of jobs that have been outsourced, but not the quality of the positions. After all, there are many jobs in the United States that the unemployed could take, but they are unwilling to do so – this is why we have illegal immigration to this country. Refusing work, even under the most unpleasant and dangerous circumstances, is not an option for the people imprisoned in the PRC’s labor camp system, or laogai (literally ‘reform through labor’). Foreign companies willing to work with (or turn a blind eye to) laogai industries are not only giving China an unfair labor advantage, but are encouraging a multitude of human rights abuses. This is an issue no presidential candidate can afford to ignore.

With over a thousand laogai camps estimated throughout China, operating under a myriad of rapidly changing corporate names, it is difficult to track exactly which products are coming from forced labor. Such products are illegal to purchase in the United States, but enforcement is difficult, and the availability of such inexpensive and pliable labor lowers the bar for working standards across the developing world. Over four million people are currently incarcerated in laogai camps, and since the founding of the PRC as many as fifty million have been imprisoned there – many to the end of their lives.

Aspiring politicians seeking to make jobs and China an issue should not just focus on the sheer number of jobs moving abroad, but the nature of them and what can be done to combat labor abuses. Someone who has been doing this for many years is Harry Wu, who will deliver the 2013 Center for Asian Democracy’s annual democracy lecture in January. His work chronicling the laogai includes several books, establishing the Laogai Museum in Washington, D.C., and founding the Laogai Research Foundation, for which he currently serves as Executive Director. Wu introduces people to the nature of life in these camps through the powerful perspective of his own experience. For nearly twenty years, he endured starvation, abuse, and torture with his fellow inmates whose only crimes were possessing a certain political viewpoint or being born into a particular socioeconomic class. Anyone interested in learning more about the real substance of international relations, domestic human rights issues, or the nature of the global economy, should make a point of attending his talk.

AUTHOR: Dr. Jason Abbott
URL: http://profjabbott.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jason.abbott [at] louisville.edu

International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) releases 2010 Annual Report

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:00:04 +0000

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) has recently released their 2010 annual report, “building a just world for workers”. The ILRF seeks to achieve just and humane treatment for workers worldwide, from campaigns working to end the use of child labor in cocoa and cotton, to our urgent action efforts aimed at defending the right of workers and their advocates to organize, and to our ongoing activities to hold the non-compliant factories of multinational corporations responsible when safety standards are breached, ILRF has made a difference in the lives of workers around the globe.

The report highlighting their campaigns, programs and accomplishments throughout the year. Additionally the report also highlights ILRF’s future campaign plans, including efforts to end the use of child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. The ILRF states, that their are “an estimated 211 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working around the world”. Poverty continues to be the root cause of child labor and sadly child labor is present in all continents in varying degrees with health impacts on the victims and economic impacts. The 2010 report therefore highlights such campaigns fighting for the rights of children such as their increasingly successful efforts to end the use of child labor in the cocoa industry, especially their Raise the Bar, Hershey campaign, for which they continue to increase the pressure on Hershey in 2011 to “set clear commitments and goals for addressing the egregious labor rights abuses in its cocoa supply chain”. The ILRF also sought to combat the violations against workers on Bridgestone/Firestone’s rubber plantation in Liberia, which have led to the “extreme exploitation” of workers, who are forced to meet high production quotas for low wages, and have thus led many workers to bring their children to work with them increasing the exploitation and vulnerability of children. ILRF once again led the charge in 2010 in advocacy efforts to eliminate forced child labor on Uzbekistan’s cotton plantations, where the government has continued to remove thousands of children from schools across the country to work picking cotton to meet government led quotas.

The report also highlights new partnerships such as that with the Not for Sale Campaign, which led to the development of Free2Work.org, a website which rates products and companies based on their policies to eliminate forced and child labor in their supply chains. Through the year, ratings of new companies in a range of industries, from food to clothing to electronics, were added to the site. The campaign also placed ratings of certification programs as feature to help consumers understand the policies behind the increasing number of labels in the marketplace claiming to protect worker rights. Additionally the partnership and campaign led to the development of a Free2Work iPhone application that easily aids consumers to obtain details on their favorite products as they shop.

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

The adacity of Free Trade Agreements

admin — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:16:03 +0000

Congress could vote any day now to strike a new blow against already-battered U.S. workers and the unemployed.

Committees in the House and Senate recently marked up the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The Obama administration is urging passage of all three relics of the Bush administration before the summer recess.

The full-court press on the FTAs represents a reversal for a president elected on a trade reform platform. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama proclaimed his opposition to the NAFTA-style FTAs and boasted of his stance against the devastating North American and Central American agreements. As candidate Obama, he carefully distanced himself from the open-market, pro-corporate policies of his predecessor, calling for significant changes to the NAFTA model, including enforceable labor and environmental standards, and consumer protections.

The Global Crisis

In the three years since Obama wooed voters with talk of bold changes in trade policy, the need for reforms has reached crisis proportions. The global economic crisis left the United States with skyrocketing un- and under-employment rates. The government paid billions of dollars in bailout money to the corporations who caused the crisis. These corporations then turned around to post record profits and hand out astronomical executive pay bonuses. The evidence that FTA-fueled outsourcing benefits those corporations while putting Americans out of work has piled up, and polls show that a majority of U.S. citizens oppose NAFTA-style FTAs.

Abroad, labor violations and increasing inequality have exacerbated the plight of poor and working people in FTA countries, while creating a new class of mega-rich that often control national economies.

This would seem to be precisely the moment to make good on the promises to fix trade and investment policy, and to give workers everywhere a fair shake in a globalized economy that has been severely skewed toward the interests of powerful corporations — to devastating effect.

Instead, the Obama administration has gone from the audacity of hope to the audacity of presenting three pro-corporate trade agreements to a public suffering from a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate. As United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard concludes in a letter to Congress opposing the trade agreements, “Trade deals force working Americans to assume all the risk and encourage big multinationals to reap all the rewards.”

NAFTA Look-alikes

The new agreements look nearly identical to the NAFTA model, despite some tweaks and promises of advances that are mostly left outside the actual text of the agreements. Some of the most noxious elements that persist in the FTAs before Congress are: prohibitions on financial sector regulation and capital controls, foreign investment incentives that encourage off-shoring, separate legal regimes in which corporations can sue governments in specialized tribunals, weak environmental standards, vague and toothless labor standards, and intellectual property rules that monopolize knowledge needed for the public good.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that the South Korean FTA alone will cost 159,000 U.S. jobs. Department of Commerce data shows that over the past decade of free trade policy multinational corporations cut their U.S. workforce by 2.9 million and increased overseas employment by 2.4 million. Under these trade and investment regimes, U.S. workers clearly suffer, which is why voters have supported candidates critical of NAFTA-style free trade. Although job displacement is frequently viewed as a zero-sum system where workers of different nations compete, the reality is that decent jobs — with dignified working conditions and real labor rights — are lost everywhere. FTAs turn the world into a global labor bazaar for corporations to bargain-hunt.

Labor unions in the countries purportedly hungering for a U.S. FTA overwhelmingly oppose them. Colombian labor organizations have consistently taken a stand against the Colombia FTA, asserting that it creates binding terms between two vastly unequal economies; would negatively affect agriculture, manufacturing, medicines and other vital sectors; would generate few if any net jobs; and would place thousands of local businesses in jeopardy. A group of Korean unions, farmers, and civil society groups traveled to Washington last January to “prevent the negative consequences that the Korea-US FTA will have on both of our countries.”

Both groups have presented their testimony to the U.S. Congress, exploding another myth: that FTAs are a “reward” to be bestowed on deserving allies. Powerful economic interests in these nations – typically over-represented by their governments — have brought tremendous pressure to bear in favor of the agreements. Meanwhile, the poor, workers, small farmers, the displaced, and indigenous and ethnic organizations nearly unanimously oppose them.

Colombians Against the FTA

A letter to the U.S. Congress signed by 431 U.S. and Colombian organizations urges members to reject the U.S.-Colombia FTA, citing “serious labor, human rights, Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and environmental concerns in Colombia.” The letter points out that Colombia continues to be “the most dangerous country in the world for trade union activists” and cites a 94 percent impunity rate for assassins of labor leaders. Fifty-one trade unionists were killed in 2010, and killings continue unabated in 2011.

An Action Plan developed between the U.S. and Colombian governments to assuage concerns does not form part of the binding text of the agreement. At this stage, the plan amounts to good intentions without establishing a firm basis for collective bargaining for cooperative members, or clear benchmarks for reducing violence, abuses, and impunity.

Promoters have countered criticisms of the Colombian government’s labor practices by asserting that increased U.S. investment can serve as a positive force in upholding workers’ rights. This argument has not been borne out in practice. In Guatemala, unionist murders increased following passage of CAFTA. The logic is simple. With more powerful economic interests in the country competing in a globalized economy, companies too often view workers’ rights as economic liabilities.

The debate on the Colombian FTA has also ignored the need to assess the effects of increased foreign investment on the continued armed conflict in Colombia. NAFTA proved that FTAs have much more to do with revamping investment regimes for multinational corporations than with the exchange of goods and services.

These investments also direct money into paramilitaries involved in drug export, money-laundering, and other crimes. There is ample evidence of these shady relations in the past, most notably the recent case of Chiquita’s payoffs to paramilitary organizations as part of “doing business” in Colombia. Such investments, associated with huge agricultural projects and mining ventures, often go hand in hand with violence and displacement. A report on Inter-American Development Bank megaprojects by the Americas Program and the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities showed the correlation between the expansion of palm oil mono-crops and forced displacement. At a recent prayer breakfast, Lisa Haugaard of the Latin American Working Group spoke of her experience gathering evidence of landowners expanding cattle ranching or mining operations at the point of a gun.

The many attacks on Afro-Colombian populations as part of this process led 24 members of Congress to write President Obama on July 6 stating, “We are concerned that the FTA would stimulate business development in Colombia at the expense of these vulnerable populations.” The congressional members also note that an estimated 5.2 million people in the country are already displaced – more than one out of nine Colombians. .

Jobs First

The Colombia FTA provides the clearest case of why free trade in the context of inequity and violence not only does not help but exacerbates the problems. The question of whether Colombia “deserves” the FTA can be easily answered. No population deserves an international agreement that directly or indirectly promotes displacement, violence, targeted murder, and the continued violation of the rights of indigenous and Afro-American populations.

Labor, human rights, and faith-based organizations are pushing back hard against the FTA onslaught, and offer tools for citizens to make their voices heard over the din of corporate lobbies.

For Congress to turn a deaf ear to those at greatest risk and in greatest need — both in the United States, and in the countries affected by the toxic trio of FTAs now making the rounds — would contradict U.S. values and U.S. public opinion. Especially now, as the U.S. economy still struggles to regain its footing, the best way to rebuild stability is to learn from mistakes of the past and strive for more fairness. A necessary step is to reject the Colombia, South Korea, and Panama Free Trade Agreements.

Part One: http://youtu.be/9SRHMWJRunI

Part Two: http://youtu.be/cploAMtQdic

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

Report revels a shocking 7,000 stillbirths occurring daily

admin — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:23:01 +0000

A report from the World Health Organization indicates that some 2.6 million stillbirths occur every year globally, with more than 90% of them in low or middle income countries. With an estimated 7,000 stillbirth every day, with majority of such cases happening in Sub- Saharan African countries including Uganda. The report estimated that almost half of the stillbirths, 1.2 million, occur when the woman is in labor. The largest reason for the high stillbirth rate, was due to complications during pregnancy combined with a lack of available skilled medical care, the study found. The report was published by The Lancet medical journal as part of series of studies published in the journal by researchers from the World Health Organization. The series of studies addresses stillbirth rates and causes in all countries, and challenges policy makers to act to cut the rate in half by 2020.

The report draws much needed attention to a global health issue that has fallen off the radar and who’s impact is undoubtedly overlooked. The report shockingly reveals that stillbirths have only declined by a small margin, 1.1 percent per year, between 1995 and 2009.

“Stillbirths are the last big invisible global health issue,” Dr. Joy Lawn of Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children, a lead author of the stillbirths series, stated to reporters (AlertNet/Reuters).

Additionally, an estimated15 percent of pregnancies are likely to develop life-threatening complications, resulting in the need for, however in many countries there is no access for many women, such as in Uganda where only 24 percent have access.

“If every woman had access to a skilled birth attendant, a midwife, and if necessary a physician for both essential care and for procedures such as emergency caesarean sections, we would see a dramatic decrease in the number of stillbirths,” said Dr Carole Presern, the director of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child health (Daily Monitor).

The series of reports in the Lancet will hopefully draw much needed attention to a global health issue that has been silently ignored for all too long. The reports and their findings will hopefully increase efforts by global health officials and states to increase services, training and procedures to ensure that these preventable deaths do not have to occur and in the next few years we will begin to see a dramatic decrease in the numbers of reported stillbirths across the globe.

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

Foreign aid & foreign influence

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 01:32:48 +0000

Upon discovering that Hosni Mubarak is worth $70 billion, or one-third of his country’s GDP, some American citizens may be wondering if their tax dollars in the form of foreign aid wound up in the Egyptian dictator’s personal Swiss bank accounts. I realize this may be upsetting to many hardworking Americans who pay their taxes and count on their government to use foreign aid to advance US ‘national interests’ and not to enrich foreign dictators. But what if politicians do not equate ‘national interest’ with the public interest, instead defining it as the interest of the military-industrial-complex.

Foreign aid is at the very least a form of influence, and at most a form of intervention by the donor in shaping the policies of the aid recipient. It is also a way to maintain the aid donor’s defense industry thriving. If the price to pay for maintaining a strong national defense industry and influencing the policies of the aid recipient and/or intervention is that the aid recipient is ruled by a corrupt dictator who becomes very wealthy, well, that is just part of the process and it is to be expected when the donor is buying influence/intervention.

Foreign aid (guaranteed loans and/or grants) and trade have always been used as a form of exerting influence by the aid donor on the aid recipient’s financial, economic, trade, investment, labor, military and foreign policies; in short in order to maintain a patron-client relationship between aid donor and aid recipient, aid, trade and loans must be the catalyst. After the end of WWII, the US and UN used foreign aid to win political-military-economic allies to the nascent Western bloc, while the USSR did exactly the same with the Eastern bloc that Stalin was determined to keep under Moscow’s control.

After Indonesia’s Bandung Conference (1955), the US became concerned that Moscow and Beijing were vying for influence in Asia and Africa thereby posing a threat to the US patron-client integration model. To offset Chinese-Russian influence, the US devised consortium aid in addition to bilateral aid used until that point. India became the first consortium (World Bank, US, western Europe, Japan and Australia as donors) aid recipient. In return, however, India had to open its markets for foreign investment, contracts, and trade for products and services by the aid donors. The result was a skyrocketing balance of payments and a dependency relationship with the aid donors.

Despite India’s experience, Pakistan, Turkey and many other countries followed suit. The question is who benefited from such aid, the average Indian and Pakistani, or a handful of politicians, businessmen and mostly foreign creditors and corporations? Robert McNamara admitted when he became World Bank president that he was embarrassed to discover that most world leaders viewed the Bank as a vehicle to secure contracts for private corporations. McNamara was also aware of the bribing process that was an integral part of securing such contracts that linked the World Bank indirectly. After he introduced reforms to stop corporations using World Bank loans as leverage to win contracts, the burden fell on the departments (ministries) of commerce of western governments serving the role as agents on behalf of corporations abroad.

In the last 40 years since McNamara candidly admitted the problem with foreign aid, things have actually deteriorated, obviously as we witness the wealth of many leaders of very poor nations having amassed many millions if not billions in personal wealth ‘appropriated’ from public asset, which of course include foreign aid. When the tsunami hit Indonesia in December 2004, more than $14 billion in foreign aid poured into the devastated country. However, Indonesia had a long history of receiving aid both from the Soviet and US camps as a tool of foreign influence. US, Australia, Japan, China, US and Western Europe used the tsunami aid as a pretext to gain economic, political and military influence in Indonesia. In short, the humanitarian missions were actually vehicles for non-humanitarian goals, but to no one’s surprise. Equally appalling, did the distribution of the humanitarian aid reach its intended victims and destination or was it used as a political tool and a device for personal profit? Reports indicate that as little as 13.5% of the total aid went for the victims.

The situation with foreign aid is not much different in most countries. The specific case of Egypt whose dictator has a personal wealth of $70 million is upsetting to many Americans who after doing the simple math figure that the US has provided massive aid in the last 30 years Does this prove that the US government was using taxpayer money to make Mubarak one of the world’s richest man? US aid has been in the form of military supplies and training. While economic aid was a mere $250 million in 2010, $1.9 billion went for ‘US-Egyptian military cooperation’ (buying Egyptian military loyalty to combat ‘Islamic terrorism’ and support Israel), $1.3 billion for the armed forces, and an undetermined amount in surplus military hardware.

Most of the money never left the US, but went for contracts to General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and other defense contractors. In short, foreign military aid is another way that the US government uses taxpayer money to keep defense contractors profitable. The argument in favor of foreign aid that keeps US defense industries healthy is “jobs, jobs, jobs”. Ironically, a small part of the US economic aid to Egypt is designated for ‘democracy promotion programs’, and this is ironic only because Obama has been using this as a public relations gimmick to justify continuing foreign aid to Egypt during the popular uprising. This of course while he has been saying on TV that he supports ‘the people’ in their democratic quest! In reality, the Obama administration has been using aid as a bargaining chip to make sure that the Egyptian military remains loyal to the US and its Middle East policies. The way the administration is justifying not cutting off military aid to Egypt is that the Egyptian army has not behaved like the Iranian during the revolution of 1979!

In humanitarian cases – tsunami of Indonesia, earthquake of Haiti, etc. – aid is essential, but invariably it is used both by the donor nations and by recipient public officials for purposes unrelated to the intended goal. Consortium and bilateral economic aid as well as bilateral military aid has a proven history that it is in fact a retarding factor in the development of a nation, not only because of its corrupting nature (Mubarak amassing billions), but also because it perpetuates the dependency (patron-client) relationship that prevents the aid recipient from making the necessary structural changes to improve the socioeconomic status of its people. The American people are absolutely justified in their anger at their tax dollars wasted in foreign aid. However, they should blame Washington for using taxpayer dollars around the world to buy policy influence at various levels from authoritarian rulers that it helps enrich, as well as US defense contractors that lobby for foreign military aid.

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com