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Tag: "labor"

Federal Contracts and Labor Law Violations

[ 27 ] May 21, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Today, a one day strike is taking place among non-union, low-paid government workers, some of the nearly 2 million government workers making less than $12 an hour, which I think is an absurdly low wage for a federal employee or someone employed by a government contractor. They are demanding that President Obama do something to improve their plight. I also thought this paragraph about the federal government’s use of contractors who violate labor law interesting:

In September 2010, the Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that the government had paid $6 billion in fiscal year 2009 federal contracts to contractors who had been cited for violations of federal labor laws. Seven months earlier, the New York Times reported that the Obama Administration was planning to issue a “High Road Procurement Policy” that could “disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits” in securing federal contracts. But such a move never came to pass; the following year, Obama OMB appointee Heather Higginbottom said in her confirmation hearing that it was not currently under consideration (an administration official told Government Executive afterwards that OMB was “considering the views of Congress, the private sector, and others with respect to possible initiatives and no decision has been made”). Labor and LGBT activists have also called for the Administration to use executive action to bar federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT workers; Obama so far has not done so.

These are the kinds of things where a president can make a difference outside the congressional approval process. It would be nice to see the president take these claims seriously and improve the labor standards of federal contractors. Given how little President Obama has given organized labor for all it has done for him, this would be a worthy repayment as well.

“Strike raises crop of stubble, cuts, safety-razors.”

[ 13 ] May 18, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Cool article on the 1913 barbers’ strike in New York, which led to the reduction of barbers’ workweeks from 92(!!!) hours to a mere 62 with Sunday off.

I may have to explore this in more detail in the labor history series.

Capital Mobility and Corporate Whitewashing

[ 33 ] May 18, 2013 | Erik Loomis

This is an interesting piece about apparel corporations looking to get out of Bangladesh because of the bad publicity the building collapse has given the companies. They want to move to Cambodia, Vietnam, and the new frontier of Indonesia. What’s telling about it is that the corporations have zero interest in actually improving conditions for Bangladeshis. For all the talk (including by liberals) about how we need to keep outsourcing the jobs to countries with dangerous working conditions because the companies are providing them work, there is no commitment at all to keeping those people employed. While it might be a good thing that companies want to avoid multi-story factories with the potential to kill over 1100 workers like in Bangladesh, rather than work with Bangladesh to improve conditions or take some responsibility, instead they just want to bail on the country entirely because it might make them look bad to western customers.

Under normal circumstances, 2 workers dying in a Cambodian roof collapse wouldn’t make the news at all, which makes accidents in single-story buildings acceptable to corporations. Right now, if the linked article is accurate, there are some positive things in Indonesia, with contractors having to offer health insurance to attract scarce workers, but I am skeptical of the long-term continuance of such practices if Indonesia becomes a fully mobilized apparel economy with the plethora of workers that has allowed for low wages in other nations.

This issue also gets at the comments in the Cambodia workplace death thread, which were not unusual in their ultimate acquiescence in a spatially mobile capitalism. The only way capital has ever granted safer working conditions is to damage the bottom line. Workers’ compensation laws in the United States happened after workers began winning lawsuits for damages, forcing companies to create a rational system of low compensation to avoid expensive payouts. Corporations stopped dumping chemicals when OSHA and EPA created civil and criminal penalties for violators, minimal as they may have been. Capital mobility across the globe is not “natural.” Rather it is a process encouraged by the governments of the corporations’ home nations. Capital moved to pay lower wages, to reinstitute unsafe workplaces, to dump poisons into rivers and air, all of which increased profits. It is true that calling for international standards where workers around the world could sue corporations in the country of corporate origin for unsafe conditions and environmental degradation would lessen capital mobility, but I hardly see this as a bad thing.

We might ask, “What about the Bangladeshi worker!” if we lessened the incentives for race to the bottom capital mobility, but a) as the flight from Bangladesh shows, capital doesn’t care about that worker anyway, b) a job is a job no matter where it is–there is a great need for work in the United States, Cambodia, Bangladesh, wherever, c) we could create a system with some differentiation in conditions but that still protected basic worker safety and stopped grotesque pollution, both of which are very inexpensive to implement, and d) companies are more than welcome to stay in Bangladesh or Honduras or Vietnam and commit to long-term investments there that will help bring workers out of poverty. We rightfully say that these nations have laws on the books but because of corruption or indifference or violence they aren’t enforced. Allowing foreign workers access to international courts is one way to help solve these problems. The idea that enforcing safety in Cambodia is “impossible” is no different than saying that enforcing safety in Gilded Age American factories was impossible. It’s a process and there are issues of corruption, but of course it is possible, especially if the corporations in charge of the whole process want it enforced. If you want to see conditions in these factories improve fast, a couple of successful lawsuits against Gap or Asics is a pretty likely way to make that happen.

Cambodian Shoe Factory Roof Collapse

[ 67 ] May 16, 2013 | Erik Loomis

This is a story that won’t get lasting attention because of the small number of dead workers, but following the death of 1127 garment workers in Bangladesh, we have another factory collapse in the apparel industry. The roof collapsed in a Cambodian shoe factory, killing 2 workers and injuring at least 9 others. The factory makes shoes for the Japanese company Asics.

Once again, these workplace disasters are a completely acceptable cost of doing business in the apparel industry. Asics could employ these workers directly in its own Cambodian factory. But it is more profitable to shirk the responsibility and instead pretend like it has no fault in the death of these workers. As the linked article notes, Cambodia, like Bangladesh, has workplace safety laws and building standard codes, but they are completely unenforced. The lack of any bite to the regulation is precisely why companies like Asics, Wal-Mart, and Gap outsource factory work there, separating the point of production from the point of consumption by as large a gap as possible. This is why I believe that Asics corporate leads should be held criminally responsible for the deaths under Japanese law, just as if the factory had collapsed in Japan.

The Latest in Job Safety Hazards: Poop Foam

[ 116 ] May 15, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Tom Philpott reports on a new job safety hazard developing in agriculture. The enormous manure piles on today’s gargantuan hog farms are gurgling up explosive foam.

This never really happened before 2009, but it is an increasingly common occurrence on industrial-scale hog farms.

The problem is menacing: As manure breaks down, it emits toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide and flammable ones like methane, and trapping these noxious fumes under a layer of foam can lead to sudden, disastrous releases and even explosions. According to a 2012 report from the University of Minnesota, by September 2011, the foam had “caused about a half-dozen explosions in the upper Midwest…one explosion destroyed a barn on a farm in northern Iowa, killing 1,500 pigs and severely burning the worker involved.”

This is highly understudied and of course nothing will stop the growth of ever larger and more dangerous agricultural concerns. However, it does seem that dumping a bunch of antibiotics into the manure pits may solve the problem. And I’m sure there will be no unintended consequences from that action.

Today in Our Failed Workplace Safety Regulatory System

[ 14 ] May 15, 2013 | Erik Loomis

On Monday, a West Virginia gas facility exploded, injuring two workers. Luckily, neither have life-threatening injuries. So this story will fade into oblivion even faster than a fatal coal mine or fertilizer plant explosion. However, it should rivet our attention because it seems that OSHA has never inspected this plant. There are 8 OSHA inspectors in the state of West Virginia. It would take them over 100 years to inspect every worksite in the state. Amazingly, that’s actually better than average.

The Greatest Apparel Company Villain–Gap

[ 39 ] May 14, 2013 | Erik Loomis

When we think of terrible labor standards in the 21st century economy, we may very well think of Wal-Mart and for good reason. But the real villain in the international clothing industry is Gap. That company has done more than any other to push back against any meaningful reform, including in the aftermath of the Bangladesh disaster.

Consumer and labor groups have focused more on persuading Gap rather than Walmart to join the Bangladesh factory safety plan. Gap has been the most vocal company in criticizing the plan, expressing concerns that overly litigious American lawyers could seize on the agreement to sue American companies on behalf of aggrieved factory workers in Bangladesh. Gap’s proposed changes would greatly limit any legal liability for any company that violated the plans.

In a statement, Gap said: “We’re pleased that an accord is within reach, and Gap Inc. is ready to sign on today with a modification to a single area — how disputes are resolved in the courts. This proposal is on the table right now with the parties involved. With this single change, this global, historic agreement can move forward with a group of all retailers, not just those based in Europe.”

Under Gap’s proposal, if a retailer is found to have violated the agreement, the only remedy would be public expulsion from the factory safety plan.

“The U.S. is quite litigious,” said Bill Chandler, a Gap spokesman. “We put forward specific proposals that we thought would bring other American retailers into the fold. We thought it would be a step forward and would turn it into a much more global agreement.”

The labor unions and advocacy groups that have negotiated with H&M; Inditex, the Spanish company that owns the Zara chain; and other companies that have signed the plan criticized Gap’s proposal to change the agreement. These groups say Gap’s vigorous push against the version of the plan has helped sway some other American companies not to sign.

“Gap Inc. is ready to sign on today with a modification to a single area — how disputes are resolved,” said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a group sponsored by 175 colleges and universities. “Gap’s demand is that the agreement be made unenforceable — and therefore meaningless. What Gap wants is the right to renege on its commitments when it wishes.”

This is not the first time Gap has acted to preserve the exploitative nature of the apparel industry. Gap has a long history of using child labor to make its clothing in nations ranging from Jordan to Bangladesh. It has used contractors that dump dyes into Lesotho rivers. It wants absolutely no enforceable standards and is the greatest defender of a system that just killed 900 Bangladeshis.

I think it is high time for an international boycott of Gap until it agrees to enforceable labor standards at its contractors, or at least signs on to the safety plan created by European companies in the wake of the Bangladesh factory collapse.

…..Also, the Bangladesh death toll now stands at 1127.

Fallout from Bangladesh

[ 33 ] May 13, 2013 | Erik Loomis

I am highly skeptical of the real motives here, but I am glad Wal-Mart is publicly calling for improved worker safety in Bangladesh. That said, it’s pretty clear that a) Wal-Mart could play a far more active role in the conditions of the workers who make its goods than it actually does and b) this is a pretty obvious and probably fairly meaningless attempt to protect its corporate brand from blame for the working conditions created in no small part by how it demands such low costs from its suppliers.

On the other hand, this is how international pressure can start making a difference. Companies making token efforts at workplace safety can become real efforts for workplace safety if attention remains focused on their actions. So this is a positive development.

In a related story, can we crowdsource a good term like “greenwashing” for corporations making token moves to pretend they care about worker safety? All ideas welcome. Someone on Twitter suggested “shirtwaisting” which I love but might be a bit obscure for general use.

This Day in Labor History: May 12, 1902

[ 16 ] May 12, 2013 | Erik Loomis

On May 12, 1902, coal miners in Pennsylvania’s anthracite fields went on strike. There were many strikes in the coal fields during the Gilded Age, but this one has special significance because the refusal of the industry to negotiate pushed the strike into the fall and placed urban Americans’ heating supplies in grave danger. That convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to intervene in the strike, but unlike his predecessors Rutherford Hayes and Grover Cleveland, he acted as a neutral arbitrator rather than use the U.S. military to crush the strike. This marked the first time in American history a president had involved himself in a labor dispute in any capacity other than strikebreaker.

Mineworker organizing had more than its shares of highs and lows in the period before the National Labor Relations Act. When the United Mineworkers of America achieved a victory, membership skyrocketed, but those victories were often met with great bitterness from industry and a determination to push labor relations back into the dark ages. Life for coal miners was indeed nasty, brutal, and short. Coal companies ruled their territory like medieval fiefdoms. Unsafe coal mines meant frequent explosions and massive deaths, high-priced company stores were often the only option for workers to buy anything, anti-union thugs were deployed to murder or beat anyone who seemed like a union organizer, etc. If you did live long enough, a slow painful death from black lung disease was a likely future. On September 6, 1869, 110 workers died in a fire at the Avondale Mine in Plymouth, PA. On January 27, 1891, 109 workers died at the Manmouth Mine in Mount Pleasant, PA. On June 28, 1896, 58 miners died at the Twin Mine in Pittston, PA.

Emerging from a mine shaft, Hazleton, PA

The United Mine Workers of America won a big victory in the bituminous mines of the Midwest in 1897, leading to improved wages and working conditions, as well as shorter hours. The union, led by its president John Mitchell, determined to build on that by organizing Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The success meant growth from 10,000 to 150,000 members and thus a much larger treasury to use to expand their gains. A small strike led to a victory in 1899. In 1900, another strike led Republican operative Mark Hanna to convince the mine owners to settle and pay a 10% wage increase in order to not hurt William McKinley’s chances in the election. With increased confidence but facing operators furious at concessions already granted, the UMWA increased its demands. It wanted union recognition, a pay raise, and shorter hours.

Anthracite miners, Pennsylvania.

Mitchell offered to arbitrate the differences, but owners representative George Baer, J.P. Morgan’s chosen point person on the strike, president of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and a man who truly hated unions, refused. On May 12, 100,000 miners walked off the job, about 80% of the workforce.

As the strike dragged on, Americans in the east began to worry about supplies of coal to heat their homes in the winter. This soon got the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt first looked into intervening in early June, but Attorney General Philander Knox told him he had no authority to do so. TR wasn’t so concerned with that and as the summer dragged into fall, his concern grew. The owners however didn’t care about the strike. They had produced too much coal early in 1902 and so had large supplies. Finally, TR acted as the nation’s population grew colder with each passing night, inviting UMWA president John Mitchell and the coal operators to the White House on October 3 to talk and settle the strike, making him the first president to mediate a labor conflict.

Mitchell agreed to call off the strike if the owners agreed to full presidential mediation and a small wage increase to show good faith. George Baer however refused to even think about bargaining with mere workers. He famously said, the “rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for—not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country.” The coal operators refused Roosevelt’s entreaties, even refusing to talk directly to Mitchell at the meeting. They walked out without a deal.

I have my problems with Theodore Roosevelt. He was a blowhard who used his advanced understanding of the media to promote himself throughout his life and slander his opponents, often unfairly. But if there’s one thing you don’t want to do to a man of that size of ego, it’s blow him off. Roosevelt was incensed with the coal operators. His response to the coal operators was a threat to nationalize the industry, sending in the U.S. military and taking the profits of the coal for the government. Mitchell wholeheartedly agreed with this, knowing that it meant the president had come down decisively on the side of the workers.

Editorial cartoon on Roosevelt taking on the coal operators.

Roosevelt’s threat finally forced J.P. Morgan and his coal operator stooges to the bargaining table after Secretary of War Elihu Root met personally with Morgan to inform him of the president’s plan. Agreeing to the presidential mediation, the two sides both sent representatives to testify before a commission. Representing the workers was Clarence Darrow, at the height of his career representing the nation’s poor and oppressed against corporate power. George Baer led the team for the mine operators. In his closing arguments, Baer summed up the plutocrat view toward the poor, saying, “”These men don’t suffer. Why, hell, half of them don’t even speak English.”

On October 23, the UMWA ended the strike. It did not win everything. The commission did not grant the union exclusive bargaining rights. It did however grant a 10% wage increase and a reduction in hours worked per day from 10 to 9. They also received a mediating bargaining board in lieu of union recognition, which Mitchell declared close enough. It was one of the greatest victories in the history of the United Mineworkers in the pre-NLRB era.

This is the 61st post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.

Fire Codes

[ 86 ] May 10, 2013 | Erik Loomis

One thing about Texas is how strongly its residents buy into the whole mythologizing bullshit about how great it is. This is true even of a lot of lefty Texans, as I found out in my 3 years there. It’s eyerolling at best. At worst, it helps lead to workplace deaths. As we already knew, the West fertilizer explosion is going to make absolutely no difference in regulating workplace safety in Texas going forward. Texans themselves have the basic response: “We’re Texas and we don’t do it that way. Go Cowboys!” But there are real things that Texas could do to protect workers. Fire codes for instance:

But federal officials and fire safety experts contend that fire codes and other requirements would probably have made a difference. A fire code would have required frequent inspections by fire marshals who might have prohibited the plant’s owner from storing the fertilizer just hundreds of feet from a school, a hospital, a railroad and other public buildings, they say. A fire code also would probably have mandated sprinklers and forbidden the storage of ammonium nitrate near combustible materials. (Investigators say the fertilizer was stored in a largely wooden building near piles of seed, one possible factor in the fire.)

“It’s tough to overstate the importance fire codes would have made,” said Scott Harris, a former emergency management coordinator in Texas for the Environmental Protection Agency, who is now with UL Workplace Health and Safety, a safety science company. “Texas just hasn’t wrapped its brain around this fact yet.”

In chemical fires, firefighters often bear a heavy toll. Ten of the at least 14 people who died in West were firefighters, and two more were residents helping fight the flames. This week, officials from the state firefighters’ association said the 50-foot-tall memorial to volunteers killed in the line of duty, on the Capitol grounds in Austin, had no room left for new names, not even those from West.

But hey, Rick Perry and his friends are all about maximizing corporate profit, even though fire codes would reduce corporate profits by like almost nothing. Firefighters dying fighting fertilizer conflagrations, that’s just the price of freedom!

This Day in Labor History: May 10, 1993

[ 16 ] May 10, 2013 | Erik Loomis

On May 10, 1993, the Kader toy factory in the Nakhom Pathom province of Thailand, just outside of Bangkok, caught on fire, killing 188 workers, severely injuring over 500, and breaking the all-time death toll for a factory workplace, previously held by the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York in 1911. The largest workplace disaster in Thai history, the Kader fire should have demonstrated the to the world the very real costs of outsourcing unsafe working conditions to the world’s poor countries. Unfortunately, the event received relatively little media attention and created no momentum for improving safety standards in the world’s factories.

The Kader factory was largely owned by Charoen Pokphand Group, a huge Thai conglomerate with concerns primarily in agribusiness; as of 2003 it was the world’s 5th largest transnational food corporation. CP owned 80% of the factory, the Hong-Kong based Kader Company owned about 20%, including the name. The factory manufactured toys, mostly stuffed animals and plastic dolls, for the international market. It received large contracts from Arco, Hasboro, Tyco, Toys-R-Us, Fisher Price, and other leading toy companies. Approximately 3000 workers toiled in this factory, with about 1500 in Building No. 1. Most of the workers were young women, some underage using fake IDs to get by age restrictions on labor. Thai women frequently add to family income, so many families encouraged their daughters to travel to Bangkok for factory labor.

This factory opened in January 1989, but already had a history of unsafe conditions. The original plant burned in August 1989 and the company’s license was suspended that November. But the Thai Ministry of Industry allowed the new plant to open on July 4, 1990. In February 1993, another fire struck one of the factory buildings. It was still closed when the main fire started in May. Thai law only provided minimum wage for full-time workers. Thus Kader and other manufacturers rarely employed people as full-time laborers. 47% of Thai employers did not pay the minimum wage. Compulsory overtime frequently kept workers until midnight, or even 5 a.m. if a deadline approached. Workers had their pay docked if they did not meet production quotas. On the 4th floor of Kader, 800 workers toiled. On that floor were 8 toilets.

None of this mattered to the American and European corporations outsourcing toy production to the developing world. They sent orders to Kader, demanding exact specifications for their markets, and asked no questions about wages, hours, working conditions, or safety. That was the advantage of outsourcing. These became irrelevant questions for corporations–so long as the costs were kept low. If costs rose, Tyco and Hasboro would move operations to another factory, another country.

At about 4 pm, a small fire broke out in one corner of Building No. 1. No one is really sure how the fire started, although a cigarette seems most likely. The workers were told to continue working. The fire alarm did not work and the fire spread rapidly in a factory full of finished plastic products. Security guards and employees tried to put the fire out but found themselves quickly overwhelmed with a rapidly spreading conflagration that soon spread to Buildings No. 2 and 3. Much like the Triangle Fire of 1911 in the United States, employers had locked the downstairs fire exits in order to maintain more control over workers. Fleeing back upstairs, the workers flooded the upper fire exits, causing them to collapse under all the weight. Workers began jumping from the upper stories to escape the flames. Then the main building collapsed from the heat of the fire. If this sounds much like the procession of events at Triangle, outside of the structural collapse, commenters at the time noted the same thing as well, ranging from a lack of fire safety training to highly combustible industrial products unsafely stored to the high number of women killed.



The dead at Kader.

Said one survivor, “I didn’t know what to do. Finally I had no other choice but to join others and jump out the window. I saw many of my friends lying dead on the ground beside me. I injured my legs but I came out alive.” Said another, “In desperation, I went back and forth looking down below. The smoke was so thick and I picked the best place to jump in a pile of boxes. My sister jumped too. She died.” The symbol of the fire was a melted Bart Simpson doll. The fire took place at the height of The Simpsons craze and the factory is where most Simpsons material was produced.

Melted Bart, symbol of the Kader fire.

Like many horrible factory accidents, shoddy design combined with employer malfeasance and a lack of basic safety standards to create an easily preventable disaster. The building was constructed with uninsulated steel girders that would collapse in 15 minutes during a fire. Basic infrastructure investment, even if none of the other problems had been alleviated, would have likely saved dozens of lives.

Although initially resisting any compensation, CP agreed to pay $8000 to the families of each dead worker and agreed to help pay the education costs of orphaned children. The Thai government announced improved safety and health standards. Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai traveled to the factory site on the night of the tragedy and pledged greater fire safety for Thai workers. But no one from CP or the factory managers received even a day in jail. The management was fined $12,000 for building code violations. Safety and health standards in Thai factories have not improved in any meaningful fashion since 1993, nor have they in many of the other manufacturing nations of southeast Asia. One big reason for this of course is that all the incentive for governments and business owners is to do nothing because the less they do, the more the big American, European, and Japanese corporations are pleased with low costs.

A memorial to Kader victims.

As I have suggested in the aftermath of the Bangladesh fire, now the largest tragedy in the history of industrial factories, with over 900 dead, perhaps the only way to stop corporations from taking advantage of poor nations and corrupt politicians to replicate the terrible working conditions of the Triangle Fire, Kader fire, and Bangladesh building collapse is to tie corporate legal status with their subcontractors’ behavior, making them civilly and criminally responsible for the conditions in factories to which they subcontract work. Otherwise, Disney can make a big stink of pulling out of Bangladesh to make themselves look good without doing anything to help Bangladeshi workers stay alive or ensure that workers in Cambodia, Vietnam, or wherever aren’t subject to the same conditions when no one is looking.

The better details in here came from Fiona Haines, Globalization and Regulatory Character: Regulatory Reform after the Kader Toy Factory Fire

This is the 60th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.

Harsher Penalties Needed

[ 89 ] May 9, 2013 | Erik Loomis

There’s no question that one lesson from the fertilizer explosion in West, Texas is that we need much harsher fines and criminal statutes against corporations when workers die, as well as the regulatory structure to prosecute the owners of these corporations. The latest AFL-CIO Death on the Job Report, released this week, shows that according to data complied by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2011, 4,693 workers died on the job. That’s 13 workers every day. 50,000 workers died from occupational disease. Workers suffered between 7.6 and 11.4 million job injuries and illnesses.

This might just be an inconvenience for the corporations who employ these workers, but it is devastating to the workers and their families. They need real compensation for their pain and it needs to come out of corporate profits.

Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the factory collapse has now claimed the lives of at least 912 people, making it by far the greatest workplace accident in human history. And another factory fire has killed 8 people in that country, including, ironically, one of the biggest defenders of the nation’s unsafe factory system. The multinational clothing corporations responsible for this system will not suffer at all for all these deaths.

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