The Los Angeles Times has another installment in its outstanding series of labor exploitation on the Mexican vegetable farms that supply U.S. markets. This piece is on the rampant use of child labor that picks your vegetables. Once again, American corporations openly seek these arrangements...
agriculture
Imagine if this was the standard for regulating production rather than the exception that took a decade of hard struggle to win: Growers in the Fair Food Program are prohibited.
What can we tell about organic farms from the air? These aerial photos are intended to show the problems with large organic animal farms. They convey an image of industrial.
The food industry, along with the apparel industry, has long led the way in labor exploitation. Throughout the 20th century, agricultural interests went to extreme lengths to keep labor costs down, which meant paying them as close to nothing as possible, crushing any organizing efforts...
So this is kind of an interesting story about a big hop farm in Idaho. I read it because I like beer. But I also read it to see how.
The California drought has not only devastated owners, but the workers who rely upon migrant farm work to survive: On July 11, Camacho was working at a health resource fair.
The obscene use of fertilizer and chemicals leads to algae blooms that make the water supply of Toledo undrinkable. The problem is exacerbated by the non-native zebra mussels that eliminate animals that eat the algae to create a perfect storm of 21st century environmental disaster.
On July 11, 1934, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union formed when eleven white farmers and seven black farmers met in Tyronza, Arkansas to form a union of sharecroppers to fight.
The prison-industrial complex finds new ways to generate profit. So it's hardly surprising that probably the industry most exploitative of labor in American history--agriculture--is more than happy to take advantage..
The decline of the monarch butterfly results from multiple causes. The one that gets the most play is logging (often illegal and done by the cartel) in its wintering ground in Mexico. Brad Plumer's piece suggests a bigger reason is the rapid growth in intensive...
While I am open to an argument that part of an immigration reform package should include a guestworker program, I am extraordinarily skeptical. Why? Because guestworker programs have ALWAYS been.
The explosion in temp work has happened because employers see it as a profitable way to exploit labor, getting rid of troublemakers, avoiding legal responsibility, and keeping wages and benefits.