Are Sanders and Fair Trade a Threat to the Global Poor?

By David L. Wilson, MRzine
April 13, 2016

On April 24, 2013, some 1,134 people died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex outside Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The building housed factories where low-wage workers, largely women, stitched garments for the U.S. and European markets.

For several years before the disaster a number of U.S. opinion makers -- notably New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof -- had been arguing that assembly plants like those at Rana Plaza were crucial to the development of economies in the Global South and therefore a boon to the world's most impoverished. The media's efforts to promote sweatshops suddenly slowed down after the collapse in Bangladesh, but they seem to be reviving now, just as we approach the third anniversary of the disaster.

The occasion for the new pro-sweatshop campaign is Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' opposition to trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).[...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/wilson130416.html

Labor, Worker Rights Activists Condemn Attacks on Workers' Rights in Mexico

Mexican Labor News &Analysis
March 2013.

Unions and worker rights supporters took action around the world as part of a week of action running from February 18 to 24, 2013. The Days of Action in solidarity with the independent trade unions in Mexico focused on the need to roll back regressive labor law changes that were approved in the fall of 2012, to support workers at key conflicts, and to end the persecution, arrests and criminalization of struggles of democratic trade unions and the workers they represent.

Another key demand was that the Mexican government take action in accordance with the International Labor Organization recommendations to address the pervasive protection contract system that is used by employers, company-friendly “unions,” and the government to avoid representation by democratic unions and to deny workers their basic rights.

In the United States where comprehensive immigration reform is under consideration, unions also called on the Mexican government to reaffirm its commitment to protect the rights of immigrant workers in the United States while also ensuring that the rights of all workers are also rigorously protected and enforced in Mexico. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=212#1568

Activista relata problema agrario estructural y habla sobre la lucha campesina

Natasha Pitts, Adital
July 17, 2012

Haití es un país con mayoría campesina, sin embargo, esto no quiere decir que haya tierra para que todos y todas cultiven y vivan dignamente. El gobierno de este país estima que el 65% de la población vive en el campo, y Chavannes Jean-Baptiste del Movimiento de Papaye (MPP) y de Vía Campesina, asegura que por lo menos el 80% está en el área rural.

Antes del terremoto del 12 de enero de 2010 la situación ya era delicada por la falta de tierras que, como en otros países, están en manos de grandes propietarios. Actualmente las circunstancias son aún más graves. Con la llegada de familias desde la ciudad, que perdieron sus viviendas durante el terremoto, el campo se infló y cada día ofrece menos condiciones dignas de vida para hombres y mujeres. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia.asp?idioma=ES&cod=68818

Watch the video (in Spanish):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=msE9YrE6dRU

Growing Ties Between Mexican and U.S. Labor

By David Bacon, Americas Program
June 14, 2011

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change’s report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, click here.

IN Mexico, the NAFTA debate led to the organization of the Action Network Opposing Free Trade (RMALC), which in turn helped to spark the relationship between the U.E. and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT). That relationship, examined in detail in several books, remains a model for solidarity between two unions, based on equality and mutual interest, preserving each union’s ability to make its own decisions autonomously. It has been a relationship based on real campaigns on the ground – organizing drives, strikes, and resistance to proposals like the PRI labor law reform. Rank-and-file workers in both unions have played an important part in those efforts. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4858

Equality and Rights for All Workers – The Key to Organizing Unions

Organizing immigrant workers is not a matter of taking pity on the downtrodden. It requires us to understand what is necessary for the survival of our communities, of our labor movement.

by David Bacon, Monthly Review and Americas Program
October 11, 2010

When I was a union organizer, I had an experience that dramatized for me the importance of the cultural and historical traditions that immigrants from Mexico bring with them when they come to the United States, and how they affect the way people organize.

I was working for the United Electrical Workers, one of the most progressive U.S. unions. We were contacted by workers at a huge sweatshop, Cal Spas. Unhappy with low wages and abusive conditions, they began to organize a union. Then the head of the workers’ organizing committee was beaten up in the middle of the street in front of the plant. It was an obvious effort to scare the workers and make them stop organizing. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3319