NYC, June 1: “The Global Minimum Wage Struggle,” at Left Forum

The Global Minimum Wage Struggle

Global capital’s “race to the bottom” in imposing ever-lower—even sub-survival—wages is generating resistance around the world. With a focus on the garment industry in Bangladesh and Haiti, the speakers will discuss the importance of working class internationalism. This includes not only building solidarity, but also coordination of struggles.

Panel at Left Forum

Noon - 1:50 p.m.

Sunday, June 1

Room 1.109

• David L. Wilson, Weekly News Update on the Americas
• Kiki Makandal, Batay Ouvriye Solidarity Network, One Struggle NY
• Stephanie McMillan, political cartonist, Proletarian Alternative, One Struggle FL

Recommended reading:
Stephanie McMillan: “A Garment Worker in Bangladesh Speaks Out”
Kiki Makandal: “Ten Years of UN Military Occupation of Haiti: Background and Current Effects”

Jan Makandal: “Wage Struggles: Reformist or Revolutionary?”

David L. Wilson: “Thinking Big: The Global Minimum Wage”

US Labor Activist Deported From Indonesia

By Educating for Justice 
May 7, 2014

Friends and Supporters:

On Tuesday, May 6th, I was deported from Indonesia and I have been banned from traveling there for at least six months.

I was picked up by immigration officers after being tailed by intel at the May Day celebrations in Jakarta.

I was brought in for hours of questioning, my passport was confiscated and I had to report back to the immigration office for additional questioning the next day. When the investigation was complete, I was told that I was being deported and that I could not travel to Indonesia for six months with the possibility that the ban could be extended indefinitely. I do not think it is any coincidence I was picked up a day after I stood in solidarity with hundreds of workers at a demonstration at Nike’s Indonesian headquarters in Jakarta.

The powers that be may think that by taking this action they are going to silence my voice and activism on this issue. To the contrary, I am as committed now as I have ever been to telling the world about Nike’s labor abuses in Indonesia. The truth does not need a passport or a visa to be heard.

To read a detailed commentary about this event, please click the following link:

May Day Mayday Again by Terry Collins

In the coming days I will be posting my research, photos, and letters to Nike about the current situation at their Indonesian factories. You can check all this out at:

Team Sweat @ Facebook

Thank you for your continued support.

Peace,

Jim Keady, Director
Educating for Justice

Also see:
Indonesian Immigration Deports US Activist Jim Keady for Visa Violation

Thinking Big: The Global Minimum Wage

If the apparel industry can globalize production, the producers need to be able to globalize the minimum wage.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout
April 24, 2014

After years of neglect, the minimum wage has suddenly become a major national issue. President Obama has proposed an increase in the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour, fast food workers are agitating for $15, and candidates who back a higher wage floor, including an avowed socialist in Seattle, are winning local elections. In February, the retailer Gap Inc. announced that it was implementing a nationwide minimum wage for 65,000 of its own 90,000 employees (although only $9 an hour).

The minimum wage is an important issue in other countries as well, although we rarely hear about these cases. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23273-thinking-big-the-global-minimum-wage

Taking On the Fashion Industry

by David L. Wilson, MRZine
April 19, 2014

Tansy E. Hoskins. Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. Pluto Press, 2014. 254 pages.

To say that Tansy E. Hoskins' Stitched Up deconstructs the garment industry would be a misrepresentation. What the British activist and journalist does is more like a controlled demolition, using facts and footnotes to strip away the apparel trade's decorative exterior and then to dynamite the foundations.

Hoskins' polemic begins with the title. In British usage "to stitch up" is "to swindle, to overcharge exorbitantly," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Hoskins' goal is to show the many ways that fashion swindles us all. Through its own media outlets and its billions of dollars in advertising, the industry creates a glittery illusion of beauty and sophistication. The reality is a $1.5 trillion industry as grimy and profit-driven as any, and the glossy pages of Vogue conceal a record of human and environmental damage we might expect from coal mining or oil drilling. [...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/wilson190414.html

Wage Hike in Haiti Doesn’t Address Factory Abuses

By Jane Regan, IPS
December 3, 2013

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dec 3 2013 (IPS) - Haiti’s minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it will go from 58 to 65 cents, before taxes.

But the raise will not affect Haiti’s 30,000 assembly factory workers, who are supposed to already be receiving about seven dollars for an eight-hour day – about 87 cents per hour. Recent studies have found rampant wage theft at almost two dozen of the factories that stitch clothing for companies like Gap and Walmart.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/wage-hike-haiti-doesnt-address-factory-abuses/

U.S. Retailers Decline to Aid Factory Victims in Bangladesh

By Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
November 22, 2013

One year after the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh, many retailers that sold garments produced there or inside the Rana Plaza building that collapsed last spring are refusing to join an effort to compensate the families of the more than 1,200 workers who died in those disasters.

The International Labor Organization is working with Bangladeshi officials, labor groups and several retailers to create ambitious compensation funds to assist not just the families of the dead, but also more than 1,800 workers who were injured, some of them still hospitalized. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/business/international/us-retailers-decline-to-aid-factory-victims-in-bangladesh.html

The challenges of reforestation

By Ayiti Kale Je/Haiti Grassroots Watch
November 19, 2013

Doucet (Petit-Goâve), HAITI, 19 November 2013 – Reforestation and soil conservation programs costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Petit-Goâve region have resulted in hundreds of small ledges built of straw or sacks of earth. Eight to ten months later, in certain areas the earthworks seem to be lasting. But in many others, these little “shelves” have disintegrated.

The construction and destruction of the anti-erosion ledges – all made with development assistance and humanitarian donations – offer an example of how at least some of Haiti’s reforestations projects turn out. In some cases, at least, they could be considered vicious circles. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/11/19/the-challenges-of-reforestation.html