This is a rent-a-cop at the factory gate. But workers' taxes still pay police to strikebreak and bust unions. Click pic
for story
NO BUSINE$$ AS USUAL! Medea Benjamin, global sweatshop activist & candidate |
Mex.Pres. Fox's musarañas Plan Colombia braceros Disgruntled.com "unmediated voice of labor" |
The labor federation said unscrupulous employers had systematically used the "I-9'' sanctions process, which the
union helped enact 15 years ago, to retaliate against workers who join together in unions. "Employers often
knowingly hire workers who are undocumented, and
then when workers seek to improve working conditions employers use the law to fire or intimidate workers,''
Chavez-Thompson said. "The law should criminalize employer behavior, not punish workers.''
The resolution also called for creation of education programs and training centers to educate workers about
immigration issues and assist workers in exercising their rights and freedoms. Chavez-Thompson said the AFL-CIO
would sponsor a series of regional forums with immigrant workers and community and union leaders to stimulate
more national dialogue and understanding on immigration issues.
The first forum is in New York City on April 1, followed by one in Atlanta on April 29, and Los Angeles on May 20.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council is the governing body of the U.S. union movement, with representatives of unions
with 13 million members.
At Applied Medical Resources in Laguna Hills, Patrick McNenny needs more employees and would welcome such
an amnesty. Family members and friends of current employees who would make prime candidates for his company
cannot be considered because of their immigration status. "We manufacture 100 percent of our goods in Laguna
Hills and we would like to continue to manufacture in the United States," said McNenny, vice president for
operations.
The labor proposal immediately drew fire from those who believe the 1986 amnesty was wrong and that there are
already too many immigrants taking jobs away from citizens.
"It would be a betrayal of all American workers," said Barbara Coe of Huntington Beach and a leader of the
California Coalition for Immigration Reform. "The bottom line is it would depress wages and take away the jobs that
rightfully belong to American citizens."
The 1986 amnesty, says Frank D. Bean, demographics professor at the University of California, Irvine, did create
some competition for jobs among the newly legalized immigrants and other immigrant workers. But he doesn't
expect an amnesty now would have a major impact, given the current economy and job availability.
Whether an amnesty is granted is likely to hinge on political, not economic, factors, Bean suggests. "What it does
remove," Bean said, "is what historically has been one of the strong voices in favor of immigration restrictions.
That's the voice of organized labor."
The AFL-CIO proposal would also repeal a 1986 law that requires all new employees to produce documents
proving they are legally entitled to work in the U.S. Organized labor supported that system in 1986. But, they say, it
has turned into a way to silence worker complaints and make organizing workplaces with many immigrants
difficult.
Coe says it's labor's "greed" to add more members that is driving this proposal. In recent years as more immigrants
have joined the work force, particularly in the service sector, unions say they have tried to organize those workers
only to find many are afraid to come foward and talk about working conditions.
An employer may be willing to look the other way when presented with suspicious documents by an immigrant. But
that same employer suddenly will question those same documents if an immigrant worker complains about
conditions, advocates and labor leaders say.
"Employers use their status as a threat to co-opt them to keep silent," said Linda Sanchez, the incoming head of
the Orange County Central Labor Council. An amnesty that freed workers from that fear would help improve
conditions for all workers, she added.
" Despite two decades of plant closures, and the loss of most of its heavy industry, Los Angeles is still the largest
manufacturing center in U.S. 717K workers walk through the gates of LA's factories every day, dwarfing the 400K
strong industrial workforce of Chicago's Cook County, now the nation's second largest manufacturing
concentration. Over half of LA's industrial workers are immigrants. Trapped in an apartheid-like subclass of
minimum wages, bone-crushing injuries and intense speed up, they have become the backbone of militant labor
protest in Los Angeles. "
" This is not a reality unknown to the city's unions, who have had to choose between being pushed into irrelevance
by shrinking membership, or organizing these new workers. Increasingly, they have chosen the latter course. Their
plan is called the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project (LAMAP) "
David Bacon, Mountain of Concrete paragraph 40
"This is aimed at converting the invisible into the visible," said Gabriela Delgado, head of the Women's Institute,
referring to housework. Her institute is part of the center-left Mexico City government, which helped promote the
event. The strike appeared to be more symbolic than mass-based. But the widely publicized work stoppage
captured the attention of a society in which women's roles are rapidly changing. Although about half of Mexican
women are still principally homemakers, women have poured into the work force and universities in recent
years.
What hasn't changed is their place in the home. Even those with outside jobs, like Ortega, find that they must do
the household chores that traditionally have fallen to women. That is, just about all of them.
"Before I leave home, I have to work. When I get home, I have to work," said Ortega, a stocky woman in a bright
pink sweatshirt adorned with a Virgin of Guadalupe medal who puts in 10-hour days selling music cassettes in
Mexico City's Alameda Park. Her husband, who repairs small appliances, she says, is "macho" and only reluctantly
pitches in.
On Saturday, however, he was on his own. Ortega slept in until 8 a.m., bathed, then headed out to a street stand
to indulge in some consomme and barbacoa, rich lamb tacos. It was, says the mother of two grown children, her
first day off from housework since 1977, when she spent a day in bed. Normally, she works seven days a week, in
addition to keeping up the house. "I'm a Mexican woman," she explained. The strike had lofty aims. Its organizers,
various women's organizations and the city government, hope to have domestic work included in national figures
on economic growth. They want men to help out more at home.
And they would like the media and textbooks to portray housework as a mutual responsibility. To press these goals,
they sponsored a protest march to the traditional heart of Mexico's political power, the capital's giant Zocalo plaza,
on the eve of the strike. About 500 women participated, banging pots and chanting: "Democracy begins at
home!"
Once in the Zocalo, the protesters listened as speakers denounced the inequity: Statistics show only half of
working men pitch in at home, compared with 94% of Mexican women with outside jobs. Such data didn't surprise
Laura Quiroz, 48, a television production worker who joined the march. She had announced to her spouse that she
planned to take part in Saturday's strike. He was not amused.
"He said, 'I don't care. In this house, we need to eat,' " she said with a grimace. Women were making progress,
she said, sighing. "But it's little by little." Like her, Rosario Rosas, 47, a homemaker in Mexico City's working-class
Tepito neighborhood, had limited hopes for the strike. The mother of three wasn't interested in making housework
part of the gross domestic product. She hoped for something much more modest: a tiny income of her own. All the
money she received from her husband was earmarked for the household, she explained.
"Men can go to the cantina with their friends. Women can't" because they lack money and are criticized for such
independence, she said. While macho practices endure, however, the protest pointed up the dramatic
transformation of women's roles in Mexico. Birthrates have plummeted in recent decades because of extensive
government family-planning programs. Young women often have twice as many years of education as their
mothers. The percentage of women in the work force has more than doubled since 1970, to nearly 40%.
And women, who didn't get the vote until 1953, have become far more politically active. In this year's presidential
race, candidates made an unprecedented effort to hold rallies with women and make campaign promises tailored to
them. In Mexico City, women's issues have been a priority, with the local government setting up special centers to
address problems such as female unemployment and domestic abuse. Delgado of the Women's Institute said it
was impossible to calculate how many women observed the strike. But the impact of the annual event appeared to
ripple far beyond those who actually put down their oven mitts and brooms.
There were discussions like the one between Angelica Cruz, 45, and her husband, a 48-year-old copy editor, who
were eating with their daughter at an outdoor taco stand in Mexico City. Asked her opinion of the strike, Cruz told a
reporter: "Good."
"Good?" exclaimed her husband. He said the strike made sense only for women who held outside jobs. His wife
disagreed. "We don't receive a salary. We work and have no benefits," she shot back. "Who's paying for the
tacos?" demanded her husband. Turning to a reporter, he said his wife didn't have time to participate in the strike.
But it seemed that he wouldn't have the last word. "It's new; I only heard about it yesterday," Cruz said. "But I may
participate the next time round."
| This being our first Subcommittee hearing of the 107th Congress, and my second Congress as Ranking Member on this subcommittee, I want to acknowledge our new Chairwoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen. I very much look forward to working with her in this Congress, as we look to shed light on the many dire human rights predicaments around the world. I want to welcome Mr. Marc B. Nathanson and wish him a happy 2nd Anniversary as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. |
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One can only wonder might have happened in Rwanda in 1994, with the messages of hate being broadcast for
days leading up to the genocide, if the VOA had been there in some way to counteract with alternative and
constructive messages. It is utterly embarrassing that, at the dawn of a new millennium, the Federal Govt is funding
Radio Free Africa with the paltry totals that it is.
The VOA also has announced the closing of its Uzbekistan service, and, to add insult to injury, are replacing it with
Russian language service. VOA's Uzbek service is the only one bringing light to the Uzbek government's violation
of human rights. The VOA claims that the Uzbek service is redundant because it is already provided by Radio
Liberty . However, Radio Liberty's objectivity has been in question by some that see it as nothing more than a
mouthpiece for the Uzbek dictatorship. Uzbek VOA service has been a godsend to the people of Uzbekistan,
covering such important issues as massive environmental degradation.
So, before closing down this beacon of hope, I would like a comparative study done to determine the quality and
objectivity of both VOA Uzbekistan and the surrogate Radio Liberty.
Last session, I introduced a bill to authorize the Broadcasting Board of Governors to make available to a private
entity archival materials from the Africa Division of the Voice of America. Representative Barbara Lee of this
subcommittee is a co-sponsor of the bill. The bill authorized the Broadcasting Board of Governors to make
available to the Institute for Media Development, a non-profit organization, archival materials of the Africa Division
of the Voice of America (VOA). VOA programs are not broadcast in the United States. As a result, programs which
may be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, history, literature and foreign policy are often
inaccessible.
Currently there is no system in place to preserve the analog tapes on which VOA's Africa broadcasts are recorded.
Programming that is rich in interviews of African political and cultural leaders is therefore being lost to posterity.
Storing these VOA interviews and news stories in a central archive will make a substantial contribution to
preserving the voices of Africans who are making history.
There are other concerns that I have regarding exactly how the BBG does its business; one centers on its hiring
practices. Now, Mr. Chairman, I know that you were not at the helm when "Women and men were treated
differently" at the VOA, where the court found that between 1974 and 1984 that "There were openings for 'warm
bodies' as long as those bodies were male." There was documented rampant sex discrimination at the VOA and its
parent, the U.S. Information Agency, during this period, where some 1,100 women in the prime of their careers,
were denied opportunity based on their gender. After 23 years of fighting, the government last year paid a steep
price: $ 531 million, plus attorney's fees. It is by far the largest civil rights settlement in U.S. history. The
government blinked only after losing 46 of the first 48 compensation hearings held as part of the 1977 class action
suit.
Court documents describe the VOA as an old-boy network run amok. The agency's male managers routinely
whited out women's application test scores if they were too high. Another tactic used was the agency claim to a
'hiring freeze'. Meanwhile, men with less experience and education magically scored dozens of points better than
women. Other men who flunked the test were given jobs anyway. One woman, Michal Shekel, was denied a
position because, she was told, she had a "girl's voice" and a "guy's name." Jahanara Hasan was advised that
broadcasting was too strenuous a job for a woman. Shirley Hill Witt, the first American Indian woman to earn a
Ph.D. in anthropology, sailed through the admissions process in 1981 with some of the highest test scores. She
wasn't offered a job, though, because the agency "had enough women in the Foreign Service at mid-level,"
according to a notation on her application.
Even today the VOA's hiring numbers are still out of whack, though. For instance, there are 68 male electronics
technicians and no women in comparable jobs. Just six of 122 broadcast equipment operators are women. African
Americans were also underrepresented for many years at the VOA. While there has been advances at the VOA in
minority hiring, certainly the agency has some way to go when you consider the backsliding of the past with this
very public institution. When you consider how well some in the private sector have been in enforcing affirmative
action for decades now, it is inexcusable for a govt agency such as VOA to have performed so poorly in the areas
of Woman and minority hiring. I trust, Mr. Chairman, that you share my concern and that the improvement will
continue under your steady leadership.
When Congress approved the Voice of America Charter in 1976, it dictated that foreign broadcasts should first of
all be objective, but also reflect U.S. foreign policy. Present
day U.S. broadcasting directors, with encouragement from Congress, go beyond this charter. They believe
they have missions to influence the way foreigners think, live, and are governed. VOA's one-time purpose to report
objective news is now being replaced by congressionally favored political programming with clear ideological
agendas. For example, it was politically expedient for Congress and the White House to approve $ 7 million to
move Radio/TV Marti from well equipped quarters in Washington to new studios in Miami, heartland of the anti-
Castro Cuban emigre community. The money was approved just a few months before the 1996 presidential
election in which the Florida Hispanic vote was eagerly sought. The Cuban service has long been mired in emigre
politics. Independent journalists, the state department's inspector general, and individual members of Congress all
have criticized the service as biased, with few radio listeners in Cuba and virtually no TV viewers. Nonetheless,
Congress continues to give Radio/TV Marti $22 million a year.
So, in closing, I wish the Chairman the best of luck and hope that he will fight to the best that he is able for more funds for Radio Free Africa, along with continued journalistic programs throughout Africa which, when funded, have been so successful. Talk about a " bang for the buck": about 20 percent of VOA's worldwide listeners are now in Nigeria alone. So I sincerely hope that you, Chairman Nathan, look to get govt broadcasting back to adhering to the Charter of '76, a charter which 'rang' the bell of objectivity so that the onetime concept or dream of a single American international broadcaster will be taken seriously enough to one day compete head on with the likes of the BBC World Service.
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ILO MNE reports Multinationals' 1996-99 human rights impact in 100 countries from govts, workers' orgs, employers' assoc., & business reps. Representative sample of countries w/ FDI in- & out-flows in ILO regions. |
Mary W. Covington covington@ilo.org Assoc.Dir. Intl Labor Organization 1828 L St NW #600 WashDC 20036-5121 202.653.7652 fax 202.653.7687 |
Critics say the proposed ban on mandatory union dues would mainly attract companies that pay low wages. U.S.
Labor Department statistics show that 18 of the top 20 states in personal income do not have right-to-work laws,
while six of the bottom 10 states in income growth do. Alexander Holmes, an economist at the University of
Oklahoma, said numerous studies agree that one of the best things the state could do to improve its economy
would be to improve its schools. "That's where the culture of the people is critically important,'' he said. "They need
to make sacrifices for future generations without regard to their own bettterment.'' Union members booed Keating, a
Republican, when he mentioned right-to-work during his state-of-the-state speech in February at the beginning of
this year's legislative session. Later in the session, 2,000 union members rallied against it.
But legislators handed Keating a major victory when they put the issue on the ballot. When Oklahoma last voted on
the issue in 1964, it failed by less than 25,000 votes. Many of the state's 124,000 union members are emotional in
their opposition; they fear a loss in bargaining power and declining union membership if the constitutional
referendum is adopted. Stickers on motorized carts at the local General Motors plant say, "Right-to-work is a ripoff.''
The same slogan appears on bus benches and T-shirts worn around town by union members. "Right-to-work is
directed at the unions to bust them up, but it's going to affect everyone in the state,'' said Monnie Hutson, vice
president of Local 2021, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Oklahoma ranks 43rd in the country in wages. Its workers earn 79 percent of the national average, down about a
percentage point from a year ago. Texas and Arkansas, both right-to-work states, rank 25th and 47th, respectively.
The ad battle has not yet begun, and many people are unfamiliar with the issue. The response from Linda Vaughn,
a state government employee, was typical of people asked at random about right to work. "I think it's a good deal -
everybody should go to work, make a living somehow,'' she said, sipping a soft drink inside a suburban Oklahoma
City mall. Jimmy Curry, state president of the AFL-CIO, said only about half of his members work under contracts
forcing them to pay dues. Included are an American Airlines plant in Tulsa, the state's largest manufacturing facility,
and a General Motors factory in Oklahoma City.
Some workers resent mandatory dues. "It's just a waste of money,'' said retiree Bob Jones, who paid union dues
for years as a civilian worker at Tinker Air Force Base. Idaho was the last state to approve a right-to-work law.
Voters ratified it in November 1986 after a $3 million campaign.
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OCIAL JUSTICE |