Free Republic

SUNNYVALE -- A prominent Silicon Valley clean-energy startup has been ordered to pay back wages and penalties for bringing in workers from Mexico and paying them about $2.66 an hour in pesos, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Tuesday. Sunnyvale-based Bloom Energy, which makes fuel cells and sells energy to clients including AT&T, Adobe, Coca-Cola, eBay, Google and Wal-Mart, was ordered by a judge to pay $31,922 in back wages and an equal amount in damages to 14 welders who were brought in to work alongside domestic workers refurbishing power generators. It followed a federal investigation that inspected records from...

BY GREG MCCARTAN  NEW YORK--Leaders of the Socialist Workers Party met here June 22-24 to chart a course to meet the opportunities to recruit workers and youth to the communist movement and prepare the SWP’s 41st Constitutional Convention, scheduled for July 25-27 in Oberlin, Ohio. The focus of the reports and discussion at this National Committee meeting was the possibilities and need to transform the work of party members and branches in order to meet the potential to recruit workers. The party has already been successful in beginning to integrate itself into the resistance of workers and farmers in town...