Free Republic

OAKLAND, Calif. - Lawyers representing about 116,000 former and current Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees in California told a jury Monday that the world's largest retailer systematically and illegally denied workers lunch breaks. The suit in Alameda County Superior Court is among about 40 cases nationwide alleging workplace violations against Wal-Mart, and the first to go to trial. Wal-Mart, which earned $10 billion last year, settled a lawsuit in Colorado for $50 million that contains similar allegations to California's class action. The company also is accused of paying men more than women in a federal lawsuit pending in San Francisco federal...

http://projectusa.org/ezine/2005/05-03-wsj_burns_gop_delay.html May 5, 2005 Issue 231 DeLay scandal hammering Wall Street Journal wing of GOP But Abramoff, the escape clause in the Contract with America, will likely be ineptly exploited by Democrats By CRAIG NELSENProjectUSA director WALL STREET JOURNAL REPUBLICANS Willie Tan, left, Hong Kong based owner of several sweat shops on the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. Commonwealth exempt from U.S. immigration and labor laws. "Returning from a fact-finding trip (to the Marianas) where he played two rounds of golf at the first-class Lao Loa Bay Golf Resort, DeLay blasted critics of what he called Saipan's 'free market...

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Even Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen can't escape the scrutiny of student activists at NYU. A student group will march today in Washington Square Park to ask that the Gallatin freshmen guarantee paid maternity leave to workers in Bangladesh who work in the factories that make their clothing line. The NYU chapter of Students Against Sweatshops and the National Labor Committee charged that 95 percent of the women who work in Bangladeshi sweatshops for major companies - including Wal-Mart and the Olsens' Dualstar Entertainment Group - don't receive three months of maternity leave mandated by Bangladeshi law. "I don't want my...

A champion of sweatshop workers in the developing world, Kenneth Miller has spent the past three baseball seasons rattling consumers' consciences outside PNC Park. Those bobblehead dolls the fans clamor for, and a variety of other sports-related gee-gaws and apparel, are made in overseas sweatshops, according to Miller and other workers' advocates, including the National Labor Committee. The Pirates don't decide which factories will make the merchandise it sells. Major League Baseball hires companies to produce it for 30 teams. Those companies, such as Nike, New Era and Rawlings, contract with factories.

Those who vent their moral indignation over low pay for Third World workers employed by multinational companies ignore the plain fact that these workers' employers are usually supplying them with better opportunities than they had before, while those who are morally indignant on their behalf are providing them with nothing. Some of the more rational among the indignant crusaders for "social justice" may concede that the employers are usually offering better pay than Third World workers would have had otherwise. But they see no reason why wealthy corporations should not pay wages more like the wages paid in affluent countries....

Here's a question. Suppose you see people lining up for hours, and people willing to pay a month's salary in bribes, in order to get a $2 a day factory job. What might you conclude? Would you guess there are higher-paying jobs around, but the people are too lazy to look for them? Here's my guess: No matter how unattractive to us that $2 a day job is, it might be that person's best-known prospect. New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof recently wrote "Inviting All Democrats" in the Jan. 14 New York Times Online, a story documenting the plight of...

"Low-Wage Costa Ricans Make Baseballs for Millionaires." That was the headline on one of those New York Times "news" stories that continued its recent tradition of disguised editorials. The headline said it all but the story ran on and on anyway, with details and quotes that added nothing to the familiar story that Third World workers don't earn nearly as much money as most Americans, even when they work for rich American companies. Perhaps the best refutation of the implied message of this "news" story also appeared in the New York Times, in a frankly labeled op-ed piece by the...

“Hip-hop” candidate Al Sharpton, who claims to represent the oppressed, needs to speak to Sean “Puffy” Combs. Sean Combs has been accused of producing his Sean John clothing line through Honduran sweatshops. Director of National Labor Committee Charles Kernaghan released a report alleging that he has observed poor working conditions in the southeast textiles factory in Choloma, Honduras. He added that the workers are subjected to daily body searches and contaminated drinking water. For 11 to 12 hour daily shifts, the workers receive 24 cents for every $50 Sean John sweater they produce. It has also been reported that the...

Honduran Officials Defend Diddy by Josh Grossberg Oct 31, 2003, 10:30 AM PT Is P. Diddy's sweatshop scandal just a bunch of puffery? Officials in Honduras certainly think so, saying they've found no evidence so far to support claims by a workers' rights group that a factory that makes Sean Combs' signature clothing line has violated that country's labor laws. On orders from President Ricardo Maduro to launch an investigation, Honduras' Labor Minister, German Leitzelar, conducted a tour of the Southeast Textiles factory in Choloma with a group of inspectors, according to wire reports. Leitzelar found no proof of the...

NEW YORK -- Sean John, the clothing line of rap music mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, is under scrutiny from a workers' rights group for allegedly using laborers from a Honduran sweatshop. The director of the anti-sweatshop National Labor Committee, Charles Kernaghan, planned to release a report Tuesday detailing poor working conditions at the Southeast Textiles factory in Choloma, Honduras, where Sean John clothes are made. Workers there are subjected to daily body searches, contaminated drinking water and 11- to 12-hour daily shifts, the report said. In exchange, they are paid 24 cents for each $50 Sean John sweat shirt...

Oct. 10 — Last month there were big protests when the World Trade Organization met in Cancun, Mexico. There are always protests when this meeting is held. OFTEN the protests are supported by American students who say workers are being mistreated The students object to what they call sweatshops. They say companies are exploiting poor people, by setting up factories in developing countries and paying workers a fraction of American workers' wages. The anti-sweatshop protesters appear to be winning the battle of public opinion. In 1996, they made Kathy Lee Gifford cry by saying she was exploiting young workers in...

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry hit turbulence on convention eve at the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation, after it was revealed the candidate has been wined, dined and fundraised by the controversial Susie Tompkins Buell. Friday's WASHINGTON POST style-section splash on Buell -- the co-founder of the ESPRIT clothing company -- failed to include stunning allegations of sweatshop profiteering! Before Kerry presents his position Tuesday night in Chicago on protecting the right of workers to organize, a sweaty review of Buell's ESPRIT: The Department Of Labor Raided Eight Sweatshops In San Francisco, Including Three Which Were Manufacturing Goods For...

And next week he will drive up to the Sierra Club meeting in a SUV.

We wake up in the morning, and our evil deeds begin before we have time to curse the alarm. As we slept, our refrigerators were hard at work giving Chileans skin cancer. We turn on the air conditioner, and amphibians grow extra limbs. We breathe and contribute to global warming. We put on our clothes and cover the world with sweatshops. We slip on our athletic shoes and tie children to workbenches with the laces. We poison the soil by eating breakfast. We drive to work and drown Pacific Islanders. We go to the doctor and kill animals. We devastate...

This is basically a response to those moral cretins who are waging an anti-Nike campaign urging people to place 'personalized' shoe orders with the company and when doing so to "use words like 'Slavelabor', 'Sweatshop', 'Childslave', or other appropriate names that my strike your fancy." The Left has a number of ideological hobby horses that it mounts when the opportunity presents itself — or when it creates one, as in this case. This phoney moral crusade against Nike accuses it of exploiting 'cheap' Asian labour, especially child labour. That many journalists cheerfully joined this ideologically corrupt campaign came as no...

http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_653774.html Nike workers protest against cutbacks Thousands of Indonesian Nike workers have marched on the US embassy in Jakarta to protest against planned production cuts. Workers at Nike-contracted factories expect the cutback could cost 7,000 jobs. Around 4,000 workers carried placards and demanded that Nike compensate laid-off workers. Rustam Aksam, president of the Indonesian Textile, Garment and Leather Worker's Union, says: "Nike has no social responsibility. They are just exploiting the workers, getting their profit and then leaving." Nike has confirmed it will terminate a contract with Doson Indonesia in November. But the company says it will continue to work...

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20020717.shtml Thomas Sowell July 17, 2002 Indignation, inc. A recent front-page story in The New York Times was headlined: "In Ecuador's Banana Fields, Child Labor is Key to Profits." This is part of an ongoing orgy of indignation by the intelligentsia at low-paid labor in the Third World. The question they never ask is: Compared to what? But people for whom indignation is a way of life seldom pause to compare the available options. Instead, they are ready to foreclose some of the options of poor people, who have painfully few options to begin with. Buried on an inside page...