The efforts to flout voter-approved laws are part of ongoing conservative and corporate-backed strategies to keep wages low.
An estimated 60.7 percent of the world’s workers labor in the informal economy, without legal or social protections. While the impact of working without the freedom to organize is most dire in the world’s poorest countries, U.S. workers are not an exception to the types of labor rights abuses the described in a United Nations Report.
As California voters prepare to vote about legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, promises and omens have become part of the debate over the state’s future if Proposition 64 is passed. Will the traditional small-time pot farmers be replaced by industrial grow operations? Will employees in this newly legalized commerce receive decent pay, working conditions and benefits? Or will the new cannabis worker have more in common with the low-wage, immigrant farm workers?
NAFTA worsened poverty in Mexico. But some did profit from "Free Trade." Mexico now has 12 billionaires. Before our government started selling off public enterprises to cronies to lay the groundwork for NAFTA, we didn’t have one.
South Korea's unions, once one of the best organized segments of the global labor movement, have suffered setbacks since the late 1990s, when the government made it easier for employers to lay off workers and hire casuals. Fewer than one in 10 workers is now unionized, the country’s lowest level ever. South Korea’s government and business leaders want to put Han away because he represents a pivotal segment of what is left of labor militancy.
The Mexican government followed through on its threat to use force against striking dissident teachers.
The secrecy surrounding the text of TTIP is revealing. Anyone who wants to enhance environmental protection, consumer protection and labor standards would have nothing to fear from transparency. Anyone who’s engaged in selling out democracy, on the other hand, is obviously going to want to avoid public scrutiny.
The Algerian regime is unsparing in the tactics used to discourage workers from organising and fighting for their rights, including wilful disregard for the decisions of its justice system.
A new report goes beyond the sanitized inspection regimes to hear from the workers themselves.
TPP's fate in congress is uncertain at best; Long-awaited text reveals gaps between administration claims and actual TPP terms on key congressional, public concerns. Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress and provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs.
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