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Boycott of Philippine Airlines and AirPhil Continues

January 11, 2012

Founded in 1941, PAL and its unionized workforce have a 65 year history of working together collaboratively to ensure the company’s success. In fact, to help PAL recover from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, its workers agreed to suspend their collective bargaining agreement and accept across the board salary and benefit freezes for more than a decade. To reward its employees' loyalty and sacrifice, in 2009 PAL management announced it would implement a “fire and rehire” outsourcing scheme that would slash workers’ salaries and benefits in violation of the collective bargaining agreement PAL has signed with its workers. The scheme, announced during a routine meeting with elected union leaders, would have allowed the company to illegally fire more than 3,500

One year after fire, more workers die on the job in Bangladesh

December 15, 2011

As a result of the tens of thousands of emails that we generated on the International Labor Rights Forum's website and at Change.org, and the ongoing advocacy of unions and labor rights groups, JC Penney, VF Corporation, Gap, Carters, Philips Van Heusen, Abercrombie & Fitch, Target, and Kohl's have all contributed to the fund for compensating injured workers and the families of the deceased.

Newt Gingrich: This Year’s Grinch

December 13, 2011

US child labor laws are the product of hard won gains in this country’s economic development.  Current child labor laws around the world are the product of decades of hard work by venerable organizations such as UNICEF and the International Labour Organization’s IPEC program to eradicate child labor. These organizations and others have extensively documented how child laborers lose opportunities twice over:  they lose educational opportunities as children and they lose opportunities to prosper as adults.  The US Department of Labor has likewise played a critical role in supporting programs to end child labor worldwide, and has identified how often child labor goes hand in hand with forced labor.

Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street

November 4, 2011

Utilizing revolutionary Arab Spring tactics, people from all walks of life regardless of their color, gender, beliefs or backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate in the resistance movement to end the corruption and greed imposed on the 99% by the 1% of our society. Through non-violent resistance and collective decision making known as the “people’s assembly”, people are uniting through a variety of events and facilitating discussions to create change from the bottom up, the people, to cultivate and uphold social, environmental and economic justice. 

A Sweet Day

October 26, 2011

These men accepted the petitions on behalf of the CEO, saying they would pass them on.  We were unfortunately not able to engage with anyone at Hershey about the demands of the campaign, yet this was still an important step.  In addition to the stack of petitions we delivered to the CEO, we also sent a copy of the petitions to all of  of the members of Hershey’s board.  If the board members were not aware of the concerns of their customers before, they are now!

The U.S. – Colombia FTA: a bad deal for workers and labor rights

October 18, 2011

In April of 2011, the U.S. and Colombian governments announced the signing of the “Labor Action Plan,” in an effort to address concerns about impunity for labor rights violations in Colombia.   While far from a comprehensive reform plan, the Action Plan did create benchmarks in key areas, including hiring additional labor inspectors, enhanced protections for union leaders facing death threats, and closing gaps in Colombian laws that allow employers to use “labor cooperatives” to avoid the legal responsibilities of a direct employment relationship.  

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