Flowers for Mom,Yes! Colombia Free Trade Agreement, No!

If you bought your Mom flowers for Mothers Day, chances are that they arrived on one of the 28 daily cargo flights into Miami from Colombia, where over 100,000 mainly female workers pick and process flowers for the U.S. market. They earn a minimal wage, are exposed to numerous toxins from pesticides and fungicides, [...]

Connecting Capitalism & Immigration: Student Labor Week of Action 2008

David Duhalde
YDS National Organizer
Originally published on theactivist.org
I gave several talks about the connection between capitalism and immigration as part of the Student Labor Week of Action. My second stop, after Butler University, was at Wooster College, where I am currently sitting in a college house scribbling through this entry. Both talks were sponsored by [...]

Security and Prosperity Partnership: Open Letter to Congress

On April 21 Democratic Socialists of America is joining with some thirty other U.S.-based organizations and networks to call upon the U.S. Congress to exercise its authority to reign in the opaque and undemocratic process called the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP has been organized by top business CEOs and the chief executives of [...]

Workers In a Global Economy: Must They be Left Behind?

Demos has organized a interesting program on the global economy.
Thurs., April 17, 2008
Program from 12:00-2:00 pm
at Demos 220 Fifth Ave., 5th Floor
New York, NY [ directions]
NAFTA, CAFTA, the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, climate change and issues of the global economy are front and center in our Presidential debate. The laissez faire vision of the global [...]

NAFTA on Steroids: The Security and Prosperity Partnership

by Paul Garver
Even as a growing number of citizens of the USA, Mexico and Canada are demanding the renegotiation of NAFTA, government and corporate elites are stealthily reshaping the agreement into a Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) to promote greater economic and military integration of the continent. When the next SPP Summit involving the three [...]

5 Easy Pieces To Stop the Colombia FTA

President Bush has said he will send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement FTA) to Capitol Hill and demand a vote before he leaves office next January.
Despite objections by the Democratic congressional leadership, the administration may formally send the agreement to Congress as early as next week when Congress returns from its Easter recess on March [...]

Today’s global capitalism in one release

Stuart Elliott

Today, looking at my email in box, a news release from the International Trade Union Confederation caught my attention. It read “Violent repression of Vietnamese workers strike.” But, I overlooked something. Before that phrase that caught my attention, the release named where the strike took place–Jordan!

Turns out these were Vietnamese [...]

Bush Tries Again to Pass Free Trade Agreement with Colombia

To date the united and unrelenting critique of the Colombian and American labor movements of the systematic violations of union rights in Colombia has deterred the Bush administration from introducing legislation to ratify and implement the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Act (née Free Trade Agreement). Now it is trying to use national security arguments [...]

Have a Labor Friendly Valentine’s Day!

From the International Labor Rights Forum

 
 

 
 

FLOWERSOn holidays like Valentine’s Day, many consumers do not think about the labor behind their flowers. We have a new urgent action e-mail to Colombian flower executives calling on them to respect workers rights in the cut flower industry. Stand in solidarity with [...]

DSA members take action on Colombia FTA

Boston DSA members working in the Jobs with Justice coalition
helped organize a protest action against the U.S.-Colombia FTA on 26
January. See article posted at http://bostondayofaction.org/now/node/38
Chicago DSA participated with thirty other organizations in a letter to
Illinois senators Obama and Durbin opposing the FTA. This letter is
publicized in a creative way at [...]