Several weeks into clean-up efforts at the site of the collapsed factory in Bangladesh, many were still searching for missing family members on Monday.
Hundreds of Bangladeshi textile factories near the capital, Dhaka, have shut because of unrest sparked by the collapse of a factory building last month, the country's textile association says.
Owners made the decision on safety grounds after many workers went on a rampage, the group's president said.
Although the organization had originally said all factories in Ashulia would be shut down indefinitely, leaders later said the closure applied only to factories where there was worker unrest.
But as the day came to an end, sweeping changes are finally on the horizon for millions of the underpaid garment factory workers of Bangladesh who have long toiled in far too often unsafe and deadly conditions.
The government says it will lift trade union restrictions amid pressure to improve workers' conditions, and Bangladesh has set up a panel to raise the minimum wage for more than three million garment workers, the minister for textiles has said.
The new initiatives are partly in response to outrage over conditions in the country’s garment sector after the April 24th collapse of a garment-factory building, Rana Plaza, in Savar, an industrial suburb of Dhaka, the nation’s capital. By Monday afternoon, at least 1,127 people were confirmed to have died in the Rana Plaza collapse, a number that could still rise, in what is now considered the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry.
The Rana Plaza in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, housed a number of textile factories, some of which were supplying Western retailers.
The House Republican bill H.R. 1406 is the latest in a string of GOP attacks on workers' rights. The bill would force an unnecessary choice between overtime pay that workers rely on and time off that they may never be able to take advantage of. H.R. 1406 -- the "Working Families Flexibility Act" -- would give employers the ability to offer compensatory time off in exchange for any overtime wages the worker has earned.
The Republican-led House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday that they say gives workers more time off - rejecting criticism from the White House, unions, women's groups and others that the measure is a sham that would force more work for less pay.
Backed by business (There's a shocker.), the bill is part of an effort by budget-slashing Republicans to project a "kinder and gentler image," particularly with women and working families.
On a nearly party-line vote of 223-204, the House approved the measure and sent it to the Senate where President Barack Obama's majority Democrats appear certain to kill it.
The bill would permit workers in the private sector, like those now in the public sector, to swap overtime pay for compensatory time off. They would get 1-1/2 hours time off for each hour of overtime, based on a standard 40-hour work week.
This is your Moment of Clarity #230: A new report says that the CEO to worker pay gap has increased 1,000% since 1950. And how the f*ck could I make this out to be good news?
The Moment of Clarity Show Kickstarter is still underway, if you'd like to help keep the show going.
Thousands of people marched about 2 1/2 miles from the Central District toward Seattle's downtown Jackson Federal Building on Wednesday after a May Day rally supporting immigrant rights and labor.
Many carried signs, with messages such as "We are America," and "There are no illegal humans." One sign suggested forgetting about marijuana and instead asking the United States to "Legalize my mom," a reference to Washington's recent legalization of marijuana.
The crowd chanted "Si se peude," Spanish for "Yes, we can," and a rallying cry for the United Farm Workers. Many wore bright purple, red or orange shirts, identifying them with their unions.
Also in Seattle, a May Day protester says a motorcycle cop ran over his bicycle. Also a look at May Day in Olympia, Washington.
It's May Day in Berlin! Hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets of Berlin all day on Wednesday, celebrating May Day. There were no cars, no traffic, no people at work, only people dancing, kissing, drinking and enjoying life. At least until the May Day march entered the banking district...
Clashes took place in Berlin during May Day protests. Part of the demonstrators broke the glass of Sparkasse Bank in central Berlin. Earlier on masked youth through bottles and other objects towards police vans and police officers. As a result the police came closer to the protest and accompanied them until the march ended.
Vermont:
Over 1500 people from across the state of Vermont came together on this day in historic show of unity, to say that the people of Vermont want a state that "PUT PEOPLE FIRST."
Dozens of organizations and communities united to hold the annual May Day march and a day of action in front of the State House.
Some of the sights and sounds of May Day 2013 at Union Square Park in NYC, just a fun day in the sun celebrating workers, unions...
Turkey: Clashes have erupted in Istanbul as 20,000 police attempted to cordon off Taksim Square.
Protesters are attempting to defy a government ban on May Day celebrations in the square.
Having allowed labour day gatherings for the last three years, the Turkish authorities did not grant permission due to safety concerns. The central square is undergoing major renovation. All transport to the area was canceled.
Amsterdam: May Day protesters march through the center of Amsterdam.
It's May Day, and Occupy Wall Street will be acting in force across New York City.
Join us on this day of celebration and agitation for the struggles of workers the world over. As the May Day music video "We Stand For Justice" depicts.
"We stand for justice. We know what it feels like. We stand together, for justice we will fight!"
Indeed, the most important way you can show your support is by joining us in the streets on May Day. But we also need financial and material resources to spread the word and to support actions.
We begin the day early in 2 groups: Uptown (meeting in Bryant Park at 10am) and Downtown (meeting in Union Sq at 11am). After marching with different groups, we’ll meet back at Union Square for more performances, especially game time at 4pm!
The Free University of NYC invites neighborhood organizations, schools, unions, spiritual centers, and other community education-oriented groups to create your own Free Universities this May 1st. The impetus behind this May Day call to education is to encourage local communities to host your own gatherings of free education to ensure they’re directly relevant and empowering on a ground level.
Join immigrants and workers this May Day as we highlight the daily struggles facing immigrants and workers in New York City. We will visit several workplaces in midtown to demand an end to exploitation of immigrant workers, ending at Schumer's office for a speak-out on what real immigration reform looks like.
Join 99 Pickets, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and allies as we march on employers around Union Square to demand fair pay and justice for all workers. We'll be visiting the offices of Frieze Art Fair to call for a fairer art world, Wendy's to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Travel Channel to support members of the Writers Guild. Gather at 2:30pm in the NE corner of Union Square; we'll leave at 3pm. Look for Rude Mechanical Orchestra!
Everybody Now! is a choir that you join as soon as you start to sing (or whisper or hum). On May Day, we will be sharing this song, "We Stand For Justice", at the beginning of the rally at Union Square, and we would love to you to lift your voice and sing with us! Our goal is to make it as resonant and contagious as possible - ideally everyone at the rally will feel empowered and excited to sing along! Listen to a demo of the song and meet us at the SE corner of Union Square (14th St between Broadway and Lafayette, right across from the Duane Reade) AND THEN SING WITH US IN THE RALLY AT 4 PM!!
Joint rally with the May 1st Coalition; the Alliance for Labor Rights, Immigrant Rights and Jobs for All; immigrant rights groups; and Occupy Wall Street. The rally will be a mix of speakers and entertainment drawing attention to the struggles and victories of labor unions, workers, immigrants and the 99%. Followed by a march down Broadway to City Hall.
This Assembly will be the first in a series of monthly People's Assemblies that will take place on the first Wednesday of each month. What do we have in common, how do our experiences vary, and what can we build together? As the march ends, gather in Foley Square starting at 7pm. We will split into multiple groups based on the struggles, campaigns and people present.
Emphasis on current labor struggles, ending Police Murder and Brutality, stop & frisk, mass incarceration and the War on Black and Brown People, justice for victims of Hurricane Sandy and building Occupy Wall Street to truly reflect and fight for all of the people in New York City.
Cheryl is one of the many Chicago fast food and retail workers that are taking a stand for livable wages and improved quality of life. Cheryl hopes to attend graduate school, but struggles with the burden of student loans and a low wage income.
Hundreds of fast food and retail workers went on strike in Chicago Wednesday morning in a labor action consciously modeled on New York City’s fast food workers campaign and the nationwide Walmart strike which occurred last Thanksgiving. The Chicago strikers -- who include workers from McDonald’s, Subway, Macy’s, Sears, and Victoria’s Secret -- are demanding a wage floor of $15 an hour and the right to form a union.
Retail and food service jobs are typically thought of as entry-level positions, populated by teenagers looking for some extra spending money before moving on. But a recent National Employment Law Project study found that since the 2008 economic crash, the majority of jobs lost have been middle wage jobs (between $13.84 and $21.13), while the bulk of jobs under the “recovery” has been jobs between $7.69 and $13.83. It’s what has been called a “McJobs Recovery,” in which low-wage jobs are increasingly the only jobs available—for teenagers, young adults, middle-aged workers, everyone.
Indeed, at a meeting downtown two weeks before the strike, workers of a wide variety of ages and other demographic profiles gathered. One of three such meetings held to discuss whether or not to strike, nearly 100 workers squeezed into a sweltering room, listening to middle-aged Ecuadorian immigrants telling their stories of working at McDonald’s in Spanish, followed by the kind of white twenty-something cashiers who would likely take umbrage at being pegged as hipsters. An African-American man approaching what’s typically thought of as retirement age told of decades working in fast food and hovering near minimum wage, while a young Urban Outfitters worker said a raise would “make the difference between living and surviving.”
When explaining what a raise to $15 per hour would mean to her, Trish Kahle, a Whole Foods worker, stated simply, “I could have heat all winter.”
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While recent efforts to organize low-wage and retail workers seem new, they have historical precedent in the U.S. Vanessa Tait, author of Poor Workers Unions, a history of organizing efforts in low-wage jobs, says previous efforts, like the famous 1937 sit-down strike by women workers at Woolworth’s or lesser-known efforts to organize fast food restaurants in Detroit in the 1980s, were done on a smaller shop-by-shop level—unlike the strikes in Chicago and New York, whose scope involves hundreds of stores and restaurants. “Being able to organize on a unified industrial and geographical level with broad public support makes a big difference: it creates a sense of movement and a greater possibility of victory.”
Standing with a group of protestors in front of the Nordstrom Rack on State Street Wednesday morning, Charde Nabors, 21, said she's fighting for better pay and more opportunities for workers like her.
Nabors works at Sears for $9 an hour to support her two children, ages 2 and 5 months. Nabors says she only works about 20 hours a week, though she has asked for a full-time position.
She has to supplement her income with food stamps, but she's struggling to pay $650 a month for the apartment she moved into after staying with family and living in a hotel.
Nabors is among the hundreds of fast food and retail workers in Chicago that community organizers expect to walk off the job Wednesday in a campaign to push for higher wages.
The Fight for $15 campaign, named for its goal of securing $15 an hour for workers, said it expects McDonald's, Subway, Dunkin' Donuts, Macy's, Sears and Victoria's Secret store in the Loop and Magnificent Mile to be affected.
Many of these targeted, short-term walkout protests have been organized by non-union “alt-labor” groups such as OUR Walmart and the community organizing group New York Communities for Change, which is organizing New York City fast food workers. As noted by The Nation, "the successful example of New York—where only one striking worker was told they were fired, only to be allowed to return after community leaders and other supporters accompanied her back and demanded her reinstatement—seems to have emboldened many of Chicago’s low-wage strikers."
Thursday’s strike is unlikely to be the last of the fast food workers’ labor actions, as the day's events could lead the way for the campaign to grow even larger.
Rachel Maddow reports on Occupy Wall Street's The Illuminator and the Light Brigade's messages to Boston.
May Day 2013 is fast approaching. This is a day to celebrate and further the struggles of the 99% by coming together to support immigrant and worker struggles, and fight the injustices of the 1%.
Learn more about the plethora of May Day events and actions in store:
Occupiers took part in May Day en masse last year, and it was quite an amazing occasion. Check out our media roundup from last May Day for a reminder, and get ready!
This week, NYC’s own beloved Illuminator, the “spectacularization machine” and mobile instrument of dialogue and inspiration, found its services in extreme demand. Back in use after a contentious custody dispute, as well as after being targeted by the Intelligence Division of the NYPD for lighting up Mayor Bloomberg’s home, the Illuminator joined other members of the Light Brigade coast to coast to project their dissatisfaction with corporate tax dodgers on banks and overpasses across the country. Here’s the OWS Light Brigade on Twitter.
The amazing folks who were responsible for illuminating the foul recesses of tax dodging corporations this week also took it into their hands to make manifest what all of New York City was feeling about our sister city, Boston. In a moving series of light projections, they sent our love and thoughts to our neighbor. NYC does indeed love Boston!
Watch video and analyis on OccupyWallStreet.net of an interesting and timely panel discussion on how to create and share videos of great activism from the recent Organizing NY conference. A diverse group of Occupy media makers took part, discussing topics such as the attributes of an engaging and “hyper-shareable” video, what you need to know to avoid problems while filming at actions, as well as a how disseminating media is activism in and of itself.
They work for some of the biggest businesses in the United States, yet they are among the nation's lowest-paid workers.
On Thursday, hundreds of fast-food workers staged protests at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell and other restaurants in New York City to call attention to their plight. Organizers scheduled the job actions to commemorate the day Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 45 years ago in Memphis, where he was supporting a strike by sanitation workers.
Burger King and McDonald's said in statements to Reuters that most restaurants in their chains are independently owned and operated, and offer compensation consistent with industry standards.
As many as 400 workers from more than five dozen restaurants around New York City committed to turn out for protests planned at various locations throughout the day, said Jonathan Westin, director of Fast Food Forward.
The current minimum wage in New York is $7.25 an hour. New York has passed an increase in the minimum wage to $9 per hour which goes into effect...in 2016. The fast-food workers are seeking $15 per hour now.
Fast food workers deserve union representation, said Richard Trumka, national president of the AFL-CIO, who stopped by the Wendy's protest.
"They're being mistreated, they're being underpaid, they're going to stand together until they get fair treatment and we're going to stand with them," Trumka said.
Several protesters wore signs that said "I am a man" or "I am a woman," echoing placards carried in Memphis in 1968.
The Great Hall at Cooper Union in lower Manhattan was packed, standing room only on this November 22nd, 1909 day. Garment workers from all over the city came to the same auditorium where Abraham Lincoln had denounced the proliferation of slavery nearly fifty years earlier. They were there to consider an industry-wide strike in support of the striking Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers. Union leaders (men) droned on for nearly two hours, when suddenly a 23 year old, immigrant union organizer named Clara Lemlich burst up onto the stage uninvited, and said, “I would like to say a few words.” She then turned to her audience and said, “I have listened to all the speakers and I have no further patience for talk. I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared now!” Her peers were wildly supportive. She then led a modified version of an old Jewish oath, “If I turn traitor to the cause, I now pledge may this hand wither from the arm I now raise.” And so began what was soon known as The Uprising of 20,000. The next day, all over the city garment workers walked off their jobs, and met in Union Square Park for a solidarity rally. The eleven week strike saw over 700 arrests. Strikers were being beat by company-hired thugs, and prostitutes, and police often turned their backs, and in some cases even participated in the beatings. Finally it ended with a Peace Protocol, with the hundreds of clothing manufacturers making different deals with their workers. Many companies became union shops where only union workers could be hired. The owners of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory resisted, giving in to only modest wage and hour concessions. The unsafe, over-crowded conditions remained the same at Triangle with doors only opening inward, shabbily constructed fire escapes, a barrel of oil stored on the floor, cloth tailings that were not removed on a regular basis, and incredibly exit doors that were locked during working hours.
Then late in the afternoon on a beautiful spring Saturday (March 25th, 1911), while having tea with a friend near Washington Square Park a woman named Frances Perkins suddenly heard screams and sirens going off. She ran across the park and came upon the horrific site of seeing the first of 50-60, mostly women jumping out of the fire engulfed upper floors, of the ten-story Asch building. Triangle Shirtwaist occupied the 8th-10th floors. In the little more than a half hour that fire raged, 146 people died; 129 of them were women; Italian and Jewish immigrants mostly; the average age was 19, and the youngest, Kate Leone and “Sarah” Rosaria Maltese only 14. The bodies were brought to a covered pier on E 26th St so families could conduct the gruesome task of identifying their loved ones, if they could.
Via a Google search, a link entitled "Megalomania's Method of Making HMTD" notes the chemical's "extreme sensitivity to heat, shock, and friction" and describes it as "a poor choice for the lesser skilled home chemist…HMTD does not store well, so deal with it immediately." This video claims to demonstrate the chemical's volatility.
UPDATE: A new report says that Gliedman and Greene are not terrorists, "just privileged kids with drug habits."
I wonder how much time in the slammer the rich white kids with drug habits -- not to mention the explosive chemicals and illegal sawed-off shotgun -- will serve?
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Police have arrested a pregnant graduate of an elite Manhattan prep school and her Harvard-educated boyfriend Sunday after allegedly finding an explosive powder and a sawed-off shotgun in their Greenwich Village apartment. Morgan Gliedman, 27, daughter of a prominent New York City physician who attended the Dalton School, and Aaron Greene, 31, are charged with felony possession of an explosive with intent to use, and felony criminal possession of a weapon. The criminal complaint also claims that a "collection of pages" entitled "The Terrorist Encyclopedia" was found in the apartment.
NYPD went to 9th Street Saturday to question Morgan Gliedman about alleged credit card theft when they found a plastic container with seven grams of a white chemical powder called HMTD; a chemical that the New York Postsays is so powerful, "cops evacuated several nearby buildings."
Besides the powder, the apartment also contained a flare launcher, a modified twelve gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun, ammo, and nine high-capacity rifle magazines, sources told the Post. Cops also allegedly uncovered papers about creating homemade booby traps, improvising submachine guns, and several handwritten notebooks containing chemical formulas.
Residents were roused by the police at around 7:30 a.m. on Saturday and relocated while police executed a search warrant. Gliedman, who is pregnant, is also charged with four counts of felony grand larceny for credit card theft that police say occurred in February of this year, and a warrant squad was making the arrest when they noticed "a white powdery substance" in a plastic container in the living room.
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Investigators say that substance is Hexamethylene Triperoxide Diamine (HMTD), which was one of the components in the explosives to be used by Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber" who planned to bomb LAX on New Year's Eve in 1999. HMTD was also likely to be used in the foiled bombings of transatlantic flights in 2005. Sergeant Michael DiMarfio of the NYPD's bomb squad tested the powder, and the results yielded a positive for HMTD, according to the complaint.
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Greene was arraigned on Sunday afternoon, and is being held without bail until his next hearing on January 4. Gliedman had yet to be arraigned as of Sunday night. According to court records Gliedman was charged with marijuana possession in February, but had taken an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal [ACD], and her next scheduled court appearance for those charges is on January 10.
According to Gliedman's Facebook page, she attended The Dalton School, NYU's Gallatin School, and received an MFA in creative writing at the Art Institute of Chicago. The Post reports that Greene "attended Harvard as an undergraduate and did his graduate work at the university’s Kennedy School of Government" and has "five prior run-ins with the police, with the charges including, assault, and weapons possession."
On Monday afternoon, Morgan Gliedman's arraignment was postponed when she was taken to a hospital and reported to be in labor.
