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.

Continue reading »

No surprises here, but in a new study the Bloomberg administration has found that half the residents of New York City are "poor" or "near-poor," meaning that they were "making less than 150 percent of the poverty threshold." A small increase in the number of poor-- 3 percent since 2009 -- yet again, a telling marker in the city with the billionaire mayor and over 50,000 homeless men, women and children sleeping in shelters each night.

The city’s analysis warned that cutbacks in federal programs could threaten any recovery and place pressure on the next mayor to maintain or expand public assistance.

“The recent increase in the state minimum wage affects the working poor and near-poor, and paid sick days are important, but missing rungs in the ladder make it really hard to climb out of poverty,” said Nancy Rankin, vice president for policy research and advocacy at the Community Service Society, which lobbies on behalf of the poor.

New York City's billionaire mayor, btw, opposed both the minimum wage increase and paid sick days.

America’s most iconic city now has the same inequality index as Swaziland, note the editors at The Nation.

The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill Moyers shares examples of the striking extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless -- who’ve grown 20 percent in the last two years -- are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps.

“A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill, “while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.”

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

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.

Today’s planned work stoppage represents a major escalation by Fast Food Forward, a campaign spearheaded by the community organizing group New York Communities for Change.

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.

Bill Moyers:

Even as President Obama’s talking points champion the middle class and condemn how our economy caters to the very rich, modern American capitalism is a story of continued inequality and hardship. Even a modest increase in the minimum wage — as suggested by the president — faces opposition from those who seem to show allegiance first and foremost to America’s wealthy and powerful.

Yet some aren’t just wringing their hands about our economic crisis; they’re fighting back. Economist Richard Wolff joins Bill Moyers to shine light on the disaster left behind in capitalism’s wake, and to discuss the fight for economic justice, including a fair minimum wage. A Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and currently Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School, Wolff has written many books on the effects of rampant capitalism, including Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It.

Also on the broadcast, activist and author Saru Jayaraman marches on Washington with restaurant workers struggling to make ends meet, and talks about how we can best support their right to a fair wage. Jayaraman is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which works to improve pay and working conditions for America’s 10 million-plus restaurant workers. She is also the author of Behind the Kitchen Door, a new exposé of the restaurant industry.

Full transcript from the show below the fold.

Continue reading »

Speaking from Hyde Park Academy in his hometown Chicago, President Obama says he wants to reignite the "true engine of America's economic growth, a rising, thriving middle class."

"Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions: How do we bring good jobs to America? How do we equip people with the skills those jobs require? And how do we make sure your hard work leads to a decent living?" Obama says in the address.

By launching manufacturing hubs across the country, the president says he believes it will "transform hard-hit regions into global centers of high-tech jobs and manufacturing." America should become a "magnet for new jobs," he says.

Obama explains that getting there should be simple.

"We need to make our tax code more competitive, ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and rewarding companies that create jobs here at home. And we need to invest in the research and technology that will allow us to harness more of our own energy and put more people back to work repairing our crumbling roads and bridges," says. "These steps will help our businesses expand and create new jobs."

The president also notes his goals raising the minimum wage and providing every American child with "high-quality preschool," because, he says, "kids in these programs do better throughout their lives."

"These steps will help grow our economy and rebuild a rising, thriving middle class. And we can do it while shrinking our deficits. We don’t have to choose between the two, we just have to make smart choices," he said.

A full transcript of the President's remarks after the fold, or visit the White House website.

Continue reading »

[Source: Pew Center on the States]

The New Year brings some good news for minimum-wage workers in 10 states.

Nine states will adjust the wages to accommodate the rising costs of living, as required by state laws, while Rhode Island will implement a law signed by the governor in June that raises its minimum wage to $7.75 per hour. The wage hikes range between 10 cents and 35 cents per hour, adding between $190 and $510 to the pockets of nearly one million worker’s annual pay.

With those changes, 19 states and the District of Columbia will have minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25, which translates to about $15,000 per year for a full-time worker. That rate has been in place since 2009 and has not been adjusted for inflation.

Workers in 31 states remain at $7.25 an hour, and House Republicans will continue to block the minimum wage increase that would make full-time work pay enough to actually keep people out of poverty.

Florida GOP Rep. Bill Young is running for reelection for the 22nd time. But according to Young, he has far bigger problems on his hands.

Young claims that there have been multiple break-ins at his residence, possibly by the evil forces of the Florida Consumer Action Network or the Occupy movement. Young told the Tampa Bay Times that he doesn’t really know who’s behind the break-ins, though he noted: “The Occupiers are after me.”

Young believes that both FCAN and Occupy are “not happy” with him, after an incident where he was caught on video telling a constituent who asked him whether he’d support raising the minimum wage to “get a job.” Both of the groups have denied any involvement.

According to police, there’s no evidence that there have been any break-ins:

Via:

“They have investigated one incident. In July an alarm went off at the condo, but police concluded there was no burglary. Instead, they said, a storm blew open a garage door with a faulty lock, setting off the alarm — the second time that has happened in two years.

‘There were no pry markings nor impact marks that would be consistent with a forced entry,’ Officer Shaun Griffin wrote in his report on this year’s incident. Griffin said in a recent interview that, despite the wet conditions outside, police found no wet footprints anywhere inside the condo, another sign there was no break-in.”

Young disagrees with the police report, and said the intruder ”left an item in a very, very prominent place to make sure I knew they had been there,” so then “the wind must’ve blown that item into the house and placed it in a prominent position. That’s a pretty smart wind.”

GOP Congressman-wannbe-senatorTodd Akin was asked why he voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at a town hall on Thursday. Akin's response suggests that a) he doesn't understand what federal law was prior to the Ledbetter Act, b)he doesn't understand what's in the Ledbetter Act, c) he's a misogynistic cretin who thinks it should be legal for employers to discriminate against women and d)that he will say he believes anything the GOP backer Koch brothers tell him to.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Why do you think it is okay for a woman to be paid less for doing the same work as a man?

AKIN: Well, first of all, the premise of your question is that I'm making that particular distinction. I believe in free enterprise. I don't think the government should be telling people what you pay and what you don't pay. I think it's about freedom. If somebody wants to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that's fine, however it wants to work. So, the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things has gotten us into huge trouble.

It's been illegal to discriminate against women by paying them less since 1960s. The Ledbetter Act just made it easier for women to sue if they find out they're being discriminated against. Because, see, where Akin says that "If somebody wants to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that's fine, however it wants to work," the reality is that employers don't generally say to women, "Hey, I'm going to pay you less than I'm paying men doing the same job as you." They just pay less, and keep quiet about it, because they're breaking the law. Which means it would be bad for them if the women they were discriminating against found out about it because there are consequences for breaking the law.

The only "freedom" Akin is talking about here is the freedom of businesses to break the law. Which he thinks is fine, because he doesn't think that equal pay should be the law, even in largely unenforceable theory. Just like he doesn't think there should be a minimum wage for anyone.

Note also how in this case "the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things" is not a good thing, according to Akin, but when it comes to women's vaginas more intrusive government is just fine.

From Press TV: This episode of the show reports on the Anaheim solidarity marches across the U.S., Frack attack rallies in D.C., Stand Up Chicago and raise the minimum wage rallies, the Obama fundraiser in Portland as well as the AIDS awareness rallies.

This episode also interviews many Occupy Wall Street protesters including the “Stand Up Chicago” policy analyst Elizabeth Parisian.