Douglas Becker ([log in to unmask]) wrote: : Thank you, Mr. Rosenblat for your inspiring words and reminding us of the : higher successful endeavors of mankind. : : I am certainly grateful for the Bill of Rights, as well as, the Magna Carta : and the Ten Commandments. : : However, it should be noted that none of those apply to anyone involved : with the management of the misfortune 500 companies, where you leave your : morals at home and church, what is right is what the people around you : want, and the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, and Ten Commandments are about : as welcome and relevant as a ham at Bar Mitzvah. : Then there's globlization where the only rule is "greed is good"... http://www.globalexchange.org/ Global Exchange http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/corporations/ Sweating For Nothing "Still Waiting For Nike To Do It A detailed investigation by Global Exchange, titled "Still Waiting for Nike to Do It," shows that workers making Nike products continue to work for wages insufficient for supporting a family, are forced to work long overtime hours, and face harassment, violent intimidation and firing if they organize to defend their rights or tell journalists about abuses in their factories. _________________________________________________________________ Send a fax to Philip Knight asking that Nike take immediate and concrete steps to ensure that the people making the company's products aren't facing abuse and intimidation. Contrary to what many would like to believe, sweatshops are not working for the people of developing nations. In many cases, sweatshop workers, employed by large multinational corporations, are trapped in a system of modern day indentured servitude comparable to slavery and denied basic human freedoms like the right to join a union, attend religious services, quit or marry. Menial wages and reports of physical abuse in addition are typical of a new economic world order in which the poor are getting poorer and the rich growing richer. The anti-sweatshop movement strives to eliminate these poor conditions in garment and shoe factories by pressuring companies to disclose the location of factories, pay workers a living wage, allow independent monitoring of factories and ensure workers the right to organize in independent unions. Did you know... * Cambodian garment workers make $40 a month sewing clothes for Gap, Inc. They are requesting a living wage of $60 a month to meet their families' basic human needs such as food, clothing, shelter and education. Is this too much to ask from a company worth $28 billion, whose CEO Millard Drexler made over $39 million in 2000? * Asian immigrant women in Saipan, a U.S. territory, work under a system of indentured servitude. Many of the 45,000 workers live in unsanitary barracks behind barbed wire where they sew clothes 12 hours a day, seven days a week for retailers like The Gap, J.C. Penney, Levi's, Abercrombie and Fitch, and The Limited. * Child labor is rampant in Tehuacan, the jean capital of Mexico. Workers there make so little that families are forced to send their children to the garment factories rather than to school. * Starbucks is the largest retailer of gourmet coffee in the country, yet they pay their coffee growers poverty prices. In Guatemala, less than 4 percent of the coffee plantations even have schools. * In China, most people make less than $1 a day. Most factories where toys are made in China do not allow independent trade unions...." --Jerry Leslie (my opinions are strictly my own) * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *