NO SWEAT SCOTLAND

Lean Report on de-skilling in Civil Service

2008-08-27T13:09:00.003-07:00

http://pcs.live.poptech.coop/shared_asp_files/GFSR.asp?NodeID=912688

2008-08-27T13:09:00.001-07:00

http://pcs.live.poptech.coop/shared_asp_files/GFSR.asp?NodeID=912688

Lawyers win stay of execution for Chinese activist

2008-08-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

Lawyers win stay of execution for Chinese activist
MARTIN WILLIAMS August 08 2008

A legal team supporting a Chinese trade unionist and her two-year-old son, who face deportation back to China after five years in Scotland, have won a stay of execution to stop her from leaving.

Birmingham-based solicitors Harvey Son & Filby, who specialise in Chinese law, lodged a High Court judicial review yesterday at the High Court in London to stop the deportation of Qin Wang and her son Jian Qi Lin.

They are expected to use European human rights legislation to argue her case.

Qin Wang and her son were at Heathrow Airport awaiting a 1.30pm flight out of Britain to China when news of the stay of execution came through and she was taken back to a detention centre.

A close friend, Jing Wu, said: "We are very pleased that the lawyer has managed to stop her leaving because he did not have a lot of time.

"There is still more for the lawyer to do though if they are to come back to Glasgow."

Friends who have visited her in detention said Qin Wang, who lived in Sandyhills, Glasgow, talked of killing herself rather than returning to China, where she says she was beaten and indecently assaulted by police when detained in connection with outlawed union activities.

The mother and son were due to be flown back to China from Heathrow yesterday, on the eve of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Qin Wang's solicitors claim the Home Office took issue with the activist "going underground" for four years - scared she would be sent back to China - after first registering as an asylum seeker when she arrived in 2003.

She re-registered in 2007 but failed to convince the Home Office of her refugee status.

Qin Wang, who gave birth to her son in Glasgow, says she suffered torture and was indecently assaulted before managing to escape one of the many political prisons in China after she was arrested for her part in agitating for workers to get redundancy payments when an electronics factory in the Fujian district closed.

She was detained without notice by the Home Office last Friday and went on hunger strike at Dungavel before being transferred to a detention centre near Heathrow.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2420737.0.lawyers_win_stay_of_execution_for_chinese_activist.php

Imprisoned Political Prisoners in China

2008-08-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/100014

Workers Voices

http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/100019

Research Reports

http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/100013

Chinese Sweatshops
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/sweatshops.htm

Scotland Strikes

2008-08-02T04:47:00.001-07:00

http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/news/2008/julyaug/0108.htm

Riot in Eastern China

2008-07-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Migrant workers rioted for three days in a town in eastern China in a fresh sign of rumbling social unrest running up to the Beijing Olympics.The protests began on 10 July in Kanmen in the coastal province of Zhejiang. Workers - reportedly angered by a beating meted out to a colleague - attacked a police station for three successive nights. The incident comes just weeks after a 30,000-strong crowd torched dozens of official buildings in Guizhou province.

They were protesting about an alleged cover-up over the death of a teenage girl. Police said the girl committed suicide but her family said she was murdered by the son of a local official. One hundred people have been detained over the Guizhou riots, Chinese state media reported on Monday, including "39 members of local gangs". The incident in Kanmen erupted after a migrant worker was viciously beaten by a security guard, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said.

A crowd surrounded the police station after officers detained the worker, who had gone to file a complaint, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said, after which three nights of protests and rioting followed. Three hundred military police arrived in the town on Sunday, another local official told the Associated Press news agency. In recent years, more and more reports of local protests have emerged from China. Corruption, land seizures, abuse of power by local officials and the widening gap between rich and poor are the common causes.

International unions

2008-07-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

SUPPORT SACKED STARBUCKS BARISTAS

On Thursday 24th April, Monica, a barista in the central Seville branch of Starbucks, was fired without notice for creating problems with her workmates. She had worked there for a year and a half. She had been active in organising with the CNT and defending her rights. The store manager told her on several occasions that she must have nothing to do with unions. She is a member of the Commerce Union of the CNT, in Spain. The CNT is demanding her reinstatement.

Barely a month later, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, Starbucks fired
barista Cole Dorsey on June 6th. Cole had over 2 years of service and
was active in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union. The National Labor Relations Board in the US has already made the firm rehire two sacked workers in 2006, and are looking at Starbucks latest violation.

Please come and join us and show Starbucks bosses will not tolerate their union busting.
This is part of an international day of action.
Bring placards, banners, instruments and your mates.

Solidarity Federation and Industrial Workers of the World
www.solfed.org www.iww.org.uk

Clean Clothes

2008-07-02T06:21:00.001-07:00

http://www.cleanclothes.org/index.htm

Primark in child labour row

2008-06-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

Primark in child labour row
By Edward Harcourt
Last Updated: 12:42am BST 23/06/2008

Children as young as 11 from a refugee camp in India were used to make clothes that ended up on the shelves of UK retailer Primark.

The revelations are part of an investigation into Primark's supply chain in India, which will be aired on the BBC's Panorama programme tonight.

The programme will allege that one of Primark's Indian suppliers, Fab-N-Fabrics, used a factory that employed children from the Bhavanisagar refugee camp in the Tamil Nadu region of India.

advertisementThe camp's inhabitants are fleeing war in Sri Lanka. Some of the children are as young as 11 years old, the programme alleges.

There is also a suggestion that other leading UK and European retailers may have similar connections with child labour in their supply chains, though none is named by the programme.

Last week Primark sacked Fab-N-Fabrics and two other sub-contractors allegedly using child labour. The company also ordered an internal investigation and withdrew clothes made by these suppliers from its stores, after it became aware of the BBC investigation.

"We continue to buy from many other good suppliers in the same region and the overall value of our orders will not change as a result of this," the company said.

Chinese Whispers: The true story behind Britain's hidden army of labour, by Hsiao-Hung Pai

2008-06-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

Chinese Whispers: The true story behind Britain's hidden army of labour, by Hsiao-Hung Pai

“If you don’t want to do the whole session, you can just buy parts. Three pounds for touching her face and hair, £10 for touching the upper part of her body, £20 for fondling the lower part of her body. Would you like a cup of tea first ?

- a Chinese female housekeeper at a brothel in Cheam , Surrey- February 2007

From brothels in London to a lettuce farm in Sussex and Chinatown kitchens, this courageous and heart-wrenching book documents the super-exploited lives of the army of undocumented Chinese workers living in the UK. Hsiao-Hung Pai goes undercover for the Guardian to expose the secret hell of fear and sweat that exists in a subterranean twilight world .

Everywhere she goes, Hsiao-Hung Pai finds that illegality itself multiplies the misery and that all attempts to improve their lives are doomed as ‘illegal’s’ move from one terrible job to another.

Gangs attack "massage" joints with impunity robbing undocumented workers who have been paid in cash, dishing out example beatings to workers who have done nothing wrong. Waiters earn far below the minimum wage, and invisible labourers fall sick in hellish factories. Exorbitant fees are charged for overcrowded accommodation and essential documentation . Amidst all of this Britain still spurns the UN convention that aims to protect all migrant workers.

Britain is one of the many developed countries that has so far failed to sign up to the 1990 UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, which states that human rights and certain minimum standards of welfare should be extended to all migrant workers, regardless of their legal status.

In Britain, "illegals", as the tabloids call them, have no rights. Contacting the police or accessing the health service are not options as this means deportation-a fact that is used routinely by the gang-masters and agencies. Blocks on giving agency workers equal rights compound the misery.

Cockle pickers drown, people die from exhaustion after working 24-hour shifts on production lines, and families back in china are forced to take on more debt once the existing debt is paid off .Families receive no compensation and the chains of organizations supporting the trade in cheap labour continue to flourish. There's political capital to be made prosecuting gangs bringing illegal immigrants into Britain, but very little to be had protecting the rights of those "illegal’s" once they are here. In fact the expose reveals a carve up between gangmasters , agencies, factories and the government to super- exploit illegal immigrants using the fear of deportation at any time to keep it all in place.

Hsiao-Hung Pai also explains why so many Chinese workers risk their lives to work in Britain, having been driven out of China by economic reforms implemented since it joined the World Trade Organization (nearly five million workers in state-owned factories were made redundant between 2001-2006 in the north-eastern provinces alone); and demonstrates the ways British consumers benefit from their labour.

The book humanizes the workers by relating their own personal stories throughout and there is a concluding chapter on the role of the unions and what direction campaigning organizations ought to take making ‘Chinese Whispers’ an essential book for both trade union activists and anti-sweatshop campaigners.

Peter Burton
563 Words

USAS

2008-05-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/

Book on Walmart

2008-05-24T07:01:00.001-07:00

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/755

http://walmartwatch.com/

Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour

2008-05-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

You know the people in this book. You'll remember the harassed waitress from your local Chinese restaurant. You've noticed those builders across the street working funny hours and without helmets. You've eaten the lettuce they picked, or bought the microwave they assembled. The words 'cockle-pickers', 'Morecambe Bay', 'Chinese illegals found dead in lorry' will ring a bell. But did you know that there are hundreds of thousands of illegal Chinese immigrants in Britain?

They've travelled here because of desperate poverty, and must keep their heads down and work themselves to the bone. Hsiao-Hung Pai, the only journalist who knows this community, went undercover to hear the stories of this hidden work force. She reveals a scary, shadowy world where human beings are exploited in ways unimaginable in our civilized twenty-first century. "Chinese Whispers" exposes the truth behind the lives of a hidden work force here in Britain. You owe it to yourself, and them, to read it.

From the Back Cover
`Hsiao-Hung Pai takes you on a haunting journey into the heart of migrants' lives in Britain and you cannot help but be gripped, moved and shamed' Felicity Lawrence
`A book that really needed to be written. Utterly gripping, deeply moving' Marina Lewycka

`An incredibly moving book that in turn angers and saddens and above all makes you want to change things' Nick Broomfield

New Report on the Price of Coal in China

2008-03-18T05:17:00.000-07:00

China Labour Bulletin Report

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/files/File/bone_and_blood.pdf

2008-03-18T05:09:00.001-07:00

When the Banana Company arrives in Macondo, the jungle town in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” it brings with it first modernity and then doom. “Endowed with means that had been reserved for Divine Providence in former times,” García Márquez writes, the company “changed the pattern of the rains, accelerated the cycle of harvests and moved the river from where it had always been.” It imported “dictatorial foreigners” and “hired assassins with machetes” to run the town; it unleashed a “wave of bullets” on striking workers in the plaza. When the Banana Company leaves, Macondo is “in ruins.”

China Labour Bulletin

2008-03-05T06:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/

Organizing Young Workers Interview

2008-03-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

New Zealand union organiser Mike Treen and French union activist Axel Persson spoke on organising, unionising and fighting for the rights of — mostly young — workers in the fast food industry.

They were speaking at a No Sweat meeting in the University of London Union on Saturday 16 February.

Axel Persson

Union activism in the fast food industry first started up after a 2002 strike in McDonalds that lasted for over a year. About a year ago a few of us in the CGT union decided to do some serious union work in the industry. We decided that we needed at least one person in each restaurant if we were going to be successful. Given that no one was coming to the union by us leafleting outside, we decided to “colonise”, to send members in to work there.

I applied for a job at a Quick in Paris [Quick is a French fast food chain, similar to McDonalds]; it is the biggest in France with over 150 workers. I needed to let people know that someone in the restaurant was a union member. Either I could try to talk to each and every worker (and of course I tried to talk to many people) or I could produce a bulletin to get out to everyone. The bulletin option proved to be the most useful tool, providing a backbone for the union.

The bulletin’s contents related to the working conditions of the restaurant; everyone could recognise what the bulletin was talking about — this was their working life. Facts about the inadequacy of the equipment, about a manager making a racist remark, about promises on wages being reneged on, and so on.

I produced this bulletin on my own initiative, but others in the union helped me to do it.

I started handing it out in front of the lockers, talking to people about what was in it. I also put it in each and every locker. The bulletin told the workers that the union would be operating in the workplace and if they wanted to discuss anything they could come to me.

Some of these workers had never met a union activist before, and maybe didn’t even know what purpose the union served. The first step then is to explain the role of the union, that it was there to stand up for the workers.

After a few weeks of handing out the bulletin, discussions began to multiply. People began to talk about the content, point out what was missing etc. I would suggest they should write the next article... people began to be associated with the bulletin. I was no longer the only person.

After about two months we had a group of members and union sympathisers. We decided to announce the presence of the union in a bigger, more public way. We put a union table outside the restaurant with flyers, papers, leaflets. Union activists from other fast food restaurants came along. We advertised the event to the workers inside and told people they could come along to discuss any issues they might have. Several dozen people came and talked to us. It was the start of a real union of seven people within the restaurant.

After asking people what the main demands should be, we launched a petition. The demands were better pay, better job security and more regular and predictable hours. We didn’t think the managers would cave into our demands. The petition was to help build organisation, to get names and contact details. And we wanted show the workers what the managers were about — they rejected the demands. We got about 60 signatures.

We haven’t managed yet to organise a complete walkout at my restaurant. We have organised strikes of specific groups of workers. Usually these take place between 11am and 2pm, as that is the time when 80% of the profits are made. We organised a picket line in my kitchen, to demand gloves for handling hot water.

We are not yet at the stage where we can organise a national campaign against Quick. We are still building the organisation at the grass roots.

This kind of union activity has been much more successful in southern France. This month the CGT managed to organise a 24 hour strike simultaneously at 17 McDonalds restaurants.

It is also important to address the issues that affect these young workers outside of their work. In Paris especially these workers come from the poor neighbourhoods and they face poverty, unemployment, poor housing and sometimes police harrassment. Usually they end up in the fast food industry because they need the money and there are no other jobs for them. So we used more direct political propaganda to get talking to people and get into wider discussions.

A significant proportion of the workers leave after a short time. There is an extremely high turnover. They want to find something better. It has been difficult to convince people to join a union if they don’t intend to stay. That is why we make sure that the people building the union whom we rely on intend to stay there for at least six to eight months.

All of us working in fast food unionism in France agree that our activity has to be extremely dyamic, offensive, radical and directly political. If union activism has no backbone no one will see the need for it. As the saying goes, you should be “as radical as reality itself” if you want to be up to the task.

Any time strike action has happened in fast food in France it has always been very radical, pretty impressive, with demonstrations, picket lines and occupations. People don’t usually go on strike but when they do it usually lasts.

For example the first strike ever in fast food was not over pay, but a solidarity strike in defence of two sacked union activists. It lasted for a year and they won.

Mike Treen

IN 2005-6, over those two years, there was a campaign to reunionise the fast food sector as well as call centres, hotels, casinos and similar industries. At the end of that campaign we had union-negotiated collective employment agreements at all of the big fast food chains: McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, Wendy’s and some smaller ones.

We had recruited two to three thousand fast food workers. And we had organised a major political campaign associated with the key demand for $12 [about £5] an hour minimum wage and the abolition of youth rates for 16 and 17 year olds countrywide. From beginning of this year we will have a $12 an hour minimum wage and the abolition of youth rates in fast food. Winning those key demands was a big issue in New Zealand’s broader political and industrial news.

Where did it all start? It was a very long way from here. In the early 1990s, the New Zealand labour movement went through a deep recession, lasting five or six years. During this period, industrial activity declined to the lowest point since records began. Union membership went from 49% of the workforce to 22%.

Industrial laws were adopted that made it very difficult for unions to organise: outlawed strikes outside the negotiating period, outlawed political strikes, outlawed solidarity strikes. It made it very difficult to access workplaces to recruit etc. It was illegal to organise industrial action for a multi-employer collective agreement.

When the law was brought in every single worker was put onto an individual agreement that was the same as their previous collective agreement, but in order for the union to be able to continue to negotiate on your behalf you had to sign an individual authorisation. It was very difficult for some unions to manage that. Many were eliminated overnight.

The central bureaucracy of the union movement capitulated completely to these changes and refused to organise broader industrial struggle, let alone a general strike, despite the fact that there was overwhelming sentiment for such a struggle and a general strike. Motions calling for it in workplaces were crushed by the bureaucracy.

The impact of the recession and the new law was intensified by the demoralising effect of this failure to resist. From that time real wages were under sustained attack. In New Zealand real wages, hourly rates, for unskilled workers declined by 25%. Real incomes for the people we represent declined by 30% or 40%.

All of the legal wage protections which stipulated overtime rates, Sunday rates and so on, went. Minimum conditions were now very limited - three weeks holiday, five days sick leave, that was about it, especially in areas were the workers were more vulnerable. The unions had no strength. Everything else had to be negotiated again. It was a stunning assault on working people.

Officially unemployment was 10% (although in real terms higher). Official unemployment for Maoris (who make up 14% of the population) was 30%, again higher in real terms. Working-class communities in south Auckland were devastated.

The free trade policies adopted by both Labour and the Tories [the New Zealand National Party] led to massive factory closures. The entire car industry was eliminated, textile industries were closed. Other industries with traditionally strong union organisation, like the meat industry, were restructured and thousands lost their jobs. There used to be four meat plants with one or two thousand workers each. There is now one plant.

Union bargaining became concession bargaining only. Over 15 years there was no attempt or struggle to maintain levels of income or organisation. In so far as you had a collective agreement, it was how much below inflation your settlement was going to be. It was accepted that it was going to be below inflation. There were exceptions, but in general that was it, espcially in the private sector.

In the private sector levels of unionisation went down to 9%. In other countries union rates went down, but collective bargaining coverage remained very high (in Australia for example). In New Zealand that wasn’t the case at all.

Concession bargaining remained the norm until 2005. In that year things began to change. Even the more conservative unions, for instance the engineering and manufactuing union, were calling for 5% when inflation was running at 3%. This was a radical change. But it happened far too late.

From the mid-1990s there was a sustained economic recovery. It came after a decade of rising employment. Unemployment levels are down to 3.4% of the workforce, one of the lowest in the OECD. From 1996 the union movement should have been reorganising and rebuilding in the private sector. Unemployment was no longer the terror it had been prior to 1996.

In 1999 a Labor-Alliance [the Alliance Party was a leftish split from Labor] government changed the law on union rights. Union organisers regained access to workplaces. The unions now had the right to pursue multi-employer collective agreements through industrial action. Political and solidarity actions are still outawed, and you can only take action in the bargaining period. But there are few other limitations. You don’t have to give notice to employers or ballot for example. In 2000, replacing striking workers with outside scabs was also outlawed. However, there was still voluntary unionism, there was a freemarket in unions and the unions still competed for each others’ members.

Left activists, in the Alliance Party, were bewildered by the failure of the unions to take advantage of this new law. If someone rang up a union for help, it wasn’t a recruiting oppourtunity. They would refuse to talk to you. If you weren’t a paying member of the union you had no rights to any support. The loss of confidence in organising workers for struggle, the cynicism involved, was total. However, more struggles began to happen in the mid-2000s, as some unions began to raise their sights.

As a consequence of the implosion of the Alliance Party [over sending troops to Afghanistan, which the left opposed] some of us were liberated from the parliamentary framework; we were able to reorient, to help to organise the people we’d claimed to be the political repsentatives of. We needed to re-earn the right to speak for working people. In the 2002 election the vote for the Alliance Party (now two organisations) collapsed.

Many of us still wanted to be part of a political anti-capitalist project, but we felt we had to re-earn the right to do that. One way we can do that is by seriously engaging in struggles to advance the interests of workers, through political and industrial campaigning. In some cases that involved getting jobs with existing unions.

In my and Matt McCarten’s case there was another job we wanted to do — to organise the working poor, to reunionise the precarious. We decided to form a new union.

In the end we didn’t have to do that because a little union called Unite existed, with less than a hundred members, run in a voluntary capacity by Alliance Party union officials, with a broad membership clause. We were given the mandate to do an organising campaign in Auckland and an initial donation of $500.

We had a gut feeling and confidence that we could do this. We did not believe young people wouldn’t join a union if they were asked and we had the right now under the new law to ask them.They were on the minimum wage, and with minimal unemployment there was not much to lose even if you did stick your neck out. It would always be possible to get another job with no rights.

Surveys also said that the main reason people don’t join unions everywhere in the world is that nobody asks them. That statistic applies to young people as much as anyone else.

We had no plan B. This was not play acting. We borrowed, begged, stole money to do this. We weren’t new to this, of course. Matt had been a union organiser and leader of the hotel workers’ union, leading a struggle to democratise it, before he became President of the Alliance Party. When Matt said he was going to do something, people took note. They gave or lent us the money we needed.

In Unite, we faced no encumbrances. No-one telling us they knew better. No one telling us about the “organising model”.

I had never heard about the “organising model” until we started doing this. We were told off for not following the model that had been so sucessful in the previous decade in organising no one at all! It was almost like a religious mantra with some unions.

Our premise was to have a public political campaign, and that we were going to throw everything possible at the organising effort. We had three or four paid organisers, on the minimum wage. That’s all. All the rest was done by volunteers.

These workers had nothing to lose. But in order to fight, they had to believe you were going to fight with them, you weren’t going to be there one week and gone the next week, you were going to come back. If they were victimised you were going to protect them. If you could show that militancy, people would rise to the occasion.

We tested it out in a couple of places, and as we had no bureaucracy involved, we could change our minds, switching things around if they didn’t work.

We had a membership form which we copied off another union with all the usual personal details. One day one of our organisers, a hotel worker and volunteer, went to one of the nice hotels in Auckland to speak to the housekeepers and came back with a notebook full of names and addresses of people interested in joining the union, 60 names. We thought “if only she’d taken some membership forms.”

Then we thought, hang on, all the information we want is name and address, phone and email. So our membership form became like a petition, with half dozen names per sheet. The process of signing up became more collective.

We made our fees simple. Our fees were 1% of earnings up to a maximum. We had to give people something before they started to pay. We told them we would deliver the company to the negotiating table. You don’t have to pay the fees until we’ve got them to sit down with your representatives.

We hand over the memberships at that point. Everything is a collective process and there is no chance of victimisation. What we achieve at the negotiation is up to you we said. That depends on how many members you have, how willing you are to fight, what sort of struggle you want to organise.

A lot of people hadn’t seen a union before, they didn’t know what a union was. Our message was that you can’t negotiate individually, you can only do it as part of a collective.

The trial in two places, two cinema complexes, was a great success. It was a very young, very casualised workforce. We signed up around 300 workers, which was pretty much everyone.

We discovered the big issues were ones involving personal dignity. These kids were given two free tickets each week, but they were taken off you for every petty infraction. If you were five minutes late, if you had a sick day, looked the wrong way at the manager, you lost your “comps”. The main issue was having the tickets as a right.

We also got an extra five mintues on the paid break in the shift inserted into the contract, so that people could actually have a cup of tea, or a cigarette, or whatever. This was the first time a paid break had actually been negotiated in New Zealand for a very long time.

We also found that we could sign people up very quickly. That gave us confidence to move on.

We were never going to be able to organise trench warfare in these industries, pull people out for long periods of time. But we were going to be able to push employers into signing agreements.

We went after the brands with a public, political campaign, to humiliate them.

In May 2005 we launched a recruitment drive in against Restaurant Brands, who run Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC in New Zealand. They were the biggest. They had 7,000 employees, the biggest employer of young people in the country. We signed up about 1,000 members in Auckland.

We had little strikes, for a couple of hours each, in different stores, moving from store to store. This helped build confidence. But it wasn’t enough. So then we did marches in Auckland, a Town Hall meeting with a broad range of speakers, a big concert in the park. But none of this was enough.

Then a group of high school students came to us and said they wanted to organise a strike of their own. They had been inspired by this campaign (and many of them worked in the stores). They wanted twenty buses, so we hired twenty buses. They filled them! The police tried to stop them marching, but they streamed through the centre of town, stopping, sitting down and screaming outside every fast food outlet. A few days later the company called us and said they wanted to talk.

We got a deal. Security of hours, a youth rate that was 90% of the adult rate, minimum length of shifts, union rights. It was only a matter of time before we knocked over McDonalds. They fought it. They gave a pay rise to all the non-union staff, they threatened to sue workers who went on strike, they threatened to sue us; but we won. The very last was Burger King.

What was proved conclusively was that young workers will fight if they think they have a chance of winning.

During the campaign there were lots of texts and email messages going out. We did mass texting and emailing to let people know what was going on. We should have a regular electronic newsletter, that’s on our agenda. Even when we do our stop-work meetings, at Sky City for example, we will do a mass text to everybody. We use it whenever we have an event.

How will we keep up the membership? We have an absolute insistence on routine visits to all of the sites. We have a monthly newspaper, which gets out to all of the sites. We also have a constant process of trying to identify delegates and get them to our regular delegates’ conference. They have a role in maintaining the organisation on their site. We can keep up membership through developing a delegate structure.

Getting the supervisors in is very important. They are the people that carry the experience to pass on to new people. We are careful about formulating demands in contract negotiations that relate to that group, and each time we’ve negotiated we’ve managed to win improvements. We’ve not had to have strikes in this round, mostly, though there have been a few in the picture theatres.

Generally the employers know we could cause them quite a bit of difficulty if they don’t negotiate seriously. So delegates are pretty proud of the union and make sure people join the union.

We have mostly kept up the membership, despite the huge turnover, so we must be doing some things right.

We are now looking at ways to get the minimum wage up to something like $15 an hour (which is almost two thirds of the average wage). If we can do that for some groups of workers, it will help win it more generally. The next big thing is to raise the bar of the minimum wage. We need to develop a pubic campaign around that.

The other thing is fluctuating hours. Hours are more secure now, but not good enough; the companies are still are still not obliged to offer regular hours. There is still lots to be done.

New Zealand Union Organizes Fast Food Workers

2008-03-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.unite.org.nz/?q=node/178

Chinese Factory -Imagine this was Your Job !!

2008-02-29T08:21:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTsrf2OoBCk&feature=related

No Sweat Fashion Show YouTube

2008-02-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

Why not have one of these in your college or Uni/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9my8j1Cy4o&NR=1

Polish Workers In Scotland

2008-02-29T08:08:00.000-08:00

Sunday Herald Piece- Slipping through the Net

http://www.sundayherald.com/search/display.var.2032961.0.slipping_through_the_net.php

No Sweat YouTube

2008-02-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqrmbB1H90g

Anti- Sweatshop shop tour

2008-02-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 19th February evening: Glasgow
Sponsored by Glasgow University Socialist Society and organised by activists from groups including the SSP/SSY, IWW, Iraq Union Solidarity and Workers' Liberty
Email darcyleigh@gmail.com

How the first Starbucks strike was made

2008-02-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/02/09/how-first-starbucks-strike-was-made

G8 Protests and Images of USA 2005

2008-01-02T13:21:00.001-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7711764@N03/

Alabama 3 Benefit for No Sweat

2007-12-11T08:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/files/Alabama%203%20Decflier2_0.pdf

Gap

2007-11-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

Recycle Gap clothes

Although I am disgusted at the fact that yet another high street store has proved the pressure for increasing profits has ensured the wage enslavement of children (The Herald, October 29) I am annoyed that it has proposed destruction of the garments produced.

Rather than wasting these clothes and adding to the carbons in our air through the use of incinerators, would it not be a better idea for Gap to consult with a children's charity and for the clothes to be distributed among those who need them?

We are failing the children of the world by our push for profits and cheap, throwaway goods. All of the legislation in the land will not protect children unless real sanctions are applied to companies that use vendors who are not properly investigated using standard criteria. Scottish hotels and other businesses would not employ foreign nationals without certain checks. Western corporations should not be allowed to exploit the child poverty in developing countries and, if they have been proven to be lax, should have stiff financial penalties imposed.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters/display.var.1794819.0.recycle_gap_clothes.php

Rank and File postie site

2007-11-02T05:45:00.001-07:00

http://cwurankandfile.wordpress.com/

Independent on Sunday: 30 September 2007

2007-10-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

Corporate Social Responsibility
Black gold turns grey as Western giants prepare to draw from the wells

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/613

No Sweat Annual Conference

2007-10-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

No Sweat Annual Conference

Start: 01/12/2007 - 11:30am
End: 02/12/2007 - 3:00pm

It's time again for the annual gathering. This year, there will be the following sessions:

Red Politics or Product Red? - How to Take on Exploitation (Discussion)
Taking on Water Privatisation and Child Labour in India (Slideshow and talk by Richard Whittle, author and activist)
China the Olympics and Human and Workers Rights (Discussion with TUC, Amnesty International & Playfair)
Christmas High Street Campaigning (Ideas and planning with No Sweat & Labour Behind the Label)
London Olympics and Workers' Rights (UNITE construction worker activist speaks)
Migrant Workers Speak (GMB & UNITE migrant worker activists tell their story)
Iran on the Brink (Discussion - Iranian activists share their perspectives)
The Corporate Plunder of Iraq (Film and discussion with Iraqi trade unionist and anti privatisation activist)
Black Gold (Film showing and discussion)

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/files/No%20Sweat%20Flyer.pdf

Springburn CWU Picket Oct 4th

2007-10-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Organising fast food workers

2007-09-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

Mike Kyriazopolous interviews Jared Phillips, a Unite Fast Food Organiser and Workers Party activist in New Zealand.

MK: How did Unite plan its organising in fast food?

JP: The background is that Unite went from being an unemployed or community union to being a low paid workers’ union. Inroads started in the hotels, Sky City Casino, etc. There were plans to unionise the café industry but the real companies dominant in the service sector are the large brands or chains in the fast food and café industry. The first real campaign here was the Burger King campaign in Auckland which kicked off around 2003/4. However, BK was the last company of the big five that we managed to get a deal with.

Unite organises in BK, McDonalds, Wendy’s and Red Rooster as well as the cinemas. But with Starbucks what we’re talking about is KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks which comprises Restaurant Brands Ltd NZ.

The general approach when going for the big chains had to be a mass one – you need quite a large campaign team routinely visiting sites and building a mass membership, rather than trying to get militants in the store who are “secret”. I think Unite found that militancy came from the mass, not the other way around, as some suggest is the right way to organise in conditions of victimization.

With Starbucks specifically, how much headway have you made?

The structure of the company is you have an area manager with a cluster of five or six Starbucks. Within each store you have a manager, a few assistant managers or shift supervisors. So this is the same as the fast-food structure.

As with the other fast food stores, we negotiated an access protocol. With Restaurants Brands we can basically visit at any time except 12 - 2pm and 5.30 - 8am and 5 - 8pm . We talk to employees one-by-one.

With Starbucks, with some employees, there has been a problem of low wage affluence. Some of the employees see themselves as being above fast food workers because they make coffee. But their wages were actually very low. Now, because of the activity of the union, they are actually getting something nearer to a living wage, if not a living wage. Also another trend in the last couple of years is that all the gas stations are now serving proper coffee, so the higher skill attitude of some of the barristas might start to go.

How did the SupersizeMyPay campaign fit in?

Supersize was a political campaign and an industrial campaign. The main demands were for a $12/ hour minimum wage, abolish youth rates, and security of hours. We made inroads on all of those things. The organisers took those demands out everywhere. It did play a real unifying role in having an industry-wide campaign.

What was the proportion of paid to unpaid organisers involved in getting the campaign off the ground?

Most people in Auckland were getting some sort of pay. But it’s only this year that we’ve been able to employ full time organisers in Wellington and Christchurch . At the start there was a lot of volunteer blood and sweat in setting up Unite. They started with nothing. They ran out of cash at one stage, and then a housekeeper who had left another union gave her redundancy to Unite. But there were a lot of semi-paid volunteers and volunteers in the early period.

Who were the volunteers?

Firstly rank and file militants who had been burnt by other unions, then socialists or communists and anarchists and also, quite importantly, some Maori Sovereignty activists. Also, quite importantly, the unite leadership was formerly involved in the social democratic Alliance Party.

How long was it before you were able to establish delegate structures?

We’re still doing that! It’s been a huge struggle, and we’re still debating how best to do it. This is really a question of organising in the new growth industries as well. You can’t expect to see your delegate when you go on site to do your site visits, ’cos you turn up and there’s like a one in 14 possibility that it’s a shift that your delegate’s on.

I personally advocate the setting up of committees of two-three-four people in each store. In principle they should be elected, but at this early stage, natural leaders just emerge. If We’re trying to build for a really big Restaurant Workers Conference; we want about 175 people from the industry.

How has the Employment Relations Act helped or hindered your organising?

Strikes are illegal outside of the negotiating period. This is a very real shackle which forces us into grievance proceedings to deal with problems, and we are not strong enough to challenge the anti-strike legislation in a front-on way. There was a right to strike campaign a few years ago, but there wasn’t the groundswell of struggle required to bring it through in any meaningful way.

Sometimes I get sick to fuck with people just parroting about the right to strike without addressing what are the problems caused by the inhibiting of strikes in the industry. We are always dealing with casework. Every day, workers have hours stolen, time records adjusted, bullying is rife, incorrect pay, etc, all of this is just ongoing. My impression is that there is a much higher ratio of casework in this industry than the more traditional and secure industries. We get caught up in mediation with so-called “good faith” and so on.

Aside from the negotiating periods, in which there have been many lightening strikes (two to three hour strikes), there has been some other industrial action, for example, a wildcat strike we only found out about after the event. It was at a Starbucks store in fact. Four workers shut the store down for about five hours because of bullying. They just put a sign on the door saying “Closed because of strike action”! It was really awesome, cos these people were all really young – aged about 20 or younger – and they didn’t have enough understanding of the Employment Relations Act, and the fact that the activity, being post-negotiation, was illegal. This really brought the issues to the fore much quicker than a personal grievance. We couldn’t formally endorse that strike, but we did go out and handle their disciplinaries and gave them a whole bunch of t-shirts and badges and all the rest of it!

Workers' Control site

2007-09-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

http://workerscontrol.blogspot.com

Uk Report on Starbucks ' protest

2007-08-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

UK action against Starbucks

IWW organizing expands throughout UK, Europe.

By Diane Krauthamer

On August 18, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and No Sweat held a successful National Day of Action against Starbucks, with demonstrations in ten cities throughout the UK, including Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Leicester and London.

Keywords: Starbucks Union, National, Human Rights, Labor, Corporations,

London protest
Despite Starbucks’ international union-busting attempts, workers and their supporters are telling the company that they are not backing down. Increased organizing and support is growing like wildfire throughout Europe and the U.S., and this past weekend proved once again that the struggle is far from over.

On August 18, 2007, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and No Sweat held a successful National Day of Action against Starbucks, with demonstrations in ten cities across the UK, including Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Leicester and London.

Although the company has more than 500 stores with over 5,000 workers and continues to expand in the UK, management is growing nervous as negative publicity surrounding their unfair labor practices increases regionally.

In London, small groups spent the morning distributing informational leaflets to baristas at both Starbucks and Caffé Nero, another major UK coffee chain with working conditions that parallel those of Starbucks. Starbucks baristas are paid just above the minimum wage and are subject to excessive working hours and unpaid overtime. Additionally, baristas must work at a relentless pace, resulting in repetitive strain injuries.

By 2 PM, the groups convened in front of the New Oxford Street Starbucks, a busy shopping district in the central city. More than 30 people spent the windy Saturday afternoon protesting and distributing information to customers, workers and onlookers. In addition to the dozens of protesters, undercover police officers and regional management also made a presence at the event. Two police officers were spotted across the street from the demo, illegally taking photos of individuals from the IWW and No Sweat.

One of the managers, wearing a beige sweater as a feeble attempt to conceal his company t-shirt, sat inside the store “reading a newspaper” while keeping the protest under surveillance. When I asked him if he was there to protest, he said he just wanted to make sure that nothing would “get out of hand.” He admitted that the company had already known about the protest beforehand, despite the fact that the protest location was only communicated over email, and not made public.

The manager asked if we were planning any other demonstrations, and when everyone packed up to go home, he followed the group down the street.

As Starbucks' headquarters in Seattle is advising regional management in the UK to embark on campaigns of surveillance and intimidation—as they have done in the U.S., France and Germany—workers are not backing down. Many baristas showed interest in joining the union, and many potential customers turned away from the store when they received information about the company’s practices. Continued harassment is evidence that the company who sets the world's coffee industry standard feels threatened by the power of radical unionizing and solidarity that continues to expand across international borders

By Diane Krauthamer diane@indymedia.org http://www.iww.org

Glasgow Starbucks protest

2007-08-20T05:49:00.000-07:00

Good protest around the starbucks stores on saturday
in spite of the rain.
Rattled some of the managers and i think got some of
the workers thinking about the issues of unionisation
and starbucks not being the company it makes itself out to be.
Think next time the coffe sirens film should be distributed
to more workers and we should ask to meet up with individuals
to discuss the issues raised in the film.

Pete

Starbucks Glasgow Sat 18th

2007-08-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Joint No Sweat /IWW UK Wide protest Sat 18th

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/549#attachments

Meet outside Starbucks this Saturday at foot of Sauchiehall street 1pm .

Leaflets above -make copies and bring.

Perhaps Edinburgh Comrades could organise a protest at Starbucks

there ?

Pete

http://www.nosweat.org.uk

http://nosweatscotland.blogspot.com

http://www.iww.org.uk

http://www.baristasunited.org.uk/

Two Big Strikes in China

2007-08-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.china-labour.org.uk

Two Big Strikes in China

2007-08-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.china-labour.org.uk

Starbucks Briefing

2007-08-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

No Sweat Scotland and the IWW are organising a protest in Glasgow
on Saturday 18th August - Look out for details here

www.iww.org.uk
www.iwwwscotland.wordpress.com
www.starbucksunion.org

International unions
Starbucks No Sweat briefing notes
No Sweat briefing on Starbucks

August 2007

Starbucks – global corporation

Starbucks is the world's largest coffee chain. Founded in the early 1970s in the United States (US), last year its annual global turnover was $7.8bn (£3.9bn). Starbucks announced in October 2006 its long-term expansion target of 40,000 outlets around the world, more than triple the existing number.

Starbucks opened its first store in London in September 1998, on the King's Road, Chelsea. It opened its 500th outlet in the UK in July 2006. The company announced in January this year that it aimed to open a new store in London every fortnight for the next decade.

Exploiting workers

Over 100,000 people worldwide - known as “partners” – work for Starbucks. More than 5,000 people work for Starbucks in the UK.

Starbucks workers in the US earn as little $6-$8 per hour depending on the location. Every single barista in the US is part-time and not guaranteed any work hours per week. For example, a Starbucks worker can get 35 hours of work one week, 22 hours the week after, and 10 hours the following week. In Britain baristas get a little over the minimum wage – in other words poverty pay.

Meanwhile Starbucks CEO Jim Donald awarded himself a $2.5 million (£1.25m) bonus in 2004. Its highest paid UK director got £452,000 in 2005.

Starbucks baristas work at a relentless pace to meet extraordinary customer demands. The Starbucks work environment is also full of ergonomic hazards, resulting in repetitive strain injuries for many workers.

Workers report that they are often bullied by managers. Schedules are often made without consideration for workers’ needs. In the US, Starbucks requires workers to call around the city to get a shift covered when ill or in bereavement.

Starbucks anti-union activity

In 2004, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began an organising campaign in Starbucks in the US, forming the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU). In 2006 the union took the company to the US National Labor Relations Board for anti-union activity and victimising union members. Yet within months, it sacked another union organiser Daniel Gross.

The SWU alleges that the coffee giant: unlawfully fired two IWW baristas in retaliation for union activity; illegally disciplined workers for discussing the union during and after work; threatened, issued negative performance reviews, and suspended workers for supporting the union.

Exploiting coffee growers

According to the Guardian newspaper, coffee growers receive little more than $1.10 (50p) for a pound of coffee, which is then sold for $160 (£80).

Oxfam launched a campaign against Starbucks in October 2006 after it effectively blocked Ethiopia's attempts to trademark its coffee beans in the United States. Around 90,000 people wrote to chief executive Jim Donald to complain. Starbucks put out a video on the website YouTube, which said it would be illegal for the Ethiopians to trademark their beans Sidamo and Harar in the US since they are geographical regions which cannot be trademarked there.

Starbucks and the Ethiopian farmers signed a marketing, licensing and distribution deal in May 2007. It quit its campaign against the African country's farmers being allowed to trademark in the US the names of their highest quality beans

Union fightback

By April 2007, the SWU had a public organised presence at nine Starbucks stores spanning four states and Starbucks baristas in several other states.

In New York City, SWU members have won important victories:

* Four city-wide wage increases from $7.75 to $8.75 per hour and $9.63 for many workers after six months on the job
* More consistent scheduling of hours
* The right to wear union pins (badges)
* Significantly reducing unsafe rat and insect infestation in stores
* Reduced repetitive strain injuries

Similar gains have been won by SWU members in Chicago.

In November 2005, Starbucks workers in Auckland, New Zealand staged a one-hour protest about low wages for staff working in the fast-food sector. This was the first ever strike by Starbucks workers. The strike was part of the SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign. It included more than 30 Starbucks workers from 10 different Auckland stores, joined by about 150 supporters and staff from KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonalds.

Starbucks are workers getting organised in France and Germany. The IWW is helping Starbucks workers set up their own union in Britain too. No Sweat supports the campaign and wants activists to help the unionising drive wherever there is a Starbucks or similar coffee shop.

Sources:

IWW Starbucks Workers Union www.starbucksunion.org

Baristas United www.baristasunited.org.uk

Behind the Label

2007-07-29T02:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.behindthelabel.org/

USAS

2007-07-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/

CWU

2007-07-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

CWU
http://www.cwu.org/

Justice for Agency Workers
http://www.cwu.org/default.asp?step=8&CamID=22

Glasgow's Radical Independent Book-fair

2007-07-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

Can anyone help leaflet the Starbucks event about the 18th August protest against starbucks?

Pete

Glasgow's Radical Independent Book-fair project.

SAT 4th - AUGUST- 2007 12 - 10pm

Glasgow's Radical Independent Book-fair project...
...the long hot summer is here (well for one day in august anyway!) Kinning Park Complex - Cornwall Street - Glasgow
(next to Kinning Park Subway) stalls / resources / videotheque / events

FREE entry
for more info on RIB and a full set of links go to www.ribproject.org
...supporting small press publishers and independent producers...circulating radical reading materials and information...
EVENTS for august the 4th

12 - 4
Education and Neo-liberalism
- A Critical Discussion Forum
Conference sessions include -
- The Crichton Campaign: Learning lessons from education struggles.
- Principles of Autonomous, Radical and Community Education.
- The Dark Side of Academe.
- Roundtable: Education and Neo-Liberalism - Threats & Opportunities.

4 - 5
Praxis - Towards a new anarchist organisation
Speakers from Praxis, which sees its formal launch this September, and from the Irish Workers Solidarity Movement, on the need for specific anarchist organisation to involve our ideas in the mass movements and organisations of the working class. The event will draw on examples from the UK and Ireland, and explain why Praxis is being launched and outline our short term objectives. The WSM will state how they see that the presence of such an organisation has impacted positively on the class struggle in Ireland, and how such an organisation could be useful elsewhere.

6 - 7
Industrial Workers of the World
- Film screening & discussion
'Together We Win: The Fight To Organize Starbucks' and 'Coffee Sirens' are two films that highlight Starbucks Union activities and corporate propaganda. Includes a discussion with members from local IWW branches and filmmaker Diane Krauthamer from New York City IWW.

7 - 9
Document - Film screenings
Now in it's fifth year Document - International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival will screen a selection of films dealing with death in the work place. There will be a discussion with representatives of the Graham Meldrum Memorial Campaign and a poetry reading by Karen Thompson.
more info on the Graham Meldrum Memorial Campaign
more info about Document

Starbucks leaflet

2007-07-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Starbucks
Starbucks
... why not print this flyer, run a pile of copies off, get a group of your friends and picket Starbucks on 18 August.

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/536

Starbucks -abusing workers'rights

Starbucks is one of the sickly-sweet faces of global capitalism. Worldwide it runs over 12,000 coffee shops and has an annual turnover of nearly £4bn. In Britain, it has over 500 outlets employing 5,000 workers.

The firm exploits workers all the way down the supply chain. In coffee shops, a Starbucks barista earns a little over the minimum wage but often doesn't get enough hours each week to make a decent living. In the UK its top executive earns nearly £500,000.

Workers might be called "partners" but in reality they suffer repetitive strain injuries, burns and persistent bullying from managers.
Starbucks pays farmers a pittance. According to the Guardian, growers receive little more than 50p for a pound of coffee, which is then sold for £80.
Starbucks is also anti-union. In the US it has faced legal action for victimising workers who tried to organise to improve their conditions.

But Starbucks isn't getting everything its own way. In New Zealand, Starbucks workers organised a strike to protest at their pay and conditions. The Starbucks Workers Union in the US has successfully organised in some stores and won improvements in pay, hours scheduling and on safety. An Oxfam campaign this year forced the firm to concede better terms to Ethiopian farmers.
Starbucks workers in the UK are also standing up for their rights. No Sweat is helping them to organise a union. Join us, get involved!
interested in no sweat?
Name: ..........................................................................................................
Address: ......................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................
Email: .........................................................................................................
Phone: ........................................................................................................
School/college/union:..................................................................................

Return to No Sweat, PO Box 36707, London SW9 8YA
Alternatively email admin@nosweat.org.uk or call 07904 431959
www.nosweat.org.uk

Coffee Sirens Film

2007-07-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

"Coffee Sirens" presents how Starbucks Coffee Company uses a relentless propaganda campaign to move beyond selling coffee as a self-proclaimed "extension of people's lives." In dissecting the myths versus the realities of Starbucks, this film brings to light a corporate force that exploits labor while winning the hearts and minds of its loyal customers.

http://www.archive.org/details/Coffee_Sirens

Coalition Fighting Unfair Pay

2007-07-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

COFUP!

Coalition Fighting Unfair Pay

www.cofup.org.uk

Dear Comrade,

I am writing to remind you know that the Coalition Fighting Unfair Pay (COFUP!) will be launched in Committee Room 9, House of Commons at 7pm on Tuesday 24th July.

COFUP! has been launched by the Socialist Youth Network, the youth wing of the Labour Representation Committee. SYN is a coalition of young Labour party members and trade unionists fighting for socialism in the Labour party.

The main aims of COFUP are to campaign for Labour councils to include a living wage without exemptions as part of their worker procurement contracts and for the Labour party to adopt a living wage for all workers regardless of age as its official policy at Conference.

The speakers at the rally include Manuel Cortes (Deputy General Secretary of TSSA), Cllr. Miranda Grell, John McDonnell MP, Rory MacQueen (GMB), Angela Molloy (Regional Industrial Officer for T&G Region 1), Heenal Rajani (UNISON), Sam Tarry (Compass Youth) and Marsha-Jane Thompson (Co-Chair of SYN).

The event is open to all and I hope that you will be able to attend. Please also spread the word!

Finally, an Early Day Motion has been tabled in Parliament in support of the campaign. EDM 1876 has now been signed by 39 MPs. If you have a local Labour MP, I hope you will consider writing to them to ask for their support.

In solidarity,

Owen Jones

Co-Chair of the Socialist Youth Network

Solidarity with migrant workers

2007-07-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

Solidarity with migrant workers

This branch notes that:

1.Migrant workers in the UK do jobs that are often unpleasant and sometimes tough. But these jobs – from cleaning on the Undergound, to caring for the sick and elderly – are all essential.
2.Some migrant workers are forced into illegal work under ruthless gangmasters and agencies. Even those working legally plugging gaps in agriculture or construction suffer extremely low pay, poor health and safety standards, long hours, excessive workload and bullying.
3.The trade union movement is now beginning to take on the essential task of organising migrant workers, overcoming language barriers, building trust, allaying fears of reprisal from bullying employers, working in areas where there is a complete lack of legal rights. That is why the self-organisation of workers and our solidarity is essential.
4.No Sweat, an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers worldwide, has produced a pamphlet making the political case for solidarity with migrant workers, with fact and figures, case studies from the trade union movement and ideas for organising. No Sweat has the backing of PCS, GMB, Unison, CWU, RMT, NUT, NUS and others in the UK.

This branch resolves to buy ____ copies of the new ‘Solidarity with migrant workers pamphlet’ at £1 per copy (discount trade union price, postage free).

High price paid for cheap UK clothes

2007-07-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

There was also a discussion on this on BBC Radio Scotland this Morning

Bangladesh
High price paid for cheap UK clothes
Karen McVeigh in Dhaka
Monday July 16, 2007
The Guardian

Two toddlers sit on a rusting grille platform built on bamboo stilts at the entrance to one of Bangladesh's fastest-growing housing developments.
Three feet below them lies a festering mound of rubbish, into which a gushing waste pipe from a nearby factory discharges. Beyond them are rows and rows of windowless, airless, corrugated iron rooms, stacked on top of each other like chicken coops.

This is Begunbari in Dhaka, the heart of the city's industrial district and home to many of its garment workers, including those who make clothes for some of Britain's best-known high street brands, including Asda, Tesco and Primark.

By day, the rooms are like ovens. At night, the noise from the slum's estimated 50,000 inhabitants, their screaming babies, radios and televisions is deafening. But the rent is cheap, at 900 takas or three pounds a month, which is why they are filled with factory workers, whose monthly earning are, they say, as little as seven pounds, or just two pence an hour.
Over the last 10 years, Bangladesh's clothing industry has boomed, fed by the huge demand for cut-price clothes supplied by supermarkets and discount chains.

An estimated 2.5 million people work in thousands of factories here, but their wages have halved in real terms in recent years, making them one of the cheapest workforces in the world.

When faced with previous allegations that their suppliers are exploiting factory workers, Asda, Tesco and Primark have spoken of their commitment to labour rights. All three have signed up to a code of conduct which sets out basic rights for employees, including that they shall not regularly work more than 48 hours a week, that overtime shall be voluntary and not exceed 12 hours a week, and that a "living wage" should be paid. But last month, employees of factories supplying clothes to all three retailers told the Guardian that their wages were so low that, despite working up to 84-hour weeks, they struggled to provide for their families. Many claimed they were regularly forced to work 12-hour days, and that working through the night to finish an order was not uncommon. Workers from factories supplying all three companies also said they were refused access to trade unions and claimed that, in the last month, four colleagues had been dismissed for attempting to organise a union.

Physical abuse

All of the eight workers interviewed by the Guardian said they were paid well below the £22 a month considered by experts to be the minimum living wage.

One worker claimed she had witnessed the physical and verbal abuse of a colleague and said she felt "threatened and frightened" at work, while another said he had been sacked and had his wages withheld for taking two days off to take his baby daughter to hospital. A third, who folds clothes for all three companies, claimed two colleagues lost their jobs last month for taking three consecutive sick days off. He said he was forced to stand nine hours a day, with only one, hour-long break for lunch.

Parvin, 25, a sewing machine operator who makes jeans and trousers for Primark, told the Guardian that she had seen a supervisor physically attack a colleague for not meeting her target of making 100 pieces an hour.

"I do things very quickly," said Parvin, from Begunbari. "A sewing machine operator hadn't met her target of finishing 100 pieces. It was maybe 80 or 90. The supervisor came over and snatched up the clothes and slapped her and shouted at her. What can she say? If she protested, she would be sacked."

She earns £18 a month for working from 8am to 8.30pm, a 75-hour week. At least three times a month, she is forced to work through the night, until 4am, and often until 10 or 11pm, she said.

The long hours leave her "very tired and sometimes exhausted" but she fears she might lose her job if she did not work overtime. Besides, her basic wage is not enough to live on, let alone send money home to her three children in her village, so she needs the money.

Mahbubur, 20, a machine operator, who provides clothes for Tesco and Primark, earns £16 a month, but he said apprentices or helpers in his factory earn only £9. His basic hours are 8am to 8pm, six days a week, but overtime, sometimes through the night, is compulsory, as is a meticulous attendance record. "If someone refuses, they can lose their job," he said. "This month, two of my colleagues lost their jobs. One, his father was sick and he had to go to the country to take care of him. The other had a fever." There is a nurse but no doctor in his factory. If someone is sick, they will often have to work until 5pm before they are allowed to go home, he said. Azizul, 28, a sewing machine operator who makes clothes for Primark, said he was sacked on June 20 and had his month's wages withheld, after he took two days off work to take his baby daughter to hospital.

He said: "I feel sorrow and sadness, not anger. There is nothing I can do."

Nazma Akter, president of the United Garment Workers Federation and general secretary of the Awaj Foundation, a local organisation which fights for workers' rights, said that long hours, bad working conditions, poverty and the overcrowded and insanitary conditions in which garment workers are forced to live made them susceptible to a number of illnesses and diseases.

Health problems

"They get tuberculosis, kidney problems, diarrhoea, problems with their hearing and there are a huge amount of skin diseases caused by the dust and fibres. People here boil water before they drink it but the garment workers do not have the time to do that. There are also mental health problems brought on by constant stress."

Last year, after garment workers set fire to 16 factories and ransacked 300 more to demand better pay and conditions, and amid pressure from organisations such as Awaj, the Bangladeshi government agreed to introduce a minimum wage of 1,660 taka or £12 a month. The deadline for the new wage, which is supposed to be based on an eight-hour day, passed a month ago, but according to the National Garment Workers' Federation, even this meagre target is not being met, with 60% of factories still flouting the rules.

Workers spoke to the Guardian on the condition that it did not reveal the names of the factories in which they worked. They feared they would be sacked from their already insecure jobs, or that the British buyers would withdraw from the factory altogether and they would lose their jobs. They told us they did not want British companies to pull out, but that they wanted better pay and conditions.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Asda said that it would re-audit all its Bangladeshi factories in the light of the Guardian's findings. He added: "We find abuse of any kind unacceptable. It appears that one of our approved factories, which are audited up to three times a year, has subcontracted this work to another factory without our knowledge and against our wishes. It's disappointing that the Guardian's policy is to keep the name of the factory secret. By doing so no action can be taken to ensure those workers are no longer mistreated. Where we find wrongdoing we put it right."

A spokesman for Primark said that labour conditions were a matter of "considerable concern". In a statement, it said that it had audited all its Bangladeshi suppliers in the last six months and had "agreed a programme of remediation" with those not complying with its code of conduct. It acknowledged that audits were an "imperfect tool" to achieve compliance and that it was working with the Ethical Trading Initiative, an alliance of companies, NGOs, and trade unions, to lobby the Bangladeshi government to improve workers' rights. It added: "We hope that this Guardian report will add to the pressure on the Bangladeshi government to act to protect both its workers and this important source of income and foreign exchange." A spokesman for Tesco said it could not take any action because it had not been not provided with the names of the factories concerned. The spokesman said: "These allegations are serious but without being provided with any detail we cannot investigate them."

He added: "We have stuck by Bangladesh, continued to invest in modern factories and done all we can to ensure that high standards and good conditions are maintained by the most thorough independent audits carried out anywhere in the world. The alternative - and it would be easier in many ways - would be for us to stop sourcing in countries that have economic and social problems which are beyond the capabilities of any organisation working alone to fix. But we don't think that is right for the people of Bangladesh or what our customers would expect us to do."

2007-07-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

Anti-Starbucks day Saturday August 18th

No Sweat Scotland welcomes ideas on this

Submitted by SWU on Mon, 07/09/2007 - 10:46pm.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=212204

Today Starbucks went on trial in Manhattan, and I had the privilege of attending several hours of the proceedings today. On the way downtown, I noticed that a young woman on the subway seemed to be using a brown paper Starbucks bag as a purse. And it did make a pretty nice handbag! Starbucks's professions of concern for "corporate responsibility" are much like that: attractive packaging.

In the trial that began today, the nation's leading purveyor of coffee-flavored milk drinks stands accused by the National Labor Relations Board of thirty violations of employee rights, especially firing workers for union organizing. Starbucks had seven lawyers present. The two fired workers in question-- Daniel Gross and Joe Agins, Jr., both IWW members -- were present. Gross wore a suit and looked sharp, as any activist appearing before a judge probably should. (Agins went for a less formal look -- a sleeveless muscle t-shirt.)

Today both sides waded through the details of discovery; that is to say, the NLRB lawyers asked for documents from Starbucks, and the company's legal team whined about how "burdensome" it would be to get so many documents, because, since the turnover rate is so high, many of the relevant personnel files are now in storage. It is very difficult to get the files out once they go in, Stacy Eisenstein, one of Starbucks lead outside counsel, argued with a straight face. More incredibly, before the hearing had officially begun, she disputed the NLRB's contention that there was a union campaign going on when Gross and Agin were fired. If that is a major cornerstone of Starbucks's defense, the company could be in trouble, because the judge -- who seemed very fair-minded and interested in reaching reasonable compromises -- did not buy it, and allowed discovery based on the assumption that the date of the union campaign was relevant. (Also, there is ample public record of the campaign, including media coverage.)

It will be interesting to see what happens. I can't be there for much of the rest of the trial, unfortunately, so I really hope other journalists and bloggers will go check it out. They are taking tomorrow off, and back in session Wednesday.

[StarbucksUnion.org Note: The trial continues at a new location: 120 W. 45th St. 14th Floor at 9:30am, Wednesday July 11]

Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.starbucksunion.org/trackback/1818

Vulnerable Workers Campaign

2007-07-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.vulnerableworkers.org.uk/about/what-is-vulnerable-employment/migrant-workers/

TUC publication on Migrant Work

2007-07-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/safetymw.pdf

Stripping against sweatshops

2007-07-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2006/03/113980.shtml

How about Students in Scotland copying this? Much more of a sacrifice given our weather.

Pete

China Labour Bulletin Activist Network

2007-07-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.activistnetwork.org.uk/pn/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=745

Scotland- Call Centre Nation ?

2007-07-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

http://business.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=124&id=1709962006

Workers Sit-in

2007-07-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Europe
African migrant workers sit-in

Poorly paid and routinely pressured to perform un- or inadequately-compensated overtime, irregular migrants employed at the French-based fast food chain Buffalo Grill are fighting back after being denounced to the authorities and fired or pressured to quit their jobs. The migrants, mostly of African origin, many with years of employment at the chain, face expulsion from the France of Nicolas Sarkozy to their country of origin.

Last year, a popular immigrant Buffalo Grill worker announced his candidacy for workplace representation elections. in February 2007, his irregular employment status was "anonymously" denounced to the police, who proceeded to control the employment papers' of the chain's more than 600 foreign workers. Four were fired and others pressured to resign. A group of undocumented workers, supported by the Commerce, Distribution and Services Federation of the CGT (FCDS-CGT), is fighting back by occupying the Buffalo Grill in Viry-Chatillon, in the South of Paris. The police have not yet moved to enforce a court order to evacuate the premises and the occupation continues.

Buffalo Grill, based in France, operates close to 300 restaurants in France, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, employing over 6,000 workers. Two top executives of the chain were investigated on manslaughter charges in 2003 following revelations that the company had violated the French ban on importing British beef during the mad cow disease embargo of 1996-2000. Management's initial claim to have been the victim of fraudulent practices by immigrants seeking employment with false papers has been punctured by revelations in the French press that workers fired from one Buffalo Grill location were knowingly rehired in others.

Since 2005, Buffalo Griill has been owned by the US property investment fund Colony Capital, owners of the Fairmont/Raffles and Kerzner hotel and resort chains. Colony Capital has also taken a significant stake in the Accor hotel and services group.

The French case recalls that of the 5 Salvadoran workers fired by management of a US Marriott hotel in 2001 for attempting to organize a union. In that case, the National Labor Relations Board eventually determined that the workers were sacked illegally. Marriott was compelled to pay compensation and to post a notice in the hotel informing workers of their right to union representation.

The FCDS-CGT is demanding the reinstatement of all Buffalo Grill workers fired or forced to resign, along with regularization of their employment status and an end to all legal and police measures. You can support their struggle by sending a message (in English and French) in support of these demands to Buffalo Grill and Colony Capital management.

Send a message of support, click here:
http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/campaigns/show_campaign.cgi?c=283

China Briefing

2007-07-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

China
Chinese garment industry: new briefing
LBL have produced a briefing:
http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/images/pdf/chinabriefing.pdf

Live working or die fighting

2007-07-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

Live working or die fighting by Paul Mason
Author:Paul Mason

Review:

This book is an ambitious attempt to bring some of the great events from working class history to a new generation of youth. Paul Mason argues that as the working class in the “global south” has expanded, so new workers’ movements are emerging with strong similarities to those that arose during the first wave of globalisation, which began in the 1870s.

Historical vignettes

Each chapter of the book takes a current episode or struggle and juxtaposes it to an earlier class battle. The contrasts are:

* The Peterloo massacre in 1819 with Chinese sweatshop workers in 2003
* The silk weavers’ revolt in Lyon 1831 with Indian textile workers in 2005
* The Paris Commune 1871 with Nigerian slums in 2005
* The early US labour movement 1869-86 with Iraqi oil workers in 2006
* Syndicalism 1889-1912 with Canary Wharf cleaners in 2006
* German workers against war 1905-1918 with Bolivian miners 2006
* The birth of Chinese working class 1919-27 with Indian auto workers in 2005
* The Warsaw ghetto uprising 1943 with neighbourhood uprisings in Bolivia 2003-2005
* Workers control in Italy 1920, France 1936 and the US 1937 with Argentina in 2006

The modern cases are generally based on Mason’s own first-hand investigations as a Newsnight journalist. The historical examples come from a wide reading of labour history. The result is highly readable book, even where some of the parallels are a little forced - and even where strictly, some were not really part of the first wave of globalisation at all.

Working class heroes

A distinctive feature of the book is the way Mason tells stories of collective action through the lives of those who led them. Thus we learn about Samuel Bamford’s role in worker organising - including military-style drilling - building a movement during the infancy of the English working class. The Peterloo massacre is also commemorated by Shelley’s poem, which urged workers to “rise like lions” because “Ye are many - they are few”.

Jean-Claude Romand, who coined the phrase “live working or die fighting”, is the principal figure in the Lyon revolt. In the Paris Commune, bookbinder Eugène Varlin and teacher Louise Michel are the central characters. In the US movement for May Day, Martin Irons and railworker Terence Powderly are the principal figures. Irons remarked that it was the principle of solidarity, that “an injury to one is the concern of us all”, which turned him from a drifter into a militant union organiser.

In the fight to organise unskilled workers before the First World War, Tom Mann, Victor Griffuelhes, Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn are the key actors. This chapter summed up what it meant to be part of the “union way of life”, in Griffuelhes’ phrase. The Industrial Workers’ of the World (IWW) drive for “one big union” included the story of the 1912 US textile workers’ strike, which coined the demand, “We want Bread and Roses too”.

The socialist way of life in the million’s strong German SPD and its successors is told through Oskar Hippe and Toni Sender, although Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are not overlooked for the part they played. Jan Valtin is also used to spice the narrative, despite doubts about the authenticity of his memoirs.

The rise of the Chinese workers’ movement is told through the eyes of Li Qi-han, though the story of the crushing of that movement by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 is more conventionally described. More tangential to the main thesis of the book, but nevertheless a fascinating and moving account, is the story of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, as told by Marek Edelman. Mason does a useful job in describing the Jewish workers’ organisations such as the Bund and Hashomer Hatzair youth movement that led the uprising. Edelman was one of the few to survive it, going on to help the Solidarnosz movement in the early 1980s.

The closing chapter centres on the tremendous wave of sit-ins during the inter-war period. In Turin, the half a million metalworkers who occupied their factories in 1920 is told mainly through Antonio Gramsci’s journalism. Simone Weil’s writings are the basis for the story France in 1936, when 1.8 million workers took strike action in 12,000 workplaces, three-quarters of which were occupied. The great workers’ sit-in at the Flint General Motors plant the following year is told through militants Bob Travis and the Trotskyist Genora Dollinger.

Lessons from history

Mason told Mark Osborn in Solidarity 3/111, 3 May that he was reacting to “the lessons of history” approach in much left-wing literature. Yet he draws “two big truths” from the narrative himself. He argues firstly that workers faced with rapid industrialisation, organise unions because the same forces that make rival companies compete and managers cut costs and secondly that, when there is a globalised economy, a global labour movement begins to take shape.

I think these conclusions are essential in today’s conditions of neo-liberal globalisation. They are certainly important against those who have retreated from class and from the labour movement.

But Mason also seems to draw more specific “lessons”, with each chapter appearing to contain a quite explicit message. The Peterloo massacre demonstrated the need for a working class political movement. In the silk workers revolt, the importance of the revolutionary newspapers, L’Echo de la Fabrique and L’Echo des Travailleurs, stand out. And from the Paris Commune, the need to fight for a workers’ government.

From the early US movement, the importance of a shorter working day and from syndicalism, the importance of militancy for successful unionisation. From Germany, the importance of unity and of opposition to the government. From the early Chinese movement, the need to understand alliances with nationalists and their limits. From the Warsaw uprising, the need to fight for freedom even in impossible circumstances.
And from the sit-ins, the power of workers to control the economy.

Personally I see no shame in extracting “lessons” from history for today’s struggles, providing the parallels are not drawn mechanically. One of the jobs of Marxists is to act as the memory of the working class. What matters is the manner of our selections; not per se, the desire to learn from the past.

The new working class

The history is also pertinent at a time when the working class is a growing power in the world, in terms of its numerical strength and potential power in the global production chain. In the last 20 years, the 460 million workers in the advanced economies have been joined by over 1 billion workers in the third world and since 1990 by a whopping 1.4 billion from China, India and Russia that previously were largely outside the circuit of capital. Today the waged working class – broadly defined – is the largest class in the world, with greater social weight than at any other time of human history.

However not all the examples of modern labour struggles in the book are indicative of the potential of the new working class. Bolivia, Argentina and Iraq certainly merit the prominence they are given. But most of the individuals Mason refers to, with the exception of Hassan Juma, are not widely known. Surprisingly, important figures such as Dita Sari in Indonesia and Mansour Ossanlou in Iran are absent. The militant unions in Korea and Mexico are not discussed at all. The highpoints as well as defeats a generation ago in places like Brazil and South Africa are also passed over, although they illustrate comparable issues of political representation, the relationship between unions and political parties and of workers’ control. In advanced capitalist economies, the recent militancy of French workers is surely worthy of note.

Mason is realistic about the obstacles to the revival of the labour movement, including the stratification of the working class and the emergence of a new kind of (neo-liberal) social reformism. He is critical of Stalinism, both in historical writing and in actual history for cauterising independent workers’ organisation. He is less convincing in attributing a “culture of individualism” as a key factor holding back the labour movement revival.

I think Mason also goes too far in describing the level of organisation as “pre-1889”. Globally, there are still over 200 million trade unionists. And we have far greater experiences to draw on than workers did back then – as well as over a century of Marxist ideas. Nor does he point to the socialist forces that might help turn the situation around. Yet it is this subjective factor that is also necessary if the new possibilities are to be realised.

Starbucks and Coffee Farmers

2007-07-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

Starbucks record

Oxfam in the US are running a campaign to get Starbucks to improve their relationship with Ethiopian coffee farmers

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/campaigns/coffee/starbucks

Starbucks Union
A US drive to organise Starbucks workers

http://www.starbucksunion.org/

No Sweat Scotland site

2007-06-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

http://nosweatscotland.blogspot.com/

NO SWEAT SCOTLAND
No Sweat Scotland is an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers, worldwide.

Great Links

2007-06-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Anti-slavery international : www.antislavery.org/

Barbed Wire Britain Network: www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk

Close down campsfield: www.closecampsfield.org.uk

Coalition to stop deporation to Iraq: www.csdiraq.com

ESOL campaign www.ucu.org.uk/esolsignup

International Union of Sex workers : www.iusw.org

Iraq Union Solidarity Scotland
http://iraqunionsolidarityscotland.blogspot.com/

Labour start: www.labourstart.org/

Migrant Rights network: migrantrights@yahoo.co.uk

National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns

www.ncaadc.org.uk

No One is illegaL: www.noii.org.uk

Rail Cleaners Charter

www.rmt.org.uk

www.tuc.org/international

Thai Labour campaign

www.thailabour.org/

US Immigrant Solidarity network

www.immigrantsolidarity.org

BBC on Nike and Gap

2007-06-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/970385.stm

Model Union Motion

2007-06-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

Union Branch resolution: Sweatshop Labour

1. Child and sweatshop labour is a scandal.

2. Some of the high street's most famous names, including Nike, Gap, Adidas and Reebok, have been exposed by the newspapers, and TV programmes such as Panorama and John Pilger's The New Rulers, as sweatshop employers.

3. Children as young as 11 have been found working in scandalous conditions in factories commissioned by these companies to produce their goods.

4. A single top or pair of trainers can cost more to buy in the UK than the worker who produced them receives in a month. The average wage for a Nike worker in Vietnam is just $47 a month.

5. According to the US National Labor Committee, Phil Knight, co-founder of the Nike corporation, is worth $12.3 billion.

6. Forced overtime, sexual abuse, poor health and safety conditions and violence and harassment, especially against trade unionists, have been uncovered by reporters and trade union and Government investigators.

7. No Sweat Scotland campaigns in Scotland and the UK, with other campaigning groups and unions, to end child and sweatshop labour and for workers' rights at home and abroad.

8. Workers in sweatshops must be free to organise their own, independent trade unions. Codes of conduct mean nothing unless the workers themselves can enforce standards such as a limit to the working week, no forced overtime, decent health and safety.

This Union Resolves To:

1. Invite a No Sweat Scotland speaker to our next meeting.

2. Affiliate to No Sweat Scotland

3. Publicise the work of No Sweat Scotland

No Sweat past activities

2007-06-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

Between 2002 and 2005, NSS organised many protests over Sweatshop labour. There were protests at McDonalds,Gap, Disney on International Women’s day, and Pickets of the Chinese consulate over the jailing of Chinese labour leaders in Liaoyong, representation of Chinese workers at Workers Memorial days, and over 100 people at a public meeting to hear Mexican workers speak about their victory over Nike

NSS also had a speaker from Haiti. All these women trade union activists spoke to large numbers of students at Edinburgh University and helped The People and Planet Society there move from ethical consumerism to having more of a focus on workers rights.

In 2004 NSS was also instrumental in pulling together a coalition to get Multinationals out of the schools. Adidas had been given access to 20 Edinburgh primary Schools to organise “sports training days”. The coalition included the Scottish Parents Teachers Council, SSP, Greens, Edinburgh Trades Council and No Sweat Scotland.We had successful public meetings and organised a successful deputation to Edinburgh Council who agreed to review their guidelines on access to schools.

Where we Stand

2007-06-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

No Sweat Scotland : Who we are

No Sweat Scotland is an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers, worldwide.

Sweatshop labour is modern, global capitalism stripped bare. From the small, backstreet sweatshop to some of the biggest corporations in the world - child labour, forced overtime, poverty wages, unsafe conditions, harassment of women workers and intimidation of trade unionists are commonplace.

No Sweat Scotland stands for workers' solidarity.

We are for:

A living wage
Safe working conditions
Independent trade unions

All workers, in every country, deserve and need these rights. In order to enforce these rights, they need to be free to organise - the stronger the union, the safer the workplace!

We aim to:

Make solidarity with sweatshop workers and their organisations
Help unionise sweatshops in Scotland
Publicise, expose and help stamp out sweatshop employment.

No Sweat is an open, broad-based campaign. We look to the anti-capitalist protest movements and to the international workers' movement. We seek to build common, united, campaiging action against exploitation and the sweatshop bosses.

Come and join us, help us, get active!

NO SWEAT SCOTLAND

Lean Report on de-skilling in Civil Service

Lawyers win stay of execution for Chinese activist

Imprisoned Political Prisoners in China

Scotland Strikes

Riot in Eastern China

International unions

Clean Clothes

Primark in child labour row

Chinese Whispers: The true story behind Britain's hidden army of labour, by Hsiao-Hung Pai

USAS

Book on Walmart

Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour

New Report on the Price of Coal in China

China Labour Bulletin

Organizing Young Workers Interview

New Zealand Union Organizes Fast Food Workers

Chinese Factory -Imagine this was Your Job !!

No Sweat Fashion Show YouTube

Polish Workers In Scotland

No Sweat YouTube

Anti- Sweatshop shop tour

How the first Starbucks strike was made

G8 Protests and Images of USA 2005

Alabama 3 Benefit for No Sweat

Gap

Rank and File postie site

Independent on Sunday: 30 September 2007

No Sweat Annual Conference

Springburn CWU Picket Oct 4th

Organising fast food workers

Workers' Control site

Uk Report on Starbucks ' protest

Glasgow Starbucks protest

Starbucks Glasgow Sat 18th

Two Big Strikes in China

Two Big Strikes in China

Starbucks Briefing

Behind the Label

USAS

CWU

Glasgow's Radical Independent Book-fair

Starbucks leaflet

Coffee Sirens Film

Coalition Fighting Unfair Pay

Solidarity with migrant workers

High price paid for cheap UK clothes

Vulnerable Workers Campaign

TUC publication on Migrant Work

Stripping against sweatshops

China Labour Bulletin Activist Network

Scotland- Call Centre Nation ?

Workers Sit-in

More great links

China Briefing

Live working or die fighting

Starbucks and Coffee Farmers

No Sweat Scotland site

Great Links

BBC on Nike and Gap

Model Union Motion

No Sweat past activities

Where we Stand