Santa's Sweatshop

Of course while Ms. Claus gets exploited so do the elves,after all they represent a classic icon for child labour don't they. Santa's Sweatshop.
Producing all those sweatshop toys for girls and boys, in the developed world. But you can now shop sweatfree.

Thai toy shop fire kills six. 15/01/2005. ABC News Online

American Apparel's decision to sell out is another example of an ethical brand going multinational.

At the American Apparel store on New York's Fifth Avenue this week, there was a Christmas shopping buzz as customers rifled through brightly coloured racks of t-shirts, underpants and bras. Helpful little cards advised on suitable presents: a pair of baby rib briefs, for example, for your "favourite boy".
The boss of the underwear chain is getting a rather more substantial Christmas gift. Dov Charney, who founded American Apparel in 1997, will receive $200m in shares under a $383m takeover announced yesterday by a financial buyer, Endeavour Acquisition Corporation.
Although eye-watering, Charney's windfall is hardly unusual in present business climate of daily multi-billion pound private equity buyouts. But this is no ordinary takeover.
Ever since its inception, American Apparel has trumpeted its small-scale values. All the manufacturing is done in a factory in downtown Los Angeles where production line staff typically earn between $12 and $18 an hour - not a fortune, but well above the industry average and a good deal more than the people who stitch Gap underpants together in Indonesia.
American Apparel trumpets its vertically integrated, sweatshop-free business model at every opportunity. Charney, who sports a handlebar moustache and once appeared bare-bottomed in an advertisement, has a strong sense of counter-intuitive cool and likes to upset Californian politicians by campaigning for free immigration.
Yesterday's deal, however, is intended to transform American Apparel into a global player. The new owner, Endeavour, intends to open 800 stores, half of which will be outside America, to add to the existing chain of 145.
American Apparel appears to be joining a long list of once ideological "ethical" names which have succumbed to the multinational shilling. Body Shop's founder Anita Roddick found a takeover by L'Oreal impossible to resist - just as Pret a Manger opted for a partial sale to McDonalds, the organic chocolate maker Green & Black's was gobbled by Cadbury Schweppes, and ice-cream king Ben & Jerry's was bought by Unilever

The War of the Christmas Trees

The National Christmas Tree Association's Web site claims that real tree sales outnumber sales for artificial trees 32.8 million to 9.3 million. But artificial trees are used year after year, and studies commissioned by the artificial tree industry show that 57 percent of all Americans actually own fake trees.

Further, the NCTA claims that plastic trees are made in Chinese sweatshops, harbor cancer-causing and poisonous chemicals, and can go up in flames at the strike of a match.

Real trees, it says, are renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. Nurseries proudly tell customers that one evergreen tree produces enough daily oxygen for 18 people.

Sweat-free carols at Melbourne fashion retailer
by pc Tuesday December 19, 2006 at 07:06 PM

As in previous years, the FairWear anti-sweatshop campaign took its Christmas sweat-free carols to town, visiting this year fashion retailer Rich, one of far too many who have so far refused to sign up to the Homeworkers Code of Practice ...

click to enlarge

After a quick rehearsal in the Mall, the 'choir' made its way into the up-market shopping mall that has replaced the old Post Office in Melbourne's landmark GPO building and lined up in front of the fashion display for a rendering of modified version of three well-known carols - Jingle Bells (Sweatshop workers all deserve/their Christmas bonus pay - HEY!), God Rest Ye Weary Laborers (O tidings of justice and rights/ human rights, O tidings of justice and rights!), and the classic Twelve Days of Sweat Shopping (On the eleventh day of shopping, my true love bought for me,/ tax breaks for sweatshops, workers without unions, sexual/harassment, cancer-causing fumes, twelve-hour days,/six cents an hour,/RAM-PANT COR-PORATE GREED!/pre-sweated pants, slave labour shoes, toys made by kids,/all gifts made in sweatshops right here).
The performance was then repeated on the steps outside, much to the fascination of the crowds waiting to view the Myer windows...
After the performance, members of the 'choir' handed out useful wallet-sized cards listing companies certified to use the NoSweatshop label on their Australian Made clothing. Visit the website for details:

http://www.fairwear.org.au

Anti-Sweatshop Christmas Carols

Away in a Sweatshop
to the tune of Away in a Manger

Away in a sweatshop where no one can see
The immigrant seamstresses work constantly.
Conditions are awful, the pay is absurd
The boss he will fire them if they say a word.
Away in a fact'ry, an ocean away
Young girls making shoes for a dollar a day.
But please don't complain about worker exploitation
Cause this factory's in a Most Favored Nation.
Away in the Congress, the Senators fat
Count up their PAC dollars, pass NAFTA and GATT.
They couldn't care less about workers in need
These corporate whores traded their conscience for greed!

Slaving in a Sweatshop Wonderland
to the tune of Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Door bell rings, are you listening?
On your brow, sweat is glistening.
You're working tonight; it just isn't right,
Slaving in a sweatshop wonderland.
Gone away are the good jobs
Here today are the sweatshops
They want you to sew
Seven days in a row
Slaving in a sweatshop wonderland.
In Toronto, Woolworth has used sweatshops
And they've paid the lowest rates in town.
Ask about a union, they'll say no ma'am.
Homeworkers do the job for the poorest pay around.
Later on, they'll conspire
How to raise prices higher
The plans that they've made
Won't make us better paid
Slaving in a sweatshop wonderland.
Door bell rings, are you listening?
On your brow, sweat is glistening.
You're working tonight; it just isn't right,


And this little missive from the Right makes the point too..


Will the Feds Bust Santa Claus?
by George Getz

When Santa Claus comes to town this week, he'd better watch out -- because the federal government may be making a list of his crimes (and checking it twice), the Libertarian Party warned today.

"Hark the federal agents sing, Santa is guilty of nearly everything," said Libertarian Party press secretary George Getz. "The feds know when Santa's been bad or good -- and he's been bad, for goodness sakes."

Does Santa belong in the slammer? Instead of stuffing stockings, should he be making license plates?

Yes, said Getz, if he's held to the same standards as a typical American. For example:

* Every December 25, the illegal immigrant known as Santa Claus crosses the border into the United States without a passport. He carries concealed contraband, which he sneaks into the country in order to avoid inspection by the U.S. Customs Service. And just what's in all those brightly colored packages tied up with ribbons, anyway? The Drug Czar and Homeland Security want to know.

* Look at how this international fugitive gets around: Santa flies in a custom-built sleigh that hasn't been approved by the FAA. He never files a flight plan. He has no pilot's license. In the dark of night, he rides the skies with just a tiny bioluminescent red light to guide him -- a clear violation of traffic safety regulations.

* Pulling Santa's sleigh: Eight tiny reindeer, a federally protected species being put to hard labor. None of these reindeer have their required shots, and Santa's never bothered to get these genetically- engineered animals registered and licensed. It's no wonder: He keeps them penned outside his workplace in a clear violation of zoning laws.

* But Crooked Claus the Conniving Capitalist harms more than just animals -- he's hurting hard-working American laborers, too. Isn't Santa's Workshop really Santa's Sweatshop, where his non-union employees don't make minimum wage and get no holiday pay? Add the fact that OSHA has never inspected the place, and you have a Third-World elf-exploitation operation that only Kathy Lee Gifford could love.

* No wonder Santa is able to maintain his monopoly over the toy distribution industry: He's cornered the Christmas gift market. Santa dares to give away his products for free in a sinister attempt to crush all competition -- just like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Antitrust Lawsuit Memo to the feds: Is Santa Claus the Bill Gates of Christmas?

The bottom line, said Getz: "It might be tough sledding for Jolly St. Nick this Christmas if the government decides to prosecute him.

"We're just surprised it hasn't already happened. After all, Santa Claus is everything that politicians aren't: He's popular, reliable, and gives us something for nothing every December 25th -- instead of taking our money every April 15th."
See

Sweatshop

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Santa, Claus, St.Nick, Santa'sSweatshop, Sweatshops, Christmas, Xmas,

Fashion activist Aja Barber is encouraging us to change our buying behaviour

By Fiona Pepper, ABC News


File image. Photo: David Cliff / NurPhoto via AFP

It was during the darkest days of the pandemic that Aja Barber had her revelation about fast fashion.

"A lot of us were sitting in our houses looking around going, 'Holy crap, I have a lot of stuff' and yet there were weeks where I wore the same two outfits," Barber told ABC RN's Big Ideas.

Yet beyond having an overflowing wardrobe, Barber began questioning how the price of clothing had gone down within her lifetime, while everything else was going up. The conclusions made her uncomfortable.

"There was always a feeling of, 'But why are we okay with people in other countries making terrible wages?'. That feeling was always there and I couldn't fight it," she said.

Currently the average Australian purchases 56 items of clothing each year and sends 23 kilograms to landfill.

Globally, the garment and textile industry employs approximately 75 million people worldwide. The Clean Clothes Campaign estimated less than 1 percent of what you pay for a typical garment goes to the workers who made it.

Now Barber, the author of Consumed: The Need for Collective Change wants to demystify the structural inequality embedded in the global fashion industry, and show consumers how they can change that.
'I was part of the problem'

Barber was quick to admit that she was part of the problem from a young age.

"When I think about my own path to being a fast-fashion shopper, I was so ripe for the taking because I grew up being made fun of for my clothing," she said.

"[I was] never being invited to subsequently sit at that lunch table with that group of snobs that were mean to me, thinking that maybe if I just had a T-shirt from the Gap, they'd be nice to me.

"And that's how it starts."

In her 20s, Barber read about the highly covetable leather Birkin bag and she set her sights on owning this expensive piece.

That is, even though she admitted she thought the bags were ugly.

"But I wanted one because of what it said about me. I'm a young black woman in a very white world, going into white business places and I want people to treat me well. That's why I wanted the bag, not because it was pretty," she said.

Barber bought the bag and this was just one example she said of her long-standing relationship with fashion and this belief that it could fix her feelings of inadequacy.

Now she wanted to remind everyone of what was lurking behind our desire to own the next big thing.

"Maybe you don't even need that dress; maybe you need a hug," she said.

Barber said we have grown accustomed to downplaying the scale of the fast-fashion problem, in order to continue justifying the purchase of sweatshop-made clothing.

"In devaluing the system, we're entirely able to look away from the harm of the system," Barber said.

By framing the issue as trivial, Barber said we were also devaluing the labour that goes into making garments, and the entire labour force propping up the clothing industry.

The 2022 Ethical Fashion Report found that just 10 percent of companies surveyed could evidence paying workers living wages at any of their final-stage factories.

"We have to value it because it is having a deep and profound impact on not just our planet, not just our fellow sisters, but our psyche as well," Barber said.
Countering all the old excuses

A common argument that Barber came up against was that cheap clothing was accessible to everyone.

Her counter argument was simple: "Is it really accessible when it can only exist if we exploit other women?"

"We're so indoctrinated into consumerism, we really squeeze and manipulate rhetoric to fit our particular situation, so we feel good about buying sweatshop clothing," Barber said.

She also pointed out that the target audience for cheap clothing was usually the middle class.

"When I try and talk to people with platforms that sell sweatshop clothing, I'm like, 'So you're a rich woman, why are you selling sweatshop clothes?'," she said.

Their common response was that it was what their audience and followers could afford.

"And I'm like, your audience is just like you, your readership is just as middle class as you are. Do not even pretend like they need you to sell them shite that they don't need."

Additionally, she said we need to change our mindset around ethical shopping.

If Australians bought ethically made clothing at the rates they currently buy fast fashion, the cost would likely be prohibitive.

But if we reduce the amount we buy and wear those items longer, then ethically made clothing will be cost-effective.

Another common justification for buying cheap clothing was that the sweatshop workers were better off working than not.

But Barber argued this was straight up colonialism.

"This is the idea that all of these systems can only exist, if a corporation from a foreign entity exploits everyone," she said.

And she pointed out that there were brands that do pay fair wages. And these companies could challenge others to do better.
Social media and excess consumption

In 2017, environmental charity Hubbub, found that one in six young people did not feel they could repeat an outfit once it had been seen on social media.

Barber said this message was starting to become normalised.

"I grew up wearing second-hand [clothes]. I did not tell my little snot-nose peers because that would have been another thing for them to make fun of me for," Barber said.

"I think there's still stigma there. That's a hurdle that we're going to have to get through culturally in our society."

She also wanted consumers to slow down and rediscover their individual style.

"Fast fashion has gotten us so away from knowing our personal style, knowing what we really like because you're having a lot of stuff pushed at you," she said.

"And once we get back to that, it really narrows down what you're purchasing … It's a lot more considered, which means it's probably going to stay in your wardrobe for a lot longer."

Yet Barber admitted, while encouraging people to buy ethically, second hand or educating young people were all important steps forward, she said individuals could not be expected to fix the problem.

"We need legislation, we cannot group hug our way out of this."

For example, Barber suggested the introduction of an extended responsibility tax being placed on all fast fashion garments would mean that companies would have to pay for the end of the life of every product manufactured.

Additionally, imposing financial penalties around non-compliance of Modern Slavery Acts.

And as an individual, Barber said: "If you already have clothing you can wear, then you don't need new things."

And the next new item of clothing you do buy, "has to be from a company that pays everyone fair wages, that's it".

- ABC

Biden urged to pick California attorney who fought sweatshop slavery as new head of Labor Department

cdavis@insider.com (Charles Davis) 

California Labor Secretary Julie Su is photographed at her home in Cerritos, California. Katie Falkenberg/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

California labor activists are asking President-elect Joe Biden to select Julie Su as his Secretary of Labor.

Su, once dubbed the "bane of deadbeat employers," has served as California's Labor Secretary since 2019.

Previously, Su served as the state's labor commissioner. She also co-founded the group Sweatshop Watch.

"Thinking about Julie Su as Secretary of Labor is almost a physical sense of relief," one source in the labor movement told Business Insider.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Labor organizers in Southern California are pushing President-elect Joe Biden to pick a progressive, hometown hero for Labor Secretary, arguing that the state's top labor official — an anti-sweatshop campaigner dubbed the "bane of the deadbeat employer" — is supremely qualified to protect workers' rights during the pandemic.


Julie Su has served in statewide office since 2011, when former Gov. Jerry Brown picked her to lead the state's enforcement of labor laws. Before that, at the age of 26, she represented dozens of undocumented Thai workers who were effectively enslaved at a garment factory outside Los Angeles, a landmark case that prompted federal and state efforts to combat human trafficking; that work was cited by the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded her its "genius" award in 2001.

As labor commissioner, Su turned the state's under-resourced team of worker advocates into "what could be the most aggressive and effective state labor law enforcement division in the country," according to a 2013 report from In These Times, a progressive magazine.

Under Su's reign, California sought the largest-ever judgment against an employer in state history, assessing almost $12 million in citations against a construction company. "[E]mployers who steal from workers will end up paying for it," she said at the time.

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom promoted her to Secretary of Labor, a role that has seen her oversee worker safety and unemployment checks amid a pandemic and recession — experience her advocates believe has well prepared her to do the same on a larger scale.

"Workers, especially workers of color, are hurting across the country," Marissa Nuncio, director of the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles, told Business Insider. "They need and deserve someone with a demonstrated record of leadership and expertise in fighting for working individuals and families, and Julie's record is exemplary."

 Julie Su received a 2001 "genius" grant from the MacAuthur Foundation for her efforts to protect undocumented immigrant workers. 

Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

As Bloomberg Law reported last week, Su's odds for a cabinet pick have been aided by a split in union support among contenders who are better known on the national stage, such as US Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Andy Levin. "I think she's very, very viable," Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera, a supporter, told Bloomberg. "She's really been a warrior for us."

But, the outlet noted, a lack of public support from organized labor has also been one factor hindering Su's candidacy.

A letter sent to the president-elect on Sunday aims to address that gap.

"It is a critical time for women's leadership and we need a strong woman as US Secretary of Labor, especially a woman of color who understand what it's like to grow up in an immigrant household," states the letter signed by Dolores Huerta, the famed farm worker organizer, and the leaders of groups such as the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.

"She fully enforced the rights of farm workers, janitors, and domestic workers," the letter says. "In short, Su has been at the forefront of some of the most innovative policies and enforcement strategies in our state's history.

A senior staffer at a national labor organization, requesting anonymity to speak freely, said a Su cabinet post would be seen as a big win for the labor movement.

"Thinking about Julie Su as Secretary of Labor is almost a physical sense of relief," the source told Business Insider. She's spent years leading enforcement in the world's fifth-largest economy and before that fought for workers' rights as an activist exposing labor conditions in the garment industry.

"She is widely respected as a labor rights and civil rights attorney, so she truly 'speaks the language' of workers' issues," the source said, noting she is also fluent in both Spanish and Mandarin.

Su "will walk in that door fully capable, ready to work, and without any serious shadows of past transactional relationships or controversies," they added.

Sweatshop Secrets of Success

You know its serious when its reported in Business Week. And while this is about American companies in China lets not forget that we have our own sweatshop companies here in Canada investing in Nicaragua and Haiti. Like Gilden Active Wear. They too use third party codes of conduct.


For more than a decade, major American retailers and name brands have answered accusations that they exploit "sweatshop" labor with elaborate codes of conduct and on-site monitoring. But in China many factories have just gotten better at concealing abuses. Internal industry documents reviewed by BusinessWeek reveal that numerous Chinese factories keep double sets of books to fool auditors and distribute scripts for employees to recite if they are questioned. And a new breed of Chinese consultant has sprung up to assist companies like Beifa in evading audits. "Tutoring and helping factories deal with audits has become an industry in China," says Tang, 34, who recently left Beifa of his own volition to start a Web site for workers.

Some American companies now concede that the cheating is far more pervasive than they had imagined. "We've come to realize that, while monitoring is crucial to measuring the performance of our suppliers, it doesn't per se lead to sustainable improvements," says Hannah Jones, Nike Inc.'s (NKE ) vice-president for corporate responsibility. "We still have the same core problems."

This raises disturbing questions. Guarantees by multi-nationals that offshore suppliers are meeting widely accepted codes of conduct have been important to maintaining political support in the U.S. for growing trade ties with China, especially in the wake of protests by unions and antiglobalization activists. "For many retailers, audits are a way of covering themselves," says Auret van Heerden, chief executive of the Fair Labor Assn., a coalition of 20 apparel and sporting goods makers and retailers, including Nike, Adidas Group, Eddie Bauer, and Nordstrom (JWN ). But can corporations successfully impose Western labor standards on a nation that lacks real unions and a meaningful rule of law?

See:

China Needs Free Unions

Independent Unions In China

Sweatshops


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
labour, labor, unions, Nike, Wal-Mart, sweat-shops, labour-abuse, offshoring, contracting-out, China,
Canada, capitalism
GIL, Gilden, GildenActiveWear, shirts,

Freed Taiwan activist recounts 'fascist circus' of Chinese court


Lee Ming-che spent more than four years in a Chinese prison under national security laws, saying authorities there operated 'a total slavery sweatshop'

 (AFP/Sam Yeh)
Sam YehMore

Amber WANG
Tue, May 10, 2022

A Taiwanese democracy activist, jailed in China for five years, on Tuesday described the court proceedings as a "fascist circus" and said he was told he might be released if he admitted to bei
Lee said he bought books and supplies and donated money to some Chinese political prisoners and their families, as well as visiting them on the mainland.

"My actions are very normal in Taiwan or any democratic society... I didn't expect China would view my humanitarian acts as grossly as subverting state power," he said.

He was sent to Chishan Prison in Hunan province where Lee said he initially had to work 11 to 12 hours daily all year round, except for a four-day lunar new year break.

Food often smelt "rotten" when it cooled and he was initially without hot water during Hunan's bitter winters.

"Chishan is like a big factory... It's a total slavery sweatshop," Lee said, adding the prison produces gloves, shoes, bags and backpacks.

China's prisons have long deployed forced labour programmes for inmates, something that has received increased international scrutiny following the construction of a vast detention system in western Xinjiang province.

Lee was accompanied Tuesday by his wife Lee Ching-yu who campaigned hard for her husband's release.

Lee said he believed that campaign kept public focus on his case and helped improve his treatment.

Asked if he had anything to say to the Chinese government, Lee replied with a pro-independence slogan in Taiwan: "Taiwan, China, one country on each side".

China claims self-ruled democratic Taiwan as its own and vows to seize it one day, by force if necessary.

Beijing has ramped up pressure on Taiwan since President Tsai Ing-wen came to power on the island in 2016, as she views Taiwan as an "already independent" sovereign nation and not part of Chinese territory.

aw/jta/aha/reb

'I'm Asking You To Help': Amazon Employee Describes 'Sheer Brutality' of Work to Senators

"Amazon's high-tech sweatshop caused me to develop plantar fasciitis... I take what little time I have to run to the bathroom just to cry."


Workers pack and ship customer orders at the 750,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center on August 1, 2017 in Romeoville, Illinois.

(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

JESSICA CORBETT

COMMONDREAMS

December 7, 2021

"I'm looking to you to stand up to corporations like Amazon and protect us."

"We are living in a country where machines are getting better treatment than people."

That was Courtenay Brown's message to U.S. senators during a subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. The Newark, New Jersey resident and Navy veteran has worked at an Amazon fulfillment center for more than three years.

Brown—also a leader at United for Respect, a movement of Amazon and Walmart workers fighting for better labor conditions—said in her "powerful" and "compelling" testimony that she wanted to "raise the alarm about Amazon's business model, its threat to working people, and its threat to our economy."

As a process guide at an Amazon facility in Avenel, New Jersey, Brown sorts groceries for delivery, work she described as "physically and mentally exhausting," before noting that "on top of that, we are monitored every single second as we scan items."

According to Brown:

So pausing even to wipe the sweat off our forehead can lead to a write-up as managers monitor our locations and times we spend doing work. If we fall behind in any way during our 12-hour shift, we risk being disciplined. We are pushed to our limit to the point where we can’t even take regular bathroom breaks. Often we literally have to run to and from the bathroom in under two minutes so we don't get in trouble. The constant pressure and surveillance is one reason why Amazon has twice the level of injuries and turnover compared to similar employers.

Taking aim at Amazon's founder and former CEO—who competes with Telsa's Elon Musk for the title of the world's richest person—Brown detailed her difficulties with the e-commerce giant's bereavement policy in the wake of her mother's death, explaining that she had to take "a month of unpaid time off, while Jeff Bezos made $75 billion last year thanks to me and my coworkers."

"Amazon's multibillion-dollar wealth is made possible by offering one- and two-day delivery," she said, "and the corporation has achieved this speed and scale through sheer brutality—watching, timing, and punishing associates like me and my coworkers for not working fast enough and not allowing associates to take time off to adequately recover, rest, and prevent burnout."

"We are living in a country where machines are getting better treatment than people," she asserted. "The machines at my facility undergo routine maintenance checks to ensure they don't burn out. Meanwhile, research has shown that workplace injury rates are higher at Amazon facilities with more robotic and automated technology."

"Amazon's high-tech sweatshop caused me to develop plantar fasciitis—a debilitating pain in my heel—because I'm having to stand up for long periods of time at work with little to no rest. The burning sensation around my heels is so painful that I take what little time I have to run to the bathroom just to cry," Brown continued, noting that one time she begged doctors to keep her at the emergency room longer because she had to return to work.

The Amazon worker accused the company of setting up facilities "in Black and Brown communities desperate for work" and pointed out that Bezos recently told shareholders he plans to use more automated control of warehouse workers—or what she called "dehumanizing tactics designed to break our bodies."

Warning members of the Senate Finance Committee's panel on fiscal responsibility and economic growth that "Amazon has built an empire on our backs, and now other employers, like Walmart, are racing to copy" its model, Brown implored them to take action.

"I'm asking you to help me put an end to inhumane, exploitative processes that leave America's workers injured, exhausted, and mentally battered each day," she said.

Brown's testimony came during a wide-ranging hearing entitled "Promoting Competition, Growth, and Privacy Protection in the Technology Sector." The subcommittee's chair, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), asked Brown how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted logistical operations.

Brown also shared her experience working under Amazon's surveillance with The Washington Post last week.

"They basically can see everything you do, and it's all to their benefit," the 31-year-old said. "They don't value you as a human being. It's demeaning."

In an emailed statement to the Post, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel framed the employee monitoring as beneficial to not only the company but also its workers.

"Like any business, we use technology to maintain a level of security within our operations to help keep our employees, buildings, and inventory safe—it would be irresponsible if we didn't do so," Nantel said. "It's also important to note that while the technology helps keep our employees safe, it also allows them to be more efficient in their jobs."

The newspaper noted that some workers don't agree with Nantel's framing—such as Chris Smalls, a former employee at an Amazon facility in Staten Island who is leading a unionization effort there.

"It's one of the big reasons people want to unionize," Smalls said of the monitoring policies. "Who wants to be surveilled all day? It's not prison. It's work."

Staten Island isn't the only place where Amazon employees are fighting for a union. A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board determined last week that following allegations of unlawful interference by the company in an unsuccessful April union election, workers at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama will get to vote again.

The Alabama decision came on Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, and followed a Black Friday that saw Amazon workers walk out of facilities around the world to demand better working conditions.

Amazon's treatment of its workers and opposition to unionization efforts have fueled demands for the Senate to pass the House-approved Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

'The Box' gets inside Mexican sweatshop at Venice film festival

Issued on: 06/09/2021 - 

'How do you put a camera inside a real maquiladora?' said Vigas.

 'It's nearly impossible.'

 Filippo MONTEFORTE AFP

Venice (AFP)

Getting access to a "maquiladora", one of the hundreds of factories that line Mexico's border with the United States, was the biggest challenge of shooting Lorenzo Vigas' latest film at Venice, the director said Monday.

"The Box" is in competition for the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, to be announced on Saturday.

It was shot in Chihuahua, the site of hundreds of foreign-owned factories assembling cheap goods and apparel for the United States just across the border, and one of Mexico's most violence-plagued states.

The cheap labour that fuels the maquiladoras has made Mexico a major exporter, but at the cost of its poor and uneducated workers, many of whom work in sweatshop conditions for rock-bottom wages.

"How do you put a camera inside a real maquiladora? It's nearly impossible," the Venezuelan director, who lives in Mexico, told journalists Monday.

"They're very jealous of not exposing their production line," said Vigas, who in 2015 became the first Latin American to win Venice's prestigious Golden Lion with his first feature, "From Afar".

"They're very jealous of not exposing the condition of their workers -- so how do you shoot a film?"

The production team spent nearly a year trying to find a maquiladora that would allow the crew to shoot inside, before finally getting the green light from a company that was ready to close for bankruptcy.

"We didn't get any roadmap from people who had done this before -- because nobody was allowed before to do this," said one of the film's producers, Jorge Hernandez Aldana.

- Missing women -

The film tells the story of a 13-year-old boy (first-time actor Hatzín Navarrete), who travels halfway across Mexico to recover the remains of his father, whose body has been found in a mass grave.

On the way, he hooks up with a man, played by Hernan Mendoza, who supplies workers for the maquiladoras. He signs up poor people in remote villages with a pitch that they must protect Mexican jobs from Chinese competition.

When we finally see inside the jeans assembly factory where the workers are taken, in the middle of a bleak, unforgiving desert, we immediately wish they could turn back -- it's loud, hot, and the pace is non-stop.

Besides its central theme of replacing absent fathers, "The Box" touches on the brutal reality of thousands of women there -- many of them maquiladora workers. Since the 1990s hundreds have been abducted, either vanishing entirely or their bodies turning up discarded or buried in the desert.

Tarantino regular Tim Roth stars in another film in competition, 'Sundown', by Mexico's Michel Franco

 Filippo MONTEFORTE AFP

"More than 20,000 women in the north of Mexico have disappeared," said Vigas. "Nobody knows why."

More than 73,000 people in Mexico are missing, the government said in 2020, a quarter of them female.

Another Latin American film in competition is "Sundown" from Mexico's Michel Franco. His "New Order" with its searing indictment of the gap between rich and poor in Mexico, won Venice's Silver Lion last year.

"Sundown" stars Tim Roth as a man escaping his obligations at a time of family crisis to hang out on an Acapulco beach.

But, just as in Vigas's film, an undercurrent of social tension pervades the quiet drama, keeping the viewer on edge -- and even a tranquil beach holiday in Mexico is not enough to keep violence at bay.

© 2021 AFP

IS THERE REALLY A PETITE BOURGEOISIE

Originally posted July 5, on Marxism-Leninism Today.
Zoltan ZigedyAugust 4, 2016
https://www.liberationnews.org/really-petty-bourgeoisie/

As a tool of social analysis, the concept of class fell into disfavor. Academics scoff at it as a crude, outdated remnant of a discredited Marxist tradition. Politicians scorn it as an affront to the social homogeneity of modern advanced democracies.

But the rising awareness of economic inequality and its growth in the US has recently brought the idea back into focus, though a decidedly cloudy focus.

The Occupy Movement, its counterparts and spin-offs, generated a simplistic picture of social class based upon an arbitrary, yet compelling division of income and wealth. The idea of the “1%” is a welcome radical slogan, but of little use in understanding the dynamics of various social groups and the relative stability of a social system operating against the interests of the 99%.

Others have contrived a structure that places a vast “middle class” at the center of US society with the decadently rich and the poor at the margins. This quasi-class structure is the preferred depiction of social democratic trade union leaders and politicians who rail against the “shrinkage” of the middle class while evading an indictment of corporations or capitalism. This construction is both misleading and politically impotent.

I cite this perspective in a recent post: Modern liberals have… [created] …an artificial class— the “middle class”— that purports to include hospital workers, food service workers, and sweatshop workers in the same class with doctors, lawyers, and financial managers. For those left out of this broad, meaningless class, the Democratic Party offers the fruits of volunteerism and charitable giving as expressed in its 2012 platform.

Unlike the Occupy movement’s hazy recognition of class antagonism, liberals see social harmony disrupted by unchecked greed. For them, the expansive “middle class” is a happy product of capitalism when properly regulated.

The Marxist Alternative

Like the Occupy movement, Marxists see a class divide roughly based on wealth and income. But they probe deeper for the cause of that divide, locating the cause in social relations unique to capitalism. Those social relations turn on a person’s relationship to the instruments essential to the creation of society’s wealth. Those who possess (own) those instruments form a social class (the bourgeoisie, capitalist class) that, not coincidentally, acquires a greater share of society’s wealth.

Those who own little or none of the instruments of production must hire themselves out to the owners of those instruments in order to find a place in the economic system. They exchange their labor for an income. But because they depend upon this exchange for their continued existence, the owners of the means of production maintain an advantage over them. Marx calls those who are dependent “the proletariat” (the working class); he calls the relationship of dependency “exploitation.”

Thus, capitalist society divides itself into two classes based upon a social/legal relation to the material and immaterial means of creating wealth: those who control (own) those means fall into the capitalist class; those who add their labor to the means of production constitute the working class.

Marx’s neat class divide calls for some refinement: he recognized that there were penumbra on the two major classes, lesser groups with ambiguous features. At the margin of the working class are déclassé workers who often survive by extra-legal means or as parasites on other workers. Marx dubbed this group the lumpen-proletariat.

But below the principal owners of the most powerful economic entities— the national and multinational corporations, in our era— is a group of small business owners, merchants, managers, consultants, intellectuals, and professionals who identify and share many interests with the bourgeoisie. Marx labeled this group the petty bourgeoisie or petite-bourgeoisie. Though the group’s relations to the means of production (and wealth) may be tenuous, those populating this group nonetheless tend to share values with the bourgeois class. The petty bourgeois world view is essentially that of the very wealthy and powerful.

The Petty Bourgeoisie and Today’s Politics

A recent (June, 2016) study by Stephen Rose of the Urban Institute gives credence to the Marxist class analysis and provides a key to both the resilience of capitalist domination and the current political crisis. Ross endeavoured to track the growth of the US “upper middle class” (UMC), an economic category assigned a benign name, but not reflective of a similarly benign role. While Rose chooses to define the UMC in terms of income— a slippery approach to class— his category roughly captures the class dimensions of the Marxist concept of the petty bourgeoisie. Rose’s income-filters select those who persistently identify with the bourgeoisie (Rose’s top .1-1.8% of incomes) because of their economic status.

His findings show a remarkable increase in the size of the UMC from 12.9% of the population in 1979 to 29.4% in 2014! In other words, the mass base potentially supporting the ideology and values of the so-called 1% more than doubled in size in 35 years.

Even more striking, the rich and the upper middle class accounted for 30% of all income in 1979. By 2014, their share grew to 63.1% of all income, demonstrating the enormous growth in resources available to those with a vested interest in capitalism and the status quo.

Thus, as 70% of the population— the working class and the poor— experienced greater and greater inequality, rising poverty and insecurity, intensifying racism, unemployment, and growing debt, the capitalist class and its junior partners grew in size, wealth, and influence. At the same time, the class divide grew wider.

What Does the Class Analysis Reveal?

The relative growth and strength of the petty bourgeoisie offers a powerful ally with the capitalist class before an increasingly demoralized, poorly led, and fragmented majority. As the capitalist/petty bourgeois coalition became more powerful over the last 35 years, union militancy declined, electoral cynicism grew, and radical opposition faded, further denying the majority its place in the democratic process and the defense of its interests.

Clearly, the simplistic class analysis of the 1% versus the 99% fails to grasp the implications of this development. It offers no explanation of the inability of the 99% to simply overpower the will of the 1%. And it fails to reveal the pitfalls of petty bourgeois leadership.

Likewise, the social democratic theory of a thriving, homogenous “middle class” favors class collaboration with a powerful, rapacious coalition of the rich and their bedfellows. This road, too, is a dead end.

When one brings the Marxist analysis to bear on the Democratic Party, it is possible to understand the shift to the New Democrats that found full expression in the Clinton and Obama administrations. I wrote in May: …the social base of the Democratic Party shifted, in the post-Watergate era, away from poor and working class voters, its traditional base through most of the twentieth century, toward professionals and middle strata in urban centers and suburban bedroom communities.

This observation finds an empirical foundation in the data available with the June release of the Rose study; the correlation of the shift and the emergent power of the petty bourgeoisie is no accident. The unparalleled growth of the petty bourgeoisie in size, resources, and voting power becomes a target for the two US parties. In the case of the Democrats, with their traditional link to labor and minorities guaranteed by ossified leaders, upper-income, “liberal” professionals have come to play a decisive role.

The traditional New Deal agenda offered again and again as a tease for workers, Blacks, Latinos, and the poor has been discarded for the social issues near and dear to the petty bourgeoisie. Redistribution, as a sop to the old coalition, gave way to “A rising tide lifts all boats,” the New Democrat metaphor for Reagan’s “trickle down” economics. Gun control, sexual politics, lifestyle issues replace bread and butter.

The contest between the two parties became a contest for the votes, resources, and agenda of the upper income 30%. The remaining 70% were fed an unappetizing gruel of empty promises and neglect.

Of course the US two parties have always been bourgeois parties in the sense that they are, in the end, owned by the rich and powerful and are committed to preserving the existing economic and social relations. However, the Democratic Party, for most of the twentieth century, competed for the loyalty of workers and minorities, conceding small reforms to maintain that coalition. With the wedding of labor unions and civil rights organizations to the Democrats, that deference is no longer necessary. With the ascendency of the petty bourgeoisie, a new agenda has emerged— one decidedly negligent of the interests of the working class and its allies.

It is likely that a similar expansion of the size and influence of the petty bourgeoisie accounts for the devolution of New Labour in the UK, the Socialists-in-name-only in France, and of other popular parties in Europe.

Sanders, Trump, and Brexit

This season of political shock and awe leaves many elites and servile pundits with soiled underwear; they are scrambling to respond to the rejection of the script carefully prepared for the electorate. Sanders was not supposed to seriously challenge the trusted Democratic Party corporate candidate; Trump was supposed to be a sideshow to the anointing of another trusted corporate candidate for the Republican Party; and in the UK, citizens were supposed to follow their “betters” and vote for the continuation of a state of affairs that served only the interests of the privileged.

In all three cases, voters showed an unexpected and unprecedented refusal to be herded like sheep toward preordained outcomes. Voters demonstrated anger and independence. And their anger was directed at political institutions, parties, and politicians that have failed them. The outrage marks the first stages of a rejection of political options that take the majority of the people for granted and ignore or deflect their interests. In a real sense, the class dynamics outlined above have led to a crisis of legitimacy in both the US and the EU. In the short run, it may be contained. But. going forward, the political crisis will only deepen.

Rape Civilization

Elliot Sperber

 December 22, 2025

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

The Rape of the Sabine Women, Nicholas Poussin (1635), Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Though our political, socio-economic world operates according to the dictates of rapacity, many continue to deny the existence of rape culture; a denial (itself a technique of rape culture) as deeply rooted in delusion as the denial of the general ecological catastrophe, from which rape culture is inextricable.

This violence is so pervasive, so much the norm, that we too often fail to perceive it at all. It goes without saying, and without seeing. Given not just its ubiquity, then, but its intrinsicality to capture, appropriation, extraction, and exploitation (the bases of patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism), it would not be inaccurate to describe ours as a veritable rape civilization.

Present from the beginning, we find it throughout antiquity in the mythic rapes of Zeus, Poseidon, Heracles and other gods and ancient heroes, as well as in the quasi-historic rapes of, among others, the Sabine Women (expressions of not just physical desires and insecurities but of deeper desires for order and stability, for control of the anxiety-inducing mysterium – leading quickly enough to anesthetizing dogmas and hierarchies).

We encounter this again and again, from the conquests, slavery, and rape of ancient times to modern imperialism’s rape of the globe, to the present-day rapist-in-chief plotting the rape of Venezuela in order, in no small part, to distract from the epic rapes of Epstein‘s rape networks. From the micro street corner level to the macro-level plantation, prison or sweatshop, to the halls of academia, Hollywood, and let’s not forget the Catholic Church (just one of the many rape cultures comprising this rape civilization), rape is ubiquitous. Not just the exception, it’s the rule. And not only is it the rule, it’s a classic technique of rule. So ubiquitous is it that even the famed critic of coercive power, Noam Chomsky, is caught up in this coercive, violent order.

One may point out that although the violence of rape (normalized in the practices and values of rape civilization) is a necessary aspect of this age of destruction, referred to sometimes as the Anthropocene, rape is hardly unique to anthropos/human beings. Male orangutans in particular are known to rape female orangutans. Yet this primatological tendency can not excuse rape, as though humanity is helplessly determined by nature to brutality and barbarism. Our humanity, where it arises, is inimical to such brutality. But we are not discussing nature so much as rape civilization, which is comprised and perpetuated by ideology, laws, and institutions; entities which, as history attests, change and so can be changed. As our technologies (largely the technologies of rape civilization) grow more and more powerful, however, they lead overwhelmingly to the aggrandizement of rape civilization, brutalizing us all. Which way, then, is the exit, the exodus (or the epoché)?

Will Moses emerge from the desert, ascend the mountain and add Thou Shall Not Rape to the commandments? Don’t count on it; especially since the Bible itself, and the hierarchical religions emanating from it, is one of the central pillars of Rape Civilization. Just look at Moses authorizing the mass rape of hundreds of young Midianite girls. It’s not hard to imagine him feeling right at home at one of those Epstein mass rape events described so politely in the Rape Civilization Press as parties.

More than commandments, though, themselves entangled in relations of force and domination, we need to overcome Rape Civilization itself. Fortunately, millions of people across the planet are every day doing that, working on developing new ways of living together that are based instead on mutual aid and respect – the real clash of civilizations.

Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and adjunct professor. He lives in New York City and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com and on twitter @elliot_sperber

 

Frauenkultur.co.ukfrauenkultur.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Against-Our-Will.pdf

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape - Frauenkultur

... Susan Brownmiller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a ...