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Labor rights groups long have documented low pay and strict management in Chinese factories. But as Western firms increasingly move manufacturing to China to cut costs and raise profits, activists are adopting a strategy of publicizing conditions at globally recognized companies including Foxconn, which supplies dozens of international brands such as Apple Inc. from its Shenzhen facilities.

A call from a South African trade unionist for national supermarket chains to stop importing avocado from Israel could ultimately lead to the banning of all imports from the Jewish state, if unions and human rights activists have their way.

Hundreds of workers yesterday held a protest in Pingshan (Shenzhen) outside DeCoro, an Italian sofa company, accusing supervisors of severely beating three employees who dared to ask for respect of the minimum wage. In November 2005 disputes had already taken place between the employees and the company with mutual accusations of violence made.

The pouty Bratz dolls so popular as Christmas presents are made at a factory in southern China where workers are obliged to toil up to 94 hours a week, among other violations, a labor rights group said in a report released Friday.

LOS ANGELES -- It's all over but the spinning. Outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the LAPD took snap shots if each other in the protest area where earlier in the week they clubbed and tear gassed demonstrators, as well as a few convention-goers and members of the media.

A West Hartford tool manufacturing plant has been cited for widespread safety and health hazards for the third time in six years by the Hartford office of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency said Tuesday.

In Liberia, a war-ravaged country with 80 percent unemployment, almost any job is a good one. But Firestone is increasingly under fire from human-rights advocates here and in the United States who say conditions on the 80-year-old plantation in Harbel - Firestone's single-biggest source of raw material for its U.S. manufacturing operations - are scandalous.

Just beyond the city limits, a patch of land where an auto factory is planned amid a sprawl of potato fields and rice paddies has become a battleground for the world's longest-running democratically elected Communist government.

Despite Ikea's current claims, low prices always incur a high social cost. Between 1994 and 1997 three documentaries screened by German and Swedish television accused the firm of using child labor under degrading conditions in Pakistan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines

Around 800 Thai lingerie workers waved bras and placards to defy martial law and demonstrate in front of the US embassy on Sunday, demanding the Americans investigate the closure of an underwear factory.

Former Coca-Cola workers blocked access to all Coca-Cola Co. (KO) bottling plants in Venezuela and picketed administrative offices Monday, demanding a solution to a long-running dispute over unpaid severance.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning yesterday said Alcoa would not be allowed to construct its controversial aluminium smelter in Chatham if it does not commit to developing downstream aluminium industries in Trinidad and Tobago.

Since Dick Cheney became a candidate for Vice President, many journalists have focused on his mixed financial record as CEO of Halliburton, and his enormous retirement package. Few have investigated Dick Cheney's role in influencing foreign policy for the benefit of the company.

A CONFRONTATION involving Chatham residents protesting the construction of ALCOA's multi-million dollar smelter plant and Alcoa officials and police threatened to become violent yesterday, when a policeman held one of the protesters at gunpoint.

Dana Corp. creditors said the company's latest plan to reward six top executives would allow them to reap a "windfall" if they were to get Dana to cut workers' retirement benefits.