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Today, thanks to a slew of questionable concessions offered by the local government to global investors, Gurgaon is on the addresses of some the world's best-known names in garments, automobiles, and information technology (IT).

Earnest shareholder resolutions presented at company annual general meetings on everything from human rights to executive compensation are routinely shot down in flames. But shareholder resolutions may have an effect, even in defeat.

This month, an important event is taking place that should change the lives of workers on Saipan, an island in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and impact the way we address issues of sweatshop throughout the world.

Last December, overwhelmed by debt and the countrys economic chaos, the Brukman brothers left their high-end suit factory in Buenos Aires and never returned. They also left more than 100 employees awaiting back pay.

In a twist of commercial fate, metal chunks from the World Trade Center are being melted down and recycled at a Malaysian factory -- an hour's drive from a spot where some of the Sept. 11 hijackers plotted. At the huge mill in Banting, outside Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur, shredded pieces of the fallen twin towers are among scrap headed for furnaces to be rolled into coils of flat steel used to make automobile panels and pipe, among other products.

Here is a copy of the lawsuit filed by Marc Kasky against Nike, Inc. alleging labor abuses in its overseas manufacturing operations and seeking compensation to California consumers under state laws against false advertising and unfair business practices.

Gore's top donors for the 2000 presidential campaign (donation in parenthesis).

Last fall, a reporter from The Times asked me about the relationship between Crenshaw High School boys' basketball program and Nike in terms of what the corporations donates to the basketball players. To my knowledge as the principal, I told him, the company gave each member of the boys' team a pair of tennis shoes, just as Karl Kani, a smaller African American ownedbusiness, gave shoes to members of the girls' team.

In April this year, with much fanfare, US President Bill Clinton announced the introduction of a new ''No Sweatshop'' Code of Conduct for US Apparel and Footwear companies. The code is voluntary, but high profile companies like Nike Inc., Reebok International Ltd. and Liz Claiborne Inc. were among the ten initial signatories. These companies agreed that a set of minimum standards for working conditions in factories would be adhered to in the production of their goods -- wherever that production occurs.

During a two-week period in September 1996, U.S. Department of Labor Officials travelled to six countries -- the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India and the Philippines -- as part of a major study of codes of conduct in the garment industry. The outcome was a report, The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct: A Solution to the International Child Labor Problem? (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 1996).

The Labor Department has sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., alleging hiring discrimination against hundreds of women who sought jobs at one of its plants in Virginia in the late 1990s.

Anti-sweatshop pressure groups are protesting against sporting goods manufacturer, Adidas, being one of the major sponsors of Euro 2000, the European Football Championship that kicks off here Saturday.

The best known, most prestigious, and largest keiretsu, is the Mitsubishi Group of companies. Given the size and reach of its diverse activities, and due to the fact that it is more heavily focused in polluting industrial sectors than other keiretsu, the Mitsubishi Group may well be the single most environmentally destructive corporate force on Earth.

For women working in Mexican assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, insisting on their legal rights takes what are colloquially referred to as cojones. It indicates that Mexico's low wage feminine labor force may not be as docile as foreign employers would like to believe. It also is a harbinger of an incipient movement inside Mexico's expanding export-processing sector.

Marc Kasky, a self-described environmentalist, viewed the Ernst and Young audit as an opportunity. Enlisting the support of San Francisco attorney Alan Caplan, he filed a suit against Nike in April of 1998. The suit claims that Nike's assertions about the labor conditions in its Asia factories amounted to false advertising.

Gonzalez was one of two workers invited Monday to recount conditions at two Nicaraguan factories that human rights, religious and labor groups claim supply Kohl's Department Stores with cheap garments.

Al Gore has raised more money than any other Democratic presidential candidate in history. But his pandering to rich and powerful comes at a cost to the public.