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Student activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have split with university administrators on how to prevent abuse of workers in factories that make Badger-licensed clothing. The students say Chancellor David Ward is ignoring their concerns.
This was Sunday, the day before the start of the three-day World Economic Forum in Melbourne, the same type of meeting that sparked riots in Seattle last year. The two players just happened to pass one of the demonstrations at a park.
Maquiladora workers voice constant fears about their safety on the job. In the electronics industry alone, workers are exposed to a variety of substances which include xylene, trichloroethylene, zinc and lead oxides, and nitric acid. Not only electronics assembly but other industries as well expose workers to the materials used in thinners, paints, solvents, resins, solders, dyes, flux, and acetone. Exposure to such substances without proper protection can cause cancer, reproductive problems, skin diseases, vision problems, respiratory impairments, gastrointestinal and nervous disorders, and headaches and fatigue.
This year's cause celebre was the campaign to end the use of sweatshop labor by the $2.5-billion collegiate apparel industry. Undergraduates nationwide demanded their colleges quit the Fair Labor Association (FLA) -- an industry-backed watchdog that opponents liken to a fox guarding the hen house -- and join the Worker Rights Consortium. Founded by students, academics, and labor unions last October, the WRC promises strict workplace oversight, free from industry influence.
An arm of the Pentagon has come under fire for procuring large quantities of apparel from a Nicaraguan factory that labor rights groups say is a sweatshop and that the United States trade representative has voiced serious concerns about.
The Defense Department and five companies, including Sharper Image Corp. and Kohl's Corp., sell goods produced at factories in Asia and Central America that exploit workers, a labor rights group claimed.
As a student at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University in the 1960s, Judith Rodin was caught up in the social activism of the era. Last week, Penn's president found the tables turned as she negotiated with students who spent the entire week staging a sit-in in her outer office.
They sound like stories from another time. But a survey of the working poor in Chicago and surrounding suburbs has found otherwise. More than a third of the 800 workers questioned many of them immigrants described conditions in factories, restaurants and other workplaces that the federal government would deem ''sweatshops.''
Sneaker maker Converse Inc., best known for its basketball and ''Chuck Taylor'' brand shoes, is closing three North American production plants and shifting production to Asia as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
Workers at a factory in American Samoa that made apparel for the J. C. Penney Company and other retailers were often beaten and were provided food so inadequate that some were ''walking skeletons,'' a Labor Department investigation has found.
MEXICO CITY -- The GOP's vice-presidential hopeful Dick Cheney once claimed that it was a damned shame the ''good lord'' didn't put the earth's most abundant oil reserves in democratic countries.
From farms and automotive plants on the outskirts of Mexico City to the industrial heartland of Monterrey and the wineries and electronics firms in Tijuana and Guadalajara, signs are that this nation's recession is becoming more entrenched.
U.S. corporate CEO salaries rose 16 percent in 2012, according to research firm Equilar. Average daily CEO pay is now greater than that of the average annual worker salary. Top salary: Larry Ellison of Oracle - over $96 million. Top exit bonus: James Mulva of ConocoPhillips - $156 million.
Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, the global ad agency, was defeated in his attempt to get shareholders to approve his $20 million (£13 million) a year salary. His was at least the 12th in a series of shareholder revolts against excessive compensation this spring.
Protests at the 2012 annual general meetings of companies may rank as the most diverse, widespread and sizeable in history. They have been bolstered not just by Occupy activists outside but also by institutional investors inside who have started a "shareholder spring" against excessive CEO pay.
Protestors have rallied this week outside annual meetings of Barclays bank in London, Citibank in Dallas, Credit Suisse in Zurich and Wells Fargo in San Francisco. A surprising number of shareholders have rallied to their side to vote down excessive executive compensation, in an unexpected victory for the Occupy movement.
Three Barclays bankers made more than $15 million in 2011 salary packages, with the CEO making $28 million. The numbers were revealed under a pact made by the banking sector with the UK government, under Project Merlin, sparking outrage.
The top 40 highest-earning hedge fund managers took home a combined $13.2 billion, according to a Forbes magazine survey. The top 10 hedge fund managers made more than $200 million each, while the lowest earning managers made $40 million each.
Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street's pay culture.