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Thursday, June 05, 2014
Talk Poverty, a project of Center for
American Progress, runs great read on the Fair Food
Program…
Moyers & Company also picks up article analyzing worker-led approach
that drives success of CIW’s Fair Food Program…
Over the past generation, Corporate Social Responsibility programs (a field known by the acronym “CSR”) – based on a mix of corporate-drafted vendor codes of conduct, voluntary compliance, and periodic auditing – have been embraced and promoted by large corporations looking to blunt increasing public scrutiny of inhumane labor conditions in their suppliers’ operations. Yet today, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on CSR initiatives around the globe, non-compliance with basic labor and human rights standards is still rampant, and in many industries the norm.
Driven by the persistence of humiliating, dangerous, and exploitative conditions in workplaces from the fields of Florida to the sweatshops of Bangladesh, workers themselves have begun to redefine the terms of social responsibility. This new approach posits a way forward in which independent worker organizations take a leading role in the drafting of new labor standards, and in the monitoring and enforcement of those standards, empowered by the purchasing power of corporate buyers that support the new standards through binding agreements with the worker organizations. This worker-led model of social responsibility — or “WSR,” to coin a term — differs from the traditional CSR approach on several levels, from its underlying objectives (CSR is driven by the imperative to prevent public relations crises, while the fundamental goal of WSR is to eliminate the underlying human rights violations that provoke those public relations crises) to its governance (corporations exercise unilateral control in the case of CSR, while workers play a leading role, in partnership with corporations and suppliers, in the case of WSR).
The few WSR initiatives that exist today are new and largely still in the developmental stage. But where the WSR approach has had an opportunity to be tested, as it has in the Florida tomato industry over the past four years through the CIW’s Fair Food Program (FFP), the results have been not just encouraging, but dramatic. Talk Poverty, a project of the Center for American Progress, asked the CIW to discuss the worker-driven approach behind the FFP’s success and the results it has achieved in its first three years of operation, which we did in a short article published last week and also picked up in Bill Moyers’ widely read site, Moyers & Company.
Here’s an excerpt from the piece, but be sure to read the article in its entirety:
Over the past generation, Corporate Social Responsibility programs (a field known by the acronym “CSR”) – based on a mix of corporate-drafted vendor codes of conduct, voluntary compliance, and periodic auditing – have been embraced and promoted by large corporations looking to blunt increasing public scrutiny of inhumane labor conditions in their suppliers’ operations. Yet today, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on CSR initiatives around the globe, non-compliance with basic labor and human rights standards is still rampant, and in many industries the norm.
Driven by the persistence of humiliating, dangerous, and exploitative conditions in workplaces from the fields of Florida to the sweatshops of Bangladesh, workers themselves have begun to redefine the terms of social responsibility. This new approach posits a way forward in which independent worker organizations take a leading role in the drafting of new labor standards, and in the monitoring and enforcement of those standards, empowered by the purchasing power of corporate buyers that support the new standards through binding agreements with the worker organizations. This worker-led model of social responsibility — or “WSR,” to coin a term — differs from the traditional CSR approach on several levels, from its underlying objectives (CSR is driven by the imperative to prevent public relations crises, while the fundamental goal of WSR is to eliminate the underlying human rights violations that provoke those public relations crises) to its governance (corporations exercise unilateral control in the case of CSR, while workers play a leading role, in partnership with corporations and suppliers, in the case of WSR).
The few WSR initiatives that exist today are new and largely still in the developmental stage. But where the WSR approach has had an opportunity to be tested, as it has in the Florida tomato industry over the past four years through the CIW’s Fair Food Program (FFP), the results have been not just encouraging, but dramatic. Talk Poverty, a project of the Center for American Progress, asked the CIW to discuss the worker-driven approach behind the FFP’s success and the results it has achieved in its first three years of operation, which we did in a short article published last week and also picked up in Bill Moyers’ widely read site, Moyers & Company.
Here’s an excerpt from the piece, but be sure to read the article in its entirety:
How did a program born in the small, hardscrabble farmworker community of Immokalee, Florida become a leading model for the protection of human rights on the global level?Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to ask another question: “What if workers designed a social responsibility program to protect their own human rights?” What would such a worker-designed social responsibility program look like?...
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the Boston International Socialist Organization
presents:
Women's
Liberation and the Socialist Movement
Saturday, June
7
11am -
4pm
42 Seaverns Ave,
Jamaica Plain
(Haymarket
People's Fund - Conference Room A)
for more information:
contact@bostonsocialism.org, 617-902-0476
“If women’s liberation is unthinkable without communism, then communism
is unthinkable without women’s liberation.” - Russian revolutionary Inessa
Armand
The Marxist tradition has always stood for the liberation of women. Far
from seeing the oppression of women as subordinated to the economic exploitation
of workers, the Marxist movement has seen the fight against women's oppression
as central to the struggle for socialism. At the same time, the various
Socialist movements have had different and sometimes contradictory relationships
to feminist politics. What has the tradition of the
socialist movement looked like, including in the ISO? What has it's
relationship been to Black Feminism - a largely ignored but significant
contribution to the politics of women's liberation? And what about the debates
taking place today - around post-structuralism (or post-modernism), identity and
the politics of privelege?
Join the Boston ISO at this Day
School to read and discuss these questions with guest speaker Sharon Smith, author of Haymarket
Books publications Subterranean Fire and the soon to be
re-published Women and
Socialism: Essays on Women's Liberation.
Today, as the gains of the women's rights movement of the 60's and 70's is
eroded more and more, we need to look to the politics and the theories -
including the debates - that can help us chart a course for the struggles today
and in the future towards socialism and full equality.
Session 1 - Women's Liberation and the Socialist
Movement
- Required reading (attached PDF) - The Marxist tradition on women’s liberation
Session 2 - Black Feminism versus Privelege
Politics
- Required reading (attached PDF) - Intersectionality, Oppression, and Marxism
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Massachusetts Workers need a Higher Minimum Wage and Paid Sick Time!
We're Half Way
Through Second Round of Petitioning
Thanks to those who have already signed up to help complete the goal. A higher minimum wage and the right to earned sick days are basic parts of a social justice agenda. Join the Massachusetts Peace Action team supporting Raise Up Massachusetts! Massachusetts Peace
Action joins close to 100 other community organizations engaged in the struggle
for economic and socail justice. Massachusetts Peace
Action is proud that we helped gather the 285,000 signatures in phase 1 of the
campaign. Many of us also called and wrote our Representatives in phase 2 of the
campaign as the Massachusetts House of Representatives debated the
issue. We have also been helping to collect signatures in the
second round but we have only half the time left and more than half of the
signatures required still to collect.By June 18 we need to collect roughly 11,000 valid signatures of registered voters on each petition, in order to be able to put the measures on the state ballot this November. Fullfilling this requirement is also the best way to put pressure on the Massachusetts legislature to pass an acceptable minimum wage bill through the Conference Committee process now underway. There are several good opportunities for signature collection in the next week:
Please choose one of the opportunities above and add your energy to our effort to win an increased Minimum Wage and Earned Sick time. Contact Massachusetts Peace Action or stop by our offices if you do not have petition blanks and need them. Click here to find out more about the Raise Up MA campaign to raise the minimum wage and establish earned paid sick days. Together we will make this happen! 
In solidarity,
John
Ratliff
Massachusetts Peace Action Economic Justice Coordinator |
America: "It's tme to rush the field." ~Tim Dechristopher [anything less is wishful thinking - at best]
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Posted:
29 May 2014 11:29 AM PDT
On the eve of the first anniversary of
the Gezi uprising, a small group of textile workers explores a radical
alternative: occupy, resist, produce!
Diren!Kazova, reads the sign above a
small shop and cultural center in Istanbul’s busy Şişli neighborhood. Inside,
the floor is made of cobblestones, giving the visitor the impression of arriving
at a type of indoor street market. Slogans like ’1st of May!’, ‘Resist Kazova!’
and ‘Long Live the Revolution!’ are written on the stones, scattered across the
room. From the walls hang racks full of sweaters, hundreds of them. At first
glance they appear to be just ordinary sweaters. That is, until one learns the
story behind them. Then suddenly the sweaters turn into symbols of resistance,
signs of defiance, and the materialized hope for a more equal society, a more
just economy — yes, for a better world even.
The story starts over a year ago, in the last
week of January 2013. At that time the workers of the Kazova textile factory
were put on a one-week leave by their bosses, the brothers Ümit and Umut
Somuncu, without having received their salaries, let alone overtime pay, for
several months. The Somuncu brothers told them that upon returning to the
factory one week later they would receive their back pay, but instead they were
met by the company lawyer who informed them that all the 95 workers had been
collectively fired because of their ‘unaccounted-for absence’ for three
consecutive days. The bosses had disappeared overnight, taking with them 100,000 sweaters,
40 tons of yarn and anything of value. They had sabotaged the machines they
couldn’t bring with them, leaving the workers empty-handed, without their
salaries and without their means of production.
Some of the workers had spent years, if not
decades, in the factory, and now suddenly, from one day to the next they found
themselves without a job, without an income and without any right or possibility
to bring their criminal bosses to justice. ”In Turkey, the law is not designed
in favor of the worker,” states Nihat Özbey, one of the Kazova employees, when I
speak with him in their shop. “So, were it not for the use of force, we would
never have gotten what we wanted.”
With this in mind, the workers did the only
sensible thing they could do: they resisted. Their resistance started in the
form of weekly protest marches from the neighborhood’s central square to the
factory, but as soon as they learned that in their absence the factory’s former
managers continued to rob the place of anything valuable, the workers decided to
occupy their former workplace. “On April 28 we pulled up our tent in front of
the factory,” Kazova worker Bülent Ünal recounts, “From then on our resistance became a tent
resistance.”
Resistance and solidarity
In the weeks that followed the workers were
attacked by hired thugs, accused of theft by their former employers and
tear-gassed and beaten by the police when they staged a protest on May Day, but
none of this could break their determination to fight for what was rightfully
theirs. On June 30, emboldened by the Gezi Uprising, the workers moved ahead with
their planned occupation of the factory.
First, they tried to sell off the remaining
machines in the factory, but soon they were once again attacked by the police.
When four of their comrades were taken into custody, the other eight workers who
were part of the resistance staged a hunger strike to protest against this
treatment by the authorities, who treated them as the criminals and their former
bosses as the victims. “The boss stealing our labor, taking away the machines
was no crime. But us trying to get a fraction of our dues was a
crime,” states Ünal. “The police came to the factory following
complaints by the bosses [...]. Again investigations were conducted about us;
again we were the accused. No one said a word to the bosses.”
The workers realized very well that the odds were
against them, and that their resistance would be met with violence and attempts
by the powers-that-be to sabotage their efforts at independently running their
factory. Nonetheless, inspired and strengthened by the show of solidarity they
received from their neighbors, fellow workers and comrades across the city and
across the country, the Kazova workers decided to reopen the factory. They
resumed production using the old machinery their bosses had left behind and the
few raw materials they had overlooked when plundering the factory.
The first batch of sweaters they produced under
workers’ control was sent to the women and child prisoners who had written them
letters of support during their struggle. The remaining sweaters were sold at
the cafe of the Kolektif 26A in Taksim and at the numerous Gezi forums across the city, which had
sprung up after Gezi Park had been evicted by the authorities in mid-June. The
money they made through these sales was used to repair the machines that were
sabotaged by their bosses.
In order to make their struggle more visible to
the public, the workers also organized several public forums and in September
hosted an actual fashion show in which a number of public
figures — including intellectuals, journalists, actors, academics and music
groups — participated. “Fashion of resistance,” the Turkish writer, lawyer and
activist Metin Yeğin called it, before pointing out the sweet irony of using one
of capitalism’s own products as an act of resistance.
‘Affordable Sweaters For All!’
A recent court ruling decided that the machinery
in the factory would come to the workers as compensation for their lost wages,
and with the machines brought to a new location everything is now ready for
production, which should be possible within two months.
The slogan adopted by the Kazova workers —
‘Affordable Sweaters For All!’ — bears witness to their belief that this
struggle is about so much more than just the jobs and livelihoods of a dozen
individuals. The workers are very well aware of the highly important time and
place in which their struggle takes place, and the fact that its outcome of it
will fill thousands of supporters, comrades, onlookers and colleagues with
either hope or despair.
And just as the struggle is not socially confined
to the Kazova workers themselves, so its geographical reach expands far beyond
the borders of Turkey. The workers have already reached out to self-managed
factories and cooperatives elsewhere, including Vio.Me in Greece and the Mondragon Cooperatives in the
Basque Country, in order to establish connections of solidarity; to learn from
the experiences of others and possibly in the future exchange the products of
their labor.
The Kazova workers claim to have been inspired
and emboldened by the wave of Gezi protests, and now through their determination
to run their future factory as an autonomous workers’ collective, their struggle
has turned into a beacon of hope for all those who took to the streets in their
hundreds of thousands to resist the policies of an increasingly authoritarian
government.
Turkey’s poor labor rights
Turkey has a long tradition of suppression and
restriction of labor rights, which was already widespread under the country’s
former military dictatorship in the 1980s and has continued under the current
Justice and Development Party (AKP) government (check out this excellent article on the topic). Rights to
organize and strike have been curtailed, and worker rights are violated on a
massive scale with unsafe working conditions and virtual impunity for company
owners who fill their pockets while workers are dying.
In January alone, 82 people died after suffering work-related injuries
— two of whom were just kids, 6 and 13 years old respectively, who died on the
streets while collecting garbage to support their families. More recently, in a
horrific confirmation of the poor state of workers’ safety conditions in Turkey,
over 300 miners died when a fire broke out in a coal mine in Soma. In March, the mine received a “perfect score” from a government
safety-inspector, who happened to be the brother-in-law of a senior executive of
the company, highlighting the close relations between government officials and
leading business figures.
According to the constitution, labor unions must
represent a majority of the employees at the workplace, and 3 percent of all
workers in that particular sector in order to become a bargaining agent (this is
down from 10 percent prior to 2012, but since the amount of sectors has been
reduced simultaneously and their size increased, the 3 percent representation
might actually be harder to attain than the former 10 percent). Just as any
government ruled by neoliberal principles would like to see it, union membership
has dropped to an all-time low with less than 6 percent of the labor force
organized in unions. The government has actively promoted neoliberal employment
policies that rule out benefits, cut healthcare and keep millions of people
hostage in precarious and insecure work arrangements.
The use of subcontractors was one of the main
reasons for the workers of the Greif burlap bag factory to organize a strike in
the early months of 2014. They demanded an end to subcontracted labor, with the
subcontractors being brought in-house, a pay-rise, up from the legal minimum
wage of 978 Turkish liras (about €330,-) and social rights. For 90 days the
workers were on strike, occupying their factory, until a police raid on April 10 brought it to an
end, detaining at least 91 people engaged in the occupation, and two reporters
covering the raid.
A radically democratic alternative
In the past year, the AKP’s victory in recent
municipal elections, the slowing down of the Turkish economy, and last summer’s
wave of Gezi protests have only radicalized Erdoğan’s government in its fight
against workers in general, and the left-leaning labor unions in particular. The
government recently tried to prosecute leaders of the KESK, the Turkish
public-sector trade union, on trumped-up charges of terrorism. In February, 23
union members were released after one year in prison, while
six of their colleagues remain behind bars.
On May Day, the center of Istanbul was again
shrouded in clouds of tear gas when thousands of workers, radical leftists and
other sympathizers attempted to march on the iconic and thoroughly sealed-off
Taksim square. With the celebration of the first anniversary of the Gezi
uprisings only days away, the streets of Istanbul and other major cities across
Turkey will undoubtedly once more become the stage for a violent stand-off
between the AKP’s private security forces (i.e. the national police) and
protesters from all walks of life demanding justice, equality and the fall of
the AKP government.
In the midst of this ongoing struggle between
workers fighting for their rights and a government enthusiastically suppressing
all dissident voices, the Kazova workers have come up with a radically
democratic alternative: “Occupy, Resist, Produce!” — a battle-cry they adopted
from the recovered factory movement of Argentina. Rather than demanding legal
reforms that the government probably won’t honor anyway, or demanding a pay-rise
from a boss who would rather set the police free on his own employees, the
Kazova workers have taken matters into their own hands.
Not demanding better pay and working conditions,
but taking them; not asking for a better alternative,
but creating their own; not fighting just for their money, but
for control over the means of production.
“Profit is not our aim,” explains Nihat Özbey,
“but rather the exchange of ideas, to create revolutionary solidarity contacts.
If we succeed, it will be one of the first times in Turkey that workers have
occupied their factory and successfully restarted production under workers’
control.” Whenever they open their new factory, their old colleagues — even
those who did not participate in the resistance — will be welcomed back to join
the cooperative, where all will enjoy equal pay and equal rights, according to
Özbey.
“We won’t be focusing on the past,” he says. And
that is exactly the power and the beauty of Kazova’s example. This small group
of 11 workers, who have been denied their rightful means to subsistence, have
been lied to and have been fooled, tricked, tried, beaten, arrested, attacked,
abused and gassed, have never looked back but instead have concentrated on what
lies ahead. Through their refusal to give up and their determination to succeed,
the Kazova workers are an inspiration to all. Their eventual victory may well
mark the start of a whole new chapter of the resistance in Turkey.
Joris Leverink is
an Istanbul-based freelance writer and an editor for ROAR Magazine. Follow him
on Twitter @JorisLever.
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The Struggle Continues...
dear
friends,
it is with great pleasure
that i write to tell you all about my very wonderful experiences of the past few
weeks! it all started out with a couple of emails to friends in southern oregon
and southwest montana, regions where i lived fifteen of my post-college years
and where i have returned to again and again over the past eight years. after
hearing friends in the northwest say that their peace and social justice groups
would be interested in hearing me talk about my "artistic witness"
activities
of this past year, the balls began rolling to plan my first little speaking
tour.
the tour actually began
in grand rapids, michigan in early March of this year. two months later, in
early May, within one week, I spoke in Ashland, Oregon and the three Montana
towns of Helena, Livingston, and Bozeman.
the leading story at each
speaking event was the historic court martial of Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea
Manning and my process of making courtroom sketches each day of her trial. i
also described my month-long trip to Palestine through the grant to make art
about life under illegal Israeli occupation. shortly before i went on the trip
out west, i had attended one week of Cecily McMillan's trial in New York City
and thus I shared some sketches and stories about Cecily. (Update on Cecily
McMillan: Cecily, having been brutally assaulted by a police officer, was
falsely labeled guilty of a felony charge of assaulting a police officer and was
unjustly sentenced on May 19 to three months in jail and five long years of
probation. She is at NYC Riker's Island federal prison now.)
at each speaking event on
the mini-tour i was relieved to be greeted by very kind, attentive audiences. i
found it easy to speak from my heart because the people attending the talks
seemed genuinely interested in everything i had to say. i thoroughly enjoyed
meeting many new friends as well as reuniting with old ones. and, because the
attendees were so generous, all of my travel expenses--including two plane
flights and one long Greyhound bus ride--were covered by the donations
collected.
i also am grateful to the
many people who have been reading my emails and have sent money and/or
affirmations to support my various social change projects over the years. as you
continue to affirm me in many ways, i know i am not alone in my passion for
justice. we are many and we are strong!
At the Bozeman event I
announced the nationwide call from Witness Against Torture for actions on May 23
towards closing the horrific indefinite detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
where 154 men are still held without charges and where 77 of those men have been
cleared for release by military courts (which means the military has found that
it has no grounds to press any charges against these men). US taxpayers pay one
million dollars per person to illegally hold those innocent men in
captivity. On May 23 a group of Monatana activists joined others in 40 cities
nationwide to protest Guantanamo. About 10 of us stood on Main Street in Bozeman
in front of the Gallatin County courthouse. Please see a one-minute video clip
of the Bozeman demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkXB4003fGI&feature=youtu.be
And hear a fabulous radio show about the demonstration in Boston: http://www.radio4all.net/files/chuck@wmbr.org/727-1-Guantanamo_2014_MASTER.mp3
In solidarity, towards
justice, peace and compassion for all~
deb
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From The Archives Of Women And Revolution
Markin comment:
The following is a set of archival issues of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting articles from the back issues of Women and Revolution during Women's History Month in March and periodically throughout the year.
Women and Revolution-1971-1980, Volumes 1-20
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/w&r/WR_001_1971.pdf
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/w&r/WR_001_1971.pdf
hank you, Kaveh! Hope, perhaps...?]
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