Social Justice Blog

Tomato pickers in Florida might lose the first significant raise they've received in thirty years, because Burger King is trying to undermine agreements made with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra penny per pound of tomatoes. These workers earn about 40 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. Take action now. (Click here to read more about their harrowing working conditions.)


Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs [a private equity firm that controls most of Burger King stock], that sort of money shouldn't be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million—more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company's good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain. (Link)
posted by Elham Shabahat at 12/20/2007 12:35:00 AM

Overcoming opposition from China, U.S., and Iran, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution today "calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, with the ultimate aim of abolishing capital punishment." Amnesty International heralded this moratorium as an important way to "encourage retentionist countries to review their use of the death penalty."

104 UN member states voted for the resolution. The opposing countries (such as China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and the U.S.) account for ninety one percent of all capital punishment.

Whether capital punishment is a matter of human rights or criminal justice seems to be a key question. Criminal justice is considered to be a country-specific decision (in the U.S., capital punishment is primarily governed by state law), and some countries like Singapore have decided to disregard the UN and continue to implement policies they see fit. Whatever your opinion on the death penalty, it doesn't hurt to look at some relevant public advocacy and educational material.
posted by Elham Shabahat at 12/18/2007 11:30:00 PM

• Lawyers argue that detainees at Guantánamo should have the right to habeas corpus. The U.S. Supreme court is considering whether detainees should have access to courts.



• Hospital worker and teacher Adel Hamad is released from Gitmo and reunites with his family in Khartoum. See also "Poems from Guantánamo."



• Gawker (yes, Gawker) in a fantastic case of investigative journalism supported Viacom freelancers when their benefits were cut significantly. Viacom has now agreed to reinstate healthcare and other benefits.



• Ethiopian military's abuse continues. About one million people have been displaced, and more than 600,000 killed.



• Slavery continues in America.



• On a hopeful last note: A Muslim college student comes to the aid of two young Jews caught in a train beating.

posted by Elham Shabahat at 12/17/2007 12:01:00 AM

The Writers Guild of America continue their strike against studios, since negotiations this week did not satisfy both parties. For those unaware: writers, actors, and directors are on strike asking for 2.5 cents per every dollar made by media conglomerates when T.V. shows and films are aired over new media channels (free episodes streamed or downloaded over the Internet, advertising, iTunes sales, etc.) Currently, all the profit goes to the AMPTT which consists of corporations such as General Electric, Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, etc. The WGA believes this is a cause worth fighting for, since the future of entertainment is being determined by the growth of new media channels.

Of course, the economic impact of this strike is huge. Aside from losing at least $200 million dollars, not only are ratings falling, but collateral damage to industries that do business with the studios is also high:

Examples include: a battery manufacturer that has seen 30 percent of its business fall off and has already laid off some of its 20 employees; a caterer for "Ugly Betty," "24" and "Mad TV" that has lost nearly all its business; a wardrobe cleaning business, whose staff of a half dozen people are out of work. (via Reuters)

And this does not count production professionals who are currently nonsalaried and out of work. Note however, how some successful folks in the entertainment industry are helping fellow strikers by offering free food, salaries for assistants, organizing benefits to fund writers, etc.

The actors and producers of my favorite show, The Office are also on strike. I hope negotiations start again with satisfying results this time, since I'm not sure how comfortable I am watching internet reruns that profit only the corporations and not the artists, writers, directors, etc.
posted by Elham Shabahat at 12/08/2007 12:35:00 PM

"This is a story with which you are probably familiar. But these are in no small part symptoms of a larger transformation of the relationship between employers and employees, in which Americans increasingly sign away their humanity when they sign an employment contract."
-Paul Waldman-

In "Woe is the American Worker," Waldman questions why our presidential candidates aren't talking about the American labor force. Read it for a startling look on how employer-employee relations have changed over the years.
posted by Alexandra at 12/06/2007 09:26:00 AM

The idea that capitalism can save us from climate catastrophe has powerful appeal. It gives politicians an excuse to subsidize corporations rather than regulate them, and it neatly avoids a discussion about how the core market logic of endless growth landed us here in the first place.

World governments are meeting this week in Bali, Indonesia to discuss how to cut rising greenhouse gas emissions. This key U.N. summit will decide what will replace the Kyoto Protocol when it ends in 2012. (The Kyoto Protocol was an agreement signed by developing and developed countries that, first, agreed upon the necessity of preventing human activity that caused damage to the climate, and also recognized that "rich countries produced the emissions in their industrial development which are causing the changes in the atmosphere and must do more than their counterparts.") Bush is claiming that regulating policies will not lead to reduced gas emissions, but industrial advancement is necessary to resolve this crisis. Naomi Klein writes a scathing critique of this idea at The Nation.
posted by Elham Shabahat at 12/02/2007 10:59:00 PM