Labor Rights

Brands Pledge To Raise Cambodian Garment Workers’ Wages

September 29, 2014 Bryce Covert, www.thinkprogress.com Organize! Cambodia, Capitalism, Labor Rights

Eight major clothing brands, including Swedish H&M and Spanish Inditex, which owns Zara, British New Look, and Irish Primark, have sent a letter to the Cambodian deputy prime minister saying they will pay more for goods sourced there in order to help raise pay for the country’s garment workers. “Workers in all production countries have the right to a fair living wage,” the letter states. “As responsible Business’ [sic] our purchasing practices will enable the payment of a fair living wage.” The letter also calls on the government to establish a monitoring and policing system to ensure workers actually get any higher minimum wage to “create a competitive advantage for the factories that comply with the new minimum wage” and the installation of a yearly collective bargaining process for the workers.

L.A. City Council Approves Minimum-Wage Hike

September 27, 2014 David Zahniser, Emily Alpert Reyes, www.latimes.com Organize! Labor Rights, Los Angeles, Minimum Wage

Big hotels in Los Angeles will soon be required to pay at least $15.37 an hour to their workers — one of the highest minimum-wage requirements in the country. The City Council voted 12 to 3 on Wednesday to impose the higher wage on large hotels, delivering a huge victory to a coalition that included organized labor, more than a dozen neighborhood councils and the ACLU of Southern California. Lawmakers cast their vote despite warnings from business advocates, who said the measure would trigger job losses at hotels stretching from Harbor Gateway to the San Fernando Valley. Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, predicted that other cities would follow L.A.'s lead, much as they did after passage of the city's landmark 1997 "living wage" ordinance mandating higher pay for employees of many city contractors.

17 Numbers Reveal Just How Pathetic The Minimum Wage Is

September 27, 2014 Nick Wing, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Capitalism, Labor Rights, Minimum Wage

If you have a job that pays the federal minimum wage, an hour of your work is worth $7.25, before taxes. Activists and lawmakers from around the country say this amount and slightly higher state-based rates don't offer workers enough to pay for life's basics. President Barack Obama and his administration have called for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, but Republicans have resisted a proposal to raise the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour over three years, claiming businesses can't afford to pay workers more. A wage hike would lead to devastating job losses, they say, and would do nothing to increase job opportunities or address poverty.

Against Sharing: Uber Exploits Workers

September 26, 2014 Avi Asher-Schapiro, www.jacobinmag.com Educate! Capitalism, Labor Rights

In fact, if you ask Uber drivers off the clock what they think of the company, it often gets ugly fast. “Uber’s like an exploiting pimp,” said Arman, an Uber driver in LA who asked me to withhold his last name out of fear of retribution. “Uber takes 20 percent of my earnings, and they treat me like shit — they cut prices whenever they want. They can deactivate me whenever they feel like it, and if I complain, they tell me to fuck off.” In LA, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, tension between drivers and management has bubbled over in recent months. And even though Uber’s business model discourages collective action (each worker is technically in competition with each other), some drivers are banding together.

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