Recently in Labor Category

Rarely will I cheer a person losing clients. But Chris Lehane today provides the rare exception.

Supposed liberal Lehane decides to take a job with the AMPTP right as the movie producers walk out of contract talks with the striking writers guild, and right as the AMPTP puts on the table some obvious union busting tactics.

Now Lehane's union clients are firing him. As Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher writes:

There is a limit to what you can do and still work for progressive organizations. In contracting out as a strike buster for the AMPTP, Lehane has definitely crossed it.

Indeed.

One of the reasons I support the Writers Guild of America: they should get compensated for their talent. As this video by the Colbert Report writers explains. You can learn more about the writers' strike on the United Hollywood blog.

Is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger going to side with his special-interest corporate buddies again by endorsing an anti-union measure written by a radical anti-tax activist?

Just when you think Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) can't sink any lower, he always finds a way to surprise. Now, he is fighting for a law that would expand sweatshops across the United States.

Nathan Newman explains the horrible propsoal at his Labor Blog:

This is as low as it goes, as the GOP fights to expand sub-minimum wage sweatshops across the country. Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum is leading the charge for a GOP bill that would ostensibly raise the minimum wage by $1.10 per hour, but in reality would cut wages for millions of American workers and expand unregulated sweatshops across the country.

As this Economic Policy Institute analysis details, the bill is a trojan horse for assaulting workers rights.

Isn't the GOP's vision of the 21st Century grand?

This presents a wonderful opportunity. As Newman writes:

If progressives miss the opportunity to smash this vote over the head of these rightwing politicians, they are truly brain-dead. While voters are closely divided on a range of social issues, even many normally Republican voters support raising the minimum wage. It's the best wedge issue in the progressive arsenal, and we get to skewer the GOP for hypocrisy on states rights to boot.

This bill also is just the latest example of why defeating Santorum's reelection bid next year should be a national priority.

Nathan Newman explains how Wal-Mart successfully defeated a unionization vote:

Essentially, Wal-Mart says that since they'll continue to violate labor law after the vote and fire people who try to strike, resistance is futile. Wal-Mart uses its own reputation for intimidation and retaliation as an electioneering tool.

Newman uses Labor Blog to do an excellent job of highlighting labor issues around the country. If you don't visit already, I suggest you make it a regular stop.

Do you want to mix your chocolate with some child slavery? If not, you may want to read this important commentary by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.):

On Valentine's Day, there will be no chocolate gifts for young Aly Diabate. "I don't know what chocolate is," said Aly, who was forced into slavery at age 11 to harvest cocoa beans in Ivory Coast. Aly's ignorance of chocolate is forgivable. Like tens of thousands of other child slaves on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast, he subsists on a diet of corn paste and bananas.

Less forgivable is the fact that chocolate lovers in the West have been kept in the dark about these harsh realities. Few realize that most of the cocoa beans that go into Nestle, Mars and Hershey candy bars come from Ivory Coast, where thousands of enslaved boys — some as young as 9 — work in the most squalid, brutal conditions imaginable.

According to one report, the child slaves of Ivory Coast "are whipped, beaten and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and the United States."

That's a nice Valentine's Day message, doncha think?

An even better one from we consumers is to refrain from buying their candy until these companies get the message that child slavery is not an acceptable labor practice.

Mathew Gross rightly urges us to stand with the United Food and Commerical Workers in their fight against a Wal*Mart decision to close a Jonquiere, Quebec, store -- one where the workers dared to vote to unionize.

Click here to sign a petition to Wal*Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott, urging him to reconsider this attack on working families.