But with fuel prices rocketing and dock amenities still in short supply, making a living from the ocean has become next to impossible for the couple. They depend on their social security checks and Geneva's schoolteacher's pension.
"I ain't made a profit in three years," said Joseph. "The boat supports itself, but that's it. It's so hard to make a living."
Disaster has compounded that challenge for the Rosses and countless others on the Gulf Coast. But they are not alone. Millions of Americans face similar struggles trying to earn a living, to stay healthy, and to educate their children in a country where the American dream has become more myth than reality for many people.
That truth emerges—sharp and stunning—from the pages of a new report that, for the first time, provides a human development rank for each state, congressional district, and ethnic group in the US. Called "The Measure of America," and supported by Oxfam America, the report takes tools long used to analyze the complexities of developing countries and applies them to one of the richest nations in the world. The report was written by Sarah Burd-Sharps, Kristen Lewis, and Eduardo Borges Martsin. Its goal is to deliver a clear picture of what life is really like for many of the 305 million Americans in a country where the average income among the top fifth of US households in 2006 was almost 15 times that of those in the lowest fifth—or $168,170 versus $11,352.
"The American Dream has drifted beyond the each of many, while fading from view among others," say the authors in their executive summary. "To reinvigorate it, to make it real for millions of middle-class and poor Americans, the stagnation and decline of middle and low incomes must be reversed, and opportunity must once again reach down to the lowest rungs of society."
That mission—to give poor people a fair shot at opportunity; to ensure their basic rights and dignity—lies at the heart of Oxfam America's US regional programs in the southeast. One of them is concentrating on helping the Gulf Coast recover from the devastation caused by back-to-back hurricanes in 2005.The second program seeks to reform the food system so that those who produce the food that feeds our nation—the low-wage farm and meat-processing workers—can secure their rights to decent work and improved conditions in their communities.
When Katrina and Rita barreled into the Gulf Coast, the damage they left was enormous—and indiscriminate. Regardless of their means, everyone in the paths of the storms got slammed. But not everyone has benefitted from the multi-billion-dollar recovery—funded by American taxpayers—that slowly has been restoring what the wind and water swept away.
In Mississippi and Louisiana, many of the region's poorest residents continue to struggle toward recovery. The persistent inattention of state and federal policy makers to meeting the needs of the most vulnerable people has compounded the storms' destruction.
Walk through storm-battered Biloxi, Mississippi, and the disparities in the recovery become clear. Remodeled hotels glimmer and luxury condominiums have sprouted just blocks from narrow streets where many people still live in temporary trailers.
"We need affordable housing: not projects, but homes that people can pay for on a living wage in Mississippi," says Sharon Hanshaw, a lifelong resident of the city who longs for the old neighborhoods to come alive again. She's executive director of Coastal Women for Change, an Oxfam partner organization founded following the disaster. Its goal is to empower local women to participate in the recovery. "New houses mean new life."
After the hurricanes hit, Oxfam's first response was to work with its local partners and provide emergency assistance to people. That response has now grown into a five-year, $12-million program focused on Mississippi and Louisiana. Working through local organizations, the program's goal is two-fold. The first is to ensure that the regio's most vulnerable people have access to safe and affordable housing. And the second objective is to ensure that workers in the hospitality industry—including those employed by restaurants, hotels, and casinos, as well as the construction workers now rebuilding those facilities—can land jobs that will allow them to achieve a decent standard of living.
By working with local communities to understand, demand, and ensure their rights, Oxfam's objective is to influence the outcome of the recovery and to help bring equity to the country's poorest states.
To the authors of "The Measure of America," it's a job that will require an investment of both will and financial resources on the scale of the Marshall Plan—a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction effort that helped to rebuild Western Europe following World War II. According to the report, about 12 million people live in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and together their three states have the lowest human development index scores of any region in the country—and that was before the consequences of the storm were factored in.
"On key measures of human development, the region today is at the level of development the country as a whole experienced 18 years ago. It has the nation's lowest levels of educational attainment, shortest life expectancy, and lowest incomes," say the authors.
"A Gulf Coast Reconstruction Plan, encompassing far-reaching humanitarian, social, political, and economic aims would expand choice and opportunity for the people of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi."
Expanding choice and opportunity for farm and meat processing workers is also going to require some far-reaching change. Oxfam America's program to improve conditions for some of the country's lowest-paid workers in the rural southeast employs a number of tactics including consumer campaigns that pressure employers to offer workers better pay.
"By working at multiple levels, the program addresses the issues of declining wages, low union density, gender and racial discrimination, high rates of occupational injury, and abuse due to the immigration status of workers," said Guadalupe Gamboa, Oxfam's worker rights program officer.
Farm workers, of whom there are an estimated three million, are among the poorest laborers in the country. Half of all individuals earn less than $7,500 a year, and half of farm worker families earn less than $10,000 a year—wages that are well below the US poverty threshold. Most workers get paid on a piece-rate basis, and because of their poverty they often live in overcrowded and substandard housing that routinely violates federal regulations. Food processing workers—there are about 800,000 of them in the US—face similar stressful economic and social conditions.
Besides poverty wages, both groups of laborers face dangerous working environments. Accidents and exposure to toxic pesticides are among the regular risks for farm workers. Meat packers are often forced to work at blinding speeds using razor-sharp knives, risking accidents and cumulative stress injuries.
But momentum for change is building. Oxfam-supported campaigns against some of the biggest names in the food industry—Yum! Brands (owner of Taco Bell), McDonald's, Burger King—have coincided with the public's increasing concern about food safety, motivating people to mobilize in support of farm workers. All three companies have agreed to pay some of the field hands in their supply chain a higher wage.
Building on those successes, Oxfam is now supporting a major campaign to organize 5,000 workers at Smithfield's Tar Heel, North Carolina pork processing plant—the largest of its kind in the country.
"Low-wage workers in the rural southeast, particularly people of color, immigrants, and women working in agriculture and food systems have a right to decent work and improved conditions," said Gamboa. "And we'll know they've secured that right when we see their increased power through collective bargaining, fair compensation, and worker leadership."
]]>Almost a year after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW, launched its campaign to get the fast food giant to join McDonald's and Yum! Brands in paying field hands in their supply chain a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they picked, Burger King relented.
On Friday—along with an apology for negative statements its employees made about CIW—the restaurant chain announced its plan to work with the coalition to improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato harvesters.
For Burger King, a multi-billion-dollar corporation, the deal reportedly costs it just $300,000 a year. But for farm workers, who earn an average of 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, that penny represents a near doubling of their wages.
"Today we are one step closer to building a world where we, as farm workers, can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day," said CIW's Lucas Benitez in a press statement. "We are not there yet but we are getting there and this agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry: Now is the time to join Yum! Brands, McDonald's, and Burger King in righting the wrongs that have been allowed to linger in Florida's fields for far too long."
For Oxfam America, which has long partnered with CIW and launched an on-line petition on its behalf, the agreement is proof that consumer pressure can bring about positive change. More than 37,000 people signed the petition calling on Burger King to work with CIW to improve the wages of farm laborers and enforce a code of conduct for human rights in the field.
"It once again proves these seemingly almighty corporations have to respond to consumer pressure," said Guadalupe Gamboa, and Oxfam program officer working with CIW. "Consumers want farm workers treated fairly and getting a just wage. And they want global corporations held responsible for acts of injustice in the supply chain."
Burger King got that message loud and clear—not only from fast food fans, but from an array of global activists concerned about the conditions in the hot Florida fields.
"We engaged Burger King at the highest levels," said Gamboa. "Oxfam America's president, Ray Offenheiser, sent a series of letters to the CEO of Burger King. The company also started to get letters from Oxfam affiliates in other countries. And Oxfam partner organizations in Mexico started to get active around the issue, too."
The agreement Burger King has endorsed goes beyond the penny-per-pound increase CIW and consumer activists around the country sought. It also aims to encourage the broad participation of growers by paying them a half cent extra per pound of tomatoes. That money will help them cover the additional payroll taxes and administrative costs associated with the wage hike.
"Today, we turn a new page in our relationship and begin a new chapter of real progress for Florida farm workers," said John Chidsey, Burger King's chief executive officer, in a prepared statement. "We also encourage other purchases and growers of Florida tomatoes to engage in a dialogue."
Whether that will happen is still unclear. In November, the Florida Growers Exchange, which represents producers who grow about 90 percent of the state's tomatoes, announced that its members had chosen not to participate in any pact in which a third party set wages for their employees. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the exchange, said he was concerned about the legality of the arrangement and its potential for violating anti-trust and racketeering laws. According to CIW, the exchange even threatened to fine members $100,000 if they participated in the penny-per-pound plan.
Brown was out of the country and not available for comment following Burger King's announcement. But maintaining its earlier position on the wage hike will likely be difficult for the exchange.
"We're sure the Florida tomato growers are decent, hardworking people who want to see the industry prosper," said Gamboa. "I think it's going to be harder for the exchange to hold the growers in line because the extra money they will get—the half cent which averages out to 16 cents for each buck of tomatoes—will allow them to participate in the wage hike without incurring extra costs."
And it's not just the growers—exchange that might find it hard to hold back the rising tide of justice. It could start to improve the conditions for workers at the bottom of every food supply chain.
"We are exuberant about this," said Gamboa. "We're probably at the tipping point. When you get three major fast food companies agreeing to accept responsibility for improving wages and working conditions, it sets a very important precedent that other food buyers and retailers will have to follow. It says that getting decent pay and respect on the job is a basic human right."
]]>"I am 54 and I thought that I was too old to learn anything new," says San Van, a grandmother and farmer in a nearby village. "But I came here and see this movie and it is easy. I will try this new way and save seeds and grow more rice. It is exciting."
Pov Cham shakes her head in agreement. "I am very excited because with the old method of farming I could not have such a surplus like I can with this," Cham says. "I like how easy this was to learn and it was from people like me."
What has excited these women to change the way they will farm?
An instructional movie released today by Oxfam America and the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, or CEDAC.
The new movie, titled "Do You Speak SRI?" was developed to assist Cambodian farmers to easily and effectively grow more rice to support their families and to teach them new ways to farm. It takes a different approach of the traditional educational movie by using real farmers rather than actors to tell their own story and successes in using the new practices. The movie follows the journey of a young farmer as he learns each of the 12 practices from more experienced farmers.
In a recent viewing in Kampong Chhang, audience members were excited to see real farmers in the movie—most of whom were unscripted. The farmers showed off their natural enthusiasm for the practices.
"I like that I could see someone like me," says Van. "They are so happy and have grown so much rice using less seeds."
The movie is an addition to the other training tools CEDAC uses to assist farmers in implementing the practices.
"We hope that farmers will learn how to implement their choice of 12 practices into their own farming practices and realize that this can improve their yield and thus their quality of life," says Dr. Yang Saing Koma, President of CEDAC.
System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which was first introduced to Cambodia in 2000, has helped more than 80,000 Cambodian families grow more rice by using a selection of up to 12 simple practices. By adopting these steps, Cambodian farmers can increase rice yields from 50 to 150 percent, compared to yields harvested from traditional methods. Many farmers use this surplus of rice to feed their families, generate extra income and make improvements for other agricultural ventures.
"Boosting the farming community's skills so that they can grow more rice is about more than feeding Cambodian families,"" says Brian Lund, Regional Director of Oxfam America's East Asia Office in Phnom Penh. "It also is about boosting the farmer's confidence so that they take control over their life now and in the future."
To better empower farmers and sustain their self-reliance, Oxfam America and CEDAC recently combined the SRI training with a savings-led microfinance program called Saving for Change, which enables farmers and community members to better retain and manage the improved wealth they are achieving from their crops.
CEDAC plans to teach the SRI method to farmers in the 13,000 villages in Cambodia over the next five years.
As for Cham and Van, both said the movie convinced them to try SRI practices on a small part of their rice field to test it and see how it works for them.
"I am going to try it out," says Cham laughing. "Then I will let you know if I will be ready to be in the next movie to show my surplus of rice."
]]>Yum! Brands, Inc., one of the world's largest restaurant companies with 34,000 establishments, recently agreed to pay a penny a pound more for the tomatoes four more of its chains buy from Florida growers. The increase nearly doubles the amount workers can earn for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick and sell to Yum! The going price now is between 40 and 45 cents a bucket. This new agreement will hike that by 32 cents.
Yum! Brands' decision comes two years after one of its chains, Taco Bell, agreed to a similar hike in the face of intense national pressure. Others that will now be included in the deal are Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, A&W All-American Food Restaurant, and KFC. In April, mega-chain McDonald's also announced an agreement to boost the pay of Florida pickers by a penny a pound.
"If two of the largest restaurant chains are doing this, it's only a matter of time 'til others follow," said Julia Perkins, of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW , which has spearheaded the drive for better pay and working conditions for tomato pickers. CIW is one of the local partners with which Oxfam America works.
"This is an important precedent that's being set," said Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer in Oxfam America's US regional office. "And it also furthers CIW's strategy to go after other major buyers of tomatoes and eventually get them all to pay a higher price that will be translated into higher wages for a lot more farm workers."
During the winter months, about 90 percent of the fresh tomatoes consumed in the United States come from Florida, said Perkins. According to the Florida Tomato Committee, the state shipped more than 1.2 billion pounds of tomatoes in interstate commerce during the 2005-2006 growing season. During the peak season, Florida growers hire about 33,000 people.
CIW has been working with many of them since 1993 when it first began organizing in a borrowed room at a church. In 2001, it launched a national boycott of Taco Bell, which had long denied responsibility for the bad working conditions and below-poverty-level wages at the farms that supplied it with tomatoes. Students, religious groups, and labor organizations all got behind the boycott, galvanizing support for CIW's cause.
"It's a good model for other organizations to follow that are trying to improve wages and conditions for workers," said Gamboa. "It shows you can get concrete and positive results for the poorest workers in the country."
And there is no good reason for companies not to embrace the campaign.
"It's doable from a financial perspective, an administrative perspective, and it's good for your company's marketing," said Perkins, who has high hopes that other corporations will follow the lead set by Yum! and McDonald's. Burger King is on her list.
"Consumers have really gotten behind this," said Perkins. "Burger King has promised consumers you get to have it your way. It's just a matter of time before they have to make good on that promise."
]]>The petition urges Burger King to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an Oxfam America partner, to commit to improving the wages and working conditions in an agreement nearly identical to ones already signed by Yum! Brands and McDonald’s.
“It is disappointing that Burger King continues to reject overtures to ensure that the rights of workers in your supply chain are protected,” Oxfam America President Raymond C. Offenheiser wrote in a letter accompanying the petition to Chidsey. “CIW’s call for fair food, which has been widely supported by the broader public, is eminently reasonable and not cost-prohibitive. Major corporations throughout the world have recognized that corporate social responsibility, instead of being a burden, is in fact good for their business.”
Since 2001, CIW has worked with fast food producers to improve working conditions for workers in its supply chains by paying one penny more for each pound of tomatoes a worker picks and agreeing to core labor standards. Yum! Brands reached an agreement with CIW in 2005, followed by McDonald’s Corporation in 2007.
CIW has worked with Burger King since 2005 to reach an agreement with CIW, with no success. Burger King officials have cited legal and technical hurdles as reasons for not entering into such an agreement.
“If there were any real legal problems with the agreements Yum! Brands and McDonald’s would have refused to sign,” said Guadalupe Gamboa, Oxfam America Senior Program Officer. “If Burger King truly has concerns about these agreements, the best way to address them is to engage in a constructive dialogue with the CIW.”
On March 13 CIW will launch a campaign in DC calling on its supporters to pressure Burger King to reach an agreement with CIW to increase wages and end forced labor in agriculture.
According to its website, Burger King is “the second largest fast food hamburger chain in the world, recoding $2.23 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2007.”
It is estimated the proposed agreement would cost Burger King $300,000 per year.
Florida laborers pick nearly the entire US winter crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes, earning an average of 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. In order to earn minimum wage, a worker must pick nearly two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes each day.
US farm workers do not have the protection of many US labor laws, including laws protecting the right to organize. This has led to intolerable conditions in the fields, including at least seven documented cases of forced labor and human trafficking mainly in Florida and the Southeast.
A 2004 Oxfam America report, Like Machines in the Fields, found the annual wage for the 3 million US farm workers is between $7,500 or $12,000 per family with no benefits.
]]>"This represents economic relief for farm workers and gives them real participation and a voice," said the coalition's Lucas Benitez.
"The significant thing is that McDonald's is the largest restaurant chain in the world and the second largest employer of workers in the United States," added Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer in Oxfam's US regional office. "And so, for a little group like CIW to take them on and beat them is pretty significant. It shows the power of consumer pressure."
Starting in the 2007 growing season, McDonald's will pay an extra penny per pound for Florida tomatoes offered through its produce suppliers to its US restaurants. The farm workers will receive the increase directly for the tomatoes McDonald's buys. The agreement also lays out a plan for CIW and McDonald's to develop a new code of conduct for Florida tomato growers and calls for the creation of a third-party mechanism to monitor conditions in the fields and investigate workers complaints about abuses.
Typically, Florida field workers earn between 40 and 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick—a wage that has not gone up significantly since 1978, according to CIW. At that rate, working a 12-hour day, laborers would have to pick nearly two and a half tons of tomatoes to earn the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. With the penny-per-pound increase, workers can earn 32 cents a bucket more.
An Oxfam America report released in 2004, Like Machines in the Fields: Workers Without Rights in American Agriculture, documented the harsh conditions farmworkers endure and how big buyers, like institutional food services and fast food companies, are buying increasing volumes of produce at increasingly cheaper prices.
"Like machines, nearly two million workers in America's fields labor without rights, earn sub-living wages, and exist in dehumanizing conditions," said the report. "Already, farmworkers are among the poorest—if not the poorest—laborers in the United States."
Added Gamboa, "In the past 20 to 30 years, farm workers' wages have been stagnant. It may not sound like much, but for poor farmworkers in southwest Florida, McDonald's decision to increase by a penny a pound the amount it pays for tomatoes could translate into nearly a doubling of wages.
They have lost value in real dollars. But the profits earned by the retail industry have gone up tremendously, and it has been profiting from the sweat and labor of the workers."
And that has translated into profound hardship for field workers, whose average annual salary in 2005 was between $10,000 and $12,499, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey. The federal government considers an individual earning less than $10,210 to be living in poverty. The income guideline for a family of four is $20,650 a year—more than the average farm worker household earns. That figure ranges from $15,000 to $17,499, according to the agricultural survey.
Since 1993, when CIW first began organizing with a small group of workers in a borrowed room at a church, the coalition has worked hard to address the injustices farm laborers face. The message is now getting heard—at the highest levels of corporate America.
"CIW has publicized the terrible conditions of farm workers," said Gamboa. "People who pick the food don't have enough to eat. They endure terrible living conditions with between 10 and 15 people in a single trailer. And in real terms, their wages have gone down in the last 20 years."
That was the reality CIW set out to change when, in 2001, it launched a national boycott of Taco Bell, another fast-food giant that purchases great volumes of tomatoes. The company had long denied responsibility for the bad working conditions and below-poverty-level wages at the farms that supplied it tomatoes. Students, religious groups, and labor organizations all got behind the boycott, galvanizing support for CIW's cause and putting intense national pressure on the company.
Two years ago—in March 2005--CIW and Taco Bell announced an historic agreement guaranteeing Immokalee tomato pickers a penny a pound extra for the produce supplied to the chain.
"We are laying the groundwork for real change," Benitez said at the time, "both in the concrete conditions of farmworkers' everyday lives and in the market itself."
On Monday, with the McDonald's agreement in hand, those farmworkers have marked a another victory in their long, slow struggle toward equity and justice.
"Today, with McDonald's, we have taken another major step toward a world where workers can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day," said Benitez. "We are not there yet, but we are getting there, and today's agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry that it is now time to stand behind the food they sell from the field to the table."
]]>And he's just one reason why Oxfam America recently gave the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) a $25,000 grant to hire a community organizer to help make that happen. There are about 5,500 other reasons, too—one for every single employee at the sprawling plant in Bladen County where 32,000 hogs a day are slaughtered and processed.
"In the past 20 years, the meat packing industry has turned from a decent-paying industry with benefits to a dangerous, low-paying one where workers move at almost impossible speeds and injuries are frighteningly frequent," said Guadalupe Gamboa, an Oxfam America program officer who focuses on workers' rights. "The conditions in these plants—Smithfield included—clearly violate the basic human rights of their workers."
Gene Bruskin, a UFCW campaign director who has been helping workers organize at the Smithfield plant, put it in even blunter terms: "You're literally chewed up and spit out."
But in Bladen County, where more than 19 percent of the residents live in poverty and unemployment rates hit nearly 10 percent in 2002, people have been hungry for work, and take jobs at Smithfield, despite the grueling conditions.
"If you're working in that plant, you're killing 1,000 pigs an hour on two lines. That's 16,000 in eight hours," Bruskin said. "If I'm working on the line, I'm doing 1,000 of whatever I do every hour. If I'm the one who stabs the pig in the throat and kills it, or I pull the brains out, I do it 1,000 times an hour. It's one every three to four seconds, so it's extremely dangerous. People work at blinding speeds with very little training."
Part of the problem, said Gamboa, is an absence of regulations that would help protect workers.
"There is no law in the US that governs the speed at which a hog processing plant can run its killing and cutting lines and that's why companies are allowed to get away with horrible conditions," he said. "International human rights laws are broader than US law. We have an obligation to meet that higher standard."
Twice, workers at the plant have tried to unionize to improve their working conditions—once in 1994 and again in 1997 when they lost the election by a small margin amid union-busting activities, including threats, intimidation, and violence against workers. In 2000, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge found Smithfield liable for those actions and ruled the election invalid. In 2006 a federal appeals court upheld that decision.
"Rather than subjecting themselves to the ordeal of another election, the workers are asking the company to recognize their union by an alternative procedure under the NLRB—one in which workers can choose a union by having a majority sign union cards. Smithfield has refused this alternative procedure," said Gamboa.
And there it stands. With no union and no protection, employees like Melvin Grady face a mountain of challenges.
Grady's hardships are detailed in a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released last year called "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants." Grady started work at Smithfield on the kill floor where he spent 18 months before moving onto a job sharpening knives. One day, returning to his station after a meal break, he slipped on the greasy floor and tumbled to the bottom of some steps where he heard a pop. It was his Achilles tendon, severely torn and requiring surgery and convalescence.
Grady's nightmare had begun.
In the end, said the HRW report, Smithfield told him he wasn't eligible for workmen's compensation and fired him when he couldn't get clearance from his doctor for unrestricted work. The final blow came a few months after the accident when the bank foreclosed on Grady's house: The temporary jobs he was able to pick up for $6 an hour couldn't match the $11-an-hour-plus-overtime he had earned at Smithfield. His income had plummeted by more than half.
Grady's fate could have been the fate of any Smithfield worker. But the tide may be getting ready to turn, if a recent two-day walkout by hundreds of workers is any indication of what the future holds.
In November, the workers—Hispanics and blacks alike—decided to walk off the job to protest the firing of dozens of immigrant employees whose documentation the company questioned.
The step took great courage, said Bruskin.
"It was historic," he said, "for immigrant workers with all they have to risk to walk out of the plant like this—a company of this size."
But as important, the walkout could also be signaling a shift in race relations among workers at the plant—a critical step in building momentum for their collective rights.
"Smithfield has a long history of using race to divide the workers," said Leila McDowell, the communications coordinator for UFCW's "Justice at Smithfield" campaign. "They would tell African-Americans, 'if you stand up for a union we'll replace you with Latino workers.' And they tell Latino workers, 'blacks are getting more than you.' The union organization has been working to overcome that."
And the show of solidarity during the walkout was proof.
"It was very important for immigrant workers to see the African-American workers support them," said Bruskin. "It was also a tremendous opportunity for them to see the power they have."
In the end, following thousands of phone calls from religious organizations, civil rights groups, and immigrants rights agencies urging the company to respect the rights of its workers, Smithfield agreed to hire back the ones it had let go and not to discipline those who had participated in the walkout. Additionally the company agreed to allow employees time to respond to questions about their documentation.
While workers savor that bit of victory, the organizer the UFCW has hired with Oxfam's grant will begin to focus on African-American communities in the area, particularly churches and civil rights groups.
"This outreach will provide crucial community support for workers seeking to organize against a notoriously anti-union and anti-worker employer with a long history of violations of the legal and human rights of these workers," said Gamboa. "About 40 percent of the workers at Smithfield are African-American, and the majority of the others are Latino.
"The Justice at Smithfield campaign has close community and religious ties with the Latino population already. Building strong ties with the African-American community will help the campaign build the alliances between the two groups as well as support the workers in their struggle to protect their human rights through a union contract."
]]>This examination of three communities emblematic of longstanding poverty and exclusion— the urban neighborhoods of East Biloxi, Mississippi, and the rural communities of Vermilion and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana—reveals that government neglect at all levels extends beyond the well-publicized failures in New Orleans to encompass an entire region in distress.
Access to opportunity remains unequal—and unfair. In Biloxi, government officials acted first to save the city’s battered casinos by convincing state lawmakers to allow gaming on land. Not ensuring that the low-income residents of East Biloxi shared in the economic benefits, however, has made them victims of an enormous land squeeze, forcing them out of their neighborhoods and homes.
False assurances undermine future visions—and current optimism. The self-reliant residents of Erath, a mostly Cajun community in rural Vermilion Parish, began rehabilitating their houses the moment they returned after Hurricane Rita’s flood waters receded. After confusing signals about new flood elevations, plans for the town’s future, and possible homeowner grants, their progress has slowed and in some cases has been reversed by the agencies meant to facilitate it. Institutional neglect leaves communities at risk of losing everything—even their way of life.
Few state or federal funds have assisted the recovery of independent commercial fishers, who for generations have made Plaquemines Parish the center of their trade. Their inability to continue is draining Louisiana’s usually robust commercial fisheries, normally second in the nation only to Alaska.
These communities, and many like them, teeter on the brink. They are being rendered invisible.
Left behind. Forgotten.
The pattern of inequity in receiving recovery assistance from the government has been well established by past disasters. Federal disaster assistance tends to favor people who have economic assets at risk—that is, the affluent. Though the pattern may be familiar, it need not be inevitable.
Making sure the billions designated for recovery benefit the region’s most vulnerable communities remains a matter of political will. Action can and must be taken immediately.
It is, after all, what the nation promised them. That they would be rendered whole. Get ahead. Thrive.
]]>Oxfam’s report, Offside! Labor Rights and Sportswear Production in Asia, found that workers making clothes, shoes and other goods for global sports brands have been fired or threatened with violence when they have organized unions to lobby for better pay and conditions. The majority of Asian sportswear workers are women from poor communities, many supporting children and families. Oxfam said that none of the big sports brands are doing enough to solve the problem.
“In 2004 the Play Fair Alliance -— including Oxfam, the Clean Clothes Campaign and global unions —- challenged the industry to improve labor conditions, but sadly little has changed. Workers' right to form unions is crucial to achieving the big improvements needed on the factory floor but many brands are still not willing to play ball,” says Kelly Dent, Oxfam International spokesperson and the report's co-author.
Oxfam’s year-long survey of 12 sportswear labels found that US-based FILA was at the bottom of the league and had failed to address serious labor abuses in its supply chain. In one case, a FILA sport shoe supplier in Indonesia with an appalling record of worker abuse closed suddenly and without warning. A year later, none of its 3,500 workers have received any back-pay or severance pay. FILA refuses to reveal its role in the closure or take responsibility for the workers.
“Unless workers are free to bargain collectively for better pay and conditions, companies like FILA will continue to get away with this kind of outrageous behavior. Professional soccer players are represented by players’ associations, sportswear workers should be allowed to form unions too,” Dent said.
Oxfam says that Reebok has done the most to uphold workers' rights in Asia, while other big brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma and Asics had made some improvements. However, the performance of the industry as a whole remains poor.
For example, an Adidas supplier in Indonesia where workers receive as little as 60 cents an hour for their labor recently terminated 30 union workers who took part in a legal strike for more pay. The Panarub factory near Jakarta makes the Adidas' Predator Pulse shoes promoted by England’s David Beckham and Frank Lampard, France’s Zinedine Zidane and Patrick Viera, Spain’s Raul and Brazil’s Kaka. The factory also makes the +F50.6 Tunit shoes promoted by Holland’s Arjen Robben, Germany’s Kevin Kuranyi and Brazil’s Ze Roberto in the lead up to the FIFA World Cup. However, Adidas has refused to help the 30 fired workers get their jobs back.
“The firing of these workers sends a very worrying signal to sports brands - that it’s acceptable to discriminate against union workers. In the past, adidas has shown leadership within the industry and the company should continue to do so by ensuring the factory reinstates these workers,” Dent said.
“The sportswear industry is a valuable source of jobs in Asia. But consumers and workers alike have the right to expect that global brands will not exploit the people making their goods,” concluded Dent.
]]>For that reason Oxfam America's duty is clear: We and our project partners must help reform government policies, laws, and social injustices that deny people the right to live a decent life. We do this by providing funding, training, and the moral support people need to make real, substantive and transformative changes. The courageous and visionary people who do this work are setting out to build a movement for social justice—and Oxfam America is one of the few organizations to which they can turn for the help they need.
]]>The payments, recently announced by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA), mark a major victory for the organization whose campaign against wage abuse is sending a clear message to employers across the construction, shipbuilding, and hospitality industries on the coast.
“It’s made companies aware they can’t continue to exploit the workforce and it’s created a reputation for MIRA--that MIRA will make justice be served,” said Vicky Cintra, MIRA’s organizing coordinator who has just been appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights as a member of the Mississippi State Advisory Committee.
“The success MIRA has had with this campaign shows what can happen when a community pulls together and demands its rights,” said Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer for Oxfam America, which has supported MIRA’s advocacy efforts. “What’s worrisome, though, is the scale of the problem, and the fact that a small organization like this is shouldering a task that federal and state agencies should be responsible for. Those agencies don’t have enough inspectors and lack bilingual staffs. The absence of robust oversight results in the widespread wage abuse we have seen on the Gulf Coast.”
Concerned by the mistreatment immigrant laborers faced when they arrived to help with the recovery, MIRA launched its drive to address wage abuse within weeks of Hurricane Katrina’s strike. To date, it has helped workers recover $907,637 in back wages, $89,398 in worker and longshoreman compensation claims, and $3,184 in reduced court fines and bonds.
The alliance has used a variety of tactics, such as demand letters and direct confrontation, to convince contractors to meet their obligations. In four of the cases, employers owed back wages totaling $100,000 or more.
The most egregious among them was a drywall company for the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino, in Biloxi, Miss., which underwent a $550 million makeover following Hurricane Katrina. The drywall contractor had failed to pay its workers $250,000 in wages. Other delinquents on MIRA’s list have included roofing contractors, hospitality employers, and construction companies.
With an immense amount of reconstruction work still waiting to be done, the Gulf Coast has attracted about 100,000 new immigrants, according to recent census estimates. Many of them are Spanish-speaking and face a range of hurdles on their arrival here. MIRA, with Oxfam’s support, has grown rapidly into a powerful and vocal proponent for these newcomers.
“When we first started out on this journey, the going was rough and we had to use all activist tactics and strategies at our disposal,” said Cintra. “Now, I can call the CEO of a company and get through to them and directly report abuses against workers in their employ and they will respond. Before, the abuses went unknown, unreported, and unresolved.”
Despite their success, MIRA officials say what’s really needed to effectively address wage abuse on the Gulf Coast is for government enforcement agencies to do their job. Mississippi, they note, is the only state in the union without a department of labor, whose responsibility it is to enforce wage-collection laws. MIRA, in collaboration with labor organizations, community activists, and civil rights groups has for years been advocating for the establishment of such a state agency.
“It’s only when you have a mechanism for effectively enforcing labor laws that you will see an end to the type of wage abuse that has become so widespread on the Gulf Coast,” said Bill Chandler, executive director of MIRA.
For more information about MIRA, visit www.yourmira.org
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