Daily Archives: September 7, 2022

Forced labor, sexual assault and abuse are not normal dinner-table topics for the relaxing Labor Day weekend. But, sadly, this is often part of the story behind so much of the produce that winds up on our plates in America. As Justice Department prosecutors noted this spring when three defendants in Georgia were sentenced to federal prison for human trafficking on U.S. farms, These men engaged in facilitating modern-day slavery.

As the co-founder and CEO of a values-focused soup company, I have preached endlessly about the need to know the story of our food. And although weve made strides in drawing awareness to sustainability in the agricultural industry, we have not paid as much attention, perhaps, to the vulnerable and often unprotected laborers who do the actual work. That no longer should be acceptable to any of us. What good is it to pat ourselves on the back for buying locally sourced organic tomatoes and onions if those vegetables were picked by farm workers who endured abusive conditions?

There are more than 1.2 million hired farm laborers in this country. They pick the tomatoes for our summer BLTs, the corn for our Labor Day barbecues, and the strawberries for our fruit cups. They do this work by hand. Weve mechanized so much in our food system, but most crops are still picked manually by farm laborers. And these laborers are more vulnerable than ever. The number of workers in this country legally under the federal governments H2A temporary visa program has tripled since 2012, to nearly 258,000 in 2021. This number represents less than one-quarter of the agricultural workers in this country. Unfortunately, the agricultural labor force is often subject to abuse, wage theft, and worse regardless of their immigration status.

The statistics from the Department of Labor are staggering. Over 70 percent of the departments workplace investigations reveal major violations, and many farms are repeat violators. A recent investigation found that violating farms owed more than $9 million in back wages to hundreds of laborers.

We, the consumers, have the power to stop this and to reform the food supply chain for good.

One group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, is working to end abuse in the agricultural system. These farmworkers say they have seen it all: A farm manager reportedly beating a worker simply for stopping to take a sip of water. Undocumented workers hidden inside walk-in freezers to dodge immigration officials. Women who are raped in the fields and then too terrified to report the assaults for fear of losing their jobs, or worse.

The Immokalee Workers created the Fair Food Program, a unique partnership among farmers, farmworkers and food companies to ensure humane wages and working conditions for the people who help feed our families. Many retailers have signed on to participate, including Whole Foods, Walmart and Ahold. My company, Soupergirl, recently obtained a Fair Food certification just for our tomato gazpacho line. Its a very modest step, and we hope that much bigger companies will join us.

Many Americans feel powerless to stop the seemingly endless stream of tragic events they hear about or read about in the news. But we actually can play a positive role simply by asking food brands to buy only produce that is certified as having been grown on farms that respect basic human values. This isnt some ill-defined boycott that goes viral on social media for 12 hours and is never heard about again. Consumers can do good every time we step into a grocery store by buying Fair Food-certified produce and other products. And we can each do our part to push food companies to buy fruits and vegetables from certified farms that care about their labor force.

Theres no virtue in buying pesticide-free produce grown on farms that abuse their workers for profit. This Labor Day weekend and all days lets make sure that the food we put on our tables is worthy of the decent, hardworking people who picked it for us.

Sara Polon is CEO of Soupergirl, the plant-based soup and gazpacho company based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter @thesoupergirl.

Excerpt from:

This Labor Day, buy produce grown only on farms that respect workers rights - The Hill

The call for unity resonates across a wide swath of todays democratic and social movements. Attend any demonstration and youre likely to hear marchers rhythmically shouting in Spanish and English El pueblo unido jams ser vencido (The people united will never be defeated), a chant born and made famous around the world by Salvador Allendes fight for popular unity in Chile.

In the U.S. today the country faces a growing fascist menace not unlike what the Chilean people faced during the Pinochet dictatorship. The challenge is to go beyond slogans and find a strategy that will build the unity needed: that strategy is creating from the ground up a broad anti-fascist alliance. Fortunately, theres a lot to build on.

Indeed, unity concepts and slogans abound in U.S. history and culture. One of its first expressions came from Abraham Lincoln, who, in an 1858 convention speech on the eve of the Civil War, warned that slavery threatened to tear the nation asunder. A house divided against itself cannot stand, the then GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate famously declared, arguing that the country could not survive, half slave and half free.

An injury to one is an injury to all is another popular slogan that came straight out of the labor movement at the dawn of the last century. The IWWs Big Bill Haywood attributed the saying to David C. Coates, a socialist labor leader and former lieutenant governor of Colorado.

A few decades later, black and white, unite and fight was the clarion call of communist organizers in the CIO as they led the fight to organize workers in the steel, auto, and electric industries in the 1930s. Today, black, brown, Asian, and white, unite and fight more accurately reflects the increasingly diverse composition of the U.S. working class.

Fighting for unity, while not always successful, is a veritable way of life for U.S. communists, and many of the Partys strategic concepts revolve around it. Left-center unity, that is, the imperative of developing strong ties between left and moderate forces in the trade union movement, has long been a mainstay of CPUSAs labor policy and remains so today.

An all-peoples unity strategy (which basically means unity of the entire people) was advanced by the Hall-Winston leadership in the 1980s, after the Republican National Committee (RNC), at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce and the big banks, shifted far to the right.

In light of the countrys deepening political crisis, this strategy retains all of its potential force. In fact, Trumps threat to run for a second term makes it even more relevant. All-peoples unity is the current application of what the communist movement once called the popular front strategy, that is, the creation of a broad coalition of the American people to oppose the MAGA movement and the threat of a fascist dictatorship. In its day-to-day work, particularly at the local level, the CPUSA strives to put a working-class stamp on this front by centering its election activity where possible with trade unions, community groups, and other movements who operate independent of official Democratic Party campaigns. Taking initiative on the key issues is vital, including fighting for the passage of abortion rights, the PRO-ACT, voting rights, climate change, and other legislation.

Of course, its one thing to call for unity and quite another to achieve it. Alliance building can be halting and at times even tortuous. Differing agendas, egos, and experiences can impact the ability to forge viable coalitions. The multi-racial, multi-gendered, and cross-generational diversity of the U.S. working class often requires taking special measures to respond to the challenges faced by different sections of the class.

Building unity between the trade union movement and the young generation (what the CP terms labor/youth unity) illustrates this need. For example, during the auto workers strike in 2019, the industrys two-tier wage system where new young hires are paid substantially less than older workers was a major sticking point. And while progress was made to reduce the wage differential during negotiations, it was not done away with. The recent UAW convention pledged to take up the issue in a major way in future contract talks. One resolution, according to Peoples World, instructed the unions executive board to reject management proposals which seek to divide the membership through tiered wages, benefits or post-employment income and benefits. Thus, unity between older and younger workers required confronting the companys tactic of dividing by pay scale. In other words, a united front on the picket line meant the union had to address younger workers special demands for equal pay a refusal to do so could have meant the defeat of the strike.

Another key issue is fully appreciating the nature and strength of ones class opponents. Speaking to this challenge, Henry Winston, the Partys late national chairman, once placed the issue this way when addressing building labor community coalitions in response to the collapse of the steel industry: Why is such unity necessary? he asked. Because victory in the battle against monopoly is impossible without it the ruling class in this country is too strong. The working class, the CP chairman argued, cannot win this fight alone.

In a similar vein, African American, Latino, womens, and LGBTQ movements can ill afford go-it-alone approaches. And while Winston stressed that confronting the most powerful ruling class in history required focusing on common demands, he also hastened to place in the foreground special compensatory measures like affirmative action as necessary for binding alliances with those experiencing historic discrimination, a point that some continue to dismiss as concessions to identity politics.

The working class learned the lesson of building unity of action the hard way. Strikes were lost, campaigns for elected office defeated, attempts at social revolution vanquished at almost incalculable costs. Recall that the Paris Commune was drowned in the blood of 35,000 communards, after 30 days of wielding power.

Set back after these terrible events, but undaunted, burgeoning movements had to consider things afresh, discard strategies that proved infeasible, tinker with others that showed greater promise, and adopt whole new methods as conditions changed. As the bourgeois democratic revolutions against monarchies gained momentum in the 19th century in countries like Germany, France, and England, narrow approaches had to be rejected. New avenues for struggle had to be sought based on the institutions that began to emerge as people began to organize themselves according to faith, occupation, and interest.

The notion, for example, that small, highly committed groups could successfully contend for political power was frontally challenged by Frederick Engels: The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses, he wrote in his 1895 introduction to Marxs Civil War in France. Engels continued, When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act.

The struggle for democracy in combination with the class struggle began to take center stage. Socialist parties now had to take into account building alliances as the franchise became a major factor in the exercise of political power. In several countries, Marxist parties were able to build mass electoral coalitions and win office.

Had new, peaceful paths to power been discovered? At first blush it appeared so, and even Engels, the veteran of many a class battle, seemed quite taken with the social democratic movements late 19th-century electoral successes. Still, the old revolutionary took pains to point out that these victories in no way meant renouncing the goal of revolution. Engels warned: Of course, our comrades abroad have not abandoned the right to revolution. The right to revolution is, in the last analysis, the only real historic right upon which all modern states rest without exception.

Some, however, appeared not to have listened to Marxs old friends advice. Even Marxs sage instruction when critiquing the Germany Social Democratic Partys Gotha Program was ignored. Marx had urged comrades to enter into compromises necessary to achieve practical aims but to never make theoretical concessions.

Instead, theoretical concessions were made by those adopting Eduard Bernsteins the movement is everything, the goal, nothing update of Marx. Under Bernsteins advocacy, reforms became the be-all and end-all of everything: reforms would gradually evolve themselves into socialism. The goal of working-class power was lost.

What went wrong? Varying explanations have been offered: the buying off a section of the trade union leadership and the emergence of a labor aristocracy, an undue domination of the labor movement by middle-class elements; the offering of a psychological wage to white workers to promote a feeling of racial superiority, was an explanation posited by W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction.

Or could the problem lie in another direction, perhaps in the coalition strategy itself? Its a matter of historical record that radical reforms advocated by the socialist parties got watered down as their electoral successes increased. The closer some came to power, the greater was the temptation to concede this or that plank of their program in order to win sections of the vote.

At the turn of the 20th century, echoes of these debates entered the Russian Social Democratic movement, albeit in quite different circumstances. Russia remained largely trapped in feudal-like conditions and was still ruled by a hereditary monarchy. The socialist movement had to find a path to defeat the czar and also design tactics that would address the growing capitalist class in a huge country with an extremely diverse population and a political culture steeped in backwardness. Who could the workers unite with? Whither lay the promised land, and with whom could the oppressed masses get there?

In these circumstances a fierce argument broke out. All the Marxists agreed the country needed to pass through capitalism at least in some form but there were sharp differences about what that entailed. A revolution was required to get rid of czarism on this there was consensus. What kind of alliances were needed and which class forces would lead them was another matter entirely. A section of the party favored confining the coalition to the working class and peasants alone. Others supported including capitalists in the mix. The former group were called Mensheviks. They opposed allying with Russias nascent merchants and industrialists for fear of being dissolved in a growing sea of bourgeois democracy.

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, conversely, favored including the capitalists. The issue in the Bolshevik leaders view wasnt whether to support a cross-class alliance the challenge was how to do it. In Lenins view, the point was to fight for working-class leadership of this alliance, to place a proletarian stamp on the democratic revolution. Doing so would preserve the working classs independent role and reduce the risk of its objectives being subsumed. How? By fighting for consistent democracy, in other words, by carrying to completion the democratic fight for voting, representative government (a constituent assembly), land reform, the eight-hour day, and a government capable of inflicting a decisive defeat of reaction. In this manner, Lenin argued, the working class would stand the best chance of positioning itself within the emerging capitalist order.

These arguments are pointedly made in Lenins Two Tactics, where, in embryonic form, and yet unnamed, what became known as the united front concept is first introduced. They guided Bolshevik domestic policy through 1917.

The united front tactic was formally adopted by the world movement at the 4th Congress of the Communist International in 1922. What is the united front? Simply put, it is a politically diverse coalition of working people who come together to address a specific set of issues. Ideological differences, for the moment, are set aside in pursuit of common goals.

What goals? In the first place, to resolve the bread-and-butter issues confronting the working class at any given point in time. In a 1922 speech, Grigory Zinoviev, one of the leaders of the Comintern, put it this way: We are in such a phase of the struggle of the world proletariat that we should unite in the struggle for the eight-hour day, aid for the unemployed, and in the fight against the offensive of capital.

The adoption of the united front was a major part of Lenins polemic against left-wing communism, the knee-jerk responses of the newly formed parties that had split from the 2nd International, many of whom rejected electoral work, shunned compromises, and, heady with the success of the October Revolution, believed themselves to be on the verge of world revolution. Under the influence of strategies like Bla Kuns theory of offensive and Leon Trotskys permanent revolution, failed attempts at state power occurred in Hungary, Germany, and other countries with disastrous results.

Lenin, on the other hand, well understood that, after the initial success of October 1917, the revolutionary moment had passed and with it the chance for a European continent-wide social revolution. A protracted era of class and democratic battles instead were at hand, requiring long and patient preparatory work. In these circumstances he offered the parties of the Third International a three-fold plan: Adopt the united front strategy and tailor it to fit each country; win over the majority of the working class in the process; and build mass communist parties, all necessary if the socialist revolution would have any real chance for success.

After the Soviet leaders untimely death, however, and in the face of stiff resistance from potential social democratic allies (the main objects of the united front efforts), the Comintern moved sharply in the opposite direction as the movements stubborn affair with leftism returned with a vengeance. Confronted with attacks on communist insurgents by social democratic governments, the parties of the 2nd International were labeled social fascists, and with this branding hopes for a united working-class front ended as fascist regimes won power first in Italy, then Germany and other countries.

It was in these circumstances that the 7th World Congress of the Communist International took place in 1935. The meetings main report was delivered by Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian communist, who a few years earlier had been accused of setting fire to the German Parliament, a Nazi provocation designed as an excuse for seizing power. In his famous United Front against Fascism speech, Dimitrov reversed course and reembraced Lenins united front strategy.

Describing fascism as the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sections of finance capital, Dimitrov offered an olive branch to the 3rd Internationals erstwhile Social Democratic allies: Communists, he said, place no conditions for unity of action except one . . . that the unity of action be directed against fascism, against the offensive of capital, against the threat of war, against the class enemy. This is our condition.

Precisely what would this unity consist of? The defense of the immediate economic and political interests of the working class, argued the general-secretary of the Comintern. Dimitrov suggested a threefold approach: fighting to shift the burden of the crisis onto the rich, resisting all attempts to restrict democratic rights, and combating the war danger.

It is important to point out here that the offer for united action was largely, but not exclusively, aimed at the social democratic parties and trade unions in Europe, as they represented working-class majorities in several countries. The absence of a large social democratic movement in the United States, however, required an adaptation of the tactic to fit American conditions. The U.S. working class was and remains ideologically diverse, harbored in unions, churches, synagogues, and campuses along with various associations and groups, to say nothing of the two main capitalist political parties. What was required on U.S. soil was not a united front of the left but a coalition of the class as a whole. This remains true today.

A brilliant application of this strategy to U.S. conditions in the 1930s was the American Youth Congress (AYC). Initiated by the Young Communist League and its principal organizers, Henry Winston and Gil Green, the AYC included the YWCA, the YMCA, the national students union along with scores of union, religious, community, civil rights, and youth groups. It met yearly and at its height boasted over 500 organizations. The AYC promoted a youth bill of rights and succeeded in presenting legislation calling for its enactment in Congress. Eleanor Roosevelt lent it important support.

With the creation of the AYC the Communist Party recognized the need for an even broader response as the fascist threat grew in the U.S. The working class needed allies, a militant multi-class coalition of youth, a popular front of the young generation as a whole that could be mobilized in the righteous battles of the times.

And righteous battles they were. Coming out of the Great Depression, the Communist Party and YCL plunged headfirst into organizing the mass production industries, the fight to save the lives of the Scottsboro defendants, and the effort to break the back of segregation. These were the circumstances out of which Lenins idea of a working class-led, cross-class coalition, though born of different conditions, in a faraway land, took root and blossomed. Indeed, the popular front proved more than a notion: it had been given life and organizational form, and it became a material force helping set the course of the entire nation.

Dimitrovs report described the popular front this way:

The formation of a wide anti-fascist Peoples Front . . . is closely bound up with the establishment of a fighting alliance between the proletariat, on the one hand, and the laboring peasantry and basic mass of the urban petty bourgeoisie who together form the majority of the population even in industrially developed countries.

With World War II engulfing much of the planet and the USSR bearing the brunt of the battle, this grand coalition grew to include not only sections of the capitalist class but also entire countries in fact whole groups of countries as the Allies engaged the Axis powers in this gigantic civilizational battle.

Were there grave dangers of getting dissolved in the sea of bourgeois democracy associated with this enterprise? Of course there were: the dissolution of the Communist Party and YCL as World War II drew to a close is a case in point. What began as novel approaches to united front mass work initiated under Earl Browder grew one-sided and detached, drifting far to the right.

Under Browders influence, the antifascist wartime emphasis on national interests tended to replace class interests. Class cooperation, in order to defeat fascism, always a slippery slope, morphed into class collaboration. Illusions began to set in, one of the consequences of which was that the domestic expression of Browders dream of a new era of post-war cooperation saw no need for a party of militant class struggle. The Party was dissolved and an association working within the Democratic Party was created in its stead. The YCL was replaced by an advocacy group and renamed the American Youth for Democracy. Tragically, Browders daydream of class peace fell victim to the American nightmare of McCarthyism after Winston Churchills Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Censorship, jail, mass firings, and war both hot and cold were the high price paid.

With the end of the war, the emergence of a socialist community of nations and the defeat of colonial rule in Africa and Asia, the need for a peoples front internationally began to fade. Events back home, however, were another story. McCarthyism was unleashed in full force. Smith Act and McCarran Actdriven prosecutions intensified, aided by the Truman administration and GOP majorities in Congress. Backed against a wall and incorrectly seeing fascism on the immediate horizon, the Party leadership fled underground, increasing its isolation from domestic currents and limiting its ability to fight back.

In time, the Cold War began to thaw, at least domestically after the growth of the Civil Rights and free speech movements in the late 1950s. Upon the release of its leadership from prison, party activity resumed. By then an updated strategic and tactical framework was required as Communist activists undertook the long and difficult task of rebuilding relations in workplaces, communities, and campuses. The policy of left center unity by means of building of rank-and-file caucuses helped free the labor movement from the grip of pro-employer, business union leaders who embraced anti-working-class policies that were pro-war, anti-affirmative action, anti-immigrant, and anti-international solidarity. Importantly, the Party resumed fielding candidates for local, state, and national office, in an effort to increase visibility and influence the national debate. United front work began in earnest as the Civil Rights revolution unfolded along with the movement to end the Vietnam War. Solidarity with African liberation, particularly South Africa, became a major site of struggle.

In the mid-1980s a major rightward swing by Big Business took place. The decades-long impact of Richard Nixons Southern Strategy, the Iran/Contra scandal during Ronald Reagans tenure, and the RNCs Moral Majority venture combined to produce a new and dangerous quality, a whiff of fascism, as Gus Hall termed it. At stake was how to tactically adjust, and the question sparked a major debate in the CPUSA leadership.

Vic Perlo, then the partys leading economist, had been warning of these trends in National Board discussions. Over time, Gus Hall not only became convinced but alarmed and argued that the right danger had become so grave it was necessary to elect all Democrats and defeat all Republicans.

A shift in gears was proposed: the party would temporarily suspend fielding candidates for office. Thus began the conversation that would later lead to the CPs call for the creation of an all-peoples front.

Hall was nearly alone in the ensuing debate that ranged from mild questioning, to hemming and hawing, to outright opposition. After a long discussion, the proposal was tabled. In his summary of the first NB debate, the longtime chairman complained, You comrades dont realize what youre up against because youve never been hit. His proposal, however, won the day at a subsequent meeting.

Hall, of course, was himself no stranger to the need for unity. In the days following Nixons resignation he called for peoples unity to turn the country around. Nixons leaving office could result in a new beginning if it results in a new unity a unity of all democratic forces, a unity of all working-class forces, a unity of the racially oppressed, a unity of peace forces, and a unity of the younger generation.

That united new beginning, however, has been long in coming. Soon after the aforementioned debate, the CP National Committee adopted an all-peoples front strategy, a policy that, notwithstanding problems of implementation, has stood it in good stead. The election of an extreme right GOP majority in the 1994 midterm elections, led by Newt Gingrich, followed by the two Bush presidencies, the emergence of the Tea Party, and now the growth of a fascist mass movement led by Donald Trump, underscored the partys farsightedness.

During these years, the CP declined to field presidential candidates, but continued to run for office in much reduced numbers at the local and state level. More recently, the party, while retaining its all-peoples front policy, has pledged to encourage communist candidacies and run for office where possible.

Present in all the developments is an ongoing tension between maintaining Marxisms basic principles and applying them in ever changing conditions. How do you decide between whats a primary question around which there can be no compromise and whats secondary and open to negotiation?

Admittedly, its no easy question, as time and again theoretical foundation stones get traded away for seeming advantage. To gain votes, 19th-century socialists gave up key planks in their program. A few decades later, again currying favor, many of the same parties voted to support their governments war efforts. World War II found the CPUSAs leadership so taken with the task of building anti-fascist national unity that they traded away class independence for it.

This problem arises again and again: in Eurocommunism, in the Perestroika reforms, and post-Cold War, in the CPs efforts to break out of narrow strictures and find relevance amidst calls to rethink its communist outlook, change its name, and even dissolve the organization.

But these pressures are unavoidable. Indeed, they are part of the living fabric of Marxism itself, a doctrine whose views are continually tested, changed, and retested.

Clearly, care has to be taken in the course of these social tests that the very door that opens to new insights does not lead to the window through which basic principles are lost.

Concepts like the united front and the all-peoples front remain a living, breathing force in American politics. They have repeatedly come together in real life in the wake of Trumps election: in the womens marches, in the anti-police murder uprisings, in the sojourns from the uprisings to ballot boxes. The concept is not static: the all-peoples front is not an event, a meeting, a conference, but a series of meetings, events, conferences, demonstrations, marches, and occupations, over an entire period. It is the living, breathing mass movement of the people.

Drawing the lessons of its history and creatively applying them with flexibility while avoiding conceding working-class principles is key.

United and popular front forms will vary according to time, place, and circumstance: a housing coalition in one city, an alliance to prevent plant closings in another; a movement for reproductive rights in a third, an anti-war coalition to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a fourth. The Party should never be afraid to participate in, enter, or initiate coalitions. Indeed, it should be afraid not to. What it should really fear, however, is failing to stress the necessity of working-class leadership of these coalitions. As Gus Hall used to say: Keep your eyes on the working class. Youll make mistakes, sure, but you wont make the big ones.

Images: CP banners, CPUSA; Unity meme, CPUSA; UAW on strike, Al Neal, Peoples World; Henry Winston, CPUSA; Friedrich Engels painting, Wikipedia (public domain); Lenin at 2nd Comintern; Georgi Dimitrov (on the right); Hall-Tyner campaign poster, CPUSA; Gus Hall, CPUSA; Poor Peoples Campaign March on Washington, June 18, 2020, Erik Shilling.

Here is the original post:

The unity imperative: Lessons for building the anti-fascist alliance - Communist Party USA

The Fisheries Agency updated the US Department of Labor on its efforts to eliminate forced labor on Taiwanese fishing vessels at a meeting in Washington on Friday, it said yesterday.

Taiwanese seafood products were added to the US List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor in 2020, and the Fisheries Agency said it was hoping Washington would remove them from the next list, which is expected to be published later this month.

The labor departments decision in 2020 came after 19 non-governmental organizations sent a letter to the department saying that forced labor on Taiwanese longline fishing vessels continues unabated with little to no consequences.

A delegation led by Fisheries Agency Director-General Chang Chih-sheng () held a meeting with representatives from the departments Bureau of International Labor Affairs on Friday, the agency said in a statement.

The meeting was titled the Taiwan-US Bilateral Consultation on Fishery Labor Rights and Benefits, the agency said.

The delegation shared Taiwans progress in improving fishers human rights, Fisheries Agency Deputy Director-General Lin Kuo-ping () said in Taipei yesterday.

The agency said it told US officials that the Executive Yuan on May 20 approved its Action Plan for Fisheries and Human Rights.

The action plan covers major strategies for bolstering labor recruitment processes and the management of foreign-flagged fishing vessels and recruitment agents, as well as improving the monitoring and management of living and working conditions on longline fishing vessels, the agency said.

To be taken off the departments list, Taiwan would be expected to increase the number of labor inspectors and inspections, and implement additional measures to safeguard the welfare of fishers, it said.

The US hopes that the prevalence of forced labor can be reduced by implementing social protection programs and establishing migrant fisher unions, itthe agency said.

The delegation also visited Greenpeaces US branch to convey Taiwans support for safeguarding the rights of migrant fishers, it said.

Greenpeace was one of the first to draw wider attention to claims of labor rights violations on Taiwanese-flagged longline fishing vessels in a 2019 report titled Seabound: The Journey to Modern Slavery on the High Seas.

Meanwhile, the agency released a revision to the Regulations on the Authorization and Management of Overseas Employment of Foreign Crew Members (), saying that the minimum monthly wage was raised from US$450 to US$550, while the insurance compensation limit for deceased crew members was increased from NT$1 million to NT$1.5 million (US$32,563 to US$48,844) and the maximum pay-as-you-go medical insurance compensation limit was set at NT$300,000.

The standard for minimum daily rest hours was also amended to be in line with the ILO C188 Convention for migrant fishers, the agency said.

Comments will be moderated. Keep comments relevant to the article. Remarks containing abusive and obscene language, personal attacks of any kind or promotion will be removed and the user banned. Final decision will be at the discretion of the Taipei Times.

Follow this link:

Agency visits US to share efforts to end fisher abuse -

BY BARNEY OREREborere@spp.com.pg

The subject of personal income tax that does not give a fair return to workers in Papua New Guinea has been talked about for a long time but it continues to fall on deaf years.

A year or so ago, a tax expert from the United kingdom who visited the University of Papua New Guinea raised the matter of high income tax regime in PNG. No one really took any notice of the academics views.

There was no reaction from the government.

Now were making whispers on the same topic. It is to be hoped that a follow-up will come by if theres any real seriousness involved.

Huge tax burdens and increasing law and order problems are the challenges facing the government.

Economic hardship of unprecedented dimensions, corruption, and unemployment are on the rise.

Fifteen years ago the Governor General, late Sir Silas Atopare, when opening the seventh parliament said PNG was facing many social, political and economic challenges. We suffered from prolonged and unmanageable level of inflation, he said.

It distorted our economic decisions, penalised growth and disadvantaged the already struggling families, said Sir Silas.

Unemployment and for the employed, the denial of a fair return to them by the tax system penalised successful achievement and kept us from maintaining full productivity.

But as great as our tax burden was, it had not kept pace with public spending.

For years, we had piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our childrens future for the temporary convenience of a few, Sir Silas said.

When you assess it, the poor management of the country is being carried by the taxpayer.

The poor management of the country means the people cannot prosper; the tax burden is killing them and it is an unfair system.

The more economic troubles we get into the tax burden increases as a result, hoping that it will provide the solution.

But the mismanagement continues which means the taxing will still go on; potentially in an ever-increasing upward spiral.

This makes no sense if there are no results for the better..

HER MAJESTYS GOVERNMENT

The G-G is the Queens representative.

We have him because the Queen is far away in England; half way across the world.

She is the Head of State.

That is how we wanted it by becoming a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations at Independence and adopting the Westminster system of government.

It means the government of Papua New Guinea is Her Majestys government and the people of PNG are the Queens loyal subjects under her watch. We must understand this structure.

As great our tax burden is, the G-G pointed out it has not kept pace with public spending.

Law and order problems have become rampant and social problems are on the rise, predominantly to do with poverty.

The high income tax regime denies a fair return and penalises successful achievement and keeps Papua New Guineans from achieving full productivity.

The people is the countrys No1 resource. But they have been looked down on and they will not rise.

There is no innovation; they are dispirited and will not use their God-given talents. It is too expensive to live in a poor country. Many dreams have been shattered and there are fewer dreams out there.

The worker has less money in his pocket because the high income tax takes it from him.

The poorly managed economy in the same system means there are no jobs and the cost of living is too high.

It denies the human person from realising his full potential. In the final analysis this country is poor because its people are.

WHY PEOPLE ARE POOR

There are two reasons why we should worry about the poverty and the lack of jobs.

The first is what economists call human capital which means any nation relies on its people to create development.

If the population is healthy and well educated the country has the base on which to build and create jobs and wealth.

If the population is sick and poorly educated the opportunities for attracting investment and creating employment are bad and investment will go to other countries.

The second is that a poor and unemployed population still needs to eat and live under shelter and somehow it has to find the means to do this.

If there are no jobs available the only recourse is to crime.

The Australian National University has estimated that nearly 20 per cent of the total population of PNG towns are in some way dependent upon crime or prostitution for their living.

The level of crime and other lawlessness is now one of the major reasons businesses dont invest in PNG.

This applies to existing businesses as well as new business.

Almost every day we hear about how rich PNG is, how we have unlimited mineral resources or the potential to grow any sort of cash crop we want.

We had tremendous wealth from oil and minerals over the last few years.

Income from our primary products has been very high and we have watched our timber resources being harvested at record rates.

This has all produced income that should have translated into development.

SLUSH FUNDS

Instead the opposite has happened.

Three times in the 1990s PNG has come close to bankruptcy.

Some of the causes have been beyond our control but we have had to get to the edge of a very steep cliff before we realised that we have to do something about it.

The Slush Funds were increased year after year and yet services to rural areas got worse.

We never learned where all the money went. All we knew was that suddenly we did not have any more.

A government is no different to how a family works.

It gets money from taxes and other sources and it makes a budget for the year.

It will decide how much money it can borrow and how it can repay that money. When the government and the public service is running properly it follows that budget.

To manage a large organisation there has to be experienced and honest people running it.

Appointments have to be made on the basis of what a person has done before and what he knows about the job that he will be doing.

Part of that job is to advise governments that what they plan to do is illegal or will not be good for the country.

They should be able to give reasons and what will happen if the government or the minister insists on doing what they want.

In the end they have to do what the government of the day instructs them to do no matter if they think it is good or bad.

We have not followed this practice for many years now.

Appointments have been made not on the basis of what the person knows but who they know.

Ministers almost always sack the person in charge of their department when they get appointed. .

They replace them with people from their own party or people who they owe favours to and the person doesnt need to know anything about the job or have had any management experience.

The trend has been that these people have been appointed at larger and larger salaries and conditions packages, especially chairmen and managers of statutory institutions.

The person who has been sacked will be paid out, not like someone in the private sector for three weeks pay and other entitlements, but the whole of the contract.

We have allowed management of government to get so bad there is no care taken to see that government or the statutory body gets the best deal for the people. We continually read about contracts that are made for much more than they should be.

Corruption is bad because it means that our managers dont do their jobs and we dont get the best value for our money.

Corruption leads to lazy and bad management.

These conditions are not fixable by raising taxes or making people pay for them.

MINIMUM WAGE

Lifting of living standards for workers is a means of addressing poverty.

Responsible upward adjustment to wages is good for the national economy. In our capitalist-styled economy supply and demand is the main driver.

An upward adjustment in wages drives demand.When there is money in workers pocket they will spend on goods and service.

This will have the effect of generating economic and business growth.

Some years ago the General-Secretary of PNG Trade Union Congress, John Paska made these observations: Minimum wage earners spend nearly all their money onshore on local produce while those on the upper echelon of the wage structure tend to spend a high proportion of their income on offshore products and services. Luxury goods are mostly imported. They command prices that are beyond the minimum wage so it is those at the high level of the wage bracket that buy such goods. In the 1992 Minimum Wage Determination, minimum wage was slashed from K120 per fortnight to K45 per fortnight.

The 2008 Minimum Wage Determination set the new rate at K2.28 per hour or K182.40 per fortnight. The current rate is K3.50 per hour.

The negative impact of not being judicious enough can be seen clearly in the difference between the wage bill and the contribution of minimum wage earners.

Paska said wage economics, because of its intrinsic value to the economy had to be based on logic and economic sense.

The reason for the minimum wage slashing in 1992 was that cut in real wages would create the impetus for employment as employers would be incentivised to hire more workers.

While it was true that employers would be willing to pay wages to a certain point, it was also equally true that workers would be willing to accept employment when offered wages to a certain point.

Spending on luxury goods and services meant repatriating money offshore since most companies that engaged in such business had their roots outside the country.

The value of the minimum wage earner therefore was very vital to the growth of the domestic economy particularly in rural areas where most income earners shied away from.

The idea that workers somehow respond to robotic command at the flick of a finger by the employer was as archaic as the master/servant conundrum of serfdom and slavery. And yet it did happen and not just once but twice.

The first in 1992 Minimum Wage Determination and the second in 2000 Minimum Wage Determination.

The result proved disastrous, Paska said. There was no bump in employment period and that 10 per cent has remained static to this day.

It prompts the question of why there was insistence to pursue the same failed pathway. We had eight years between 1992 and 2000, sufficient time to analyse the data.

But we persisted with a failed prescription. The answer did not lie in econometrics but rather ideology.

Continued here:

High income tax in PNG is a disincentive - POST-COURIER

The pandemic shone a glaring light on this often overlooked backbone to our social and economic structure, the report notes. Childcare facilities shut down, nursing homes were overrun with COVID, and home care was harder to find but desperately needed.

In Massachusetts, women make up about 85 percent of home care workers and employees in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes, and 92percent of child-care workers, according to the report, while Latino, Black, and immigrant women account for a disproportionate share of those working in home and long-term care. Black workers account for 24 percent of home care workers and 43 percent of those employed in long-term care facilities in the state, despite making up just 7 percent of the workforce.

Get Innovation Beat

Boston Globe tech reporters tell the story of the region's technology and innovation industry, highlighting key players, trends, and why they matter.

These workers are less likely than the average employee to have employer-provided health insurance or retirement plans, and are more likely to be on MassHealth, the states Medicaid program. Nearly a third of the states home care workers are enrolled in SNAP, the program formerly called food stamps.

The median hourly wages in all three subsectors ranged between $13 and nearly $16 an hour based on 2016-2020 Census data used in the report slightly more than half the median hourly wage statewide. Wages have risen across the economy in the past two years, but care worker pay is still likely half that of the statewide median.

Even when controlling for education levels, skill requirements, and job characteristics, care workers are paid 5 to 15 percent less than similar workers, the report notes.

The roots of this inequity go back to slavery, the report says, when many Black women were forced into caregiving roles. And this didnt end with Emancipation. Many freed slaves were coerced into indentured servitude caring for white families, and then were excluded, along with other women of color, from higher paying, less physically taxing jobs, said Mignon Duffy, a sociology professor at UMass-Lowell whose research is featured in the report. These jobs were later left out of early 20th century labor protections that elevated many other occupations. In fact, it wasnt until 2015 that federal minimum wage protections were expanded to include most care workers.

All these factors, along with cultural norms that women are natural caregivers, have culminated in todays workforce of women of color in low-paying, largely invisible jobs, Duffy said. All together, care work extends into a number of sectors, from health care to education to social services, that account for about a quarter of all jobs.

Care work is very central to understanding race and gender inequality in the world and the US, Duffy said. They are inextricably intertwined.

For those of us who are interested in dismantling sexism and racism, youve got to pay attention to the care sector in particular.

The findings dont come as a surprise to Maria Castro, 55, a personal care attendant from Roslindale who works 64 hours a week taking care of three people for $17.71 an hour, plus overtime. Castro, who is from the Dominican Republic, worked throughout the pandemic, preparing food, administering medicine, and otherwise providing assistance like family would do, she said. She supports her 85-year-old mother, who lives with her, as do her two 20-something daughters, whom Castro has helped pay for college and esthetician training.

Castro served on her unions bargaining committee and recently ratified a new contract that includes a racial justice committee to address discrimination.

It feels like only people of color do this job thats why [society doesnt] see it as important, Castro said in Spanish, through an interpreter. Back in the day it was a slavery job.

And as the population ages, the demand for workers in the care sector is expected to grow substantially.

The number of Greater Boston residents over age 65 is anticipated to rise by more than 50 percent between 2020 and 2040, and the number of those over 85 nationwide is set to triple by 2060. Between 2018 and 2028, personal care and home health aide jobs are expected to increase by nearly 20 percent statewide, while jobs overall are expected to grow less than 3 percent.

Ive really become convinced through this research that improving the quality of care work ought to be at the top of any agenda for advancing racial equity in Massachusetts, said report coauthor Luc Schuster.

Upgrading these jobs would also decrease turnover and provide more stability for the families receiving care, he noted: Theres a really direct relationship between the quality of jobs that were offering in this sector and the quality of care theyre able to provide.

The risk of contracting COVID made these jobs more dangerous in recent years, but theyve always been hazardous. In 2019, nursing assistants who work in care facilities and at peoples homes had a higher rate of nonfatal injury or illness than any other worker more than truck drivers, laborers, and movers, the report notes.

To improve these jobs, the report recommends increasing the minimum wage and Medicaid reimbursement rates, making training and career advancement more accessible, and licensing home care agencies, among other policy changes. Many institutions in the care sector have limited budgets, the report acknowledges, making it essential to pair changes that raise labor costs with public funding increases.

The problems in the care industry go far beyond the jobs themselves, noted James Fuccione, head of the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative, which consulted on the report. A licensing process for home care agencies in particular would mean more oversight and policies that could strengthen jobs. Workers also need affordable housing and a reliable transit system. This is a community-wide issue, he said.

Significant investment and policy change is also needed in early education, according to the advocacy group Strategies for Children, which provided input for the report. The Massachusetts Senior Care Association said it was working to retain nursing facility workers and promote career growth, noting that increased government funding was vital to paying employees a living wage.

Preschool teacher Kiya Savannah would welcome improvements to a job she loves but isnt sure she can afford to keep. The only place Savannah, 31, can afford to live with her 3-year-old daughter is an in-law apartment she rents from her parents in Brockton.

Savannah, who is Black, worries about whats going to happen when she has to resume making student loan payments in January on the $40,000 shell still owe after the federal loan forgiveness program kicks in. To avoid dipping into savings set aside for her daughter, she might start making deliveries for DoorDash again, as she did when her hours were reduced early on in the pandemic. Shes also considering getting a masters degree, which could mean taking on more debt.

I havent figured out a way to fix this problem, she said.

It has become increasingly difficult to steer job seekers toward care jobs, said Andre Green, executive director of SkillWorks, a workforce development partnership between the Boston Foundation and the City of Boston that contributed to the report. Jobs shouldnt simply make people less poor, he said, especially crucial caregiving roles that many people will need at some point in their lives.

We know how important these jobs are, he said. Why as a society dont we act like that?

Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ktkjohnston.

Read the original post:

For women of color in care work, racial and economic inequities abound, report shows - The Boston Globe

Reports of the biggest rise in public support for unions in a half century is an encouraging response to the chokehold the policies of neoliberalism have held over U.S. workers for decades that led to a staggering inequality, the weakening of unions, and facilitated the ascendancy of the right.

Assaults on workers and unions have a long history in the U.S., dating back to the brutal, forced labor of slavery and racialized capitalism, and the exploitation of industrial workers and state and private contractor violence on striking workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It should also serve as a signal to Democratic Party strategists. Commitment to the growth of unionization is an essential component of a multi-racial, working class coalition needed to fight off the rise of what President Biden calls the threat of "semi-fascism" from the Trump cult's acceptance of repressive legislation and political violence, and a shift toward a more humane public commons.

A new Gallup poll shows 71 percent of Americans now approve of labor unions, the highest mark since 1965, concurrent with a huge wave in union organizing. Gallup also noted a 57 percent leap in union election petitions filed during the first six months of fiscal year 2021.

During the first half of this year, unions won 639 NLRB elections, the highest total in nearly 20 years, bringing a union voice to 43,092 workers, more than double the prior year.

That surge is most evident in the widely celebrated union campaigns in such prominent consumer names as Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, Trader Joe's, REI, Chipotle. It has also included registered nurses at hospitals in a wide array of states, including Maine Medical Center in Maine, Doctors Hospital of Manteca in California, Longmont Hospital in Colorado, and Coral Gables Hospital in Florida, among others, the past two years.

Less reported was a deeper dive behind the reversal of antipathy toward unions long fanned by corporate and right-wing institutions and media, and enforced by their acolytes in Congress, state legislatures, and the courts.

The success of that war on unions could be seen in the election of candidates whose war chests were fattened by corporations and the super-rich thanks to the Supreme Court's evisceration of campaign financing limits, and the proliferation of anti-union legislation, such as the spread of so-called "right to work" laws, and the gutting of worker rights under federal law primarily under Republican administrations and a reactionary majority on the Supreme Court.

Assaults on workers and unions have a long history in the U.S., dating back to the brutal, forced labor of slavery and racialized capitalism, and the exploitation of industrial workers and state and private contractor violence on striking workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, the inequities leading to the current moment largely derive from the policies of neoliberalism, a model of unfettered capitalism first concocted by an Austrian and University of Chicago economist in the 1930s influenced in part by reaction to Keynesian economics and New Deal programs.

In the U.S. neoliberalism was updated by rightwing economist Milton Friedman and fully weaponized by a host of far-right, libertarian economists and their corporate and political allies as public policy, from the early 1970s.

It was intended to reverse New Deal achievements, the expansion of unionization, and the gains of the Civil Rights movement. It was also influenced by an infamous memo by future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell in 1971 for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging a more vigorous corporate counter revolution.

Neoliberalism, as Robert Kuttner has written, "relied on deregulation, privatization, weakened trade unions, less progressive taxation, and new trade rules to reduce the capacity of national governments to manage capitalism. These shifts have resulted in widening inequality, diminished economic security, and reduced confidence in the ability of government to aid its citizens."

As corporate profits skyrocketed, and the wealthiest of the wealthy got richer, the consequences were devastating for working people, especially for Black, Latino and other communities of color. Today three people now own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. CEOs are paid times 350 times more than their average worker.

The stock portfolios of the top 1 percent are worth $23 trillion. Since 2009 the wealth of U.S. billionaires has mushroomed from $1.3 trillion to $4.7 billion but the national minimum wage remains frozen at $7.25 an hour. And membership in unions, clearly identified by their corporate and political adversaries as a key impediment to this massive shift, plummeted from 35 percent of all workers in the 1950s to about 10 percent today.

Though most identified with the right, many Democratic politicians were complicit, or at best bystanders in neoliberalism and its disastrous trend. Too many took unions for granted, as funders and foot soldiers for electoral campaigns, while offering minimal support for challenging the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism or confronting anti-union employers and their growing industry of union busting consultants and strike breaking firms.

As President, Jimmy Carter embraced austerity and deregulation. But it was Bill Clinton who went full board with the corporate friendly NAFTA agreement, lifting more financial industry regulations than Reagan or Bush, and a savage assault on welfare recipients.

Carter, Clinton, and Barack Obama de-prioritized and rapidly abandoned major labor legislation to reverse key elements of the virulently anti-union Taft-Hartley Act and restore the intended role of labor law to protect worker and union rights, not function as a permission slip for corporate misconduct.

By contrast, Biden, has worked to undo some of the damage, with legislation to create green and infrastructure working class jobs, and a social insurance expansion of Medicare in drug pricing limits. Arguably the most pro-union President since Truman, Biden has aligned with labor through federal labor board appointments and open encouragement of union organizing drives.

The biggest test will be if Democrats can maintain and increase their majority in the Senate in the upcoming election, abolish the filibuster and move the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act billand other essential stalled legislationthrough the Senate to Biden's desk. The PRO Act would blunt some of the most routine employer harassment common in union campaigns. And it would set real penalties for anti-union corporate employers who wantonly violate worker's democratic rights even after they have won a union election, as Starbucks, Amazon and dozens of less prominent employers have done.

Citing Gallup and other polls, Washington Post columnists Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent note "the time seems ripe for Democrats to amplify the case for unions."

Another survey commissioned by a coalition of advocacy groups found that by a whopping 56 to 37 percent margin, voters would favor a Democratic candidate who supports unionization over a Republican who opposes them. Further, a recent Pew Research Center poll, 58 percent of Americans said the decline in union membership has been bad for the country, and 61 percent said it has been bad for workers.

What the workers, particularly those organizing in low wage service and retail sectors, see is the enormous disparity in survival living conditions. As the AFL-CIO has analyzed, union workers' wages are 11 percent higher on average than for their non-union counterparts. Union members are more likely to have employer-paid health coverage and pension plans, access to sick pay, and a voice on the job on workplace conditions and safety.

The economic benefits are even more apparent on race and gender. Black, Latino and women union workers are paid 26, 39 and 23 percent more respectively. Union contracts are also far more likely to provide protection from unfair discipline, as well as discrimination based on race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity.

It was the rise of unions and sweeping organizing campaigns in the private sector in the 1930s and '40s, and later in the 1960s and '70s in the public sector, that built the labor movement, and created unprecedented improvement in living conditions for working families in the 1950s and '60s.

The present moment offers seminal opportunity for a renewed growth of the labor movement and a commitment to the broadest public interest of the entire working class, and economic security for all with a concurrent united front for saving democracy and promoting racial, gender, LGBTQ, and immigrant justice. Will Democratic leaders fully encourage that movement? That is a question for our time.

Read the original post:

Opinion | Behind the Rise in Union SupportAnd the Challenge Ahead - Common Dreams