employment

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Report slams child labor in U.S. tobacco fields

 

(CNN) — Children can’t light up, but there are some who suffer the effects of nicotine exposure as they labor in U.S. tobacco fields.
There is not an exact figure for how many children work in America’s tobacco fields, but Human Rights Watch interviewed nearly 150 for a new report on the dangers these workers face.
“I would barely eat anything because I wouldn’t get hungry,” one child worker, Elena G., 13, told the human rights group. “Sometimes I felt like I needed to throw up. … I felt like I was going to faint. I would stop and just hold myself up with the tobacco plant.”
Nearly 75% of the children interviewed reported similar symptoms — nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, headaches, dizziness, irritation and difficulty breathing. These are symptoms of acute nicotine poisoning, Human Rights Watch said.
And nicotine is not the only danger.
Exposure to pesticides from adjacent fields and accidents with sharp tools are also common, the report said.
“Once they sprayed where we were working. We were cutting the flower and the spray was right next to us in the part of the fields we had just finished working in. I couldn’t breathe,” Jocelyn R., 17, told HRW. “I started sneezing a lot. The chemicals would come over to us.”
See on www.cnn.com

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Technology and trade policy is pointing America toward a job apocalypse

 

“… public policy that should raise the most suspicion is trade policy, which fostered the offshoring of more than 2 million manufacturing jobs after Congress normalized trade relations with China in 2000. But an even more fundamental factor in the declining share of working Americans is the technological automation that has eliminated millions of jobs and is poised to eliminate millions more.

 

…47 percent of U.S. workers have a high probability of seeing their jobs automated over the next 20 years…”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

I would prefer the author didn’t single out China. China continues to be blamed in the media because they have the worker capacity to do the jobs that are building the vast majority of consumer electronics and everything else.

 

On the one hand Americans love their low cost consumer electronics. On the other hand Americans complain about loosing jobs to China.

 

What ends up happening is that Americans start hating on all Asians (not knowing the difference between cultural groups), and next segregation, xenophobia, hate crimes, scapegoating, and maybe even immigration restrictions based on race again with the myopic thinking that Chinese people are taking all the jobs – at the low end in China and at the high end in the U.S.

 

There is an underlying injustice from the U.S. here:

 

  1. U.S. government refuses to provide low cost higher education so that low income people (often Black and Brown) can get an education and in-turn get a decent job.
  2. Furthermore, U.S. companies refuse to hire Black and Brown workers to manufacture goods in the U.S. and hence move the vast majority of manufacturing jobs to other countries.

See on www.washingtonpost.com

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The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide

 

“For every dollar owned by the average white family in the United States, the average family of color has less than a dime. Why do people of color have so little wealth? The Color of Wealth lays bare a dirty secret: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that benefit white Americans.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Book recommended by Joanna Shoffner Scott and Paula Dressel of Race Matters Institute

 

See on www.amazon.com

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TO FAST FOOD CEOS: YOUR WORKERS SHOULDN’T NEED FOOD STAMPS (petition)

  I know I’ve posted quite a few petitions about fast food workers and the minimum wage. I do so because I think it’s so important that people who work hard get treated with respect and dignit…

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

If companies do not pay their workers fairly, then us, the tax payers, will make up the difference in their salary by subsidizing the cost of their grocery bill with food stamps and the cost of their health care bill with — subsidized health care payments.

 

It seems like a popular business model in the U.S. is to pay your emplyees so low that the government picks up part of the cost of taking care of the emloyee’s basic needs.

See on illuminatebytanya.wordpress.com