The People's Record

U.S. seeks inspiration in Basque cooperative model Mondragón. An article in Time magazine praises the economic model of the industrial group MCC, which has become a benchmark in several US declined areas.
May 20, 2013

When companies all over the world are struggling to fight crisis, and while every country has an eye on the United States to find out when the depression will end, it follows that outstanding North American businessmen are seeing the light through the Arrasate-Mondragón cooperatives.

According to an article appeared in the latest issue of Time magazine, executives in charge of enterprise planning and union leaders of the previously buoyant and today depressed industrial belt of Cleveland, Ohio, are seeking inspiration in the economic, industrial and social model of the Arrasate-Mondragón area.

The magazine included a report which analyzed the origins of the current corporation founded by the Arizmendiarreta priest, whose success is supported, according to the publication, by the fact that nowadays, MCC is the seventh state’s industrial group and one of the most profitable.

According to figures provided by the writer, MCC is a multidisciplinary group that brings together 256 companies and employs more 100,000 people. Anyway, the interest is focused on the original basis of making the employees members of the enterprise. Those members often have a close association with the company as producers or consumers of its products or services, or as its employees.

Therefore, Time stresses that MCC holds its commitment “to one-worker, one-vote democratic governance through a complex, carefully honed organizational structure in which the corporation serves as a kind of meta-cooperative for the individual companies.”

The article presents the broad spectrum of companies of the Basque group, which ranges from manufacturing equipment, bicycles, and electronics, to an university and its own savings bank, Caja Laboral. Time says that, while many people look to cooperatives as activities at a “hippie small scale,” Mondragón is a consolidated and successful business whose revenue, in spite of the full depression of the Spanish economy, grew by 6 % last year.

According to the magazine, some companies in the Ohio state want the workers to get involved in the capital and the management of the company, and seek more balanced development patterns with a philosophy of reinvesting profits. This would be one of the hallmarks of MCC: instead of “flowing into the pockets of executives and outside investors, a company’s profits are distributed in a precise, democratic way; set aside as seed money for new cooperatives; distributed to regional nonprofits; or pooled into shared institutions like the university and research center.”

But the Mondragón template goes further and Time quotes a bakery cooperative in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California. Its four partners -soon to be six-, have chosen a particular name for their brand: Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives.

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Aam Aadmi Party workers today protested outside residences of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and local MLAs on the issues of rising prices of power and water, and women’s safety in the national capital. 
May 19, 2013

While demonstrating outside the CM’s residence, some workers were detained and sent to Tuglak Road Police Station, a statement released by Aam Aadmi Party said. AAP workers claimed that a number of volunteers were injured during police action at the time of the protest. 

“In Shahdara, AAP volunteers, including several women and children, were hurt when they were protesting outside Congress MLA Narendra Nath’s residence. Around 20 volunteers were detained by the police outside his house and taken to Farsh Bazar Station,” the statement said. 

When AAP volunteers tried to gherao local MLA and senior Congress leader Kiran Walia’s house in Malviya Nagar, they were detained by police and taken to local police station, it said. Workers, who went to meet area MLA in Gandhi Nagar, were arrested and taken to Kalyanpuri Police station when they tried to confront their MLA, the statement said. MLAs refused to meet the AAP workers, the statement added.

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Aam Aadmi Party is an Indian political party launched on 26 November 2012. ‘Aam Aadmi’ in Hindi means ‘Common Man’. The name was adopted by the Party as it aims to represent common Wo/man of India and to bring political power back into the people’s hands. One of the party’s primary vision is to realize the dream of ‘SWARAJ’ or ‘Self-governance’ that Mahatma Gandhi had envisaged for a free India - where the power of governance and rights of democracy will be in the hands of the people of India.

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Walmart opts out of Bangladesh safety agreement
May 15, 2013

Walmart has confirmed it will not sign up to a legally binding agreement on worker safety and building regulations in Bangladesh supported by retailers including H&M, Zara, Primark, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer, Next, C&A and several others.

However, the US retail giant has created its own agreement, which it claims goes beyond the current accord that was drafted by labour groups and campaigners.

The company, which also owns the UK’s third biggest supermarket, Asda, said the deal signed by its rivals was “unnecessary to achieve fire and safety goals” and questioned the “governance and dispute-resolution mechanisms”.

Instead, Walmart has agreed its own deal to inspect all 279 factories it uses in Bangladesh within six months, and has promised to publish the findings immediately.

Bosses claim this goes beyond the UNI Global Union and IndustriALL deal, pointing out the agreement requires 65% of inspections instead of 100% inspections taking place and argue its own deal means results are published straight away rather than within 45 days.

However, the Walmart deal is not legally binding, does not require the company to offer financial support for fire and safety regulations and blacklist factories unwilling to comply.

The agreement has been criticised by campaigners as a “business as usual” approach, which fails to address the core problems that led to the Rana Plaza factory collapse.

Sam Maher from Labour Behind the Label, said: “Walmart’s so-called new programme is simply more of the same ineffective auditing that failed to prevent the Rana Plaza disaster, or the deaths of 112 workers at Tazreen, who were producing Walmart goods.

“The changes demanded by the IndustriALL accord, include ensuring that factories are provided with the incentives and investment needed to actually make factories safe and are essential for any real change to occur. What Walmart are demanding is business as usual: a business that has cost lives of over 1,300 workers in the last six months alone.”

Walmart has also refused to clarify whether it sourced clothes from the Rana Plaza building, saying only that it had no “authorised” production at the site.

A statement from Walmart said: “The company, like a number of other retailers, is not in a position to sign the IndustriALL accord at this time.

“While we agree with much of the proposal, the IndustriALL plan also introduces requirements, including governance and dispute resolution mechanisms, on supply chain matters that are appropriately left to retailers, suppliers and government, and are unnecessary to achieve fire and safety goals.”

Several major UK retailers have declined to sign the agreement, including Arcadia group, the company behind brands including Topshop, Bhs and Dorothy Perkins; Debenhams; River Island; Matalan and Peacocks.

However, late on Tuesday night Next, the UK’s second biggest clothing retailer, did agree to sign.

Walmart’s decision leaves George at Asda, the supermarket’s clothing brand, at odds with its own position as a founding member of the Ethical Trading Initiative.

The ETI, the UK’s biggest alliance of businesses, trade unions and voluntary organisations, has recommended its members sign up to the accord.

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Once more: “What Walmart are demanding is business as usual: a business that has cost lives of over 1,300 workers in the last six months alone.”

Detroit’s emergency manager outlines slash & burn “restructuring” plan: Slash wages & city services, privatization
May 14, 2013

Detroit’s emergency manager released a report on Monday, outlining a “comprehensive restructuring plan” for the city involving savage cuts to city workers’ jobs, wages and pensions and the shutdown of services to a large section of the population.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr, a former Washington, DC bankruptcy attorney, as emergency manager on March 14. Under the state’s emergency manager law, Orr was mandated to issue a preliminary Financial and Operating Plan within 45 days.

The plan was drawn up in close collaboration with Andy Dillon, a former hedge fund manager and Democratic Speaker of the State House of Representatives, picked by Snyder as state treasurer.

The report begins with a lie, claiming that measures about to be unleashed in Detroit are aimed at improving the “governmental services essential to the public health, safety and welfare of its citizens.” In fact, the aim is to extract every penny possible from the working class to pay back an estimated $9.4 billion in debt, which currently costs the city $246 million to service, or 19.3 percent of the General Fund budget.

Orr’s former law firm, Jones Day, represents some of the same Wall Street banks—including Bank of America and UBS—that have profited from its financial misery.

In the report, Orr paints a dire picture of the financial state of Detroit. Unemployment has tripled since 2000 and is now officially at 18.3 percent. State revenue sharing has fallen by $160 million, or nearly 50 percent from its peak of $334 million in 2002. There has been a 40 percent decline in income tax since 2000, with a loss of $145 million.

These conditions are an indictment of the capitalist system. They point in particular to the devastating impact of the financial crash of 2008, which led to hemorrhaging of the auto industry, a wave of foreclosures and sharp cuts in federal and state aid. But nowhere is there any suggestion that the corporate and financial elite should be made to pay for the catastrophe they wrought. As a hatchet man for the banks, Orr, like Obama and the Republicans in Washington, is seeking to exploit this crisis to further enrich the financial criminals at the top.

According to Orr his plan has three principles. The first is “improving public safety and promoting reinvestment in the city.” These are code words for ridding the city of “undesirable” elements, including large numbers of unemployed and impoverished workers, and making way for the redevelopment plans of multi-billionaires like Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch and Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert. Already hundreds of low-income and elderly tenants are being evicted from apartments in the downtown area targeted for the development of upscale housing and shopping.

The second principle, according to Orr, is “evaluating and restructuring the City’s long term liabilities.” This means slashing the pensions and medical benefits of tens of thousands of retired city workers and their families. In his report, Orr complains that there are now more retirees, 18,500, collecting benefits, compared to 10,000 active city workers. The emergency manager, he states, plans to “reduce or eliminate certain healthcare costs for both active and retired employees” and “suggest modifications to the [pension] plans…”

The third principle is “evaluating and streamlining the City’s operations,” which entails an acceleration of the plans by Democratic mayor David Bing to downsize the city by eliminating services in areas deemed too poor or under-populated.

The city, Orr writes, has already developed strategies to address what he calls the “surplus land” issue, using three neighborhood categories (steady, transitional and distressed) to determine whether services in these areas will continue. This strategy, which would be incorporated into the comprehensive plan, would include a “coordinated program of foreclosures, demolition, public/private partnerships and targeted investment.”

In a press conference Monday, Orr said that the privatization of trash collection, transportation and other services were “all on the table.” He pointed to nearby Pontiac, Michigan as a model for his plan.

In that city, as the New York Times recently noted, the EM “overhauled labor contracts, sold off city assets and privatized nearly every service Pontiac once provided to citizens…Its Fire Department belongs to a nearby township. The city’s payroll, once numbering more than 600 workers, now amounts to about 50 public employees. Even parking meters have been sold.”

Other parts of Orr’s plan include:

* Reviewing “options for shared services and contract services” for the Detroit Fire Department, which has been slashed to the bone, leaving only 812 ill-equipped firefighters to cover 139 square miles.

* The possible full privatization of the Department of Transportation, which has already outsourced management duties and cut routes for its depleted bus fleet and employees.

* Turning “daily operations and programming” of the city’s remaining 17 recreation centers “over to experienced entities capable of providing improved services,” which would include “fee-based programming provided by third party operators.”

* The selloff of the Department of Public Lighting.

“The Emergency Manager believes that it is in the best interest of the citizens of Detroit for the City to exit the power supply business,” he writes. Beginning in 2014, the city will “pare down the current number of streetlights from approximately 88,000 to approximately 46,000,” providing lighting only to the “main thoroughfares and population centers.”

The first step will be to transform DPL into an “authority” with the power to issue debt. Once the city pays for infrastructure improvements, the system will be handed over to a “third party,” most likely the electric monopoly DTE Energy. Three years ago, the City Council and Bing administration approved a $150 million deal to buy 100 percent of the city’s power from DTE Energy, replacing the electricity produced by the city-owned lighting department. Before becoming mayor, David Bing, sat on DTE’s board of directors for two decades, and former DTE CEO Anthony Early was the chairman of his election campaign.

Also being targeted for privatization is the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, one of the largest municipal water departments in the nation. Orr writes that he will evaluate all options regarding public assets, including “entering in partnerships with other public entities, outsourcing of operations and transferring non-core assets to other private or public entities in sale, lease or other transactions.”

In regards to labor costs, Orr says the city has “made great strides” under the Consent Agreement reached between the city government and the governor last year, “in reducing costs imposed by its numerous active and expired collective bargaining agreements between the City and various labor organizations.”

This included the unilateral implementation of “City Employment Terms,” which froze or reduced active employee benefits, reduced or eliminated pension and retiree medical benefits and imposed a 10 percent wage cut. It also gutted seniority protections, expanded management rights, changed shifts, hours of operation and overtime procedures and revised or eliminated job classifications.

Nevertheless, Orr complains that these concessions have not been uniformly applied to all bargaining units. The emergency manager’s “labor strategy will be developed with a view that any concessions are equitably distributed across” the city’s entire workforce.

While the emergency manager law suspends the city’s duty to bargain under the Public Relations Act and empowers him to “reject, modify or terminate” collective bargaining agreements, Orr states that he has willingly negotiated with the unions. In this, he is counting on the complicity of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions to reach what he calls a “consensual agreement” and block any resistance by workers to the demands of the banks.

“Overall, employee headcount ultimately may be lower in the future than it is today,” he adds. At the same time, a new “compensation structure” will be established to retain “high performing individuals,” by which he means the army of highly paid consultants and turnaround specialists he is bringing in to help loot the city.

On the eve of the report’s release, Orr’s press secretary Bill Knowling said, “Unless we change and restructure city operations, it’s not going to get any better. That’s a message to the capital markets… If we stop providing services, and basically stop functioning as a city and only paid our debts but kept collecting taxes, we couldn’t pay it off in 20 years.”

Here Knowling may have said more than he intended. The essential purpose of Orr’s plan is to transform the city into little more than a cash machine for the banks and big business. To pay off the wealthy bondholder in the next few years, instead of twenty, will require the suspension of city services for virtually everyone but the well-to-do and a limited number of workers who service them.

As for his boss, Orr made it clear he is essentially a dictator for the banks and oblivious to the concerns of the working people in the city. “The public can comment,” he told WWJ radio, “but it is under the statute, it is my plan and it’s within my discretion and obligation to do it. This isn’t a plebiscite, we are not, like, negotiating the terms of the plan.”

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Most of these are original content, some are shared from tumblr (links to OP in FB posts). Photo stream here.

A look at International Workers’ Day - Happy May Day!

1: Madrid, Spain
2: Ankara, Turkey
3: London, England
4: Moscow, Russia
5: Jakarta, Indonesia
6: Dhaka, Bangladesh
7: Havana, Cuba
8: Taipei, Taiwan

More photos/updates coming soon… Submit your May Day photos here!

MAY 1 LOS ANGELES SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

12:00pm: Long Beach Revolutionaries : Back in Actions @ Pershing Square

2:00pm: Occupy LA Meet @ Pershing Square

2:30pm: March to Olympic and Figueroa

3:00pm: Join with Occupy Fights Foreclosures to SHUT DOWN Wells Fargo

4:00pm: Join the SCIC march @ Broadway & Olympic to march for FULL legalization for all!

7:30pm OLA General Assembly @ Pershing Square

Neighboring Occupations are also holding their own events this year! For more information, please visit their Facebook pages:

• Occupy San Fernando Valley
• Occupy Venice Beach

Additional Information:

• http://occupylosangeles.org/
• http://www.immigrationcoalition.org/
• http://www.occupyfightsforeclosures.org/

This was all from that first link that was posted after the question. The other two links were for these Facebook pages:

• One for LA in general
• & one for UCLA

Thank you to everyone who submitted links to answer this person’s questions!

The role we all played in the Bangladesh tragedy
April 29, 2013

The first thing Shariful noticed was debris falling from the ceiling. Then he heard a crash as the factory floors gave way and the building crumpled. He fell from the seventh to the first floor‘faster than an elevator’s speed.’Next he heard people screaming: mostly women and children.

There were three crèches in the eight-floor factory. When Shariful gained consciousness he saw dust. He felt a sewing machine crushing his left leg and then he saw death. Everywhere. Dead pale bodies powdered with fine brown dirt. Shariful didn’t know this, but a pregnant woman went into labour around this time. Of course she shouldn’t have been at work. No-one should have been at work. Factory inspectors ordered the building be evacuated the day before but the owners ignored them. Workers who complained were threatened with dismissal. So the 3000 workers filed into the Dhaka factory last Wednesday against their will. As I write, the death-toll stands at 350, but is predicted to rise to 1000.

I learnt about the collapse of the Bangladeshi garment factory a few hours after it happened. I was lying in bed chatting on skype to a friend who is living in Dhaka. It was around 9.00 at night and I was already in my pyjamas: Benetton pyjamas in fact. My floor was its usual mess, strewn with clothes that I had proudly bought for ten dollars or less from Big Bargain Discounts as well as some more respectable work clothes: Gap, Zara, H&M and Levis. ‘It’s OUTRAGEOUS’ I railed, ‘the factory owners made them go back to work when they knew the building was unsafe.’ My friend agreed. We also tsked the government for doing so little to enforce basic safety standards for workers.

But as I hung up the phone the question of fault nagged me. There I was clothed in pyjamas that had been made if not in that factory then in one like it. The labels found inside the collapsed factory included Benetton, Mango, Joe Fresh, Primark and C&A. My floor was littered with dresses and tee-shirts that had been run through the sewing machines of people working in prison conditions or even possibly now dead.

The question of responsibility and what is to be done stretches from the global to the minutiae, from international labour standards to the clothes racks of Myer. It’s a question that stems from our commercial imperialist past and will continue into our neoliberal future. And it’s a question that centres on the lives of women.

We could start by blaming the illegally built building, although it’s certainly not the first. Five months earlier 112 workers died in a fire in the Tazreen garment factory. The workers burnt to death because the gates had been locked from the outside. We could also blame the fact that there are only 18 inspectors to monitor the 100,000 factories in the Dhaka area. Or we could blame the fact that all foreign retailers except Tommy Hilfiger, Tchibo and Calvin Kelin have refused to sign the Fire and Building Safety Agreement that would establish a system of independent factory inspectors. All this is true, and terrible, but there’s also a larger context.

The only reason why clothing companies go to places like Bangladesh, Cambodia, or the US-Mexican border, is because they’re on a hunt for cheap labour and they no longer want to invest in building factories. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is $37/month and there is an entire shadow economy that pays even less. The profit margin for Bangladeshi manufacturers is low so they subcontract out their labour to factories with illegal risky practices. While the foreign retailers report stellar annual profits, some Bangladeshi manufacturers often barely break even. The only way they can make profits is through increasing work hours often to 12-14 hour days, and avoiding building safety regulations and environmental standards.

As global capital sniffs like a ravenous wolf around the world in search of cheap labour, who are the workers who end up caught in its jaws? Liesbeth Sluiter from the Clean Clothes Campaign estimates that 84% of workers in the global clothing industry are women, which is 30-40 million women worldwide.

Fauzia Ahmed says factories prefer women because they’re excluded from male-dominated union movements and so are less likely to strike. And because they’re women they’re paid less, even in instances where they do the same work as men. Most of these women are young, poor and rural. They are as Sluiter describes: ‘women whose children sleep beneath the sewing machine and begin to help out as soon as their fingers can manage to thread a needle; some who wear nothing but black clothes to work when menstruating, because toilet visits are restricted and stains on their clothes will shame them; pregnant women who stand all day; women who are sexually harassed and psychologically intimidated…’

Surely there is no other issue where first world women’s consumerism collides so dramatically with the conditions of third world women. I mean, I wonder what Sex and the City would have looked like if Carrie turned her mind to these issues. But leaving Carrie’s ethics aside, let’s think about a feminist response.

Firstly, I think we should demand that labels be placed on clothing so that we know what we’re buying. Secondly, we try to buy locally and to buy less. Thirdly, we campaign with the many feminists from the global south who have demanded that labour standards be established by the International Labour Organisation and enforced with sanctions by the World Trade Organisation. Capitalism is a prowling, salivating beast that needs to be tamed with regulation and personal ethics.

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#4… & most importantly: Let’s not tame capitalism; let’s destroy it.

Fire kills ‘last survivor’ in Bangladesh building collapse
April 28, 2013

A fire broke out in the wreckage of the Bangladesh garment factory which collapsed last week, killing what has been characterized as the last remaining survivor.

“The fire broke out as we were cutting a beam to bring out what we believe was the last remaining survivor from the collapsed building. We managed to douse it, but as we came back we saw her dead,” the country’s fire chief Ahmed Ali told AFP on Sunday.

Firefighters described a nearly 11 hour struggle to bring her out alive, with many seen weeping on television following her death. Her battle for survival had captured the hearts of Bangladeshis watching the drama unfold on television.

Rescue workers moved to postpone a decision to use heavy machinery to clean up the debris in a bid to boost her chances at survival. A volunteer recounted hearing her make a feeble cry for help from underneath the wreckage early on Sunday.

“When we first arrived on the scene, she pleaded with us to not to leave her. We gave her water, oxygen, saline and food. And she ate and hang on,” a volunteer involved in the rescue operation told the agency.

“She was a brave lady and fought until the end”, Ali said. “We took the challenge but we lost. It’s broken all our hearts. Everyone became emotional,” he continued. At least three rescue workers were injured when the blaze erupted on Sunday.

Rescue workers have abandoned efforts at the scene of the wreckage which is now consumed by flames, refocusing their efforts on finding any possible survivors in other parts of the decimated eight-story building.

Firefighters continue to work desperately to douse the blaze.

“Hopefully we will be able to control it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, told AP.

Authorities put the latest death toll at 379, with the number of causalities expected to increase as hundreds remain unaccounted for. Earlier on Sunday, four other people were dug out from the debris after spending nearly 100 hours beneath a mass of broken concrete and metal. Another woman was pulled from the wreckage but later died, fire service officials said.

About 2,500 people have been rescued from the collapsed building which housed five garment factories in the commercial suburb of Savar, located some 20 miles from the capital, Dhaka. Around 1,000 of those rescued sustained serious injuries, as many had limbs amputated in order to free them from the rubble.

The fire came hours after the owner of the illegally-constructed building was captured Sunday while attempting to flee into India via a border crossing.  He is set to face charges of faulty construction and causing unlawful death. Two other owners of garment factories based in the complex were taken into custody on Saturday.

Officials said the eight-story complex had been built on spongy ground without the correct permits, and more than 3,000 workers - mainly young women - entered the building on Wednesday morning despite warnings that it was structurally unsafe.

Bangladesh’s garment industry is valued at some $20 billion annually, making it the third largest in the world after China and Italy according to 2011 figures. Many of the workers earn approximately $38 a month to make some of the top international brands in often squalid conditions.

Wednesday’s collapse has sparked days of protests and clashes, with police deploying tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to suppress often violent demonstrations.

Garment workers blockaded a highway in the neighboring industrial zone of Gazipur on Sunday, demanding the death penalty for the owners. The country’s opposition has called for a national strike on May 2 to protest the incident.

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Police fire tear gas at Bangladeshis protesting factory collapse
April 26, 2013

Bangladeshi police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of enraged workers protesting the deaths over 300 of their coworkers in a Wednesday garment factory collapse. At least 25 people have been injured in the clashes.

The demonstrators – some armed with bamboo sticks – blockaded roads, smashed vehicles, burned tires and attacked factories at Gazipur, just outside the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

“The situation is very volatile. Hundreds of thousands of workers have joined the protests. We fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them,” M. Asaduzzaman, an officer in the police control room, told AFP.

The rioting also spread to several districts in the capital, local media reported. The protesters have demanded the arrest and execution of those responsible for the disaster, and blamed the building’s owners for the deaths.

The collapsed eight-story building at Savar, a town on the outskirts of Dhaka, housed five factories. Rescuers have recovered nearly 300 bodies form the rubble, and found 62 people buried alive in the ruins; the death toll may rise further.

There are fears that hundreds of people remain trapped in the wreckage of the building, which officials claim was built illegally and without proper building permits.

“Some people are still alive under the rubble and we are hoping to rescue them,” Reuters cited deputy fire services director Mizanur Rahman.

The building reportedly developed cracks on Tuesday evening, but the owners ordered fleeing workers to return to their production lines, survivors said.

The incident was the worst to befall Bangladesh since a fire in November 2012 that killed over 100 workers.

Many of the country’s 4,500 factories have already been closed due to protests and fears of damage. Manufacturers have declared Saturday to be a holiday, while trade unions called for a strike on Sunday to demand better working conditions, AP reported.

Special prayers for the dead, injured and missing were offered at mosques, temples and pagodas across Bangladesh on Friday.

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Chicago fast food, retail workers strike today - workers walk out at some McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Macy’s in push for higher wages, union
April 24, 2013

Community organizers said they expect hundreds of fast food and retail workers in Chicago to walk off the job Wednesday in a campaign to push for higher wages.

The Fight for $15 campaign, named for its goal of securing $15 an hour for workers, said it expects McDonald’s, Subway, Dunkin Donuts, Macy’s, Sears and Victoria’s Secret store in the Loop and Magnificent Mile to be affected.

The rolling strikes began at 5:30 a.m. as workers walked off the job at some McDonald’s restaurants and Dunkin’ Donuts. Strikes are expected later this morning at some retailers. A rally is planned for 4 p.m. at the St. James Cathedral near Huron and Rush streets. A McDonald’s spokeswoman said that while the company believes “a few workers may have walked off the job,” it was “not a high number at all.” Basically, they are daring you to boycott them and daring their workers to strike because they feel like they can do anything they want to their workers and have no consequences. Let’s call their bluff.

“Our downtown restaurants remain open, and it remains business as usual for us,” she said.

Representatives for Dunkin Donuts and Subway said that hourly wages are set at the discretion of franchisees who operate their restaurants.

“Fight for 15, seeks to put money back in the pockets of the 275,000 men and women who work hard in the city’s fast food and retail outlets, but still can’t afford basic necessities,” the group said in a release. “If workers were paid more, they’d spend more, helping to get Chicago’s economy moving again.”

Wednesday’s action follows a nationwide Black Friday strike by Walmart workers and comes just weeks after 400 fast-food workers walked off their jobs in New York City.

“Fast food and retail workers bring more than $4 billion a year into the cash registers of the Magnificent Mile and the Loop, yet most of these workers earn Illinois’ minimum wage of $8.25, or just above it,” the group said.

In addition to higher pay, Fight for 15 says it is pushing to organize a union for workers. Among those participating will be Aimee Crawford, 56, who said she has worked for 14 months at a downtown Protein Bar restaurant for $8.75 an hour.

“I’m using my retirement funds and my savings to bridge the gap between what I bring home and what I need to survive,” Crawford said.

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Bangladesh factory building collapse ends nearly 100 human lives, injures hundreds more
April 24, 2013

An eight-storey block housing garment factories and a shopping center collapsed on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital on Wednesday, killing nearly 100 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said. Television showed young women workers, some apparently semi-conscious, being pulled from the debris.

One fireman told Reuters that about 2,000 people were in the building when the upper floors jolted down on top of each other.

Bangladesh’s booming garment industry has been plagued by fires and other accidents for years, despite a drive to improve safety standards. In November last year, 112 workers were killed in a blaze at the Tazreen factory in a nearby industrial suburb.

“It looks like an earthquake has struck here,” said one resident as he looked on at the chaotic scene of smashed concrete and ambulances making their way through the crowds of workers and wailing relatives.

“I was at work on the third floor, and then suddenly I heard a deafening sound, but couldn’t understand what was happening. I ran and was hit by something on my head,” said Zohra Begum a worker at one of the factories. An official at a control room set up to provide information about the missing and injured said that 96 people were confirmed dead and more than 700 were injured.

CRACKS IN THE BUILDING

Mohammad Asaduzzaman, in charge of the area’s police station, said factory owners appeared to have ignored a warning not to allow their workers into the building after a crack was detected in the block on Tuesday.

Five garment factories - employing mostly women - were housed in the building, including Ether Tex Ltd., whose chairman told Reuters he was unaware of any warnings not to open the workshops.

“There were some crack at the second floor, but my factory was on the fifth floor,” said Muhammad Anisur Rahman. “The owner of the building told our floor manager that it is not a problem and so you can open the factory.” He said that his firm had been sub-contracted to supply Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world’s largest retailer, and Europe’s C&A.

Last November’s factory fire put a spotlight on global retailers that source clothes from Bangladesh, where low wages - as little as $37 a month for some workers - have helped propel the country to no. 2 in the ranks of apparel exporters.

It emerged later that a Wal-Mart supplier had subcontracted work to the Tazreen factory without authorization.

Buildings in the crowded city of Dhaka are sometimes erected without permission and many do not comply with construction regulations. Dozens died when a garment factory collapsed in the same area eight years ago.

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