Union fury over Thiess spy scandal

By Ewin Hannan and Hedley Thomas
The Australian, November 19, 2010

Photo caption: Workers at the Wonthaggi desalination plant in southern Victoria walk off the job yesterda after news of the spying scandal spread. Picture: Aaron Francis Source: The Australian

THE builders of the Brumby government's $5bn-plus desalination plant last night stood down two of the project's senior executives over claims of spying on workers.

This comes as union fury threatened to spread across the nation.

Workers employed by giant building company Thiess will stop work around Australia from today as unions demand a federal police probe into the revelations, published in The Australian yesterday.

Ahead of crisis talks with unions leaders in Melbourne this morning, Thiess announced last night that the Wonthaggi plant's project director, Greg Miller, and human resources manager, Marcus Carroll, had been stood down pending an investigation into the engagement of notorious strike-breaker Bruce Townsend and his company, Australian Security and Investigations.

Thiess's chief executive in Australia, Nev Power, said: "Due to the serious nature of this matter, this decisive action is necessary."

There is no suggestion Mr Power knew of the secret arrangement with Mr Townsend, which was dubbed Pluto Project.

A source told The Australian last night that Thiess had sacked another manager who was one of the operatives secretly recruited by Mr Townsend to spy on the workforce and make regular reports.

That manager had remained as a worker at Wonthaggi despite Pluto Project being terminated in June.

It is understood the man was given no reason for his sacking yesterday, but there were concerns for his safety in the event of union members discovering his identity.

The Australian understands the sacking means that all the operatives who were reporting covertly to Thiess on the project from March to June are now gone from the desalination plant.

At crisis talks at the plant yesterday, Thiess executives demanded to know the full scope and penetration of Pluto Project.

Workers were sent home from the plant on Victoria's south coast yesterday morning as union anger mounted at the building company's alleged monitoring of workers.

Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary Dean Mighell reiterated last night that the desalination project was "dead" until the full truth about the spying activities was revealed.

He said work would not resume until Monday at the earliest.

Thiess executives have agreed to attend crisis talks with union leaders at the ETU headquarters in North Melbourne this morning.

Mr Mighell said the future of relations between Thiess and the workforce hinged on the company's response to its investigation into the scandal.

"It's a bit like finding out your partner's been cheating on you," he said. "It's jeopardised the future of the project, no doubt."

Earlier yesterday, Thiess admitted hiring a company to spy on its workers, but insisted it was done without the knowledge of senior management and was "totally inappropriate".

Mr Power said ASI had worked for Thiess for about 15 weeks between March and June.

He said ASI was appointed to review security, recruitment and subcontracting processes at the site, but project management subsequently concluded that ASI was not appropriate for the project and terminated its services.

"The use of this consultant was totally inappropriate and contrary to Thiess business practice," Mr Power said.

"While the investigation has so far found no evidence of privacy breaches, we will continue to investigate to determine what action should be taken."

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union yesterday wrote to the Australian Federal Police seeking an investigation into the monitoring of employees, as it believed the conduct appeared to be in breach of federal telecommunications laws.

The building industry watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, also announced an investigation, expressing concerns at the claims of covert monitoring of employees.

The Brumby government has sought to distance itself from the scandal, which comes just eight days out from the state election.

Premier John Brumby yesterday described the news as "deeply concerning" and said that if the conduct was proven, it was "completely unacceptable".

"We would expect the company to address these issues," he said.

"They are obviously running that site; I would expect them to conduct their industrial relations and employment policies within the context of the law, by the letter of the law and in the spirit consistent with what makes a good workplace."

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said it was not right for the government to try to absolve itself of responsibility for the scandal.

Mr Baillieu said he was also worried about the taxpayer paying for the costs of industrial action.

"(My) principal concern here is if this leads to increased costs at the desal plant, then families will be paying more," he said.

Officials from the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union said the union would visit every Thiess site across the country to hold meetings with workers as the employees felt they had been "stabbed in the back".

Dave Noonan, the national secretary of the union's construction division, said workers wanted assurances that covert operations were not being carried out on other Thiess projects.

Prior to last night's standing down of Mr Miller and Mr Carroll and the sacking of Mr Townsend's operative, Mr Noonan said Thiess should identify the managers responsible and sack them.

"It is unacceptable that working people should be monitored in this way," he said.

"The ripple effect of this covert activity will be felt on Thiess jobs all around the country.

"From (this) morning, the union will be visiting every Thiess construction site to hold meetings with members.

"The union will be advising members of their rights to privacy on every Thiess construction job and questioning management on the use of illegal and unethical spying tactics.

"Workers want assurances that they are safe to work alongside their colleagues without wondering if their conversations are being recorded."

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence demanded a full, open investigation into the company's conduct, particularly the hiring of Mr Townsend.

"No worker should expect to be spied upon by people paid to pose as work colleagues and secretly gather information," he said.

"The employment of Bruce Townsend, who has a criminal record for receiving stolen goods and is a known agent provocateur, was an appalling error of judgment by Thiess."

Opposition workplace relations spokesman Eric Abetz said the company's alleged activity highlighted the need for the retention of the ABCC.

"This is a prime example of the developing deterioration of the industrial relations climate in Australia (that) companies feel forced to resort to these activities," Senator Abetz said.

A spokesman for Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said last night that "the government is pleased that the appropriate authorities are thoroughly investigating this matter".

A spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the minister was not aware of specific allegations being made regarding access to communications. "Whether a breach of the Telecommunications Interception Act has occurred is a matter that can be investigated by law enforcement agencies," the spokesman said.



URL: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/investigations/union-fury-over-thiess-spy-scandal/story-fn6tcs23-1225956013098

Revelations of Extreme 'Slave-Like' Working Conditions and Billions in Wage Theft Drive Nationwide Protests

By Art Levine
Alternet, 13 November 2010

As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers.



Activists in more than 30 cities, organized by Interfaith Worker Justice and backed by labor groups, are staging a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft on November 18. "As the crisis for working families in the economy has deepened, so too has the crisis of wage theft," says Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) Executive Director Kim Bobo, perhaps the country's leading reformer addressing the ongoing scandal.

As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and, in some cases, through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers. The latest case to come to light involves alleged horrendous conditions for immigrant workers reportedly hoodwinked in Mexico by a food services contractor for the New York State Fair and kept in near-slavery conditions of $2 an hour.

Indeed, the scandal surfaced when some of these legal guest workers showed up several weeks ago at a Syracuse area clinic, severely dehydrated and malnourished after allegedly being kept in virtual imprisonment in a trailer at the fair and at other locations; they were reportedly being denied thousands of dollars in legal wages owed them while working about 100 hours a week at fairs for months, according to legal filings and Danny Postel, communications coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice.

"It's one of the most shocking cases of wage theft," Postel says.

The contractor, Pantelis Karageorgis, is the target of a labor standards class-action lawsuit filed last month by Farmworker Legal Services and a Labor Department investigation. But criminal charges by the U.S. Attorney's office have been dropped— "dismissed without prejudice"—and instead a modest settlement involving some back payment for the workers is being hammered out, knowledgeable sources say. In These Times spoke to the vendor's attorney Thursday seeking comment, but didn't hear back as of this writing.

While Obama's Labor Department under Hilda Solis has been winning high marks for adding new inspectors and its tough rhetoric, as well promoting outreach to workers victimized by wage theft, the on-the-ground enforcement remains uneven. One reason: the under-funded, outgunned Wage and Hour Division has a spotty record for cooperating with local advocates and workers' centers.

Kim Bobo says, in a tempered statement:

Interfaith Worker Justice is pleased with the new DOL leadership’s commitment to wage theft enforcement...Nonetheless, given the crisis of wage theft around the country, the partnerships between the Wage and Hour Division and local workers centers need to be strengthened, and a Wage and Hour Director should be nominated who can develop aggressive and creative approaches to stopping and deterring wage theft.

In fact, one activist notes in blunter terms "The Wage and Hour Divison is way behind OSHA in having a culture of aggressively targeted investigations."

Today's OSHA, of course, despite some new inspectors, is widely viewed as still failing to effectively protect workers. With just a thousand inspectors to oversee abuses and wage theft affecting over 20 million low-wage workers -- the primary but not the sole victim of a crime affecting white-collar workers, too -- the Wage and Hour Division hasn't been able to turn around yet the willful flouting of labor laws essentially encouraged by the Bush Labor Department's years of neglect. (The problem is only worsened by the grossly under-manned state labor agencies, which, a new study by Ohio Policy Matters finds, have less than 700 total investigators enforcing minimum wage and related labor laws in the over 40 states surveyed.)

Indeed, as Ted Smukler, IWJ's policy director sums up, "Secretary Solis is using her bully pulpit and hired 250 additional investigators, but Obama needs to get a Wage and Hour administrator confirmed [there's only an acting director] and they could be doing a lot more in enforcement."

Whatever the Department of Labor is attempting to do in this arena, it's clearly not had much of a deterrent effect. A new IWJ video underscores the scope of the continuing unstopped corporate crime wave.

Cincinnati workers bilked out of overtime pay

The failure to effectively enforce wage theft has allowed employers to underpay and stiff workers with impunity. For instance, one alleged scheme by owners of a Cincinnati animal hospital reportedly involved paying immigrant workers overtime, but then demanding the pay be returned to the owners in the form of cash kickbacks.

Daniel Sherman, the director of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, contends, "It's one of the most egregious examples of wage theft"—but hardly unique in his area. He contends, "The law is not very strong and it is not pursued."

As the Cincinnati Enquirer reported late last month:

Three undocumented workers say they were extorted into kicking back $24,000 in overtime pay to the owners of an animal hospital under the threat that if they didn't come up with the money they'd be deported.

Those workers and advocates for immigrants say the practice is not uncommon in Greater Cincinnati and is a growing problem.

The former employees of the Hamilton Avenue Animal Hospital and Clinic in Pleasant Run and the Sycamore Animal Hospital in Symmes Township say veterinarians Michael Cable and his daughter, Stephanie Cable, first accepted their payments in personal checks but later required them to pay in cash.

Two of the workers placed a hidden camera in the Sycamore Animal Hospital on Montgomery Road and filmed themselves three different times giving cash to Stephanie Cable. One worker rented the apartment above the animal hospital and installed the camera from there.

Jose Aguilar and another worker, Salvador Martinez, 20, gave the Enquirer the video, pay stubs and a series of canceled checks that had been deposited into the animal hospital's account at Huntington Bank...

The video provided by the workers shows three men paying Stephanie Cable cash.

"Hey, Steph - how much I need pay back for overtime this check?" asks Aguilar in the video.

"Uh, I think it's in my car - I really need to start bringing my bag in," Stephanie Cable says on the video.

In one scene, she takes the money from a man and quickly puts it in her back pocket....

But the attorney for the Cables, Steve Goodin, told In These Times, "The Cables have categorically denied that they were extorting or threatening to deport their employees." Because of pending investigations, he says, he can only say about the alleged labor law violations: "We're urging everyone not to rush to judgment," noting that there was a bomb threat aimed at the owners after the Enquirer story appeared.

Yet it's also clear the Cables are planning to mount an aggressive defense: they've already filed a criminal complaint with the county sheriff against the workers who arranged the filming for allegedly violating wiretapping and trespass laws, although Goodin concedes a criminal prosecution seems unlikely. They're also planning a civil suit on similar grounds. Still, he says of the owners, "They were friendly with these guys."

He also argues that an earlier 2007 settlement the Cables made with the Department of Labor for allegedly underpaying overtime to 19 former employees—in which they admitted no guilt but paid about $9,200—is completely unrelated to these latest violations.

Employers act with near impunity

Whatever the merits of the new charges against these owners, advocates at these privately-funded workers' centers often affiliated with IWJ, including Daniel Sherman in Cincinnati and Rebecca Fuentes in Syracuse, regularly field complaints from the victims of employers who routinely ignore labor laws with little fear of timely or effective punishment.

As one national activist told In These Times privately, the Department of Labor usually has to go to court to enforce its own regulations, and so "the smart [employers]" just wait for the interminable legal process to play itself out or get dropped altogether—assuming any enforcement efforts are even started.

As a result, Sherman and other advocates report, new abuses keep cropping up. In yet another case of labor trafficking, for example, he learned just last month about 12 immigrant laborers working about 120 hours a week for $1,000 a month each, housed at the warehouse where they worked—and who were essentially forced to sleep inside just four hours a night.

Sherman's organization only discovered the abuse after one worker jumped out of a warehouse window and escaped to a church for help. "The church called us," he says, and he in turn contacted the Department of Labor to pursue labor law violations-- and the FBI, to investigate human trafficking. But he's not confident that there will be any prosecutions for trafficking because the threatened and intimidated workers were theoretically free to leave.

But in another recent case, Sherman says, the employer just pulled a gun on two immigrant workers who complained about not getting paid. No criminal or legal actions have yet been pursued because the families of the workers are too scared, he observes.

'Perfect conditions' for 'slave-like situations'

The allegations made against the New York food vendor illustrate some of the ways employers can purportedly intimidate and abuse workers. In a startling affidavit filed by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") agent that accompanied the arrest of Pantelis Karageorgis in September (again, the charges have been dropped at the request of the prosecutor), Special Agent Thomas Kirwin outlines some of the alleged tricks of the labor trafficking trade used against employees hungry for work. The agent's affidavit and the original class-action lawsuit filed by Nathaniel Charny as the lead counsel of Farmworkers Legal Services on behalf of four named workers and others paint quite an ugly picture.

And the local workers' rights advocate, Rebecca Fuentes, who helped discover and expose the alleged Syracuse worker abuse, points out, "The guest worker visa program is very flawed, and it ties workers to one employer. That creates perfect conditions for almost slave-like situations," like those facing the apparently starving New York State Fair workers. (She also claims that, at least in her region, the federal Department of Labor is more responsive than the state labor department, which dawdles for months in the face of serious wage theft complaints - a pattern afflicting many weak state labor departments.)

The food-stand employees were recruited this past summer in Mexico with allegedly "fraudulent" promises of a relatively well-paying job, complete with written contracts, as legal guest workers under the H-2B visa program. They were hired as workers in the Karageorgis firm's Greek food concession stands that accompanied some carnivals and fairs in the United States.

Starting in Buffalo in August, then moving to Syracuse, agent Kirwin reported, the workers arrived with no food or money, were allowed to get their meals solely by eating at the concessions stands only once or twice a day, and were housed in trailers on the fair sites, working 16 or more hours each day. "On the last day of the [Syracuse] fair, the employees worked 24 hours consecutively," he noted about the state government-sponsored fair. "At the conclusion of the fair in Syracuse, the defendant paid each of the employees $260."

Yet by some estimates, for the months of nonstop work at a promised $10.71 per hour and extra overtime pay, the workers actually should have each received closer to $30,000. But for approximately 280 hours of work in just a three-week period, each worker got a mere $360, Kirwin stated.

When the employees complained about not getting their full wages, Karageorgis allegedly made a variety of threats, including potentially firing them, cutting their pay even further, or having them deported—and barring them from ever working in the U.S. again. Kirwin added, "The defendant, who traveled with the Employees the entire time, routinely berated and sought to demean them, calling them, for example, `pussies' if they complained about illness or injury."

One of the sadder ironies of the entire case is that some of these victims, also cited in the civil suit, such as Adonai Vasquez, started working for the vendor, Peter's Fine Greek Food, Inc., as far back as July, 2008. But they kept returning on different work trips for as little as $1 or $2 an hour—despite the previously broken promises of $10 to $12 per hour in wages. This is the reality of the "race to the bottom" in the Wild West-style globalized economy: Immigrants are literally starving to work in the United States.

The still-pending civil suit filed in October alleges, "For a period at least as far back as six years from the date of commencement of this action, there have been hundreds of Mexican national treated in the same violative fashion in regards to the payment of wages."

At the same time, the lawsuit claims, "Upon information and belief, Defendants [Karageorgis and his firm], grossed more than $500,000 in the past fiscal year."

Even though one of Karegeorgis's lawyers, Dawn Cardi, was unable to comment as of this writing, the ICE agent's affidavit recounts Karageorgis's version of events. The Greek food entrepreneur explained his operation: his agents recruit workers in Mexico and he submits their legal paperwork to U.S. labor and immigration authorities. But he claimed to be surprised to learn that they were promised $10.71 an hour. He conceded to Kirwin he hadn't yet paid his workers in full, but intended to do so—while somehow asserting that none of them ever worked in Buffalo for him and thus they weren't owed money for that work. He also denied making any threats against his workers, except that he'd notify his attorney if they quit.

But the observant immigration agent also noticed that Karegeorgis wasn't short of cash at the time of his arrest. "He had in his pants' pockets three bulky wads of cash and also had a briefcase that he said contained money, the security of which he was concerned about," Kirwin noted dryly. Despite the defendant's claims, Kirwin added, the agent requested that the food merchant "be dealt with according to law."

So far, though, he seems unlikely to face any criminal prosecution.

Activists to demand reform around country

It's small wonder, then, with employers apparently stealing wages with so much impunity, that a groundswell by activists is building to take action, even in a still-weakened regulatory climate. At a preview for next week's events, for instance, hundreds of workers and allies marched in Minneapolis last Saturday demanding fair wages, an end to wage theft and safe working conditions for retail cleaning workers at major stores, including Supervalu and Target.

The worsening economy makes it even easier to rip off workers desperate for work, the protesters declared (hat tip to Workday Minnesota). “Corporations are responsible for pitting cleaning companies against each other which results in plummeting wages and increased workloads,” said Veronica Mendez, an organizer with Center for Workers United in Struggle, a IWJ-affiliated labor-faith coalition. “The only way to stop this is for these retail chains to meet with workers to establish fair standards. These poor working conditions affect everyone in our communities..."

Interfaith Worker Justice and its allies have ambitious plans for its nationwide local protests next Thursday:

Events on the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft will include protests at businesses guilty of wage theft to demand back wages for workers and events at which political leaders, workers, faith leaders, community groups, and labor unions will present new initiatives to end wage theft.

In Houston, a worker center will release a local report on wage theft and will send a "Justice Bus" around the city to call attention to local businesses that steal their workers' wages. Other innovative local events include a text messaging campaign, a “Worst Employers” Awards ceremony, “Know Your Rights” workshops for workers, a jazz funeral for lost wages and a Thanksgiving-themed auction and a dramatization against wage theft in Memphis.

Yet the Republican take-over of the House and rising anti-union sentiment have already changed one of their primary legislative goals. The coalition's call for action includes this sweeping reform priority:

On September 29, Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) introduced the Wage Theft Prevention and Community Partnership Act (H.R. 6268), which would authorize the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to establish a competitive grant program to prevent wage theft. The bill would expand the efforts of enforcement agencies and community organizations to educate workers about their rights and the remedies available to them, while educating employers about their responsibilities under the law.

"That's dead," one knowledgeable activist admitted. "He lost the election."

Art Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly and a regular blogger for Working In These Times. He has written for Mother Jones, The American Prospect, The New Republic, AlterNet, Truthout, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon and numerous other publications

Unemployed told: do four weeks of unpaid work or lose your benefits

Unemployed told: do four weeks of unpaid work or lose your benefits

Crackdown on £190bn-a-year welfare bill
• Payments could be suspended for three months

By Toby Helm and Anushka Asthana
The Observer, Sunday 7 November 2010

The unemployed will be ordered to do periods of compulsory full-time work in the community or be stripped of their benefits under controversial American-style plans to slash the number of people without jobs.

The proposals, in a white paper on welfare reform to be unveiled this week, are part of a radical government agenda aimed at cutting the £190bn-a-year welfare bill and breaking what the coalition now calls the "habit of worklessness".

The measures will be announced to parliament by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, as part of what he will describe as a new "contract" with the 1.4 million people on jobseekers' allowance. The government's side of the bargain will be the promise of a new "universal credit", to replace all existing benefits, that will ensure it always pays to work rather than stay on welfare.

In return, where advisers believe a jobseeker would benefit from experiencing the "habits and routines" of working life, an unemployed person will be told to take up "mandatory work activity" of at least 30 hours a week for a four-week period. If they refuse or fail to complete the programme their jobseeker's allowance payments, currently £50.95 a week for those under 25 and £64.30 for those over 25, could be stopped for at least three months.

The Department for Work and Pensions plans to contract private providers to organise the placements with charities, voluntary organisations and companies. An insider close to the discussions said: "We know there are still some jobseekers who need an extra push to get them into the mindset of being in the working environment and an opportunity to experience that environment.

"This is all about getting them back into a working routine which, in turn, makes them a much more appealing prospect for an employer looking to fill a vacancy, and more confident when they enter the workplace. The goal is to break into the habit of worklessness."

Sanctions – including removal of benefit – currently exist if people refuse to go on training courses or fail to turn up to job interviews, but they are rarely used.

The plans stop short of systems used in the US since the 1990s under which benefits can be "time limited", meaning all payments end after a defined period. But they draw heavily on American attempts to change public attitudes to welfare and to change the perception that welfare is an option for life.

Last night the shadow work and pensions secretary, Douglas Alexander, suggested government policy on job creation was reducing people's chances of finding work: "The Tories have just abolished the future jobs fund, which offered real work and real hope to young people. If you examine the spending review then changes such as cuts to working tax credit are actually removing incentives to get people into work. What they don't seem to get about their welfare agenda is that without work it won't work."

Anne Begg, Labour MP and chair of the Commons select committee for work and pensions, said that many unemployed people already had a work record and carrying out work experience would give them less time to search for a job. "The problem is finding a job," she added. "One of the reasons the last government moved away from work placements and towards things such as the Future Jobs Fund was that it actually acted as a hindrance to them looking for work."

The Observer has also learned that ministers have abolished the Social Exclusion Taskforce, which was based in the Cabinet Office and co-ordinated activity across departments to drive out marginalisation in society. Documents show that the unit has become a part of "Big Society, Policy and Analysis".

Jon Trickett, a shadow minister focusing on social exclusion, reacted angrily, saying that ministers should "hang their heads in shame". Whitehall sources insisted the work would carry on, but more of it would take place in the Department for Work and Pensions.

Naomi Eisenstadt, who was director of the taskforce until last year and is now an academic at Oxford University, said the shift was worrying. "I don't think it is significant in terms of the name – call it a banana – who cares? What does worry me is why they are not using the civil servants who were doing the work on deep disadvantage in the Cabinet Office and exploiting their expertise," she said.

Eisenstadt added that it would be a concern if the government believed the "big society" could take the place of government intervention. "If you speak to any minister I am sure they would agree that civil society is one part of the solution, but not the whole solution," she said.

The proposals come as the government prepares to unveil policy plans across a number of departments. Tomorrow, the Ministry of Justice will reveal that thousands of criminals with serious mental illnesses or drug addictions will no longer be sent to prison but will instead be offered "voluntary" treatment in hospital. Documents will show that offenders will be free to walk away from NHS units because officials believe it would be pointless to create duplicate prisons in the community. "While treatment is voluntary, offenders in these programmes will be expected to engage, be motivated to change and to comply with the tough requirements of their community order," they will say.

Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, said: "Serious criminals who pose a threat to the public will always be kept locked up, but in every prison there are also people who ought to be receiving treatment for mental illness rather than housed with other criminals. The public would be better protected if they could receive that treatment in a more suitable setting."

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/07/unemployed-unpaid-work-lose-benefits

Exclusive Look: Where The Workers Who Made Your iPhone Sleep At Night

From Gizmodo, posted Nov 2, 2010 10:00 AM
By Joel Johnson



Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, China, is home to about half of its 420,000 workers. They make many of our gadgets and computers, then walk to dormitories on the 2.1-kilometer-square campus. I got to look inside.

I traveled to China to report on Foxconn and Shenzhen as part of a special feature for WIRED, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the magazine. In the meantime, here's a small glimpse of some of the things I saw while in Shenzhen.


This dorm is one of the older ones on campus, built near the beginning. It's a men's dorm—women have separate facilities—and populated mostly by entry-level workers.


Since a spate of eleven suicides earlier this year, every building on the Foxconn campus is draped in netting. It is morbid but seemingly effective; there have been no suicides since the nets were installed in May.


Hallways remain institutionally empty, kept dim to save energy, keep the temperature down, and to allow workers who keep a late schedule to sleep with less interruption during the daylight hours.


A dorm room. Eight workers sleep in four bunk beds in a room about the size of a two-car garage.


Toiletries kept on a shelf in mugs.


A television viewing room is available on each floor. I joked with the Foxconn executive who was with me that of all the places in the world that could probably manage to get bigger television screens installed, it was probably here at Foxconn, who make televisions for the world's largest brands.


Workout equipment in the spaces between buildings.


In a newer dorm, a sink is shared on the balcony, where workers can wash their clothing and themselves. Management of the living quarters has recently been outsourced to a local operations company in an attempt to address concerns about an employer managing living conditions of its workers. It's unclear how outside management will fundamentally alter the nature of on-campus living.

This special report is a partnership between Gizmodo and WIRED Magazine.

Camera and lens rental from BorrowLenses.com.

Send an email to Joel Johnson, the author of this post, at joel@gizmodo.com.

URL: http://gizmodo.com/5678732/exclusive-look-where-the-workers-who-made-your-iphone-sleep-at-night

Chile miners: rescue joy must not derail focus on why mine collapse happened

By Claire Provost,
The Guardian, Wednesday 13 October 2010

It remains valid to ask how the miners' plight could have arisen in a country lauded for its development progress

After 69 days underground, the miners trapped in the San José mine in Chile today began their journey to the surface.

There is no doubt it's a great day for the miners and their families. But as we celebrate their safe and successful return, let's also take a moment to consider some of the commentary on the safety of Chile's mines, labour rights and the potential dangers of an export-oriented development strategy. These are important considerations which have become buried in the avalanche of news about extramarital affairs and lucrative movie deals.

"Los 33" were discovered in late August, after they had already been trapped underground for over two weeks. But in contrast to the excitable coverage of recent weeks, a question implicit in other commentaries has been: how could this have happened in a middle-income country, often congratulated for its development progress?

Several commentators – including international trade unions – have pointed to Chile's failure to ratify International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions on safety and health in mines, and drawn attention to the consequences of inadequate workplace safety standards across the country. According to the Inter Press Service, in 2009 alone Chile had a total of 191,685 workplace accidents, including 443 deaths.

Carmon Espinoza, head of the Chilean NGO Programa de Economia del Trabajo (Labour Economy Program) remarked in late August that job insecurities mean miners "for logical reasons pay greater attention to keeping their jobs than to work safety".

The San José mine, in particular, is no stranger to workplace tragedy: over a dozen lives have been lost there in recent years.

Bélgica Ramírez, sister-in-law of one of the trapped miners, suggested that even if workers did express their concerns, they were ignored. "The mine was in precarious condition and they [the miners] always told the bosses, but the only thing they cared about was production," she said.

In early September, a Guardian report revealed that "the dangers were so well known that locals called its miners 'the kamikazes'." Even the owners of the mine recognised the dangers, offering "salaries 30% higher than average, a tacit acknowledgement that the job required extraordinary sacrifices".

Other commentators went further, arguing that the mine collapse happened not in spite but because of Chile's rapid economic growth and reliance on an export-oriented development strategy.

Blogging on the Reuters site, Stacy Torres, a PhD student at New York University, lashed out at the lack of safety standards to "protect the workers who make Chile's prosperity possible". She argued: "despite reigning as Latin America's economic powerhouse for the past two decades, Chile continues to suffer from some of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. The struggle of the country's trapped miners has once again laid bare the human costs of such 'progress'."

Chile is the world's largest producer of copper, and the country's often-congratulated 4-5% growth rate has been largely fuelled by copper exports to Europe, the US, China and India. The government celebrates Chile's status as a prime investment destination, and is proud to proclaim the country as Latin America's fastest growing economy.

However, though Chile's drop in absolute poverty rates (which have fallen from 40% in 1990 to 14-15% today) is accredited to the country's rapid and sustained economic growth, inequality figures have barely budged. According to the 2009 UN human development report, of the 147 countries for which there are figures, Chile is the 19th most unequal state in the world in terms of the social distribution of the country's wealth. Figures from the report suggest that the richest 10% account for 40% of Chile's income and expenditures, while the poorest account for only 1.6%.

While labour standards and workers' rights are often sidelined by the aggressive "pro-growth" talk of development economists, they are fundamental components of social or human development.

A 2004 report from the UK's Department for International Development argued for "making the improvement of labour standards a part of the international community's strategy to achieve the MDGs [millennium development goals]".

Though the ILO has reported that "more than 75% of the global population do not enjoy a set of social guarantees that allow them to deal with life's risks", it argues that the promotion not just of work, but of "decent work" – underpinned by rights and social protections, including safeguards for income, health and safety – is necessary for the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger (MDG1).

Unfortunately, these insights seem to have been overlooked.

No man has done more for this shift in coverage than Chile's charismatic president, Sebastián Piñera, who leaped into the media spotlight by quickly firing top officials of Chile's mining regulator and promising an independent expert inquiry into the accident. More recently, he postponed his trip to Europe until after the miners' rescue and erected new mobile phone towers to provide the thousands of journalists who have descended on the Atacama desert with high-speed connections to disseminate their coverage of the evacuation.

While there is much to celebrate today – primarily that the names of the miners will not be added to the long list of men and women in Chile who have lost their lives in the workplace – the spectacle of the rescue should not overshadow the importance of the question: how could this have happened in the first place?

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/oct/13/chile-miners-rescue-mine-collapse

Modern-day slavery: horrific conditions on board ships catching fish for Europe

From The Guardian, posted Thursday 30 September 2010
By Felicity Lawrence and Robert Booth

Exclusive: Crews marooned at sea off Africa found in squalor, with cardboard bunks, 18-hour shifts, and payment in fish

When environmental campaigners began tracking a hi-tech South Korean trawler off the coast of West Africa, they were looking for proof of illegal fishing of dwindling African stocks. What they uncovered was an altogether different kind of travesty: human degradation so extreme it echoed the slavery they thought had been abolished more than a century ago.

"It was horrendous," said Duncan Copeland, a senior campaigner at the Environmental Justice Foundation, who boarded the South Korean-flagged trawler at the end of 2008 with naval forces from Sierra Leone.

"The men were working in the fish hold with no air or ventilation in temperatures of 40-45 degrees. It was rusty, greasy, hot and sweaty. There were cockroaches everywhere in the galleys and their food was in disgusting boxes. All they had for washing was a pump bringing up salt water. They stank. It was heartbreaking."

As their investigation continued, the EJF found vessel after vessel, some up to 40 years old, rusted and in terrible repair, engaged in pirate fishing – an illegal trade that damages already fragile marine stocks and exploits human labour in shocking conditions.

The 36 crew members on the boat boarded by Copeland came from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. Eight men shared a tiny windowless area of the fish hold with four cardboard "bunks" resting on planks. Four worked in the hold sorting and packing fish for the European market while four slept, and they would alternate, literally rolling out to allow the next to roll in.

The Sierra Leonean crew members said they were not paid with money but in boxes of "trash" fish – the bycatch rejected by the European market – which they would be given to sell locally. If anyone complained, the captain would abandon them on the nearest beach, they said.

"The conditions aren't good, but we can't do anything about it," a worker on another South Korean-registered ship told investigators. "We live with it, because it is hard to find work. If someone offers you a salary of $200 to support your family it's not good, but we have to live with it."

In May, about 150 Senegalese men were found labouring in a ship off Sierra Leone; working up to 18 hours through the day and into the night, eating and sleeping in spaces less than a metre high. The vessel carried a licence number for importing fish to the EU, showing it had passed apparently strict hygiene standards.

EJF also found several apparently redundant trawlers out at sea still with crew on board, some of whom had been there more than a year with no radio or safety equipment.

"I was sent here by the company," said one fisherman on a trawler off the coast of Guinea. "The company sends a boat with supplies to bring me food like fish and shrimps. Nobody wants to come here."

The fishermen's tales reveal the human toll of pirate fishing, a business thought to produce a catch of at least 11m tonnes of fish a year worth more than $10bn (£6.3bn).

Living quarters inside one of the pirate fishing ships. Photograph: EJF

Vessels often stay at sea for months on end, with reefers coming alongside every couple of weeks to unload the catch and resupply them. As they operate in remote waters, they can avoid detection for long periods. The crew are effectively imprisoned, most cannot swim and many of those interviewed by EJF meet the UN definition of forced labour. Reports of violence, withholding of pay and retention of documents are common, said Copeland.

The investigators found a crew of 200 Senegalese operating off Sierra Leone in 2006. The men were living in a makeshift structure built on the stern of the ship, divided into four levels with barely a metre of headroom and cardboard packing boxes crammed together to serve as mattresses.

The ship did not appear on the official list of vessels licenced to fish in Sierra Leone at the time of sighting. Records show that it has visited Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, which is the largest landing point for west African fish into Europe and has been criticised by senior EU officials for its lax inspection regime.

But the investigators' original interest in fish stocks also produced worrying evidence.

Several of the vessels boarded by EJF are bottom trawlers, licensed to import to the EU, catching high value fish such as shrimp, lobster and tuna. Bottom trawlers drag heavy chains across the sea bed, scraping up everything in their path including coral. In one case, the boat had been dumping more than 70% of its catch overboard, including sharks – once the fins had been removed for the Asian market.

The vessel's owner had been putting its Senegalese crew out to sea in small boats to bring in tuna and shark to sell as caught by "hook and line, having first identified fishing targets with global positioning software. Many of the Senegalese were fishermen unable to sustain a livelihood in their own waters because stocks have been decimated by overfishing by hi-tech trawlers.

The EJF believes most illegal fishing is carried out by ships flying flags of convenience. Under international maritime law, the country where a ship is registered is responsible for its activities. Some countries allow vessels of other nationalities to register with them for a few hundred dollars and are known to ignore offences.

Pirate vessels can re-flag several times a season and frequently change their name. They are often backed by shell companies, which makes their real owners hard to trace and law enforcement extremely difficult. The maximum fine for illegal fishing is around $100,000, which is typically less than two weeks' profit from the trade, according to EJF.

The South Korean captain, first mate and engineer of one of the ships were arrested by the Sierra Leone navy and fined $30,000 plus their catch for fishing in the country's inshore exclusion zone. The same ship was however spotted in August, fishing again off the coast of Sierra Leone and Liberia according to EJF.

All at Sea, the Abuse of Human Rights aboard Illegal Fishing Vessels, EJF. www.ejfoundation.org

Does illegal fish make it to UK?

Deciding whether the fish on your plate is from an illegal catch from west African waters remains difficult, but it should be getting easier after a crackdown in recent months by the British and European authorities.

Under an EU regulation brought in this year, it is forbidden to import fish into the member states unless it has been certified as legal by the flag state of the vessel. That means if a ship sails under a Spanish flag, Spain has to certify the catch as legal. Campaigners believe the problem remains that some countries, including South Korea and China, are not effectively policing fishing vessels using their flags.

Investigators believe pirate fish are "laundered" – packed in boxes with the stamp of a licensed fishing boat. During checks in 2006 and 2007 the Environmental Justice Foundation found west Africa-caught denton, commonly sold in the UK as snapper or sea bream, in London fish markets. Some boxes of frozen denton carried the logo of a Chinese company that operates many of the illegal fishing vessels the EJF had observed operating in Guinea. The problem of pirate fish reaching the plate is thought to be greater for consumers in southern Europe, which consumes the bulk of west African fish, shrimp, prawn and lobster.

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/30/modern-day-slavery-fishing-europe?intcmp=239

Even illegal workers have rights

Even illegal workers have rights
By Danielle Celermajer
The Sydney Morning Herald, September 23, 2010

The death last month of Myung Yeol Hwang, a South Korean who had been working in Australia for 12 years, brings into sharp relief not only the tragic vulnerability of the world's millions of migrant workers, but the reality of their suffering in our backyard.

The Australian government can no longer turn a blind eye to the suffering of migrant workers - whether they have legal status or not. Both ethically and according to international law, all migrant workers, no matter their official status, are subject to the basic human rights covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At the minimum, that includes emergency medical care in the face of irreparable harm to one's health, something that would probably have saved Hwang's life.
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It is disturbing that so much of the reaction to Hwang's death, reported in the Herald this week, has circled around objections Australians have to people working ''illegally in our country''.

Australia, like any sovereign state, has a right to make and implement laws about who has permission to enter and to work. The very international laws protecting the rights of migrant workers explicitly recognise that states have this right.

But we live in the real world where not only finance and financial crisis, but also labour (mostly cheap labour) circulates fairly freely and globally.

Like it or not, the Australian labour market includes many more people like Hwang, working at the periphery for low wages, often in dirty, dangerous and degrading jobs (the three Ds of migrant work conditions).

Despite our objections at an official national level, clearly we, as employers, don't seem to mind.

We like to be able to pay lower wages, to employ people casually and to run our businesses outside a formal economy that might curb our flexibility and our profits.

These are the indisputable facts, and the Australian government has an obligation to ensure basic human rights of those workers are not violated.

But disturbingly, Australia has ensured that technically it would be incorrect for me to claim that it has an obligation under international law to afford illegal migrant workers such protection.

That is because it has refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

In refusing to do so, Australia has effectively said that the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights do not apply to this subclass of human beings.

Let me make it clear: we are not talking about guaranteeing illegal migrant workers the same type of welfare and social services we provide people who are legally in the country. Australia retains, and should retain, the right to draw distinctions between legal and illegal workers.

What we are talking about are those most basic rights that the nations of the world declared belong to every single human - rights to be protected from discrimination or abuse, to be treated with dignity and not be left to die without basic medical care.

Irrespective of the legal technicality of whether Australia has ratified the convention that explicitly states those rights apply to migrant workers, our obligations under the international bill of rights already require that we do so. That's the thing about human rights - they apply to everyone, without distinction.

And irrespective of concerns that Australian citizens might have about the negative economic impact of an unregulated labour market, surely we still believe that our shared humanity with the people who lay the tiles in our bathrooms or wash the dishes when we eat out makes it unacceptable for us to treat them like refuse.

There are 90 million migrant workers around the globe, many of them working under irregular conditions or without documentation. This is a part of the reality of globalisation that we cannot ignore. And yet our international system of protection lags behind this global reality.

No longer protected by the laws of their countries of origin and not yet protected by the laws of their host countries, these millions - who care for our children, deliver our groceries, construct our buildings and indirectly fuel our economies, dangle in a dangerous gap where they are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and the vagaries of sickness and industrial accidents.

We live in a world where there is a disconnect between the global movement of workers and the failure to ensure the protection of their fundamental human rights. We want to receive the benefits of globalisation, but seem unwilling to swallow the responsibilities. A few weeks ago, Australian news carried the shocking story of a Sri Lankan woman who returned from her work as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia with 30 nails in her body. I am sure most Australians who read it recoiled in horror that someone could be treated in this way. But this is just the acute end of an epidemic that has followed hot on the heals of the globalisation of cheap and unregulated labour.

If Australia wants to hold its head up not just as a prosperous nation, but as an ethical one, too, it should take the step of ratifying the Convention to Protect Migrant Workers and advocate their protection throughout the rest of our common world.

Dr Danielle Celermajer is director of the University of Sydney's masters of human rights and democratisation program.

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/even-illegal-workers-have-rights-20100922-15mw9.html