Bangladesh union restrictions lifted after pressure

Only just discovered that Bangladesh garment workers are not allowed to form trade unions without prior permission from factory owners.  Perhaps I haven't being paying close enough attention and allowed myself to be misled by the impressive demonstrations following the Rana Plaza factory collapse. (By yesterday afternoon, at least 1,127 people were confirmed to have died - New York Times, 13th May.)

Another Bangladesh clothing factory disaster. Workers outside a building in Dhaka which caught fire. Credit: Ismail Ferdous/AP

Anyhow, all this is set to change. According to The Guardian (and other media including CTV news) there is an old law requiring workers to obtain permission before they could unionize. "No such permission from owners is now needed," a government spokesman is quoted saying. "The government is doing it for the welfare of the workers."

The New York Times has a different emphasis. Permission from owners isn't mentioned; but a list of names of those who want a union has to be submitted to the labour ministry who then pass it on to the employer who is thereby handed a useful tool for harassment and intimidation. This will now stop apparently. The New York Times says the new initiatives are “partly in response to outrage over conditions in the country’s garment sector” after the Rana Plaza collapse.

I'm not clear from reports whether the restrictions on unions are specific to the garment industry. Bangladesh is the world’s third largest exporter of garments and a government minister is quoted as calling the industry “the goose that lays the golden egg”.
 
Yet despite non-unionisation, protests by garment workers in 2010 achieved an 80% hike in the minimum wage to 3,000 takas ($38/£25) a month, according to The Guardian. 

A momentous deal

Since 2005, at least 1,800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh. This is from research by the advocacy group International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF).  I presume this figure includes the 1,127. Meanwhile War on Want is trumpeting the news that global retailers, including Primark, H&M, Tesco, Zara and C&A, have all signed the Bangladesh Safety Accord. War on Want regards this as "a momentous deal" and believes the retailers bowed to pressure from campaigners in the west disgusted by reports of the Rana Plaza collapse.

By the way the other day I was puzzling where to send money (see post below this). Maybe War on Want and the ILRF would be a start.  Thanks to Ben for some of these links, and links that led to links.

How do we support Bangladesh garment workers?

Most important image to emerge from the Bangladesh factory collapse (death toll 580 as of yesterday with little sign of what the final number will be, according to the Guardian website) isn't of bodies, or the collapsed building, but the protests demanding justice for the fatalities and enforcement of safety codes. This Guardian video captured the Dhaka May Day rally.



The question is what solidarity action should we in the west take in support of these Bangladeshi workers? That’s not an easy one. Brands needs to be pressured to sign the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement and work with trade unions to improve workplace safety.

Boycott Primark and other brands? No says this New Internationalist blog. In response to a boycott, brands may cut production or pull out of factories, leading to the loss of jobs, garment workers struggling to feed their families and being unable to send their children to school.
 
If you're looking for the inevitable online petition, The Clean Clothes Campaign has one.

Labour Behind The Label has a lot of advice about “where should I shop” but I'm afraid that worthy though it is you'll be more confused when you’ve read it than you were before.

Sending money to the Bangladeshi unions or the organisers of the big rally in the Guardian video seems a good plan but I haven't found out yet just where it should be sent. All very unsatisfactory.

2-year-old girl killed with 'my first rifle'

American man and boy out hunting with shotguns, circa 1955. FPG/Getty Images

A story on the NPR website (National Public Radio) on 2nd May shows just what gun control advocates in the US are up against. 

It's prompted by the shooting death of a 2-year-old girl in Kentucky at the hands of her 5-year-old brother, which has opened up yet another US debate about gun control. The headline is “When It Comes To Guns, How Young Is Too Young?” and it's prefaced by the black and white 1955 picture of the all-American man and boy.

The image of a woman holding a pink .22-caliber youth rifle in a firearms shop illustrates the type of gun used in the shooting. It's marketed to children as 'my first rifle' and comes in a variety of colours.

The story starts with: “While no one favors the idea of 5-year-olds using weapons without supervision, there is no consensus on the appropriate age to start hands-on training with firearms.”  A gun rights advocate is quoted, without comment, saying "Many people who have firearms familiarize their kids with firearms early on, because they want them to know that this is not something to be trifled with."

The reader comments dwell on state versus parental responsibility and compare marketing guns to kids with sugary and fatty foods. My bête noir expression “nanny state” crops up.

It's worth taking the time to read the full story and the reader comments.

I visit passage tombs in the Boyne Valley

With Cork Astronomy Club last weekend to Newgrange (top photo) in the Boyne Valley. A passage tomb - a vast mound covering a passage of stone slabs, and a chamber where cremated remains were interred. Older than the pyramids of Egypt. You can stand under a 5000 year old roof, as good today as the day it was built.

Am penning an essay which will include the regrettable reconstruction by O’Kelly in the 1970’s, why passage tombs were not observatories, why neolithic farmers didn't need calendars to tell them when to plant, and why I was unconvinced by a film at the visitor centre suggesting the builders of Newgrange believed they had to propitiate the sun-god to prevent it disappearing entirely in midwinter.

At Loughcrew several passage tombs are built at the top of a high hill (bottom photo - yes I'm afraid that old codger is me). I'm not clear if they had to haul the stones up the hill, or did they find them at the top?

Boston 6 months from now

Time Magazine 17 April 2013

What will we think of the Boston atrocity 6 months from now?


Will it be this letter on the New York Times website today?


Kenneth L. Zimmerman of Huntington Beach, California can’t believe that a 19-year-old kid has held an entire city hostage. In order to capture Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, all subways, buses and trains in the Boston area were shut down; universities and schools were closed; residents were told to stay inside their homes; businesses closed down. More than 9,000 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies accompanied by police dogs scoured the area looking for the suspect, conducting door-to-door searches.


You’d think that a foreign country had invaded, he says.

Today's funeral arrangements

Night-time dress rehearsal for Thatcher funeral. Credit: www.news.com.au

"We haven't come here to insult anybody, we have come here to tell you there's a different point of view than the one that the media have been pushing and ramming down our throats all the week.

"Our families are markedly insulted of the eulogising of a woman who absolutely destroyed our communities."

The words of miners’ union leader David Douglas, from a passionate address to the crowd in Trafalgar Square at an anti-Thatcher party on Saturday 13th, quoted in Morning Star Online.  “Ex-miners have last word at capital party” was the headline.

Meanwhile Mark Rowe ‏@MarkRowe10 tweeted that when North Korean Kim Jong II died (Dec 2011) UK media ridiculed mourners saying they are all being forced to mourn with no dissent allowed.

Daily Telegraph: What about Clement Attlee?

But let's give the last word to the top Tories’ favourite paper.  On 10th April The Daily Telegraph's columnist Peter Oborne dismissed as flimsy official denials that Thatcher is getting a state funeral. That's what it is, and it’s a mistake, he said. The decision to acknowledge Lady Thatcher, but not Clement Attlee, makes the Queen appear partisan. (Don't forget this is the Daily Telegraph and these things matter to them.)

Here's an extract:-

So the question arises: what’s so special about Maggie Thatcher? Defenders of next week’s funeral arrangements say that she was a “transformational” prime minister. This is true. But so was Clement Attlee, who introduced the welfare system and the National Health Service, thus fundamentally changing the connection between state and individual. Yet the Queen did not attend Mr Attlee’s funeral, a quiet affair in Temple Church near Westminster. According to a 1967 report in Time magazine, “all the trappings of power were absent last week at the funeral of Earl Attlee … there were no honour guards or artillery caissons, no press or television, no crush of spectators. Only 150 friends and relatives gathered for a brief Anglican ceremony in honour of the man who had shaped the political destiny of post-war Britain.”

The decision to acknowledge Lady Thatcher, but not Attlee, makes the Queen appear partisan and is totally out of kilter with the traditional impartiality of the modern British monarchy.

Poster circulated on social media that originally appeared on the front page of The Daily Telegraph (only joking)

No assistance for funerals

By the way, according to the Morning Star, miners' leader David Douglas claimed in his Trafalgar Square speech that during the 1984-85 mining strikes, Thatcher's government had "instructed the social security that no miner's families had to have assistance for funerals."

Uncanny echo of another Daily Telegraph article, this one from 16 July 2012. “Pauper's funerals increase as Government rejects half of welfare applicants” was the headline over a report of a sharp rise in pauper's funerals consequent upon the Government rejecting half of applicants for a state funeral grant. Maybe the Telegraph isn't such a bad paper after all. My Dad (which isn't a surprise) never read anything else. And my friend Mark reads it. For the sport, he says.

Stop Monsanto patenting tomatoes

Patented tomato image promoting the Avaaz petition.
1,610,404 have already signed. They want 2 million

I'm not a huge fan of online petitions, of which Avaaz sends out at least one a week. But Eva Novotny of Scientists for Global Responsibility is insistent that this one needs support. It's against patenting of seeds by corporations like Monsanto - even seeds of conventional vegetables. Monsanto alone, she says, owns 36% of all tomato, 32% of sweet pepper and 49% of cauliflower varieties registered in the EU.  The company long ago stated that its aim is to control the entire food chain.  We must not allow this to happen, says Eva. I agree, and I’ve signed, and I suggest you do too.

Find the petition here

Here's the publicity Avaaz sent out. Yes I  know it's a bit shrill but I believe they're on the button.

It’s unbelievable, but Monsanto and Co. are at it again. These profit-hungry biotech companies have found a way to exclusively ‘own’ something that freely belongs to us all - our food! They’re trying to patent away our everyday vegetables and fruits like cucumber, broccoli and melons, forcing growers to pay them and risk being sued if they don’t.

But we can stop them from buying up Mother Earth. Companies like Monsanto have found loopholes in European law to get away with this, so we just need to close them shut before they set a dangerous global precedent. And to do that, we need key countries like Germany, France and the Netherlands - where opposition is already growing - to call for a vote to stop Monsanto’s plans. The Avaaz community has shifted governments before, and we can do it again.…