Entries by Reid Maki

Agriprocessors Trial: Underage Workers Describe BRUTAL Working Conditions At Iowa Plant

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MICHAEL J. CRUMB | 05/10/10 06:59 PM | WATERLOO, Iowa — A former underage worker cried Monday while testifying she was exposed to harsh chemicals at an Iowa slaughterhouse where she and other teens worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. Yesenia Cordero Mendoza, now 18, was one of two former underage workers to testify against former manager Sholom Rubashkin, who faces 83 child labor violation charges stemming from a May 2008 raid at the plant in which 389 illegal immigrants, including 31 children, were detained. It’s the second trial for Rubashkin, who awaits sentencing in a separate federal financial fraud case that followed the raid at the former Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville. Mendoza began crying while testifying about the raid and the arrest of her boyfriend and other workers. “I don’t want to remember it,” she told prosecutors through a translator. She testified she was 15 when she used false documents to get hired at the slaughterhouse. It was common knowledge that the plant hired minors, so she forged documents that gave her age as older, and plant officials never asked for any other identification to verify it, she said. When government inspectors came to the plant, underage workers were sent home, she said. Mendoza and Rony Ordonez Capir, who was 16 when hired, said the work […]

Agriprocessors child-labor trial starts this week

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By GRANT SCHULTE • gschulte@… • May 3, 2010 Immigrants who were allegedly exposed to poisonous chemicals and dangerous machinery as minors will testify against their former bosses at Agriprocessors Inc. in a state child-labor trial that begins this week in Waterloo. The trial is the latest chapter in the two-year saga of Sholom Rubashkin and his former eastern Iowa kosher slaughterhouse. Prosecutors allege that Rubashkin, 50, and other top managers allowed underage workers to perform risky jobs and work excessive hours at the plant in violation of state law.

Rise of reality TV spurs look into Pennsylvania’s child labor laws

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  [from The Montgomery News (Penn.), Published: Tuesday, April 20, 2010]  By Jesse Reilly Staff Writer With the number of television and movie productions increasing in Pennsylvania the state’s House Republican Policy Committee held a public hearing at the Blair Mill Inn in Horsham Wednesday to begin the process of possibly updating the Keystone State’s child labor laws. “According to the Internet Movie Database, 922 productions took place in Pennsylvania from 2002 to 2008,” state Rep. Stanley Saylor, chairman of the committee, said, adding that knowing that the industry is growing the committee was hoping to determine if the state’s laws are adequate, if they are being enforced and what needs to be done to strengthen them. The staggering rise of reality television shows also energized the need for change, state Rep. Tom Murt said. “The laws must evolve too,” he said. “We need to ensure that we are providing appropriate protection for the children.” Providing testimony at the hearing were former child star Paul Petersen, civil rights advocate and attorney Gloria Allred, Rebecca Gullan, a professor of psychology at Gwynedd-Mercy College; Robert O’Brien, the executive deputy secretary for the state’s Department of Labor and Industry; as well as Kevin Kreider, the brother of television reality star Kate Gosselin, and his wife, Jodi. Having participated in the early days of […]

CLC Co-Chair’s Remarks Beore the Dept. of Ag Consultative Group

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Monday, CLC co-chair and AFT Secretary-Treasurer Antonio Cortese spoke before the Department of Agriculture Consultative Group working on measures to eliminate the use of child labor in agricultural imports, urging the panel to design a system that will inform consumers about practices that abuse children in the production, processing and distribution of agricultural products imported into the United States.  Statement of Antonio Cortese, Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers Before the Consultative Group to Eliminate the Use of Child Labor and Forced Labor in Imported Agricultural Products Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture Public Meeting March 29, 2010 9:30 a.m. USDA Headquarters, Jamie L. Whitten Building, Room 104-A Good Morning, members of the Consultative Group. I am Antonio Cortese, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers.  The AFT—which is the second-largest union in the AFL-CIO—represents more than 1.4 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.  Our members work with children and youth every day in classrooms and many other settings, and we are very concerned about their well-being here and around the world. I am also co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition, and a member of the board of trustees of Freedom House, a nonpartisan advocate […]

Bitter plight of the vanilla trade children

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From The Sunday Times March 14, 2010 Bitter plight of the vanilla trade children Dan McDougall in the Vanilla Coast, Madagascar  The pods used in ice cream made by some of the world’s best-known brands is produced with the help of children working on plantations in remote regions of Madagascar NOARY’S fingers are stained a thin, luminous yellow by the sweetest spice of all. Close to exhaustion, his tiny body is pouring with tropical sweat. At eight years old, he has been tending the vanilla orchids since before first light after walking to work, barefoot and in darkness, alongside his brother, Ando, just a year older. Here, in the remote Sava region of Madagascar, tens of thousands of children are being forced into the trade in black vanilla pods that sell for up to £4 each in British supermarkets. Such is the dire state of the small farms in northern Madagascar, the vanilla capital of the world, that children are increasingly involved in production of the pods, a key ingredient of some of the world’s most famous ice cream brands. Vanilla from the island, off the southeast coast of Africa, flavours everything from Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s to Marks & Spencer desserts and numerous items on the shelves of supermarkets. In an impoverished settlement near Sambava, the district capital […]

Teen Dumping Trash Dies In Cesspool–Doughnut Shop Employee Fell In Uncovered Hole

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[This tragedy is eerily reminiscent of a teen worker drowning in a septic tank in my home town, Holliston, Massachusetts, nearly 30 years ago. The young worker stepped on a manhole cover which flipped beneath him and he landed in a septic tank. No one knew what had happened to him and the police only recovered his body through the help of a psychic . –Reid] SMITHTOWN, N.Y. — A teenage worker taking out the garbage at a doughnut shop Sunday night fell into a sewage pit and died, police said. Amiri Zeqiri, 17, slipped into an open cesspool behind a Dunkin’ Donuts in Smithtown, about 40 miles east of New York City, police said. There usually was a manhole cover over the cesspool, a hole in the ground that collects waste from toilets and sinks, they said. The teen’s younger cousin, who was inside the doughnut shop, realized something was wrong when he didn’t return and went to look for him. The cousin found Zeqiri in about 8 feet of water and ran to a nearby store for help, but when he returned the teen was no longer visible, police said. Officers pulled the teen from the cesspool and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Authorities were investigating how the cesspool was uncovered and were […]

Apple Admits Using Child Labor

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Apple has admitted that child labor was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones. By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai Apple has been repeatedly criticized for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple. The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China. Apple also has factories working for it in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the United States. Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage. “In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment,” Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers. Apple has been repeatedly criticized for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight. Apple has not commented on […]

Group works to reform labor laws for migrant children

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By Naxiely Lopez Article published on November 17, 2010 [From The Monitor, a South Texas newspaper. Got to the newspaper article by clicking here.] SAN JUAN — It’s been almost half a century since migrant activist César Chávez began fighting for farmworkers’ rights. And today, the battle is not over, especially when it comes to child labor laws, said Norma Flores Lopez, director of the national Children in the Fields campaign. Launched in 1997 and funded by the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP), the Children in the Fields campaign seeks to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act — a federal law enacted in 1938 that allows children as young as 10 years old to work 30 hours a week or more in the fields, Lopez said. The 25-year-old San Juan native now heads the initiative in Washington, D.C. She began working in the Iowa fields in the third grade. “I never really put much thought to it when I was a kid,” Lopez said about working as a child. “To me it was a way of life and I thought every kid went through this. It never occurred to me that my life was very different from other kids. I just knew that I would come late (to school), we were living in poverty and I needed to help […]

The CLC Applauds the Introduction of the CARE Act Press Release

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Sept. 16, 2009 Washington, D.C.—The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) applauds the introduction of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), H.R. 3564, introduced September 15th by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA). The legislation would close loopholes that permit the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers to work for wages when they are only 12- and 13-years-old. “Child farmworkers are exposed to many dangers—farm machinery, heat stroke, and pesticides among them—and perform back-breaking labor that is not fit for children,” said CLC co-chair Sally Greenberg, the executive director of the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy organization that has worked to eliminate abusive child labor since its founding in 1899. “It’s time to level the playing field by closing these archaic loopholes and offering these children the same protections that all other American kids enjoy. We applaud Rep. Roybal-Allard’s leadership in introducing CARE.”

Prostitution in Cambodia: ‘New law doesn’t protect me’

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[fromGuardian Weekly, Friday 3 July 2009 09.00 BST] In March 2008, Cambodia saw the implementation of a new law entitled: Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation. Aimed at offering protection to women in prostitution by making the selling of sex illegal, it has resulted in clean-up operations and police raids of red light areas. Women in prostitution are being arrested, reporting police brutality and imprisonment. It’s also resulted in decreased safety for women as brothels are closed down and women are forced into street work. Mei, a young prostitute in Phnom Penh, describes how she fell into prostitution and the horrific experiences she has had as a result of the new law My name is Mei and I’m 19 years old. I live in Phnom Penh but I’m from a small village in Prey Veng province. I went to school when I was younger, but I had to leave to work in the rice fields when I was 13. My family is poor and when there is no food to eat, you have to do what you must to support them – as I’m the oldest it’s my responsibility.