WASHINGTON - Intent on blocking organized labor's top legislative goal, corporations are quietly contributing to lobbying groups with appealing names like the Workforce Fairness Institute and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.
These groups are planning a multimillion-dollar campaign in the hope of killing legislation that would give unions the right to win recognition at a workplace once a majority of employees sign cards saying they want a union. Business groups fear the bill will enable unions to quickly add millions of workers and drive up labor costs.
The
Read moreRecently, the American public was issued a challenge by the folks at KFC (formerly "Kentucky Fried Chicken," but "fried" just didn't sound healthy). The fast-food joint argues in its latest commercial that you cannot "create a family meal for less than $10." Their example is the "seven-piece meal deal," which includes seven pieces of fried chicken, four biscuits, and a side dish -- in this case, mashed potatoes with gravy. This is meant to serve a family
Read moreWal-Mart Stores Inc. is sparring with a small laborrights group that says it has documented worker abuse at a garment factory in Bangladesh that helps supply the Bentonville-based retailer's stores.
SweatFree Communities says its report "Sweatshop Solutions: Economic Ground Zero in Bangladesh and Wal-Mart's Responsibility" is based on interviews with more than 90 workers. Those workers, the report states, cite instances of co-workers being kicked or slapped for minor infractions, including one claim that a pregnant woman miscarried after being kicked by a line supervisor.
Read moreTwice a month at Madison's Whole Foods store, marketing director Amanda Jahnke Bauer leads a tour of the grocery, pointing out ways shoppers can economize. Buy from the bulk aisles, purchase store-brand items, use coupons, she advises.
"We've been shifting a lot of our focus to value purchases because of the economy," Jahnke Bauer explains. "We know that people in general don't have the money to buy the luxury items they have in the past."
Call it the new reality of organic shopping. After a dozen or so years of double-digit growth, elements in the organic industry are
Read moreAs farmers struggle to mitigate the increasing cost of transporting produce from farm to store and schools face smaller budgets and increasing concerns over the nutritional content of school lunches, some schools opt to bring the farm to the lunch table.
The concern over the nutritional value of school lunches isn't unwarranted: 15% of children ages 6-19 are considered overweight, according to a recent study conducted by CDC epidemiologist Cynthia Ogden, PhD. Between pre-packaged, highly processed lunches and vending machines loaded with sugary snacks and sodas, it is little
Read moreNew regulations at U.S. supermarkets are giving consumers information about where the fresh food they buy originates.
Country of origin labels will now be on beef, pork, lamb, chicken, goat meat, perishable agricultural commodities, peanuts, pecans, ginseng, and macadamia nuts. For safety advocates it is a huge step forward.
"It's vitally important to ensure that products coming in from other countries as well as ones growing here are quickly identified in an outbreak," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, Director of Food and Safety Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Read moreThis is an account of a particularly abusive factory in Bangladesh which produces children's wear, primarily for Wal-Mart. It reveals how one of the world's most powerful companies is influencing lives and working conditions in one of the poorest countries in the world. The report is based on in-depth interviews with over 90 workers carried out by a Bangladeshi non-governmental labor research organization on behalf of SweatFree Communities. The first interviews were conducted in September of 2007, the final research completed in September of 2008. We shared an initial version of this
Read moreHARDWICK, VT - This town's granite companies shut down years ago and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that once inspired the nickname "Little Chicago" have gone.
Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.
With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never
Read moreEarlier this month we celebrated the achievements of America's working men and women, we should also note that this year is the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Article 23.4 states that people have "the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of their interests."
In the 1950s American workers took advantage of this right, and even though agricultural workers were excluded, union membership peaked in 1954 at 35 percent of the private workforce. Even though a 2006 Hart Research Poll shows that 58 percent of non-managerial workers-over 60
Read more
for Big Box Retailers