Wal-Mart worker: Fired for helping assaulted woman

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.miamiherald.com

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- A Michigan man says he was fired from his job at Wal-Mart after he tried to help a woman being assaulted in the parking lot of one of the retail giant's stores and ended up fighting with her attacker. Kristopher Oswald told WXYZ-TV in Detroit (http://bit.ly/18qGyBh ) that Wal-Mart has policies against workplace violence to prevent employees from assaulting co-workers or tackling a shoplifter, but that it appears that nothing allows for them to assist in situations of imminent danger and self-defense. A spokeswoman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. told The Associated Press on Thursday that while the company understood Oswald's intentions, his actions violated company policy. "We had to make a tough decision, one that we don't take lightly, and he's no longer with the company," company spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said. Oswald, 30, said he was in his car on his break about 2:30 a.m. Sunday when he saw a man grabbing a woman. He said he asked her if she needed help and the man started punching him in the head and yelling that he was going to kill him. Oswald said he was able to get on top of the man, but then two other men jumped him from behind. Livingston County sheriff's deputies arrived and halted the fight. Oswald said the Hartland Township store's management gave him paperwork saying that "after a violation of company policy on his lunch break, it was determined to end his temporary assignment." Oswald had worked for Wal-Mart for...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• The Impact and Echoes of the Wal-Mart Discrimination Case (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Bangladesh Deploys Paramilitary in Garment Zone After Protests (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Labor Group Says Haiti's Factories Are Unsafe (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Occupational Violence (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Workers ask President Obama to raise their wages (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Fashion Safety: The Tragedy Continues

Fashion Safety continues be be a major problem in Bangladesh. One a catalyst for increased regulation, the movement continues lack sufficient traction to make a difference. Today post is shared from retail-week.com.

Nine people have died following a fire in a Bangladesh factory renewing concerns about the safety of the country’s garment industry that supplies many of the world’s biggest retailers. The fire broke out at the Aswad factory in Gazipur outside of Dhaka yesterday. The factory has supplied goods to Canadian retailers Loblaw, which owns Joe Fresh, according to shipping data provider ImportGenius.com. The Wall Street Journal reported Aswad had also produced clothes for Wal-Mart. The deaths come after the devastating collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka in April which killed more than 1,100 people. The disaster led to an industry-wide move to improve safety in the country. Retailers includingPrimark, H&M, River Island and Arcadia have signed up to the Bangladesh factory safety Accord led by union IndustriALL. By signing the Accord, retailers agreed to a legally binding pledge to contribute up to $500,000 (£325,000) a year towards rigorous independent factory inspections and the installation of fire safety measures. Yesterday Primark, which was one of many western retailers which used a factory situated within Rana Plaza, committed to paying six months wages as compensation. A Primark spokesman said: “Primark takes its responsibilities extremely seriously. To help alleviate short-term hardship, the company is committed to paying six months wages to more than 3,500 Rana Plaza workers, or their families, irrespective of whether they made...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Bangladesh Deploys Paramilitary in Garment Zone After Protests (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Doing Business in Bangladesh (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fashion Safety: Charges of Child Labor Confront Walmart and The GAP (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fast and Flawed Inspections of Factories Abroad (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Italian Plant's Abrupt Shutdown Stirs a Debate (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• U.S. Textile Plants Return, With Floors Largely Empty of People (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Workers ask President Obama to raise their wages

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from america.aljazeera.com

President Obama has also shown sympathy for the issues of low-wage workers, although the minimum wage increase he's expressly supported -- to $9 an hour -- is still less than what activists usually consider a "living wage." "I think the president's heart in the right place," Ellison said. "We’ve just got to get his pen on the right place." Federal contractors employ over a fifth of the American civilian workforce, and more than 560,000 of these workers earn $12 or less an hour, according to Demos, a liberal think tank. Many of them are cleaners and concession workers in federal buildings. If you include all the low-wage jobs funded by public dollars, including the 1.2 million paychecks underwritten by Medicare and Medicaid, the total, Demos found, surpasses the low-wage workforce of Walmart and McDonald’s combined. Labor group Good Jobs Nation, backed by the Service Employees International Union, organized three smaller building-specific strikes earlier this year, as well as a city-wide labor action in May. It’s part of a larger strategy by unions and labor activists to push for higher wages in the largely non-unionized workforces of retail and fast food. Organizers called Wednesday's event the largest low-wage federal worker strike to date. Both Ellison and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gave passionate speeches at the event.

[Click here to see the original post]

Found on

Related articles

• Many States Look to Raise Minimum Wage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Home Care Workers Win Wage and Overtime Protection (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Labor, Then and Now (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Love for Labor Lost (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Labor Dept. Mandates Minimum Wage, Overtime Pay For Home Health Workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Bangladesh workers must continue to wait for full compensation

Fashion Safety continues to dominate international news and reflects that the movement that the workers' compenstion sparked by the historic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire cannot be rekindled. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.industriall-union.org

Eleven of the brands and retailers sourcing from the factories involved in the Tazreen and Rana Plaza disasters joined high-level compensation meetings, facilitated by the ILO as a neutral chair, on 11-12 September in Geneva. Many other major companies failed to attend, showing total contempt for the 1,900 workers who were injured and the families of over 1,200 workers who were killed making their products. IndustriALL Global Union Assistant General Secretary Monika Kemperle stated: “Consumers will be shocked that almost a half-year has passed since the Rana Plaza disaster with only one brand so far providing any compensation to the disaster’s victims. I respect those brands that came to these meetings. But I cannot understand brands that are not around the table.” Regarding Rana Plaza out of a total of 29 brands that were invited the following 9 brands showed good faith by attending the meeting: Bon Marché, Camaieu, El Corte Ingles, Kik, Loblaw, Mascot, Matalan, Primark and Store Twenty One. 20 other companies, all of whom were invited, failed to show up: Adler, Auchan, Benetton, C&A, Carrefour, Cato Corp, The Children’s Place, Dressbarn, Essenza, FTA International, Gueldenpfennig, Iconix Brand, Inditex, JC Penney, Kids Fashion Group, LPP, Mango, Manifattura Corona, NKD, Premier Clothing, PWT Group, Texman and Walmart. IndustriALL, the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) presented a proposed...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles

• Bangladesh Building Collapse Highlights Need for Safety Inspections (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Doing Business in Bangladesh (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Workers compensation rates to decline in Oregon in 2014 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Report Recommends Raising Workers' Compensation Premiums (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Workers' Compensation Benefits, Employer Costs Rise with Economic Recovery (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Parma considering following Cleveland in suing Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation over inflated premiums (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Found on

Doing Business in Bangladesh

International fashion safety continues mirror the genesis of the workers" compensation moment in the US. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.nytimes.com

The owner of a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was at New York University last week to meet with clothing industry executives, labor activists and American and European government officials to talk about the Bangladeshi garment industry, the world’s second-biggest exporter of clothes after China. The workplace disasters in this business have grabbed the world’s attention, and for the past year, Western retailers that outsource their clothing production to Bangladesh have tried to come up with reforms. But there are big obstacles to improving safety in an industry driven by low profits and constant upheaval. I met with the businessman and another factory owner; both would speak only on the condition that they not be identified because they feared offending their customers. A central problem, the first owner told me, is the rapid turnaround big retailers like Walmart demand when they put in orders for tens of thousands of T-shirts or shorts. Since his factory isn’t able to make all the garments in time, he has to send some of the work to smaller producers. “I can’t do it officially,” he said, “but unofficially, I can.” Unauthorized subcontracting to smaller, uninspected factories is not supposed to happen, but it remains an entrenched practice. It is a primary reason safety guidelines that apply to bigger contractors have not prevented the hundreds of worker deaths in fires and building collapses in facilities like Rana...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

How Wal-Mart keeps wages low

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

“I think they don’t want me to actually let people know what’s really going on at Wal-Mart as an associate,” Lopez told me in an interview for the Nation following her June 21 firing. “So they’d rather get rid of me.” Firings like Lopez’s may not come as a shock — Wal-Mart once shut down a store in Canada after workers there won collective bargaining rights, and it eliminated its entire U.S. meat-cutting department after a handful of meat-cutters at one store voted to unionize. But the alleged retaliation defies an eight-decade-old promise from the federal government to most U.S. workers: Banding together to improve your workplace, whether you win or lose, shouldn’t cost you your job. That 1935 law — the National Labor Relations Act – is still on the books. But its ban on retaliation today reads more like a cruel joke than an ironclad commitment. A 2009 study released by the progressive Economic Policy Institute found that pro-union workers are fired — allegedly illegally — in at least a third of unionization election campaigns supervised by the government. As expected, Wal-Mart denies illegally retaliating against anyone. The company claims that some of the discipline was unrelated to the protests — Lopez ostensibly lost her job for violating a food safety policy by bringing the employee handbook into the deli area where she works. And Wal-Mart says other workers were punished not for...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Love for Labor Lost (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fast-food workers call for nationwide walkout Aug. 29 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Big Labor: still a political force (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Fast and Flawed Inspections of Factories Abroad

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.nytimes.com

Inspectors came and went from a Walmart-certified factory in Guangdong Province in China, approving its production of more than $2 million in specialty items that would land on Walmart’s shelves in time for Christmas. But unknown to the inspectors, none of the playful items, including reindeer suits and Mrs. Claus dresses for dogs, that were supplied to Walmart had been manufactured at the factory. Instead, Chinese workers sewed the goods — which had been ordered by the Quaker Pet Group, a company based in New Jersey — at a rogue factory that had not gone through the certification process set by Walmart for labor, worker safety or quality, according to documents and interviews with officials involved. To receive approval for shipment to Walmart, a Quaker subcontractor just moved the items over to the approved factory, where they were presented to inspectors as though they had been stitched together there and never left the premises. Soon after the merchandise reached Walmart stores, it began falling apart. Fifteen hundred miles to the west, the Rosita Knitwear factory in northwestern Bangladesh — which made sweaters for companies across Europe — passed an inspection audit with high grades. A team of four monitors gave the factory hundreds of approving check marks. In all 12 major categories, including working hours, compensation, management practices and health and safety, the factory received the top grade of “good.”...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles

• Bangladesh Building Collapse Highlights Need for Safety Inspections (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fashion Safety: Charges of Child Labor Confront Walmart and The GAP (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Bangladesh's Workers Deserve Better (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fashion Safety: US Endorses Bangladesh Action Plan (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Walmart CEO Mike Duke Pushes Back Against Company's Minimum Wage Reputation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Walmart Gets Desperate | The Nation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Governor Christie Vetoes First Responder Workers' Compensation Bill (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Found on

Defense bar files brief to U.S. SC in support of insurer

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

DRI: The Voice of the Defense Bar this week filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, saying the terms of an Employee Retirement Income Security Act-covered plan must be upheld. Heimeshoff v. Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co. et al. is expected to settle differences among the courts of appeals regarding the extent to which the terms of an ERISA-covered plan can establish the date on which the statute of limitations to file a claims for benefits complaint in federal court will begin to run. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act protects the assets of millions of Americans so that funds placed in retirement plans during their working lives will be there when they retire. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, ERISA is a federal law that sets minimum standards for pension plans in private industry. For example, if an employer maintains a pension plan, ERISA specifies when an employee must be allowed to become a participant, how long they have to work before they have a non-forfeitable interest in their pension, how long a participant can be away from their job before it might affect their benefit, and whether their spouse has a right to part of their pension in the event of their death. Most of the provisions of ERISA are effective for plan years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 1975. On Aug. 22, 2005, Julie Heimeshoff, a Walmart employee, submitted a claim for long-term disability benefits under the ERISA-covered...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles

• Changes to California Insurance Don't Help (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Why Overturning DOMA Is a Win for Employee Rights (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• UPS Won't Insure Spouses Of Some Employees (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Administration Urges Rate Changes for US FELA Benefits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Modern Families and Worker Protections (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Garlock testimony switches to financial liability (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Found on

Fashion Safety: Charges of Child Labor Confront Walmart and The GAP

Child labor infractions and workplace safety conditions in Bangladesh have been raised against Walmart and The GAP by Al Jazeera America in a report aired in its initial week of broadcasting.

Children as young as 12 make clothes with
Old Navy tags in a Dhaka factory with no fire exit or fire extinguishers.

"Fault Lines repeatedly asked for on-camera interviews with representatives of Walmart and Gap, but by our deadline, both companies had denied our requests. Instead, they issued written comments in response to the reporting in our investigative film, "Made in Bangladesh," which examines some of the practices of U.S. retailers in Bangladesh's garment industry. Walmart's comments come in the form of a Q&A we did with a company spokesperson, while Gap issued a statement in response to our findings in Bangladesh that we outlined to them. Both statements are posted in full."

Related articles

• Fashion Safety -- Mandating Sweat-Free Garment Labels: Feasible Under the First Amendment (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Bangladesh's Workers Deserve Better (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Bangladesh Building Collapse Highlights Need for Safety Inspections (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fashion Safety: US Endorses Bangladesh Action Plan (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Walmart CEO Mike Duke Pushes Back Against Company's Minimum Wage Reputation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Walmart Gets Desperate | The Nation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Walmart CEO Mike Duke Pushes Back Against Company's Minimum Wage Reputation

The struggle to increase minimum wages continues. Some perceptual targets such as Walmart are trying to spin the story a to a different perspective. Today's post was shared by Huffington Post and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com

Fast food and retail workers across the country have taken to the streets this year to decry their low wages. But the CEO of Walmart, which is often a target for criticism in that battle, claims a very small share of its workers actually make the bare minimum. “I think less than one percent of our associates make the minimum wage,” Walmart CEO Mike Duke said in an interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. "The vast majority of our associates are paid more than that.” More specifically, less than one half of one percent of Walmart's hourly associates make their state or federal minimum wage, according to a Walmart spokesman. The company claims that full-time Walmart workers make $12.78 per hour on average, much more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Yet that figure excludes part-time workers, a group that likely makes up a substantial share of Walmart's workforce, thought not its majority, according to the company.