10-14-05, 9:11 am

AFL-CIO Calls for Rebuilding America

From the AFL-CIO's campaign:

While working families struggle to survive the devastating Gulf Coast hurricanes, President George W. Bush and his congressional allies want to cut vital survival programs, such as Medicaid, food stamps, education and housing--and give $70 billion in new tax breaks to the rich.

Let's post some signs of our own online, telling the president and his friends we need some better priorities--and we need them now.

By clicking on the following link, you can post your sign on a map of the route of the Online March for America's Priorities. President Bush and Congress will get your message.

Join the online march today to tell the Bush administration and Congress:

Get your priorities straight--

--DON'T cut vital public programs that families need, such as Medicaid, food stamps, education and housing. --Rebuild our crumbling schools, hospitals and highways. --Support affordable health care for all. --And STOP giving tax breaks to the rich instead of investing in good jobs and a better future for our children.

International Day to Stop Global Warming

Mobilizing toward the December 3rd International Day of Action to Stop Global Warming has been picking up in North America! An exciting coalition has come together in Montreal to organize a major action there on the 3rd, and local actions will be happening in other parts of Canada. Activists in a dozen countries in Europe and Asia are organizing toward December 3rd. In the USA 44 organizations so far have endorsed our Call to Action, and local organizers in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina and Washington have been in contact about organizing an action on that day. We expect to hear from many more in the coming weeks. We are also ramping up our efforts to obtain many tens of thousands more signatures on the Peoples Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol petition, which will be taken to Montreal and delivered there to the U.S. delegation by a group of prominent personalities.

Protest TimeWarner's Exploitation of Child Labor

Don't Let the World's Largest Media Conglomerate Get Away with It!

A group of young, mostly female workers in Hidalgo, Mexico, some as young as 13 years-old, who have made Harry Potter and other Halloween costumes with Warner Brother logos, have been illegally locked out for protesting child labor violations, unsafe and unjust working conditions, and the company’s refusal to recognize their collective bargaining agreement. Time Warner, the world’s largest media conglomerate, through its subsidiary Warner Brothers, has given worldwide rights to all Warner Brothers properties to Rubie’s Costume Company of New York City, the world’s largest costume company, to produce Halloween costumes such as “Harry Potter”, “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings”. Rubie’s exports the Warner Brothers brand costumes to North America and Western Europe.

Despite the workers’ limited engagement with Time Warner, the company has not taken strong steps to insist that Rubie’s fix the violations and solve the labor conflict. Rubie’s has not reemployed the locked out workers seeking reinstallment and has ignored its previously-signed collective bargaining agreement with the workers’ democratically-chosen union. Worksite violations such as child labor, forced pregnancy testing, horrible sanitary conditions and frequent workplace accidents have yet to be addressed through the workers’ union.

Workers are demanding that Time Warner ensure the following points are met, or else suspend business with Rubie’s in Mexico until a fair resolution is reached:

1. Rubie’s and its clients must take public responsibility for the company’s actions. 2. They must respect the signed collective bargaining agreement with the workers’ democratically-chosen union, the FTVO. 3. A support fund must be established for the families of the underage workers to enable them to complete their educations. 4. They must pay the lost wages of the workers for the time they have been locked out. 5. They must commit to an independent monitoring mechanism (for example, the Worker Rights Consortium or an independent Mexican organization) to ensure that Rubie’s factories in Mexico comply with Mexican law. 6. And Rubie’s must guarantee neutrality in any union organizing effort at its factories or those of its subcontractors.





--If you have an e-action, write to us at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.