Excerpt:
"There was even a moment, not too long ago, when things might have changed.
In 2019, the newspaper The Hindu BusinessLine reported on an unusually high number of hysterectomies among female sugar-cane cutters in Maharashtra. In response, a state lawmaker, along with a team of researchers, launched an investigation. They surveyed thousands of women.
Their report that year described horrible working conditions and directly linked the high hysterectomy rate to the sugar industry. Unable to take time off during pregnancy or for doctor visits, women have no choice but to seek the surgery, the report concluded.
By happenstance, Coca-Cola issued its own report that year. After unrelated accusations out of Brazil and Cambodia about land-grabbing, Coca-Cola had hired a firm to audit its supply chain in several countries.
The auditors, from a group called Arche Advisors, visited 123 farms in Maharashtra and a neighboring state with a small sugar industry.
They found children at about half of them. Many had simply migrated with their families, but Arche’s report found children cutting, carrying and bundling sugar cane at 12 farms.
Nearly every laborer interviewed by reporters said children commonly worked in the sugar fields. The youngest ones do chores. Older ones perform all the work of cane cutters. A Times photographer saw children working in the fields.
The 2019 report includes an interview with a 10-year-old girl who “loves to go to school,” but instead works alongside her parents.
“She picks the cut cane and stacks it into a bundle, which her parents then load onto the truck,” the report says.
Arche noted that Coca-Cola suppliers did not provide toilets or shelter. And it cited “flags in the area of forced labor.” Only a few of the mills it surveyed had policies on bonded or child labor, and those applied only to the mills, not the farms.
The government report called on factories to provide water, toilets, basic sanitation and the minimum wage.
Few if any changes have been carried out.
Major buyers like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola say they hold their suppliers to exacting standards for labor rights. But that promise is only as good as their willingness to monitor thousands of farms at the base of their supply chains.
That rarely happens. An executive at NSL Sugars, a Coca-Cola and PepsiCo franchisee supplier that has mills around the country, said that soda-company representatives could be scrupulous in asking about sugar quality, production efficiency and environmental issues. Labor issues in the fields, he said, would almost never come up.
Soda-company inspectors seldom if ever visit the farms from which NSL sources its sugar cane, the executive said. The PepsiCo franchisee, Varun Beverages, did not respond to calls for comment.
Mill owners, too, rarely visit the fields. Executives at Dalmia and NSL Sugars say they keep virtually no records on their laborers.
“No one from the Dalmia factory has ever visited us in the tents or the fields,” said Anita Bhaisahab Waghmare, a laborer in her 40s who has worked at farms supplying Dalmia all her life and said she had a hysterectomy that she now regretted.
Ed Potter, the former head of global workplace rights at Coca-Cola, said the company had conducted many human rights audits during his tenure. But with so many suppliers, oversight can seem random.
“Imagine your hands going through some sand,” he said. “What you deal with is what sticks to your fingers. Most sand doesn’t stick to your fingers. But sometimes you get lucky.”
Sanjay Khatal, the managing director of a major lobbying group for sugar mills, said that mill owners could not provide any worker benefits without being seen as direct employers. That would raise costs and jeopardize the whole system.
“It is the very existence of the industry which can come into question,” he said."
‘The Devil in Silicon Valley
Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans’ by Stephen J. Pitti. This book covers the history of racism against Mexican-Americans within #siliconvalley in #california from the Gold Rush to the #tech industry of today. #exploitation#latino#chicano@bookstodon
Today in Labor History September 26, 1874: Sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine is born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In 1908, he became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee and spent the next decade documenting exploited child labor to help the organization’s lobbying efforts to end child labor in American industry. The book cover for my novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, is based pm a Hine photograph.
Federally Sanctioned Exploitation Of Workers with Disabilities – Happy Labor Day:
On this Labor Day, Out Of Exile – Invisible Disability Rights gives thanks and honor to workers and the unions that protect them. Without unions, the experience of many workers may be similar to that of the disabled. This piece will focus on the exploitation and abuse of disabled workers by employers , and how it's perfectly legal under federal and state laws in the US. Section 14(c) of the US Department of Labor's "Fair Standards And Labor Act" (FSLA), has been virtually unchanged since it was enacted in 1938. Under the almost century old regulation, employers can apply for a certificate which allows them to pay workers with disabilities, an unspecified subminimum wage.
The average sub wage and the number of disabled people seemingly exploited by this legislation, seems to vary among the sources linked below. By any account, even one person with disabilities being preyed upon in this way, is far too many. The wages are inhumane. A 2021 Forbes article claims over 320,000 people with disabilities, the majority with invisible disabilities, earn an average of $3.34 an hour. A previous Forbes article put the figures in excess of 420,000 people being paid as little as $2.15, while others cite drastically lower wages. Some organizations like Goodwill, form their own "sheltered workshops", determining their own limits on sub wages for their disabled workers. There seems to be no bottom limit on how little individuals with invisible disabilities can be paid.
"The non-profits use “time studies” to calculate the salaries of Section 14 (c) workers. With a stopwatch, staff members time how long it takes a disabled worker to complete a task. That time is compared with how long it would take a person without a disability to do the same task. The non-profit then applies a formula to calculate a rate of pay, which may be equal to or less than minimum wage".
A decade ago, NBC reported that Goodwill industries, presumably by authority of their DOL "Section 14(c) certificate", paid disabled workers twenty-two cents an hour. The report claims that some were paid as little as three or four cents an hour. Think about paying your bills 10 years ago on a wage like this. Some nonprofits, even place Section 14(c) workers in outside, for-profit endeavors in restaurants, stores and even, "IRS centers". That sounds more like calculated exploitation, rather than accommodation and equality. Though the "NBC-Goodwill" article and figures are old, the problem is older and still continues today.
The theory of sheltered workshops is to prepare individuals with disabilities to transition to outside employment. In Missouri, disabled workers packaging T-shirts or sorting and counting dog treats to be sold for profit on Amazon, rarely "graduate" these workshops into regular paying jobs. Pay for sorting the $15 Amazon dog treats? $1.50 an hour while Jeff Bezos builds rocket ships. The title of the recent ProPublica article linked below, says it all. "Missouri Allows Some Disabled Workers to Earn Less Than a Dollar an Hour. The State Says It's Fine If That Never Changes". I say, show me change in the Show-Me state and across the country.
In a follow-up to that story by ProPublica, some participants of sheltered workshops said they approved, saying the alternative is to sit at home and do nothing. Are these opinion formed as a result of gas lighting or years of oppression accepted as "just the way it is"? It's time for new attitudes and alternatives for the disabled community when it comes to wages and employment. In some states, now there are.
About 16 states have changed or passed laws regarding disability subminimum wage exploitation but, nothing to speak of federally. A three year old press release from the National Council on Disability that "Applauded the US commission on civil rights call to repeal section 14(c)", seems to be the sum of that effort. Other states have actions in progress including: Connecticut, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York. If you live in any of these states, now's the time for activism and to let your representatives know how you feel. Follow the ""legislation watch" APSE link to track progress. The Alternative? Similar actions introduced in Kentucky and West Virginia died in committee allowing this despicable injustice against disabled people in those states to continue. Change is up to everyone. What will you do to help stop the exploitation and abuse?
Here below are graphs of discrimination ratios over time by racialized group. The shaded area is 95% confidence region. You may notice that #discrimination has been stable since the #1970s except for a rise against MENA-passing persons since 1990.