Saying goodbye to Hull House – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

We learned to our great sadness at the National Consumers League that Hull House in Chicago is closing its doors, though thankfully the Museum will stay open. The historic settlement house founded by Jane Addams in 1889 in a rundown, largely immigrant Chicago neighborhood was inhabited for years by the first head of the NCL, Florence Kelley. Kelley did much of her earliest pioneering work from Hull House and was inspired and supported in that work by her dear friend Jane Addams and many other notable residents.

Hull House was the first of-its-kind settlement houses in America and was home to some of the most renown Progressive-era reformers in addition to Kelley – including Grace Abbot, Frances Perkins, Julia Lathrop, and Alice Hamilton, and of course Jane Addams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Addams bought the Hull House property and staffed it with a community of colleagues that helped thousands of immigrants adjust to life in America, providing classes in English, teaching about American customs, cooking, sewing, infant care, and conducting dance classes and other forms of recreation. Today Hull House provides equally critical services, including foster care, domestic violence counseling and prevention services, child development programs, and job training to about 60,000 children, families and community groups each year.

But now it appears that Hull House will be forced to close because of lack of funds. Stephen Saunders, Hull House’s chairman, issued a statement indicating that growing deficits have plagued the institution for several years.

In a nation with as much wealth as we enjoy here in the United States, it is indeed a sad commentary on our values that a historic institution like Hull House that has throughout its history provided basic services to the poor would be forced to close its doors.

We at the NCL, with our deep historical connections to Hull House and its mission, are greatly saddened at this news. We wish the institution well and we thank those members of the Hull House Board who worked so hard all these years to keep a historical icon working so long and so hard to provide assistance to those in greatest need.

NCL statement mourning closing of Hull House – National Consumers League

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January 23, 2012

Contact: NCL Communications, (202) 835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC–Sally Greenberg, Executive Director, National Consumers League issued this statement today:

The National Consumers League (NCL) laments the news that the historic Hull House in Chicago is going to be closing. NCL’s roots are closely tied to Hull House. It was inhabited for years by the first head of the NCL, Florence Kelley, who did much of her earliest pioneering work from Hull House and was inspired and supported in that work by her dear friend Jane Addams and many other notable residents.

Kelley met and worked closely with other renown Hull House residents and Progressive-era reformers – including Grace Abbot, Frances Perkins, Julia Lathrop, and Alice Hamilton, and of course Jane Addams.

In a nation with as much wealth as we enjoy here in the United States, it is indeed a sad commentary on our values that a historic institution like Hull House that has, throughout its history, provided basic services to the poor would be forced to close its doors.

The Board of Directors and staff of the NCL, in light of our deep historical connections to Hull House and its mission, are greatly saddened at this news. We wish the institution well and we thank those members of the Hull House Board who worked so hard all these years to keep a historical icon working so long and so hard to provide assistance to those in greatest need.

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About the National Consumers League

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

Fungicide, orange juice, and what you should know – National Consumers League

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By Teresa Green, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow

In the past week, orange juice has spent a lot of time in the headlines due to the detection of low levels of a fungicide called carbendazim in the orange juice.  Carbendazim is not approved for use in either the United States or the European Union but is widely used in other parts of the world to combat fungus that grows on fruit.  At high levels, the fungicide has been correlated with liver cancer in animal studies.

Coca Cola alerted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the presence of carbendazim after finding it in samples of juice it tested.  Orange juice from Brazil was implicated as the source of the residues.  In response to the alert from Coca Cola, FDA began to test imported orange juice for the presence of the fungicide.  The agency announced that it would ban any juices that contained more than 10 parts per billion (ppb) of carbendazim.

While the US and EU both ban it, only the EU has set a threshold for how much carbendazim is allowed in foods.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that carbendazim at less than 80 ppb is not harmful.  Furthermore, FDA stated in a letter from January 9 that the “EPA has concluded that consumption of orange juice with carbendazim at the low levels that have been reported does not raise safety concerns.”

While FDA has stated that the level of carbendazim found in orange juice is not harmful, the issue still raises concerns for consumers.  There are three major things that need to happen here if consumers are to be protected.  First, FDA should issue limits on the amount of carbendazim that can be present in orange juice, a move that would get rid of the current ambiguity surrounding the issue.

Second, country of origin labels (COOL) on juice allow consumers to decide whether or not they want to buy a product which comes from a country with a history of using chemicals not approved in the US. Unfortunately, our entire COOL system is under attack by the World Trade Organization (WTO).  In order to protect consumers, the Obama administration should appeal the WTO’s recent ruling and fight to protect COOL.

Finally, FDA, which is responsible for the safety of much of the food in this country, should be adequately funded so that it can carry out its expanded mandate as prescribed by the recent Food Safety Modernization Act.  Only with increased funding can FDA continue to do the work that protects our food supply.

While FDA has so far not found excess amounts of carbendazim in any of the samples it has tested, consumers may still want to avoid orange juice that contains this chemical.  There are two ways to do this.  First, if you want to avoid many pesticide residues, drink orange juice that is certified 100% organic.  Second, look at the label to see where the orange juice comes from and drink only U.S. orange juice. For now, FDA has stated that it will not recall any orange juice and that the juice available is safe to drink.

Cruise drama highlights vacation risks – National Consumers League

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The dramatic story of thousands of passengers stranded on a power- and plumbing-less Carnival cruise ship in the Carribean has many consumers wondering not only about cruise ship safety, but also their rights as passengers. What exactly are you risking when purchasing a vacation getaway?

According to a recent Reuters article, consumers sign away a handful of rights when they buy a ticket — which is essentially a contract — to embark on a cruise. According to the story, Carnival makes up about half of the cruise market, but its contracts are quite typical. Here’s what consumers are handing over — along with their cash:

A guarantee that the cruise will actually happen.

Carnival can cancel any cruise at any time, according to the contract. It will owe you a refund if the cruise is completely cancelled, or a partial refund if the company changes its mind and leaves you at some port along the way. There’s no additional refund in the contract for airfare home. If you cancel within two weeks of booking you’ll most likely owe full fare anyway, under the contract.

The right to sue when and where you want.

Like most consumer legal contracts these days, the Carnival ticket contract includes an arbitration clause that requires you to submit claims for lost luggage and the like to binding arbitration in Miami-Dade County, Florida. If you do want to file suit for a personal injury, you would be required to do that in the U.S. Federal District Court in Miami.

Furthermore, there are lawsuit deadlines in cruise contracts that many attorneys and passengers aren’t even aware of. The contract requires injured parties to notify Carnival within six months and file suit within a year.

The right to ask for sizeable punitive damages.

There are two different kinds of ticket contracts: Domestic ones, which do not cap liability, and international contracts, such as the ones the passengers of the Costa Concordia likely agreed to when they boarded their ship. That contract is subject to an international agreement called the “Athens Convention,” which limits liability to about $80,000.

The right to emotional distress.

What if you’re traumatized by your cruise – say, if a loved one is injured or killed on the ship? Unless you personally were at risk for the same injury (as would likely be the case in a disaster like the Costa Concordia’s accident), you probably waived your right to claim emotional distress in the contract.

The right to privacy.

When you sign the contract, you give the company the right “at all times with or without notice” to search your bags and personal effects. That’s so they can make sure you’re not smuggling any firearms, explosives, or alcohol onto the ship.

The contracts give the cruiseline the right to use pictures and videos of you for commercial purposes–without any further permission from – or compensation to – you. The right to use your own pictures. Carnival reserves the rights to your pictures – you don’t. Passengers agree that they “will not utilize any photographs … for non-private use without express written consent of Carnival.”

Protection from theft.

In the event that personal items go missing on the ship or luggage is lost,  The ticket contract limits the company’s liability for lost or damaged bags and their contents to $50 per guest or $100 per stateroom. If your items are worth much more than that, you can buy added coverage by declaring the value of what you are bringing onto the ship and paying 5 percent of its value.

Reuters recommends if you’re bringing expensive jewelry or other items on board, make a written list of the value, pay the 5 percent and make sure the crew gets a copy of that list.

Still planning that winter cruise to the Caribbean? Remember the golden rule of the educated consumer: do your research, know what the risks are, and don’t sign anything you don’t understand.

One worker’s tale of blatant wage theft – National Consumers League

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The fact that millions of Americans are out of work makes daily headlines, but a far less publicized problem is robbing working Americans of their full paychecks: the growing issue of wage theft.

A man we’ll call “Parker” recently came to NCL with his story: Parker, a skilled construction worker, had relocated back to North Carolina and was having a hard time landing a job. After weeks of searching, he was thrilled to find an opening at a firm that specializes in office construction and remodeling. Parker’s enthusiasm for his new job was short-lived. After he was hired, his employer informed him that he would be required to complete 40 hours of unpaid “training,” which for Parker meant a full week of arduous, physical work dismantling cubicles and work stations and replacing them with new ones.

“The ‘training period’ is nothing but a scam,” explains Parker. “We work as a team; no one needs to show you how to load or unload a truck full of old furniture, it’s common sense. The ‘training’ was just us paying him back for working for him.”

“According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), training that is mandatory, work-related, and during business hours, needs to be paid to be in accordance with federal labor law,” explains Michell K. McIntyre, the Project Director of the National Consumers League’s Special Project on Wage Theft. “Forcing employees to work a job for no pay on the ruse that the work involves “training” is exploitation in its simplest form.”

After Parker reluctantly worked a full week for no pay, he learned that his employer had devised a myriad of unscrupulous excuses to reduce the pay further. Parker was hired with a starting a wage of $10 dollars an hour, but after daily deductions for gas to transport him and co-workers to the construction site and the “privilege” of using the tools necessary for the job, along with sporadic charges for other equipment the employer claimed were “missing,” Parker was making far less than initially promised.

“We have to pay $10 dollars a day to cover the gas it takes to get us to work sites and to use the tools,” says Parker, frustrated. “That’s one hour every day that we don’t get paid for; that adds up to about $160 to $200 a month that comes straight out of our paychecks.”

Automatic deductions not included, Parker doesn’t even get paid for all the hours he is at work. Parker reports to work at 7 am but the company van that transports workers to construction sites often doesn’t show up until much later, and it could be another half hour to an hour before the workers actually arrive at the work location. Parker and his coworkers can only clock in and begin earning their hourly wages once they are physically at the construction site.

The FLSA defines the workweek as the total amount of time an employee is required to be on an employer’s premises or work site. A workday can be longer than the employee’s scheduled shift or hours, but all additional time needs to be paid. In Parker’s case, several hours worth of pay are regularly subtracted from his paycheck.

“We have to report to work at 7 am, but the van that gets us to the location can show up well after that. When I work at two different sites in a single day, the time it takes for me to get from one job to another is subtracted from my time […] there have been times where I worked 15 hours and only got paid for 11.”

“According to the US Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division, time spent by an employee in travel as part of their principal activity, such as travel from job site to job site during the workday, is work time and must be counted as hours worked,” says McIntyre

Although wage theft victims often aren’t even aware of the fact that they are being victimized, in Parker’s case the violations are so egregious that he and his coworkers have come to understand that their employer is breaking the law. However, that knowledge is of little help.

“A lot of us don’t want to complain too much ‘cause we don’t want to lose our jobs. I’m trying to line up another job but I haven’t found one yet, so for now, I need this job,” explains Parker. “If you make too much noise you get a text at night saying you are laid off; I can’t afford that right now.”

National Consumers League has provided support and direction to Parker as he seeks redress for the wage theft he has experienced. Parker has already contacted the U.S. Department of Labor and the North Carolina Justice Center to help recoup his lost wages, but to start formal proceedings Parker would have to give out identifying information—something he is not yet prepared to do.

The U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division has resources to help victims and potential victims of wage theft. Its program, We Can Help, has a Web site (www.dol.gov/wecanhelp) and tools to help workers track their pay, overtime and vacation time – an app for smartphones and a printable work hours calendar in English and Spanish.

Parker’s plight highlights how wage theft victimizes workers in two devastating ways: by robbing them of their money and then preventing them from getting help for fear of losing their jobs. For workers like Parker, whose first concern is providing for his family, the strategy is often to wait to secure another job before attempting legal action. In a tough economy with steady unemployment, wage theft victims across the nation are in for a long wait.

To learn more about wage theft, or if you or someone you know may be a victim, click here for more information.

Honoring MLK – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Today as we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. it’s helpful to look around and see where we are in 2012 in the battle against racism and the poverty that is a direct byproduct of racism. I recently heard an astounding statistic: the United States imprisons more Black men today – often for nonviolent drug offenses – than were enslaved in 1850 before the Emancipation Proclamation.

A historical look back is helpful. NCL’s founding in 1899 dates back to the Progressive Era, which was a time of historic reforms in America, but also a time of incredible backlash against former slaves and freedmen and women. Southern governments imposed a wide range of Jim Crow laws – laws and policies requiring Blacks to use different public facilities, live in different neighborhoods and go to different schools, during the Progressive era, often using the rationale that segregation resulted in a more orderly, systematic electoral system and society. Many of the steps that had been taken toward racial equality during the Reconstruction period were undone. The result is that Blacks were denied access to decent schools, housing, and good jobs that paid a living wage.

The founding of the NAACP was precipitated by this series of events. The Jim Crow practices of Southern leaders were regrettably given the blessings of the American judicial system, as in the famous case upholding the principle of racial segregation in the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy found that as long as blacks were provided with “separate but equal” facilities, Black and White segregated schools were acceptable. The problem is, they weren’t equal at all. They were inferior school facilities.

Black leaders were divided on how best to respond cases like Plessy. Booker T. Washington urged that blacks should not actively agitate for equality, but should acquire craft skills, work industriously, and convince whites of their abilities. W. E. B. Du Bois insisted instead (in The Souls of Black Folk, 1903) that black people must ceaselessly protest Jim Crow laws, demand education in the highest professions as well as in crafts, and work for complete social integration. They didn’t like each other much, and their enmity grew. DuBois, who was close to Florence Kelley, NCL’s leader for our first 33 years, was the driving force behind the formation of an organization to fight for the rights of Black Americans. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded to advance these ideals and Florence Kelley was involved in these early gatherings and today continues to be a vital and critically important organization as does the NCL.

Indeed, as I listened this week to financial guru Suze Orman, Harvard Professor Cornell West and media personality Tavis Smiley continue on their Poverty Tour of America this week, I was flanked on either side by friends from the NAACP. As we continue to work together to battle poverty and racism here are some stark statistics to contemplate:

  • the black unemployment rate is twice that of whites.
  • the average Black family’s household income fell 3 percent from 2009 to 2010, while white and Latino income fell only 1.7 and 2.3 percent, respectively.
  • While poverty rates for all ethnic groups were in the double digits in 2010, the African-American community was faring the worst, by far. More than one in four Black Americans is now living below the poverty line.
  • The economic gains made by African-Americans since the end of World War II and into the aughts have now been mostly decimated. Beyond that, the longer people are unemployed and poor, the less likely they are to be able to take advantage of educational opportunities, and the more likely the are to fall into bad habits

So while we celebrate the life of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. we can’t look at these terrible numbers and do justice to his memory unless we rededicate ourselves to fighting against the effort to destroy the middle class in America, to dismantle union and the decent jobs they provide paying good wages and benefits.

A local minister, Rev. William Lamar, the senior pastor at Turner Memorial AME Church in Hyattsville, Md says it well:

“When it comes to political discourse, during this presidential campaign season, I don’t hear the language that I think honors Dr. King. I don’t hear much talk about poverty, policy solutions to help with the large number of children in American who are living in low income situations. To really honor King, we need to reinvigorate King’s message of uniting Americans around solving the poverty and vast income inequality that exists in America.”

Thank you for those words, Reverend Lamar, and we join you in honoring the work of Dr. MLK Jr. by speaking out against poverty and encouraging our leaders to do so as well.

You go, Suze! – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director Financial guru Suze Orman launched her “Approved Card” this week to much fanfare – on Sunday Ron Lieber profiled the card in the New York Times. Orman appeared on the daytime television show, The View, hosted by Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg, and she strolled through the Paramus, NJ mall on camera and talked with average consumers. Lieber is a columnist with a bias in favor of consumers who are getting slammed by big corporate interests. His response to Suze’s card  was mostly high praise; he ended the column with this:

“…I asked her to put her hand on one of the money bibles she has written and swear not to raise Approved card fees in the next 24 months. She said she would shut the card down before that happened. ‘I am not going to make money off the 99 percenters’ backs,’ A pledge like that takes guts, and anyone who has browbeaten TransUnion into even considering a big change deserves praise. Here’s hoping that she succeeds in her credit mission — and that other media personalities like Dave Ramsey and Jim Cramer put the heat on companies in other high-fee, low-service industries and make them sweat, too.

If you’re like me, the Suze Orman you know is the very charismatic – and bossy – TV personality who tells  Americans to stop spending beyond their means, to figure how to improve their FICO scores, and get a budget you can afford and stick to it. But yesterday another  – and equally admirable –  Suze Orman appeared at the National Press Club –  flanked by radio talk show host Tavis Smiley and the Harvard Professor Cornel West and the topic was poverty, the disappearance of the middle class and how big banks and credit card companies with their hidden and predatory fees are taking money from the pockets of poor people.

And that scenario, Suze said, is what motivated her to develop a prepaid debit card that isn’t out to earn its namesake – the card is called “The Approved Card from Suze Orman” – big bucks, but instead has a salutary goal: first, you can’t spend beyond your means as so many consumers do with credit cards because the Approved Card is like cash – you only load the cash you have onto the card,  and second, and more important, over time if consumers use the card wisely,  those who don’t have a FICO score or have a low one, and are thus punished by exorbitant fees on insurance, house or car loans, can get build up their credit and get a decent FICO score.

The card has minimal fees – $3 a month maintenance and ATM usage charge of around $2 a transaction, none of those hateful Kim Kardashian card -fees which charged you to load the card, to cancel the card, and a huge monthly maintenance, etc etc etc Orman, Smiley and West were heading to George Washington University last evening for a forum on poverty in America and how to get America – and our presidential  candidates –  talking about it again.

Suze Orman – who understands financial products better than anyone – and preaches personal financial responsibility  like no one else– also says that many Americans have been driven into bankruptcy, unemployment and poverty often through no fault of their own – they were directed to subprime loans, they are underwater on mortgages they didn’t understand (by design) they were issued credit cards and opened bank accounts that imposed every sort of  fees and penalties that eventually ate away at their savings.

It’s a narrative that rings true for so many of the people we represent at the National Consumers League. So I’m with the New York Times: Go Suze! Here’s hoping that your card puts the heat on companies with high fees and low services,  and ultimately helps consumers climb out of debt and build back their credit. And keep doing it: help build back the middle class and using the bully pulpit to talk about poverty in America and what can be doing to fight it – you have the floor – and the microphone – and we thank you for using it on behalf of those who voices are so rarely heard.

Child Labor Coalition announces Top 10 Child Labor Stories of 2011 – National Consumers League

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January 12, 2012

Contact: Reid Maki, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org

Washington, DC—Advocates from the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), a group representing more than two dozen organizations concerned with protecting working youth, has released a list of the top ten child labor stories from 2011. The list represents international and American issues in child labor that received considerable attention in 2011 and what advocates hope is an increase in attention to exploitation faced by vulnerable child workers that has previously gone unnoticed by mainstream media.

“The year brought some much needed attention to serious child labor problems in the supply chains of some of the world’s largest companies,” said Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition and the Director of Social Responsibility and Fair Labor Standards for the National Consumers League (NCL). “However, we also saw a disturbing move in a few states to roll back long-standing child labor protections and a much-publicized attack on child labor laws by a presidential candidate.

The year’s 10 biggest stories, according to the CLC, included (in no particular order):

    1. Apple admits products manufactured by Chinese child laborers
    1. Victoria’s Secret’s dirty secret about child-labor harvested cotton
    1. DOL proposes rules to protect child farmworkers for first time in 40 years
    1. NBC News spotlights dangerous child labor in gold mining
    1. Newt Gingrich calls child labor laws “stupid”
    1. Advocates oust Uzbek designer from NYC Fashion Week
    1. Nestle hires independent monitoring group to examine supply chains
    1. Media reports highlight backbreaking child labor in American agriculture
    1. States try to turn back the clock on child labor protections
    1. Obama approves miliary aid to countries employing child soldiers

1) Apple hit with allegations that its iPhones and other electronic gadgets are manufactured in Chinese factories by child laborers. In February, Apple announced that it had found 91 children worked at its suppliers in 2010—a nine-fold increase from the previous year. The company also acknowledged that 137 workers had been poisoned by the chemical, n-hexane, at a supplier’s manufacturing facility and that less than a third of the facilities it audited were complying with Apple’s code on working hours. In the year prior to December 2010, Apple had sales of over $65 billion.

2)  Victoria’s hidden “secret”: children help harvest the cotton that goes into garments. Bloomberg Markets Magazine revealed in December that some of the cotton retail giant Victoria’s Secret uses is harvested by young children in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. The piece profiled 13-year-old Clarisse Kambire, who works on a cotton farm, where she said she is routinely beaten by the owner. By hand, Clarisse performs work that many farmers use a plow and oxen to perform and often works in 100-plus degree heat and eats just one meal a day. Some days she gets no food. Many of the children like Clarisse are considered “foster children” and receive no wages— most do not attend school. Limited Brand, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, has annual sales in excess of $5 billion.

3)  U.S. DOL issues proposed child labor rules to protect children on farms from dangerous work. For the first time in four decades, the Department of Labor has issued proposed rules to prohibit work on farms that is dangerous for teen employees. The regulations would ban kids from driving tractors and other machinery, work from heights greater than six feet, work in grain facilities, and other dangerous activities. Despite a far-reaching “parental exemption” that would exempt the sons and daughters of farmers from the proposed protections, many members of the farm community and many farm-related groups attacked the proposed regulations as an assault on the family farm that would make it hard to train the next generation of farmers. DOL received more than 18,000 comments about the regulations. CLC members remain strong supporters of the proposed protections, which we believe will save 50-100 teen workers over the next 10 years.

4)  Human Rights Watch and NBC News draw much needed attention to child labor in gold mining. Artisanal mining for gold is a common but brutal and dangerous form of child labor for West African children. In early December, the NBC News show Rock Center featured a chilling report about child gold miners in Mali, Africa. As many as 20,000 kids are estimated to work in artisanal mines, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which found that kids as young as six years old “dig mining shafts, work underground, pull up heavy weights of ore, and carry, crush and pan ore.” As if this backbreaking labor wasn’t bad enough, many children also work with toxic mercury to separate the gold from the ore. Many child miners are not paid wages for their labor, receiving bags of dirt which may or may not have any gold dust in them. Many children work instead of going to school.

5)  Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich calls child labor laws “stupid” and urges U.S. to save money by hiring school children to clean school bathrooms. Republican Newt Gingrich made headlines this November when he suggested that poor kids in struggling schools be given jobs as janitors. Gingrich suggested that poor children typically lack the example of a working parent and that cleaning school bathrooms would help develop a strong work ethic. Gingrich has previously made headlines for having spent $750,000 on jewelry at Tiffany’s, raising questions about his ability to empathize with the struggling poor.

6) Advocates draw attention to the forced labor in Uzbekistan to harvest cotton by getting a dictator’s daughter ousted from Fashion Week. It’s not always easy to get the attention of one of the world’s most brutal dictators, but that’s what the advocacy community did during New York City’s Fashion Week in September 2011, when several CLC members and the Cotton Advocacy Network successfully got Uzbekistan’s Gulnara Karimov ousted from the prestigious fashion show. A designer and a Uzbek diplomat, Gulnara is the daughter of Uzbekistan’s brutal leader Islam Karimov. Each fall, Uzbek school children and their teachers are forced to leave their classrooms and perform arduous hand-harvesting of cotton for up to two months. The children, whose numbers are estimated to range from several hundred thousand to almost two million, receive little or no pay. Recently, the European Union voted not to ease import rules for Uzbek cotton, hoping to force the regime to allow independent investigators to survey child labor in the country.

7)  Nestlé agrees to hire a third-party monitor to examine child labor in its supply chain. For a decade now, the world has known that cocoa in West Africa is often harvested by children under difficult and dangerous conditions. That cocoa is purchased by the world’s leading chocolate companies and eventually becomes the chocolate treats that we all love to eat. For years, the advocacy community has pushed the chocolate industry to do more to combat this intractable problem. This year, Nestlé agreed to hire the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit monitoring group, to look for child labor and other problems in the Côte d’Ivoire.

8)  60 Minutes and “The Harvest” film bring much needed attention to the problem of child labor in American agriculture. Children as young as 12—and sometimes even younger—toil in the fields beside their migrant farmworker parents, harvesting fruits and vegetables. The work—legal under U.S. child labor law—is often back-breaking and sometimes dangerous. “The Harvest,” a brilliant and poignant film by director Roman Romano and producers Shine Global, followed the lives of three migrant children as they struggled to overcome exhausting work, missed educational opportunities, and social disruption.

9)  State attempts to roll back child labor laws. Conservative legislators in Missouri, Wisconsin, and Maine worked to reduce child labor protections in 2011. The Maine legislature increased the number of hours teens can work during the school week from 20 to 24 and allowed them to work till 11 p.m. at night. In Wisconsin, legislators pushed through changes—without a public hearing or debate—that removed restrictions on the total hours that 16- and 17-year-olds can work. A bill to weaken protections in Missouri went down to defeat but legislators essentially got their way by defunding the state labor investigation team.

10) President Obama issues waivers for countries that use child soldiers. For the second year in a row, the President decided to waive congressionally mandated restrictions on giving military assistance to Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Yemen because they continue to use children in their armed forces. Issued in the name of “national security,” the waivers will result in thousands of children—some of them very young—being forced into armed conflict, including many young girls forced into sexual slavery.

“This list serves as a painful reminder that much work needs to be done in 2012,” said Sally Greenberg, a co-chair of the CLC and NCL’s executive director. “Corporations need to tighten their supply chain monitoring. Consumers need to make informed purchases and let companies know that child labor is an issue that they care about. It’s also imperative that we let the Department of Labor and congressional members know that the safety of children working in U.S. agriculture requires the immediate implementation of the proposed child safety rules, which are 40 years overdue.”

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About the Child Labor Coalition

The Child Labor Coalition is comprised of 28 organizations, representing consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights and labor rights groups, child advocacy groups, and religious and women’s groups. It was established in 1989, and is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers. Its mission is to protect working youth and to promote legislation, programs, and initiatives to end child labor exploitation in the United States and abroad. For more information, please call CLC Coordinator Reid Maki at (202) 207-2820[reidm@nclnet.org].

Cephalosporin prohibition a step in the right direction – National Consumers League

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By Teresa Green, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow

Last week, the FDA made an important decision to prohibit the extra-label use of cephalosporin drugs in certain kinds of livestock. This means that these drugs can no longer be used for purposes other than their intended use. This is an important decision and one NCL supports.

When considering the issue of antibiotics in food-producing animals, it’s important to understand just how widespread antibiotic use is.  80% of the antibiotics used in this country are used in animals. Why is this number so astronomically high?  There are several reasons why farmers use antibiotics in their livestock.

  • Farmers use antibiotics when their animals become ill.
  • Farmers raising large herds of animals will often put antibiotics in their feed preemptively.  Because disease can spread quickly and widely in a crowded setting like a feedlot, many farmers see preemptive treatment with antibiotics as a necessary part of business.
  • Farmers also give their livestock antibiotics for growth promotion. In these instances, antibiotics are given to a healthy animal to promote faster and more widespread growth. This treatment with antibiotics helps farmers’ bottom lines.

Unfortunately, the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock is leading to the development of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria. This is especially problematic when animals are treated with the same drugs that doctors give us when we become ill. Bacteria develop resistance to these medications, creating a situation where a doctor must utilize another treatment option, often one that is less effective, more expensive or has more negative side effects.  The result is increased health costs and more people succumbing to illness.

FDA’s decision to prohibit the extra-label use of cephalosporin drugs is an important first step in the fight to maintain the efficacy of drugs critical to treating human illnesses.  The FDA should continue to examine this issue and consider further banning the use of other important antibiotics in animals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the government department in charge of meat safety, should also make it illegal to sell meat that is infected with drug resistant bacteria.  These two steps would go a long way towards protecting the efficacy of crucial antibiotics Americans use everyday.

NCL: ICANN’s domain name expansion plan a boon for scam artists – National Consumers League

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January 6, 2012

Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC – The planned expansion of the generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) name system poses significant threats to consumer protection from online scam artists, according to the National Consumers League. Starting January 12, 2012, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plans to begin accepting applications for new gTLDs despite the significant concerns expressed by hundreds of stakeholders in the non-profit and business communities as well as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and members of Congress. As an organization that receives thousands of complaints from consumers about online fraud, NCL is extremely concerned that expansion of the gTLD system will be a boon to scam artists intent on deceiving consumers.

In particular, NCL is troubled by the findings of the FTC that:

“[a] rapid, exponential expansion of gTLDs has the potential to magnify both the abuse of the domain name system and the corresponding challenges we encounter in tracking down Internet fraudsters. In particular, the proliferation of existing scams, such as phishing, is likely to become a serious challenge given the infinite opportunities that scam artists will now have at their fingertips.”

In a letter sent today to ICANN Board Chair Stephen Crocker and ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom, NCL called for a delay in the implementation of the gTLD expansion program until safety and security concerns can be more adequately addressed.

“We are wary of changes to the domain name registry system that could allow unscrupulous scam artists to proliferate to an even greater extent than they exist today,” said NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg. “A delay in the implementation of the new gTLD program is urgently needed to allow adequate time to address pressing security concerns and, ultimately, to better protect consumers from abuse of the domain-name system by fraudsters.”

To view the full text of NCL’s letter to ICANN, click here.

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About the National Consumers League

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.