Rescuing Emmanuel – National Consumers League

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By Rubkwan Tharmmapornphilas, Ph.D., Child Labor Coalition Intern

Rubkwan is a child labor public policy intern at the National Consumers League. She is a Ph.D. graduate from Columbia University and a Thai Government Scholarship recipient. Her doctoral thesis was on the determinants of child labor in Thailand, where she will return to work as a government officer in the Ministry of Education once her internship is completed.

Do you know someone who is invisible? No, I don’t mean Kevin Bacon in “Hollow Man” or Jessica Alba in “Fantastic Four.” I mean a person who could easily disappear one day and no one would notice. If not, then let me introduce 13-year-old “Emmanuel,” one of the world’s 140 million street kids—“throw away” children who are left to fend for themselves in city slums around the globe.

In the compelling documentary film “Rescuing Emmanuel” (released in 2008), Len and Georgia Morris followed the life of street kids in Kenya, Brazil, Mexico, India, Indonesia and the United States. These children have no birth certificate, ID card, money, home, or family. They live on the margins, neglected and ignored by communities, societies, and government. Emmanuel and his friends struggle to survive day by day, working, begging, stealing, and selling their bodies. Hunger, violence, abuse, drugs, crime, HIV, and other diseases are common in their daily lives.

The street children are in desperate need of a better life, and they seize any tiny bit of opportunity. In the case of Emmanuel, he stole Glen and Georgia’s attention by shouting in broken English, “I want to go to school right now!”

Touched by Emmanuel and his demand, the Morrises decide they must act and help him. They place him in Huruma Children’s Home, founded by Mama Zipporah and home to 150 abandoned and abused kids.

Although it might seem hopeless to help just one kid while millions of others are still out there on streets, the Morris’s action reminds me of Loren Eiseley’s “The Star Thrower”, the story about a person walking on the beach who encounters stranded starfish and decides to save some of them by throwing them back in the sea. When asked why he is saving a handful of starfish when thousands more will go unsaved—whether, in fact, his actions are really making a difference, the Good Samaritan throws one more starfish into the sea and says, “ I made a difference to that one.”

“Rescuing Emmanuel” shows us just how vulnerable children are in many parts of the world. It’s a haunting story but one that needs to be witnessed.

Ordering information for “Rescuing Emmanuel” may be found at *https://store.galenfilms.com. Galen Films also produced “Stolen Childhoods” (2003), a wonderful feature- length examination of child labor around the world.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

What Do Somalia and the United States Have in Common? – National Consumers League

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by Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition Coordinator

You might be inclined to say “not much” since, as the New York Times noted, for the last 17 years Somalia has been ripped apart by anarchy, violence, famine, and greed. Yet, the United States and Somalia are the only two nations that belong to the United Nations and have not formally signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

To date, 193 countries have signed the convention, which requires countries to abide by and work toward *a set of principles regarding the way children should be treated. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child monitors the progress being made by each country and files an annual report, helping to highlight problems and create incentives for remediation.

Admittedly, children in the United States do not suffer the types of exploitation that others do in some of the countries that have signed the CRC, but the American refusal to sign this basic international convention is mystifying and disappointing. In 1995 Madeleine Albright, acting as a delegate to the UN, signed the CRC on behalf of President Clinton, but the convention has not been ratified by Congress.

Some believe that one obstacle to the signing has been death penalty cases that involve executing minors, which would be banned under the CRC. Some conservatives have argued that the international treaty might interfere with parental rights.

At the National Consumers League, we believe that these concerns are not well founded and that children should have the right to a free, healthy, and productive life—and that international treaties that declare basic rights be entitled to children can play a beneficial role in advancing children’s interests. As the film Slumdog Millionaire made clear, there are still parts of the world where children are horribly abused—possibly even maimed—so that they can earn more money.

One CRC article that particularly interests us at the League is Article 32 on Child Labor: “Governments should protect children from engaging in work that is dangerous, inhibits their ability to obtain an education, or jeopardizes their health and overall development. Governments are responsible for setting a minimum age limit for employment, regulating the hours and conditions of employment, and establishing and enforcing sanctions against those who violate such provisions.”

Many of the 30-plus members of the Child Labor Coalition, which NCL coordinates, believe that the United States may actually be in violation of this article because migrant farmworker children are allowed to work at such young ages (12 and 13), are exposed to pesticides and other occupational hazards, and suffer an alarming school dropout rate. We don’t understand why the United States would have a minimum work age for one industry—agriculture—that is different than that in other industries. Why should a 12-year-old onion harvester be legally allowed to work for 12 hours in 100-degree heat when that same child cannot legally work in an air-conditioned office?

The CRC articles are very straightforward principles that the rest of the world has readily agreed upon: children have the right to survive, they should not be trafficked or exploited sexually, and they should not be allowed to fight in wars. The time has come to pass this much-needed international treaty. When he was in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama endorsed the CRC.

To learn more about the CRC and its ratification, please visit the Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Statement of Support from the National Consumers League on the Introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act – National Consumers League

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The National Consumers League (NCL) today issued the following statement regarding the introduction in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).  This statement is attributable to Sally Greenberg, Executive Director of the National Consumers League:

“We applaud the introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress.  Throughout its 109 year history, the League has been dedicated to promoting social and economic justice for consumers and workers.  NCL strongly believes that consumer empowerment is closely aligned with the rights of workers to unionize,” said Greenberg.  “In a time of economic turmoil with consumers faced with massive debt, high unemployment, and too many instances of corporate greed, it is more important than ever for workers and consumers to band together to help rebuild the middle class.”

In a December 2008 *letter to Congress, NCL joined with six other consumer groups in a statement of support for EFCA. In that letter, the groups laid out three major consumer benefits of EFCA, including:

  1. Giving workers a fair and direct path to form unions through majority sign-up. EFCA would require an employer to recognize its employees’ union when a majority has signed union authorization cards. Under current law, management can refuse to recognize a union even when 100 percent of employees have signed authorization cards. After a majority of workers have signed cards, an employer can still call for a separate election. Under the current system, then, the employer gets to decide whether a separate election is necessary.
  2. Helping employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time. Under current law, anti-union employers often drag workers through lengthy negotiations by delaying bargaining sessions, withholding relevant information, and putting forth bogus proposals. Even though these tactics are illegal, there are no effective deterrents to prevent “surface bargaining.” The Employee Free Choice Act will strengthen workers’ ability to achieve a first contract within a reasonable period of time.
  3. Toughening penalties against employers who violate their workers’ rights. Too many unscrupulous employers get away with breaking labor laws because the current penalties are too weak. The Employee Free Choice Act would increase penalties against employers who illegally fire or retaliate against pro-union workers.

To read more about NCL’s support for EFCA, click here.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Lessons from National Consumer Protection Week – National Consumers League

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By John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud

On Saturday, March 7, the annual observance of *National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW) will come to a close.  News articles have been written about it and a *presidential proclamation has been issued.  The National Consumers League has been proud to again be a member of the *national steering committee for NCPW.

But NCPW does not HAVE to end at midnight Saturday night.  In the current economic environment, the opportunities for scammers to bilk desperate consumers out of their depleted wealth have rarely been greater.  Now, more than ever, it is important that consumers take the lessons of NCPW to heart to help avoid becoming another number in the billion-dollar fraud statistics.

The theme of this year’s NCPW is “Nuts & Bolts: Tools for Today’s Economy.”  Given the immense resources available to help consumers protect themselves and become more informed, this theme is especially apt.  The Federal Trade Commission’s *NCPW website provides a wealth of *governmental resources that consumers can use to get educated about a variety of consumer topics.  In addition, there is a great *outreach toolkit so consumers can talk to their local media, government officials, bloggers, and friends to spread the work about NCPW.

Con-artists have found out that the Internet is an enormously powerful tool for reaching victims.  However, the power is not just in the scammers’ hands.  Thanks to tools like the ones detailed on the NCPW site, NCL’s own Fraud.org, and in literally hundreds of others a quick Google search away, consumers can turn the table on the scammers and use the power of the Internet to get informed and stay one step ahead of the fraudsters.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Lose your job? You don’t have to lose your insurance too… – National Consumers League

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By Mimi Johnson, NCL Health Policy Associate

… Or all your money trying to pay for it! Thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last month, *COBRA premiums are shrinking. This brings needed support to the many thousands of people who have lost their jobs – and their health insurance. Traditionally, COBRA coverage requires the former employee to pay 100 percent of the premium plus an additional 2 percent for “administrative costs”, but under the ARRA, those eligible will only have to pay 35 percent of the premiums. To see if you qualify, visit the *Department of Labor’s site.

While the League envisions a day when all Americans have access to affordable coverage regardless of employment status, we applaud policy makers for taking a step to prevent even more citizens from losing their coverage.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Generation LifeSmart – National Consumers League

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Since it’s *National Consumer Protection Week and all, we thought it would be a nice time to honor the volunteers who make our LifeSmarts program the success it is, year after year. (15, in fact!)

If you’re not familiar, LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League that teaches teens and ‘tweens the kind of important life lessons that many generations before them have learned the hard way. LifeSmarts is a fast-paced competition that starts online, at the state level. Teams of teens (in the Varsity program, it’s high school students; in the newer JV program, it’s middle school) compete online against others from their state. Many states have in-person competitions to determine who will represent them at nationals, and each spring, state champion teams travel to a city (this year, it’s St. Louis) to compete for the national championship title.

The idea behind LifeSmarts is simple: why not teach kids the kinds of things they’ll need to know to be a good consumer before they have to face real-life tests? As home ec. and “checkbook math” classes have been phased out of school curriculum across the country — and as the consumer marketplace continues to reveal itself to be so filled with pitfalls — LifeSmarts seems to be more necessary now than ever before.

This year’s National Consumer Protection Week’s theme is “Nuts and Bolts: Tools for Today’s Economy – a perfect fit for LifeSmarts — and a perfect time to celebrate the people who help make it happen: more than 30 volunteer State Coordinators who run the programs in their states; the volunteers who serve as judges and other competition officials; the many companies, organizations, and government offices that provide the financial support to sustain the program; and the thousands of coaches across the country who spend long hours prepping their teens for competition, raise funds to get to nationals, and help spread the word about LifeSmarts.

Recently, at the Missouri state LifeSmarts competition, a volunteer judge had this to say about the program:

“As a former teacher, I fully believe that this competition helps promote
leadership and intellectual curiosity. It is a wonderful opportunity for
all the students involved.”

He’s right! Get to know LifeSmarts today – and follow our fun and competition in St. Louis at our nationals blog, starting April 24.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Sebelius Key to Achieving Universal Health Care – National Consumers League

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by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Universal health care has long been a top priority for the National Consumers League since our early Josephine Roche, who served as adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt and wrote the first universal health care bill during the late 1930s. Pieces of that legislation laid the groundwork for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

President Obama pledged throughout his campaign to enact laws to provide that every man woman and child in U.S. has access to affordable, safe, and effective health care. It is unconscionable that the richest nation in the world hasn’t found a way to provide basic care for its citizens. The results of this failed policy are disastrous: 46 million Americans have no health insurance, and an abundance of bankruptcies due to lack of health insurance among consumers who face illness or accident and have to pay out-of-pocket for medical expenses. As many Americans lose their jobs in this difficult economy, and millions of families are added to the rolls of the uninsured, American companies, most notably the auto industry, have to pay $1,000 extra for every car they sell – an expense not borne by their European or Japanese counterparts – because of health care costs for their employees and retirees.

President Obama’s first pick to steer the nation on the path to universal care, former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, withdrew his name from the running when it turned out he hadn’t paid an important tax bill. That was a shame, because Daschle, the author of a book that has served as a manifesto on health care reform, knew where he wanted to go. He had the kind of close relationships in Congress required to steer this complicated legislative ship through the minefield that is inevitable as we see special interests fighting over every line in the health care reform bills.

The good news is that the President *has nominated Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who looks to be a friend to consumers. A democrat in a red state (she enjoys a 57 percent approval rating) who casts herself as a “consumer champion,” Sebelius opposed rationed care and rapid hospital discharges as governor of Kansas, declined campaign contributions from industries she regulated while serving as Insurance Commissioner, and in 2002 rejected the purchase of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas by Anthem Inc, a company based in Indianapolis. Sebelius argued that the sale would result in higher premiums in Kansas, and she won the subsequent lawsuit challenging her decision.

The important thing to know about Sebelius (and a skill that will serve her well in the HHS post) is that she has fought battles to advance the cause of universal health care in Kansas, calling for universal coverage in her 2007 State of the State address, fighting to insure coverage of children 5 and under. She also comes from a political family; her father was Ohio Governor John Gilligan and her father in law, John Sebelius, served in Congress.

As we seek to finally achieve universal health coverage in the United States, this cabinet slot is perhaps more important than any other. I think NCL’s Josephine Roche would be pleased with the choice of Governor Sebelius to guide our nation in its quest to achieve universal care for all Americans (though Roche would no doubt be shocked to learn we hadn’t achieved it in 2009!) – and I think we should be too.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Stimulus to Aid Those Who Most Need It – National Consumers League

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by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

According to a recent New York Times poll, 55 percent of Americans are earning enough to just make ends meet; 6 in ten of those polled say they fear that someone in their household could lose his or her job in the next year. Sixty percent said the economic outlook is “very bad.” Despite those gloomy numbers, more than 75 percent still said they were optimistic: 55 percent said  they are optimistic about the next four years with Barack Obama as president.

That’s important, because the economic situation is dire, and the President is going to need a lot of wind behind his back to make his *new budget – and the stimulus package that goes with it – work for our country.

The stimulus contains badly needed help for those on the bottom rung of the workforce, those who have lost their jobs and need help from an important safety net: unemployment insurance. But it comes with strings attached for any state that accepts the money.

The issue of providing help for those who’ve lost their jobs goes back to NCL’s roots – Florence Kelley, the League’s first General Secretary, advocated for unemployment insurance many decades ago. In 1922, the National Consumers League worked for passage of a bill that provided unemployment insurance in Wisconsin, the first such bill of its kind and did the same over a decade later, testifying in Albany before the New York Legislature for passage of unemployment insurance.

NCL also testified before Congress in the 1930s for federal support for state unemployment insurance. Along with minimum wage and limits on working hours, NCL’s leaders believed that help for those who, through no fault of their own, had lost their jobs, was a critical part of the economic safety net.

However, today, unemployment insurance is not available to everyone who has lost a job. And some states provide such restrictive coverage that those in greatest need cannot get help. So the stimulus law says that states getting stimulus money must extend unemployment protections to low income workers and others previously denied compensation.

To qualify for the first 1/3 of federal aid, the states need to fix eligibility requirements that exclude low income workers. To qualify for the rest of the aid, states have to chose from a series of options that include extending benefits to part time workers or those who leave their jobs for urgent family demands, like domestic violence or a very sick child. The National Employment Law Project or NELP, whose legal co-director, Cathy Ruckelhaus, spoke at the League’s Muller v. Oregon conference held in June of 2008, says that 19 states qualify for some of the federal financing, and a dozen others could become eligible by making some small changes in their eligibility requirements. Workers in the Deep South are the worst off – Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas stand out. Shockingly, some Southern state governors are threatening to reject this federal assistance for their poorest workers because they argue it could lead to new state taxes, among them Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina. This is a disturbing stance, given the high rates of unemployment in these states.

We agree with the New York Times: “… by dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state unemployment funds, which puts money into the hands of people who spend it immediately on food and shelter, the stimulus could help states through the recession and into a time when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely.” This federal assistance comes at a critical moment in history and governors should welcome it on behalf of their citizens, not find poor excuses for rejecting funds badly needed by the lowest

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings income workers in their states.

Happy National Consumer Protection Week! – National Consumers League

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Yesterday was the official kick-off of this year’s National Consumer Protection Week, and consumer advocates (at least those not temporarily buried under a rare DC snowstorm) have begun the celebration!

Every year, federal, state, and local government agencies and consumer organizations from across the nation collaborate *to bring American consumers timely, important info about consumer issues. This year’s theme is “Nuts and Bolts: Tools for Today’s Economy,” and it’s especially relevant, given how crazy and scary our economy is these days. The organizations and agencies we work with on the *NCPW Steering Committee are an awesome group of dedicated consumer educators and advocates, and its their hard work that results in each year’s NCPW!

Whether you are interested in trying to stretch your paycheck, improve your credit history, or tell the difference between a real deal and a potentially fraudulent product or service, information is one tool that can always help you get the most for your money. And the best news is that this information is all FREE!

In celebration of NCPW, we at the National Consumers League have put together a new section at fraud.org about *avoiding pyramid schemes (we blogged about this last week) and are working hard to educate consumers on a  wide variety of topics. Stay tuned for more this week about the issues that we think are important to consumers during NCPW — and year-round!

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Economic Misery Increases Vulnerability to Pyramid Schemes – National Consumers League

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By John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud

Millions of Americans are out of work and millions more worried about making ends meet. In the face of this troubled economy, consumers are giving home-based business opportunities more consideration as a way to make additional money. Unfortunately, scam artists often mask their fraudulent schemes as legitimate home-based business “opportunities.” The confluence of bad economic conditions and the proliferation of such scams could be putting many more consumers at risk of falling victim to these fraudulent pyramid schemes.

These are the conclusions of a new survey released today by the National Consumers League, produced in partnership with Opinion Research Corporation. Some of *the worrying findings of the survey include:

  • 31% of survey respondents said that they are more likely to consider a home-based business due to the current economic environment.
  • One third of survey respondents couldn’t identify a pyramid scheme as a scam when one was described to them.
  • Low-income Americans could be especially vulnerable to pyramid schemes. Among respondents reporting annual incomes below $35,000, 39% were unable to identify a pyramid scheme as a scam, the lowest percentage among income groups surveyed. Low-income respondents were also the most likely (42%) to consider a pyramid scheme as a good source of supplemental income when it was described to them.
  • Chain letters were the most common kind of pyramid scheme that respondents reported being approached to join (33%), followed by general pyramid schemes (21%), gifting clubs (12%), and Ponzi scheme (7%).

For more highlights from the survey, click *here.

To help address the growing threat of pyramid schemes, NCL has launched a new section on our Fraud.org Web site to help consumers identify and avoid falling victim to pyramid schemes, particularly the many scams masquerading a legitimate multi-level marketing plans. We’ve included a scam-spotting checklist that consumers can take with them to the often high-pressure sales “seminars” that are frequently used to lure victims into pyramid schemes, a handy chart comparing pyramid schemes and legitimate multi-level marketing plans, and links to additional information about pyramid schemes.

Consumers who have been approached to join a pyramid scheme or those who may have already fallen victim to one should definitely report the scam via our Online Fraud Complaint Form. These reports are incredibly important to helping federal, state, and local law enforcement and consumer protection agencies take action to help bring scam artists to justice.

If you’ve been a victim, don’t be afraid to report it. You are not alone! In addition to Fraud.org, there are several great forums online, including Scam Victims United and Scamwarners, where victims can network, share their stories, and hopefully avoid becoming repeat victims.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.