By Debra Berlyn

Debra Berlyn is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Consumers League. She maintains a Web site and blog at consumerawarenessproject.org. You can also follow her on twitter at @dberlyn.

June is Internet Safety Month and a great time to reflect on the shared responsibility of consumers and their network providers. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have an important role in both protecting their customers and managing the network. While many consumers have seen how malicious users on the network can infiltrate their computers through viruses and spam, there is more that needs to be done to inform all users about how their actions can affect the network.

The safety and security of the network and the protection of users should be a top priority of the Federal Communications Commission. Consumers increasingly rely, both knowingly and unknowingly, on their network providers to reduce the threat of malicious attacks.  It is important that we consider both the interests of consumers and the network providers that protect their users, as the Commission considers the best way to approach the issue of network management.

While telecommunications consumers have experienced the benefits of a dynamic industry, the evolution of broadband has presented a series of difficult policy matters. One such issue is the Commission’s proposed reclassification of broadband as a telecommunications service. As the FCC and the legislators that oversee it move forward on this important issue, it will be critically important that the safety and security needs of consumers and the ISPs that serve them are taken into account.  While there are a variety of opinions on the efficacy of reclassification itself, there should be no disagreement that consumers need to be protected from the ever-evolving threat of malicious online actors.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

While American workers struggle to organize and form unions, and the number of unionized workers in the United States grows smaller, there’s some exciting news from the other side of the world. In the past two weeks, Chinese workers have held strikes against Honda, the automaker, at three different plants. The Chinese government, normally intolerant of workers protesting working conditions, is allowing these Honda workers to express their discontent. This may be because Honda is a Japanese company, and anti-Japanese sentiment lingers in China even decades after World War II.

At one of the auto parts plants in southeastern China, 1,700 workers are hoping to see their wages doubled. What is particularly interesting is that the strikers are apparently engaged in sophisticated and democratic union organizing, electing shop stewards, and are demanding the right to form trade unions to be separate from Chinese government-controlled national federation of trade unions.

Two of the plants targeted by strikers have opened back up, with workers winning significant wage increases. Workers at the third plant are demanding the same wage hikes, and labor shortages are giving strikers stronger bargaining power.

But it is really disturbing to learn about the conditions under which they work for Honda, which has a pretty good reputation in the United States as a forward-looking company. These conditions harken back to America’s sweatshops of a century ago – workplaces that NCL’s Florence Kelley fought so hard to reform. The Honda plants require employees, most of whom are in their 20s and more than half of whom are women, to stand for 8 hours at a time; pregnant women are allowed to sit only in their last trimester. Salaries are about $132 for a 42-hour-week, which is minimum wage in Zhongshan, where the current strike is taking place. Workers are forbidden from speaking when they work – which is apparently common in Chinese workplaces – and they have to obtain passes before using the restrooms. And this strike began because a female worker appeared at the factory wearing her badge incorrectly and when she talked back to the guard for turning her away he shoved her to the ground. Workers live near the factories in tiny, 100-square-foot apartments, for which they pay more than 25 percent of their salary – or $44 a month.

Reforms in both salary and working conditions are clearly long overdue for these Chinese workers, and it is their good fortune that labor shortages will give them stronger bargaining power.

American consumers should be far better informed about the conditions under which the products we buy are made. The Honda plant in Zhongshan is a case in point; Honda needs to abide by an international standard of treatment for workers – and negotiate fairly in responding to the modest demands of the Chinese auto parts makers.

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

Consumers perusing the New York Times on May 14 who skipped over the Business section on their way to the crossword puzzle likely missed an important story for the future of communications in the U.S. In section B1 was this story, innocuously titled “Everyone Is Using Cellphones, But Not So Many Are Talking,” which noted that according the wireless industry, data and text now make up the majority of U.S. cellular traffic, overtaking voice.

Most of today’s cellphone-obsessed teenagers would probably react with a shrug and a “no duh.” For those of us that have watched the cellphone industry evolve from 1984’s *Motorola DynaTAC 800X (the world’s first cellphone — a bargain at $3,995) to today’s sleek smartphones, however, the shift from voice to data represents a watershed moment for American consumers. Whereas for nearly two decades, the wireless industry’s primary source of revenue was mobile voice service, mobile data revenue is quickly replacing it. As consumers *shift increasingly to using Voice Over IP (VoIP) technologies such as Skype for their mobile voice needs, this trend is only likely to accelerate.

So what does this mean from the all-important consumer pocketbook perspective? For one, consumers shopping for new cellular service should consider the price and quality of mobile data plans offered as or more carefully than they do the voice plans available. Second, consumers should be aware that the major American cellular companies are likely to begin shifting away the so-called “unlimited” or “all-you-can-eat” data plans (in reality usually capped at around 5 Gb of bandwidth per month) that are typically priced at around $30 per month per line. Instead, carriers are likely to offer data plans to new subscribers in buckets or “tiered” plans. This week AT&T announced that it would replace its $30 unlimited data plans with a $15 per month/200 Mb “Data Plus” plan and a $25 per month/2 Gb “Data Pro” plan for new subscribers. Verizon Wireless recently announced that it would be moving in a similar direction.

While these two tiers would cover 98 percent of At&T’s current data plan subscribers, consumer hunger for mobile bandwidth is projected to continue to grow exponentially. The user who is today content with a 200 Mb plan is likely to need to upgrade to the 2 Gb plan or as yet unannounced higher-bandwidth tiers in short order.

Given this trend, consumers shopping for a new cellular plan should carefully consider that number of voice minutes used in a typical month. The goal here is to avoid overbuying minutes. Many users may find that they save money by opting for a data and text plan with the lowest possible bucket of voice minutes. According to CTIA, the wireless industry association, the average U.S. mobile voice call dropped from 2.27 minutes in length in 2008 to 1.81 minutes in 2009. This is largely a result of more users replacing voice calls with texting. An example of this trend is the NCL intern who recently relayed a story of a friend whose voice mail message asks callers to simply send a text message instead of leaving a voice mail. We do not believe this to be an isolated incident.

Going forward, we expect that cellular voice service will become more like an “app” and less like a standalone service. How consumer and regulators in Washington react to the shift away from cellular voice towards mobile data will likely play a key role in shaping the wireless marketplace for years to come.

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

Under the new health law, Medicare beneficiaries are set to experience a variety of changes in an effort to deliver higher quality care and reduce waste and fraud.

As the government tries to close up the Part D coverage gap by 2020, beneficiaries who reach the gap this year will begin receiving $250 rebate checks beginning June 10^th, and they will continue to be sent monthly as people reach the “donut hole”. CMS reminds beneficiaries that there are no new forms to fill out for this rebate; if someone is asking you to do so; you should report it as fraudulent behavior. You are not required to give any personal information to obtain this check.  

For more information related to Medicare and the new law, call Medicare directly (1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227)). If you suspect Medicare-related fraud or scams, visit NCL’s Fraud Center to issue a complaint.

By Courtney Brein, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow

As the Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow at the National Consumers League, I work on a wide range of food safety and nutrition issues. While, on the food safety front, the topics on which I focus run the gamut, ultimately, they all share a common purpose: improving the safety of the food that American consumers purchase, serve, and eat.

Due in part to a string of recent foodborne illness outbreaks, and in part to an administration that has chosen to prioritize improving food safety, the environment is ripe for making significant changes to – and expansions upon – the mechanisms currently in place for protecting our food supply. More than a year ago, President Obama created a White House Food Safety Working Group co-chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The group has recommended a public health focused approach to food safety that prioritizes prevention and strengthens surveillance and enforcement, among other measures. On the Congressional front, FDA food safety modernization legislation passed in the House last summer and is slated to come to the Senate floor soon. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently set new performance standards for Salmonella and Campylobacter in young chickens and turkeys, in an effort to help prevent tens of thousands of illnesses every year. To help consumers stay up-to-date on recalls and other food safety issues, HHS and USDA launched www.foodsafety.gov last September. The list goes on.

Central to the creation of an effective food safety system is the assurance that measures are in place to protect products at every step of the way along the path from “farm to fork,” as the saying goes. While regulations and inspections help to ensure the safety of food grown on farms and produced in factories, and consumer education helps to reduce cross-contamination and unsafe cooking practices in the home, the area in between – the transportation of food from production to purchase point – remains largely overlooked and under-regulated.

Several months ago, NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg and I began to wonder what role, if any, the pallets used to transport food might potentially play in the contamination of the food supply. Our first tip-off was McNeil’s recall of Tylenol and several other products this past December and January. The company linked the moldy, musty odor – and the unpleasant side-effects it caused in many individuals who consumed the products – to the wood pallets that were stored in the area where these products were made. According to McNeil, when a chemical used to treat the pallets started to break down, another chemical called TBA formed in the air and contaminated the products. When we realized that these pallets were, at least generally speaking, the same as the ones stacked behind many grocery stores, we started to wonder why the shipping platforms that transport food were being stored outside, and if there were any regulations governing the use of pallets.

Our research revealed that pallets are, in fact, more or less overlooked in the regulatory sphere. We decided to conduct exploratory testing of the pallets used to transport food, to determine whether the issue warranted a call for FDA’s consideration. We’ve been at this a long time – NCL first drew attention to potentially harmful products in 1904, when NCL volunteers staffing a booth at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair demonstrated to fairgoers that canned green beans touted by food processors as a labor-saving home product were adulterated with green dye. More than 100 years later, we continue this work; this past December, the League called on the FDA to investigate a “sweetened dried cranberry” product that our commissioned lab tests found to be mostly sugar, and made of cranberry skins rather than whole cranberries as advertised.

For this investigation, we tested pallets in the Miami/Tampa area and in Houston. We located a highly regarded lab that gave us strict instructions on taking samples and shipping them back, which we followed to the letter. Many of the pallets I saw – and tested – were really dirty, sullied with items ranging from bird droppings to fish scales. They were stored outside, exposed to the elements, and easily accessible to rodents, insects, and birds. I became intimately familiar with these shipping platforms – both wood and plastic – and the precise, methodical way in which one takes samples to send to a lab. In all, we took samples from 35 plastic pallets and 35 wood pallets in each metropolitan area, totaling 140 samples. We had no idea what our results would be.

As it turned out, our findings were significant – and alarming. The lab found E. coli on 10 percent of the 70 wood pallets we tested, and on 1.4 percent of the 70 plastic pallets. The lab report also revealed the presence of Listeria on 2.9 percent of the wood pallets, half of which further tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes. None of the plastic pallets tested positive for Listeria. High aerobic plate counts, which reflect unsanitary conditions of the pallets, were found on both types of pallets, with approximately one third of the wood pallets and one fifth of the plastic pallets showing the high counts.

While our exploratory testing included only a small number of pallets, we think it gives some indication that the sanitation and safety of the pallets used to transport food in the U.S. deserve a closer examination. This past Tuesday, therefore, the League sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, sharing our findings, urging the agency to do its own testing, and calling on FDA to set standards that will help to ensure that pallets are cleaned and stored properly, thus minimizing the possibility that they will be implicated in the spread of foodborne illness. Additionally, we videotaped our testing – check it out.