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Dollar Stores: Top Link in the Sweatshop Chain
Kent Paterson
October 6th, 2010
A growing group of chain-store corporations that cater to America's poor with cheap goods are classifying workers as managers. By categorizing employees as salaried managers these dollar stores avoid paying overtime wages that the Fair Labor Standards Act mandates for hourly workers.
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| Photo credit: Terry J. Allen |
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Global Horizons Indicted for Human Trafficking
Pratap Chatterjee
September 15th, 2010
Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based labor recruiter, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for "engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labor and document servitude" of some 400 Thai citizens who were brought to work on farms in the U.S.
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Billion Dollar Audit Missed by Pentagon Watchdog
Pratap Chatterjee
August 30th, 2010
Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel even though it had billed for $1 billion worth of work over the last four years, largely done in Afghanistan.
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Gulf Dispersants: BP and Nalco Play Toxic Roulette
Terry J. Allen
July 19th, 2010
BP has dumped almost two million gallons of dispersants from Nalco in the Gulf of Mexico that is disguising the extent of the Deepwater spill and the inability of existing technology to mitigate the disaster. Even if BP eventually staunches the hemorrhage of oil, devastating toxins will linger for decades.
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U.S. Congressional Wartime Commission Targets Armed Contractors
Pratap Chatterjee
June 23rd, 2010
This week, almost a decade after the U.S. "War on Terror" began, the Commission on Wartime Contracting held two days of hearings into the role of private contractors in conducting and supporting war. The Congressional witness table included Aegis, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Curiously, Blackwater was not called; and the CEO of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions failed to appear.
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| Aegis security contractor in Tikrit, Iraq, March 21, 2010
Credit: Michael Heckman, U.S. Department of Defence |
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The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report
Antonia Juhasz
May 25th, 2010
Chevron's 2009 Annual Report celebrates 130 years of Chevron operations. We, the communities and our allies who bear the consequences of Chevron's offshore drilling rigs, oil and natural gas production, coal fields, refineries, depots, pipelines, exploration, chemical plants, political control, consumer abuse, false promises, and much more, have a very different account to offer.
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| TrueCostofChevron.com May 2010 |
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ADM's New Frontiers: Palm Oil Deforestation and Child Labor
Charlie Cray
May 18th, 2010
ADM has moved beyond the days of blatant price-fixing that landed its top execs behind bars. But the company's forays into new global agricultural markets bring charges of complicity in forced child labor and rampant deforestation. Critics assert that the conglomerate's embrace of self- regulation and voluntary guidelines is but a cynical ploy to deter effective reform.
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| Cartoon by Khalil Bendib |
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BP: Beyond Petroleum or Beyond Preposterous? (2000)
Kenny Bruno
May 12th, 2010
In 2000 British Petroleum launched an expensive ad campaign, re-branding its corporate image into the eco-friendly "BP: Beyond Petroleum.” We said it then. When a company spends more on advertising its environmental friendliness than on environmental actions, that's greenwash.
Three long weeks into the BP oil disaster roiling the Gulf of Mexico, CorpWatch's December 2000 skewering of its new image sadly, bears repeating.
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| New Internationalist, June 2001 |
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