Labor Union Blog

Last Thursday Chrylser dismissed roughly 250 workers as it begins the process of slashing 1000 white-collar jobs by the end of September. The company said the majority of the necessary job cuts came voluntarily. Overall the company is seeking the elimination of 28,000 jobs worldwide.

Last Thursday Chrylser dismissed roughly 250 workers as it begins the process of slashing 1000 white-collar jobs by the end of September. The company said the majority of the necessary job cuts came voluntarily. Overall the company is seeking the elimination of 28,000 jobs worldwide.

Roughly 8100 employees could be impacted following an announcement last week that Hanesbrands would be closing nine North American plants. The underwear maker which includes Hanes, Playtex and Wonderbra plans to eliminate 16 percent of its North American workforce as it moves jobs to Asia. The move will nearly end the company’s production relationship with the United States as it closes two of its last remaining plants in the U.S. as well as an inventory storage warehouse. Other countries being impacted by the closures are Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, and El Salvador. The company plans to add 6000 jobs in Asia by the end of the year.

Roughly 8100 employees could be impacted following an announcement last week that Hanesbrands would be closing nine North American plants. The underwear maker which includes Hanes, Playtex and Wonderbra plans to eliminate 16 percent of its North American workforce as it moves jobs to Asia. The move will nearly end the company’s production relationship with the United States as it closes two of its last remaining plants in the U.S. as well as an inventory storage warehouse. Other countries being impacted by the closures are Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, and El Salvador. The company plans to add 6000 jobs in Asia by the end of the year.

Lede: The Center for Economic and Policy Research says the U.S. financial crisis is a policy failure of massive proportions. Doug Cunningham has more.

Economist Dean Baker says although the central economic problem is the collapsing housing market, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and other economic policymakers had the tools to rein in the housing bubble before it reached this crisis stage. The Case-Shiller 20 city index shows a housing price drop of nearly 20 percent in two years. That came after home prices adjusted for inflation jumped by more than 70 percent between 1996 and 2006. The price decline of the past two years has triggered unprecedented rates of mortgage defaults and failures of financial investments based on these bad mortgages. And the worst of that wave isn’t over. The sheer magnitude of these defaults and the fact they mortgage debt has been packaged into derivatives throughout the financial sector has led to the insolvency of banks and other financial institutions. Baker says the path out of this disaster isn’t going to be easy. But he says one vital lesson in it is that future speculative bubbles that depart so dramatically from past sound financial practices must be stopped before they grow so large as to threaten the entire financial system.

For the second year in a row, the World Bank has rated a former Soviet republic as “having the best worker protection” in the world. The top-rated country this year is Belarus, a country where labor practices are so bad the International Labor Organization (ILO) has condemned the country’s dictators for curtailing workers’ rights and the European Union withdrew trade preferences.

Last year’s “winner” was Georgia, which, in 2006, did away with most of its worker-protection rules, removed many working conditions from collective bargaining and allowed any worker to be dismissed without valid reason. Further, unions there can be banned altogether if officials believe they are stirring up “social conflict.”

So what’s going on that these two repressive countries rate such a lofty position from the World Bank? Every year, the World Bank rates nations in its flagship publication, Doing Business, based on criteria that in principle rank countries’ “ease of doing business.” The bank measures 10 separate indicators. But unions, academics and activists have criticized Doing Business as a one-sided publication, focused almost exclusively on a narrow “private investor” perspective, with little regard for social impact.