Dan Viederman's blog

Today Slate reports a new and (finally) amusing chapter in Alabama's anti-immigrant efforts. Police arrested and sent to jail a German Mercedes-Benz executive because he didn't have his passport.

The NY Times today describes 'quiet streets' in a small Alabama town in the aftermath of a State judge's ruling to uphold a stern anti-immigrant law. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/after-ruling-hispanics-flee-an-alab... Farmers complain that crops are rotting in the fields because there is no one left to pick them. During a time of economic uncertainty, Alabama's lawmakers have chosen to reduce their available labor pool and put local businesses at risk. Sounds like bad policy to me.

First Hershey's, now Amazon. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/us/24iht-currents24.html?_r=4
When companies hire temps, when they outsource hiring to others, they risk exploiting workers and harming their reputations. It's that simple.
Hershey's outsourced packing to a local business, which outsourced hiring to another business. Amazon appears to have done the same thing, coincidentally also in Pennsylvania. The solution is 'Fair Hiring.' We tell companies how in our Toolkit www.verite.org/helpwanted

This Guardian report leads with the awful news that a Chinese worker committed suicide. http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/aug/27/disney-factory-sweatshop-suici... The article -- built off allegations by a Hong Kong-based anti-sweatshop organization -- also contains more typical descriptions of a 'non-compliant' Chinese workplace. Wages are excessive, work is underpaid, safety is imperfect, and supervisors are abusive. Sad as it may sound, this profile is neither unusual nor the worst that we see.

a guest blog from the World Economic Forum in East Asia in June, originally posted at
http://www.forumblog.org/socialentrepreneurs/2011/06/discussing-how-righ...

By: Dan Viederman Executive Director of Verite*; Schwab Social Entrepreneur

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has issued new Guidance that to my eyes formally allows compassion in the enforcement of immigration laws. http://www.ice.gov/doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretio...
In an effort to prioritize use of ICE resources in alignment with national immigration priorities, and recognizing that 'the agency is confronted with more administrative violations than its resources can address,' ICE has given new guidance for the use of 'prosecutorial discretion.'

On May 9 we and Philip Morris International released a report on Verite's assessment of labor conditions in tobacco growing in Kazakhstan, which was essentially a response to Human Rights Watch’s investigation of PMI there. We issued the following statement on why Verite undertook the work and what we expected out of it: http://www.verite.org/news/PMI_report_tobacco_kazakhstan

Solving the serious labor problems that result from unethical recruitment won't happen if the main change is renewed calls for licensing of brokers. That's what the Gulf Cooperation Council seems to be proposing. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=182537
For the most part brokers are licensed, And they are still unethical and downright exploitative. What is needed is an ethical regime that brokers must adhere to, and which can be used by employers and their clients to distinguish between good and bad brokers.

The US DOL proposes to exclude labor contractors from accessing the 'guest worker' program. http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/26/2755032/labor-department-cracking-d... Recognizing that this program has been a source of abuse -- with several if not dozens of prosecutions recently -- the guest worker visas will be available only to actual employers, under the proposed rule change, rather than to a contractor who can then 'sell' legal workers to temporary employers.

I propose an important new measurement for supply chain labor rights – how much money do workers make?

What workers want most is fair compensation. Yet companies do not disclose wages, particularly for contracted employees in their supply chains. They prefer instead to claim compliance (or, rarely, to admit non-compliance) to code of conduct standards like minimum legal wages.