A Bangladeshi labor rights activist and former apparel worker was tortured and murdered last week in Dhaka. His body was dumped outside of the capital city and was found by local police last Thursday. According to the police report, Aminul Islam’s body bore signs of brutal torture.

Aminul’s family, who had been searching for him since he disappeared last Wednesday, identified him on Saturday from photos appearing in local newspapers. Labor rights organizations in Bangladesh and the United States believe the killing is associated with Aminul’s work on behalf of apparel workers who sew garments for suppliers to major U.S. retailers and brands

Aminul had worked for several years as a labor rights organizer and advocate. His organization is among the most prominent labor rights groups in the country. Levi Strauss called BCWS “a globally respected labor rights organization that has played a vital role in documenting and working to remedy labor violations in the apparel industry in Bangladesh.”

The Bangladeshi Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) was featured in a recent ABC TV News story (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/workers-die-factories-tommy-hilfiger/story?id=15966305) exposing the relationship of U.S. brands to a sweatshop factory fire in Dhaka that killed twenty-nine workers last year, and describing the repression of labor rights advocates.

BCWS and its staff have been the target of a campaign of harassment by the Bangladeshi government and apparel factory owners for two years. The organization’s license to operate was revoked and Aminul and two of his colleagues were jailed in 2010. Their release was secured only after international pressure.

Aminul had disappeared Wednesday evening on his way to meet a worker who had called him seeking assistance. Aminul’s family and friends searched for him until Saturday, when his wife recognized a photograph of his body, published in a local newspaper.

Aminul had been detained by officials of the National Intelligence Service (NSI) in June 2010. According to Aminul, he was subjected to severe and repeated beatings, which his captors said would stop only if he agreed to give false testimony against his colleagues at BCWS.

The NSI officials demanded that he write a letter stating that his colleagues were the instigators of recent worker protests, which had resulted in damage to some factory buildings. Aminul refused. While being transported to another location, he managed to escape his captors and went into hiding.

Later that year, Aminul and two colleagues, Kalpona Akhter and Babul Akter, were arrested and jailed on charges of fomenting riots and related acts – charges regarded as baseless by international labor and human rights organizations. They were released only after substantial international pressure on the Bangladesh government and they still face trials.

On Wednesday of last week, after working during the day at BCWS’s office in Savar, Aminul went to evening prayers. While there, he noticed a police van parked outside. Fearing harassment or arrest he called a colleague to say that they should close the BCWS office for the day.

Aminul then returned to his home. Later in the evening, he received a call from a worker urgently seeking assistance. He left home to meet the worker and was never heard from again. Labor rights organizations in the U.S. and Bangladesh are calling for a full investigation of the murder and for those responsible to be brought to justice.

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The following is being released by Green America, Washington, D.C.:

The “Raise the Bar, Hershey!” Coalition which has called on The Hershey Company to remove forced child labor from its products has an additional target this Easter: Cadbury/Kraft.

While Cadbury has demonstrated its commitment to ending forced child labor in the West African cocoa industry by selling Fair Trade certified chocolates in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Japan, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand—the same cannot be said of Cadbury products sold in the United States.

Why?

In 1988, Hershey purchased Cadbury’s U.S. chocolate business, including the exclusive rights to make and sell well-known brands like Cadbury Creme Eggs, and Cadbury Solid Milk Chocolate Bunnies.

The petition, launched last week, has already generated more than 5,000 signatures to the CEO’s of Hershey and Kraft/Cadbury.

Steven Waters, a supporter of the campaign in North Carolina, stated: ”I was shocked to learn that Cadbury’s products in the U.S. are made by Hershey. Learning that forced child labor was an ingredient in their seemingly innocent Easter chocolates made it easy to persuade my girlfriend’s family to discontinue their large quantity purchases of Chocolate Creme Eggs this year.”

“Unfortunately, Hershey refuses to meet the standard set by Cadbury overseas of offering at least one major fair trade product, despite almost two years of mounting consumer pressure,” said Green America Fair Trade Campaigns Director Elizabeth O’Connell. ”With Easter around the corner, the third most popular chocolate-consuming holiday in the U.S., consumers want to be able to buy Easter treats for their families that align with their values.”

The petition is coordinated by Raise the Bar, Hershey!, a coalition of organizations fighting ongoing labor abuses such as child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking in the West African cocoa industry.

Image Courtesy of    http://www.flickr.com/photos/owlpacino/

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The American definition of globalization or “outsourcing” is the action of “obtaining of goods or services needed by a business or organization under contract with an outside supplier”. This definition seems pretty clear and concise but what it fails to include are the countless other factors that this fad has introduced into American lives.

Some see outsourcing as a way to help other countries build their own society and economic wealth but this action causes more harm than good to those countries. Not only is outsourcing non beneficial to our country because it gives away countless jobs that we desperately need during these hard economic times, but we are also limiting the rights of the people within these deprived countries.

By outsourcing, the United States and its companies are stripping not only ourselves of our own culture by not influencing the output of products that read the label “ Made in USA” but also other countries of their own individual culture. Globalization is just another way for big companies to manufacture their products with cheaper labor, goods and services.

Over decades American families have helped build our nation to what it is today, and now we don’t even have the resources to support these workers that have helped make our country the “super power” it is.  Why should people overseas reap the benefits from our economic hardships? Is it because the government wants to keep the rich richer?

Is it because the government wants to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer? Or is it because companies don’t want to take on the accountability that comes with having American citizens working in their factories?

On the surface, globalization seems like a good idea to spread knowledge and technology to less fortunate countries but what we may not realize is that people in these countries suffer under safety and health violation and the possibility of discrimination and illegal behavior, since developing countries do not have the same level of labor rights making it easy for them to be exploited.

Thus safety hazards and unsafe labor conditions are created. Not all labor laws in the U.S. exist in these countries and if they do they are certainly not enforced the way they are in the United States, with that in mind companies can contract and make their own labor laws to which they feel are ethical.

Since these countries aren’t as well developed as the U.S. children and women are able to work long stressful hours, in an unsanitary environment for very little pay to help support their family. Companies are also exempt from paying as much for their workers health benefits.

Along with the disadvantages of the people in these undeveloped countries are the people in the hometown of these big corporate companies. According to an American Union report by AFL-CIO “Goldman Sachs estimates 400,000–600,000 professional services and information sector jobs moved overseas in the past few years, accounting for about half of the total net job loss in the sector over the period.”

The report also states “Forrester Research Inc. predicts U.S. employers will move 3.4 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages overseas by 2015.” Not only are Americans struggling with looking for work during this almost Depression-esc time the work that we do have were giving away billions of dollars to countries at a cheaper price and cheaper value.

By not circulating the money within our own country, companies are benefitting to the economic hardship by not hiring Americans to run their businesses and work in their factories. Companies are at fault by not providing a solution to the country that are assisting the problem.

In reference to the loss of jobs due to globalization, according to the CRS Report for Congress both physical and emotional factors have begin to come into play within our society people are scared that they may eventually lose their job and this creates “worker anxiety”, “The current, highly publicized wave of offshore outsourcing has caused considerable anxiety among both unemployed and employed workers….

Domestic outsourcing and offshore outsourcing result in job losses for those employees who no longer are required to produce the goods and services that their employers decided to purchase. Some displaced workers must seek jobs in other fields because the domestic firms that specialize in providing outsourced functions do so more efficiently than their former employers.

Others who lose their jobs to domestic outsourcing can continue to perform similar work — perhaps for lower wages and fewer benefits,” the CRS Report for Congress states on page 5. Americans are taking pay cuts and receiving less health benefits due to outsourcing and are made to believe that globalization is good for the country, our America.

The question is who’s America we’re speaking off and if we really want to live in ‘that’ America. Outsourcing could be detrimental to our country especially during these financial times where companies need to promote as much revenue as possible. We cannot successfully help others if we cannot help ourselves.

As it was so eloquently put in the textbook The New World Reader “The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer rights, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investments.”

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