#european capitalism

[reasonsforhope]

"Nasir Mansoor has spent 40 years fighting for Pakistan’s workers. Whether demanding compensation on behalf of the hundreds of people who died in a devastating 2012 factory fire in Karachi or demonstrating against Pakistani suppliers to global fashion brands violating minimum wage rules, he’s battled many of the country’s widespread labor injustices.

Yet so far, little has improved, said Mansoor, who heads Pakistan’s National Trade Union Federation in Karachi... Regulations and trade protocols look good on paper, but they rarely trickle down to the factory level. “Nobody cares,” Mansoor said. “Not the government who makes commitments, not the brands, and not the suppliers. The workers are suffering.”

Change on the Horizon

But change might finally be on the horizon after Germany’s new Supply Chain Act came into force last year. As Europe’s largest economy and importer of clothing, Germany now requires certain companies to put risk-management systems in place to prevent, minimize, and eliminate human rights violations for workers across their entire global value chains. Signed into law by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in January 2023, the law covers issues such as forced labor, union-busting, and inadequate wages, for the first time giving legal power to protections that were previously based on voluntary commitments. Companies that violate the rules face fines of up to 8 million euros ($8.7 million)...

...As governments come to realize that a purely voluntary regimen produces limited results, there is now a growing global movement to ensure that companies are legally required to protect the people working at all stages of their supply chains.

The German law is just the latest example of these new due diligence rules—and it’s the one with the highest impact, given the size of the country’s market. A number of other Western countries have also adopted similar legislation in recent years, including France and Norway. A landmark European Union law that would mandate all member states to implement similar regulation is in the final stages of being greenlighted.

Although the United States has legislation to prevent forced labor in its global supply chains, such as the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, there are no federal laws that protect workers in other countries from abuses that fall short of forced labor. That said, a proposed New York state bill, the Fashion Act, would legally require most major U.S. and international brands to identify, prevent, and remediate human rights violations in their supply chain if passed, with noncompliance subject to fines. Since major fashion brands could hardly avoid selling their products in New York, the law would effectively put the United States on a similar legal level as Germany and France...

The Results So Far

As of January, Germany’s new law applies to any company with at least 1,000 employees in the country, which covers many of the world’s best-known fast fashion retailers, such as Zara and Primark. Since last January [Jan 2023], German authorities say they have received 71 complaints or notices of violations and conducted 650 of their own assessments, including evaluating companies’ risk management.

In Pakistan, the very existence of the German law was enough to spark action. Last year, Mansoor and other union representatives reached out to fashion brands that sourced some of their clothing in Pakistan to raise concerns about severe labor violations in garment factories. Just four months later, he and his colleagues found themselves in face-to-face meetings with several of those brands—a first in his 40-year career. “This is a big achievement,” he said. “Otherwise, [the brands] never sit with us. Even when the workers died in the factory fire, the brand never sat with us.” ...

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

Article continues below, with more action-based results, including one factory that "complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses"

With the help of Mansoor and Zehra Khan, the general secretary of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation, interviews with more than 350 garment workers revealed the severity of long-known issues.

Nearly all workers interviewed were paid less than a living wage, which was 67,200 Pakistan rupees (roughly $243) per month in 2022, according to the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Nearly 30 percent were even paid below the legal minimum wage of 25,000 Pakistani rupees per month (roughly $90) for unskilled workers. Almost 100 percent had not been given a written employment contract, while more than three-quarters were either not registered with the social security system—a legal requirement—or didn’t know if they were.

When Mansoor, Khan, and some of the organizations raised the violations with seven global fashion brands implicated, they were pleasantly surprised. One German retailer reacted swiftly, asking its supplier where the violations had occurred to sign a 14-point memorandum of understanding to address the issues. (We’re unable to name the companies involved because negotiations are ongoing.) The factory complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses.

In February [2024], the factory registered an additional 400 workers with the social security system (up from roughly 100) and will continue to enroll more, according to Khan. “That is a huge number for us,” she said.

It’s had a knock-on effect, too. Four of the German brand’s other Pakistani suppliers are also willing to sign the memorandum, Khan noted, which could impact another 2,000 workers or so. “The law is opening up space for [the unions] to negotiate, to be heard, and to be taken seriously,” said Miriam Saage-Maass, the legal director at ECCHR.

Looking Forward with the EU

...Last month [in March 2024], EU member states finally approved a due diligence directive after long delays, during which the original draft was watered down. As it moves to the next stage—a vote in the European Parliament—before taking effect, critics argue that the rules are now too diluted and cover too few companies to be truly effective. Still, the fact that the EU is acting at all has been described as an important moment, and unionists such as Mansoor and Khan wait thousands of miles away with bated breath for the final outcome.

Solidarity from Europe is important, Khan said, and could change the lives of Pakistan’s workers. “The eyes and the ears of the people are looking to [the brands],” Mansoor said. “And they are being made accountable for their mistakes.”"

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

[nando161mando]

‘We must push past the merry-go-round of leaders that say every four years “This is our time” then “We must wait more”.

We must pour that snake oil out onto the road. No more waiting on the messiah Democrat politician. None seeks to be our “retribution”.

Patience has only led us to the gate of lynch mob rule.’

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/24/black-freedom-has-never-been-on-the-ballot

[silvermoon424]

The fact that most European companies treat their non-European employees like shit- despite the fact that Western Europeans enjoy the highest level of workers' rights in the world- just because they can get away with it in the United States or whatever is proof why regulations are needed.

European workers are only treated better than their American counterparts because there are laws protecting them, not because European corporations are so much more humanitarian than American companies. Never forget that under capitalism companies will exploit you for all you're worth and all they can legally get away with.

[lilithism1848]

[crunchycrispy]

geno is a Union Man

(4/?)

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Sunrise at Parkovyi footbridge in Kyiv, Ukraine. 18th June 2017.

[luulapants]

In the wake of COVID and rising fascism, let's remember that after the black plague, which killed a huge percent of the working class in England, workers began using the labor shortage to leverage higher wages.

And let's remember that the reaction from the ruling class was the Poor Laws, which essentially conscripted the entire population as slave labor, set a maximum wage, made it illegal to be unemployed, illegal to quit your job, and if you were fired, you would be assigned a new job. Those who refused to work for poverty wages were incarcerated and forced to work for no wages.

Yes, COVID should have been an opportunity for the working class to use supply and demand to raise their standard of living, but capitalism has never allowed for supply and demand to apply to labor as a whole.

[commiepinkofag]

Take action to stop chat control now!

Chat control is back on the agenda of EU governments.

EU governments are to express their position on the latest proposal on 23 September. EU Ministers of the Interior are to adopt the proposal on 10/11 October.

On Monday a new version of the globally unprecedented EU bill aimed at searching all private messages and chats for suspicious content (so-called chat control or child sexual abuse regulation) was circulated and leaked by POLITICO soon after. According to the latest proposal providers would be free whether or not to use ‘artificial intelligence’ to classify unknown images and text chats as ‘suspicious’. However they would be obliged to search all chats for known illegal content and report them, even at the cost of breaking secure end-to-end messenger encryption.

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

the tourist poll is so funny cause you go to the notes and most are like 'fine i guess' or 'we don't get much tourism' and then there's the notes of people you can tell are from the mediterranean that go 'i would like to kill tourists with my bare hands actually' and yeah it really is like that

[unapologeticmelancholy]

European Parliamentary elections are happening right now. Go vote! If you don't choose your own future, somebody else will do it for you.

[stellacadente]

ik the euros are over and i've also said this before but god i hate people giving stupid "political" reasons for supporting one colonizer european country over the other in fucking football. most of the time you're despising one country for things that the country you're praising also does/did IT'S DUMB. none of our countries are shit. i can't stop thinking of this (not great) pro palestine page on instagram being like pro palestine spain wins over zionist england! ....... spain literally still deals weapons with "israel" give me a fucking break. it's stupid it's stupid it's stupid just say you hate england and wanted to see them lose most of us did and you don't need to come up with reasons why the other western european country is actually morally superior

[hussyknee]

Tried to tell someone that Zionism is about white supremacy, Islamophobia and colonial capitalism and to stop centering western antisemitism when the whole reason that Palestinian Christians aren't protected by Christian Zionists is that they're the wrong race. And they blocked me.

Twenty thousand dead and y'all are still not done shutting down BIPOC and Muslims lol. You're not equal victims as colonized people and you never have been. Colonized natives of settler societies and people from Africa and Asia will never be white, and always be vulnerable to and exploited by white Europeans, no matter their own regional disenfranchisement. Zionism is about race, not religion. Religion is just a convenient alignment and rationale for US imperial interests i.e military industrial economy, weapons trade, shipping lines and gas reserves. Your white asses are the beneficiaries and will be last in the line to be eaten after the Black people, brown immigrants, Muslims in their own damn countries, and Natives. Every time you deny it, you're showing your refusal to divest from white anxiety and become more complicit in Zionism. Die mad.

[intersectionalpraxis]

daily reminder that a majority of ecosystems are being destroyed and animals/plants are at risk of and are going extinct because of the centuries-long ecological impacts of western/European imperialism and settlerism. surely, it's the not the only reason -but it's major one.

capitalism is KILLING the planet -and Indigenous communities around the world are some of our only defenses in protecting biodiversity on earth.

and why talk about this?

for the people re-blogging a post i made about a week ago about how specific birds indigenous to hawai'i "were ALREADY extinct" (the poster stated that these birds were officially declared extinct by American sources -and yes, i understand how documentation varies and the original post required more nuance but did you not read the commentary about setterlism, capitalism, and tourism destroying ecosystems?). are you really MORE upset about the lack of additional information about 1 or 2 specific bird species (which yes, was an oversight on my end -but the commentary is so important)... i'm not saying the people re-blogging or re-posting it lack reflexivity, but i'm inches away from making the post private because the handful of people i do see are denouncing the entire purpose behind that post to begin with, and it's truly frustrating.

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

Idk if the Chappell Roan European tour discourse is just happening on twitter, but this feels like a safer place to give my 2 cents

Artists cancelling their shows (especially so last minute that people can’t get refunds) is definitely too common an occurrence and should be discouraged. However i don’t think I’ve personally ever seen any artists receive THIS much backlash from doing so, and i don’t think it’s a coincidence that the artist getting the most hate for doing something other performers have done and will do is a lesbian woman

[lilithism1848]

[steelycunt]

i am too jealous a person to use instagram in the summer months as a university student. i am just too jealous