America's Race to the Bottom

Corporate America is guilty as sin for human rights violations all across the globe. In that they are complicit, they are no less guilty than if the CEO took a whip to beat the back of a 12-year-old girl himself; or if he had picked up a gun and shot and killed a foreign labor organizer. Just like the kingpins of international drug cartels, American CEOs know EXACTLY how all their blood money is being made.

And right now they are looking to expand their operations in places like Columbia. There's big push by massive multi-national corporate conglomerates for "Trade Adjustment Assistance" (TAA).

"I looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies."

Many of you have heard about New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 in when 146 young girls died. Labor unions rose up and worker's rights were born because of sweatshop abuses in America.

But atrocities are still happening all around the world today...this is how corporate America stays "competitive in the marketplace", and why they outsource our jobs. Rather than set an example of decency and fair play, and show human respect, they abuse human rights and use slave labor for profits, all while putting Americans out of work and forcing them into poverty.

For over 40 years American corporations have exported American jobs to produce cheap products made from slave labor in foreign countries to import to the United States.

As but one example: Today the clothing store GAP pays under-aged girls 28¢ an hour to produce jeans that costs us $26.95 to buy in our malls across America. There are no labor laws protecting worker's rights in most of these countries. Just the opposite, the dictators and leaders use their police forces and armies to brutally quell any worker uprising when fair pay and working conditions are demanded. In many of these countries their workers are being paid what would be equal to one tenth of what the wages were being paid in America 100 years ago. Bangladesh is now the 3rd largest exporter in the world for garments to the United States.

Is this what the Republicans and Tea Party mean by "free trade" and "free markets"? Is this what American corporations refer to as "global competition"? This is slavery in a global sweatshop economy...the exploitation of labor, sometimes brutally, for ever more corporate profits. The CEOs of these companies and our government leadership are VERY AWARE of this, yet they have failed to pass a law, or any other legislation to protect American jobs and maintain our middle-class.

Even today, as this re-distribution of wealth is all going to the top, the rest of us are racing to the bottom. Read: U.S. Profits From Booming Chinese Sweatshops

So the next time John Boehner asks, "Where are the jobs?" Tell him," They are being done by 12-year-old girls who work in sweatshops owned by American based "multi-national" corporations who rarely pay any corporate taxes in America to help pay down our debt and to fix our infrastructure."

These little girls slave for 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for 28¢ an hour so fat rich guys can earned multi-million-dollar bonuses while laying off American workers; and then they whine about having to pay unemployment insurance to the families that they betrayed and abandoned here in the United States.

An no, contrary to the Tea Party’s "talking points", Progressives ARE NOT anti-capitalist. Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century, had argued that " individual capitalists are duty bound to play a broader cultural and social role to IMPROVE the world."

But the American corporate scumbags we have today are just the opposite. They deliberately engage in child abuse by using under-aged girls to slave for them...just so the CEOs will get their bonuses.

America's Race to the Bottom 



S. 367 - Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act - A bill to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to prohibit the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labor, and for other purposes. This bill was created in the 110th Congress in 2007-2008 and sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan [D-ND]. The bill has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee and Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism. Action: Hearings held....stalled. Forgotten?

Co-sponsors S. 367 - Of course, when it comes to representing American workers, we can expect most to be Democrats Barack Obama [D-IL] Evan Bayh [D-IN] Joseph Biden [D-DE] Barbara Boxer [D-CA] Sherrod Brown [D-OH] Robert Byrd [D-WV] Benjamin Cardin [D-MD]  Robert Casey [D-PA] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] Richard Durbin [D-IL] Russell Feingold [D-WI] Thomas Harkin [D-IA]  John Kerry [D-MA] Frank Lautenberg [D-NJ] Patrick Leahy [D-VT] Carl Levin [D-MI] Robert Menéndez [D-NJ] John Reed [D-RI] John Rockefeller [D-WV] Charles Schumer [D-NY] Debbie Ann Stabenow [D-MI] Jim Webb [D-VA]  Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI] Independent co-sponsor: Bernard Sanders [I-VT] Republican co-sponsor: Lindsey Graham [R-SC]

www.sweatfree.org