garrettbrown

The whole world is one global supply chain. Brand name companies like Nike, Apple, Hasbro, and dozens of apparel companies do not actually make the consumer products they sell. Instead they hire contract manufacturers in the developing world to produce their goods, and these contractors have sub-…

Starting in July 2015, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) was authorized to hire several dozen more field compliance officers to protect the state’s 19 million workers. Because Cal/OSHA’s hiring has not filled all new positions or kept up with retirements, there…

Two global unions, four labor rights organizations and 23 apparel brands and retailers agreed in late June to amend and extend the ground-breaking Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety that has led to safer working conditions for 4 million garment workers in the world’s #2 apparel producer…

At the end of two complete years when dozens of fully-funded field compliance positions went empty, reported workplace fatalities and injuries in California are on the rise. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has had a monthly average of 34 vacant field enforcement…

With the whole world literally involved in global supply chains – how to keep track of working conditions and workers’ rights in global supply chains? There is a comprehensive “one stop” way – and then a several-other-stops method for the more ambitious. The one-stop shopping is to sign up for…

Accounting professors have confirmed what we always suspected: companies which are scrambling to meet or just beat Wall Street analysts’ profit projections have worker injury rates that are 12% higher than other employers. The recent research indicates that frantic efforts by “benchmark-beating”…

In February 2017, garment workers enraged by abusive and illegal working conditions stormed their factory and smashed $75,000 worth of equipment after attacking factory managers. The worker revolt in the one of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world also revealed the broken promises…

by Garrett Brown On February 10th, California’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) proposed revised and stronger regulations for oil refineries in the state after a 4½-year joint campaign by labor unions, environmental and community organizations to protect both refinery workers and nearby…

By Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH and Deeg Gold, MPH CIH In late January, Donald Trump’s press secretary described his immigration and refugee Executive Order as “ripping off the Band-Aid” to get at immigrants.  The next week, Trump issued another Executive Order on regulations and is preparing other…

Mass firings by garment factories and a wave of government arrests of union leaders and worker rights advocates threatens the gains made in improving workplace health and safety for the 4 million, mainly women, garment workers in Bangladesh. A shadow of fear and intimidation has fallen over the…

Let’s just say there was a working class community – of various skin colors – which was dominated for a century by a giant corporation who ran the town with bought-and-paid-for politicians, and whose operations regularly poisoned the community, threatened the health and safety of its workforce, and…

Investigations by the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) in October 2015 and October 2016, as well as Fair Labor Association (FLA) investigations in July and October 2016, have revealed that a major Korean factory operator in Vietnam producing garments for a dozen international clothing brands runs a…

A free, two-month course on global supply chains is being offered on-line by the Global Labour University starting on January 12, 2017.  The course is being taught in English by Penn State University Professor Mark Anner, one the leading labor-oriented researchers on the global economy. There's a…

A new report by four leading workers’ rights group shows just how hard it is to get international clothing brands to fix problems in their global supply chains despite the fact that 1,100 workers were killed in an instant in an unsafe garment factory in Bangladesh. Three and a half years after the…

By Garrett Brown and Bob Jeffcott A group of brave women’s rights and labor activists in San Pedro Sula, Honduras were the recipients of the 2016 International Award of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The distinction was formally…

I have just returned from a whirlwind trip in Vietnam inspecting a Korean-owned garment factory complex of 10,000 workers that produces university logo apparel for Nike and clothes for a dozen brand-name companies like Pink and Ralph Lauren’s Polo.  Lots of problems with the working conditions and…

In the early 1990s, sports apparel giant Nike became the “poster child” for sweatshops in its global supply chain – child labor, forced labor (mandatory overtime), wage theft, confiscation of migrant workers’ passports, sexual harassment of women workers, and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions…