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Business Assistance Living Wage Campaigns

New Orleans               Support is increasingly lining up in New York City and elsewhere not simply for living wage ordinances, but more specifically for a more targeted type of living wage program where public dollars are partnered with private development.  These so-called “business assistance” living wage ordinances that also draw from experiences with “community benefit agreements” [...]

Suspension of FDI Rules Change in India

New Orleans              Dharmendra Kumar, campaign director of the India FDI Watch Campaign (www.indiafdiwatch.org), an organizational affiliate and campaign of ACORN International, has been emailing and telling me for days that the outcry against the Indian government’s recent announcement that it would open foreign direct investment to multi-brand retail was intense and unyielding in Delhi and [...]

The Ironies and Contradictions of Walmart and China

            New Orleans               The action by the Indian government to modify the standards for foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail to 51% ownership is something that ACORN International and the India FDI Watch Campaign (www.indiafdiwatch.org) that founded and continue to support have long opposed.  We have done so in no small manner because of [...]

Wal-Mart Reneges on Healthcare and Teaches Old Lessons Again

Kingston     The last several days it feels like I have been reliving the organizing we did through the Wal-Mart Workers Association and WARN (Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now) from 2004 through 2008, largely in central Florida and California.  That experience was the heart of the discussion with our brothers on the national Steelworkers staff [...]

A Rough Road for Wal-Mart Women, but a Road

Houston Wal-Mart took a shot at the Supreme Court on a last ditch appeal not on whether or not they discriminated against more than a million women, since everyone knew that was the case, but whether or not the class was too big.  Now we are obviously caught between “too big to fail” and “too [...]

Gold Hidden in Dodd-Frank

New Orleans Wow!  A seasonal surprise!!  It turns out that there were a couple of pieces of gold hidden in the hills and valleys of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act that I had overlooked and that have international impact.   Retailers are required to report annually on the origin of minerals used in products from war-torn [...]