Meet NCL’s public policy summer interns

Sam Hamer – Yale University, ‘14

I am a senior at Yale University majoring in History. When not playing on the Yale Club Baseball team, I devote much of my time outside of the classroom to organizing a student-run clinic that prepares income tax returns for low-income individuals in New Haven. I am also a Yale Urban Fellow, part of a cohort of students interested in issues of poverty and urban development. From September – December 2012, I served as a White House Intern in the Office of Public Engagement. I’m originally from Chicago and am an avid White Sox fan.

I come to NCL this summer via a partnership with the Google Policy Fellowship, a program that matches students interested in technology policy with leading nonprofit organizations in that field. I have a passion for social justice and I’m eager to learn how NCL is leading the charge to support consumers in the realm of telecommunications and technology policy. To that end, I will be spending my time abetting NCL’s efforts to stem phone bill cramming, expand access to telecommunications services for low-income consumers, and combat ID theft and fraud. With an eye toward a career in public service, I am excited to immerse myself in an organization that champions progressive causes. In addition to getting my feet wet in consumer advocacy work, I am looking forward to taking full advantage of the summer intern Mecca that is Washington, DC.

Robert “RJ” Smith – Indiana University of Pennsylvania ‘14

Originally, I am from a town right outside of Philadelphia, called Pottstown. I am a senior at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, or IUP for short. At IUP, I am pursuing a double major in both International Studies and History as well as a minor in Economics. Being a History major, I was immediately drawn the NCL because the historic legislation and importance the League has played since its founding in 1899. During my American History Studies I developed a fascination with the early 1900’s and the Progressive Era. The fact that I am now working with an organization that was and continues to be so influential in passing legislation that helps and protects the average American, is a dream come true.

During my internship at NCL, besides developing an understanding of the internal workings of a non-profit organization and Washington policy making, I am looking forward to representing and protecting consumers. There are many public policy issues that I feel strongly about and would love to work on, but if I had to pick one, it would be workers’ rights, not only in the United States, but also in the factories used by American-run companies around the globe. I am passionate about this topic because I am a firm believer that the relationship between a company and its employees should be mutually beneficial.

Heather Yoon – Brandeis ‘15

I am a rising junior at Brandeis University majoring in International & Global Studies and Politics with minors in Legal Studies, Women & Gender Studies, and East Asian Studies. I love to travel and dream of visiting Africa, Dubai, and Egypt in the near future. Service has been at the heart of many of my previous travels abroad. After the devastating earthquake broke out in Haiti, I spent two summers there and in the Dominican Republic implementing the “Relief for Haiti Project.” Through this effort, my team members and I provided victims with medical aid, emotional support, and basic necessities. My growing concern for poverty, human rights, and gendered violence inspired me to join the National Consumers League this summer as a public policy intern to address international consumer and worker issues to a wider audience.

During the past three years, I had the honor of interning for Mayor Steven Choi in Irvine, California. Shadowing Mayor Choi’s position helped me to adopt a very important philosophy for serving the community – “Listen, Learn, Respond.” With this philosophy, I will effectively help represent and respond to public interests and concerns of constituents on a daily basis at the League.

I admire the League’s commitment to assisting consumers and workers on issues of fair labor standards. I am excited to be part of the team that continues to engage with a wide community of leaders and influencers. My goal is to use my international experiences and leadership skills to learn how to accentuate the rights of consumers and workers using public policies relating to consumer fraud.

Help protect American workers from on-the-job silica exposure

Guest post by Scott Schneider, MS, CIH, Director of Occupational Safety and Health, Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America

Silica is not a new problem in the workplace. More than 80 years ago hundreds of workers died from acute silicosis digging the Gauley Bridge tunnel in West Virginia. Congressional hearings were held and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins held an investigation and declared that it was our duty to eliminate silicosis from the workplace. In the 1970’s the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) developed recommendations to reduce exposures to silica in the workplace yet it wasn’t until the 1990s when OSHA began to take action. The initiated a rule to reduce silica exposures and kicked off a campaign (”It’s Not Just Dust”) to increase awareness of the problem.

Over the years we have learned even more about the dangers of silica. Overexposure to silica not only causes silicosis, an irreversible, progressive lung disease, it is also associated with lung cancer, chronic renal disease and autoimmune disorders. An estimated 1.7 million U.S. workers are still exposed to this serious hazard. Public health experts estimate that 280 workers die each year from silicosis and thousands more develop silicosis as a result of workplace exposures

After many years work and delays OSHA finally sent a draft silica standard to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in February 2011. OMB normally has 90 days to review a proposed regulation. As of next month, it will have held onto this proposal for two years. Each year of delay means additional thousands of workers will be exposed and at risk of illness or death.

Releasing the proposal and publishing it in the Federal Register is just the start of a very public process which includes OSHA public hearings and comment periods. The White House needs to release this standard for publication so OSHA can proceed with a rulemaking. Lives are at stake.

You can help by signing a petition on the White House Web site. The petition requires 25,000 signatures by February 11 to elicit a formal response from the White House. Please add your signature today to help us take this next step towards protecting workers from this serious hazard.

The real cost of cheap goods: The scary truth behind some Christmas ornaments

By Reid Maki, Director of Social Responsibility and Fair Labor Standards

With the holidays upon us, many American look forward to trimming their Christmas tree and spending time with their loved ones, especially their children. For many kids, Christmas invokes the happiest of memories, but not all kids are so lucky.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, noted earlier this month that many children in India are virtually enslaved in sweatshops that manufacture Christmas ornaments. Check out what Brown had to say in this video and learn about the “nightmare” suffered by Indian children who make ornaments for consumers in the U.S. and other countries in the Western hemisphere.

In the video, Brown talks about a rescue raid by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) which freed 14 of the child laborers—some as young as eight—from a sweatshop in Delhi. BBA, like the Child Labor Coalition is a member of the Global March Against Child Labor, an international umbrella group that works to reduce the worst forms of child labor.

“Children are being asked to work 17, 18, 19 hours a day,” said Brown. “They are being asked to work in unsanitary conditions. They are being asked to work without sunlight. Some of them are lacerated because they are working with glass. We found these children in this basement, they were not being paid, they had been trafficked…” Several children had been beaten by their crew leaders. The rescuers actually found 12 of the children imprisoned in a locked 6-foot by 6-foot cell.

The children are now free, but many children around the world are not so fortunate. Brown notes that there are tens of thousands of sweatshops around the world, where grossly underpaid workers, including many children, produce goods for us.

“The people I know in America who do not want to celebrate Christmas on the backs of the exploitation of these young children would be appalled if they knew that these decorations and trinkets and gifts and presents were coming because children had been violently kept prisoner to make these goods.” The UNESCO Institute for Statistics notes that 61 million children around the world of primary age do not attend school—often because they work instead. “That’s an unacceptable thing for 2012,” said Brown.

India is currently considering a ban on all child labor for workers under 18. However, even if the ban passes, enforcement of the law would provide enormous challenges.

In its annual report this year, the U.S. Department of Labor found that 134 goods are still produced by forced labor and child labor in 74 countries. In India, children help produce more than 20 different goods ranging from bricks to carpets to leather goods and often do so under the harshest conditions.

As you put up and take down your Christmas tree and put the bulbs away, think for a moment about the small child who might have made those decorations, who might have been beaten because he or she did not work hard enough; who may have cut his or her hand on the glass of broken bulbs; or who dreams of the school that he or she is not allowed to attend.

When we buy products at ridiculously low prices, there is often a reason for those low prices. The real cost—as Gordon Brown notes—may be the freedom and the safety of children.

Read Brown’s excellent Huffington Post column about the raid here and check out what other products we use that may be manufactured by child labor and forced labor.

Consumers who wish to support the Child Labor Coalition’s and the National Consumers League’s efforts to educate the public about child labor issues may make a donation here.

Shedding tears for workers — not Twinkies

We are saddened by the closing of Hostess Brand plants in cities throughout the country and have issued several statements to the press in support of the Bakery workers. The Bakery workers had gone on strike because they, in the past, had provided many wage and benefit concessions, which the company promised to use toward rebuilding the brand and improving the capital structure. Hostess did none of this, according to a report by a nonpartisan bankruptcy analyst and was terribly managed. Now the company is blaming the striking workers instead of taking responsibility for abysmal management and giveaways to six CEOs in 10 years who have failed to turn the company around and squandered the savings provided to the company by the workers. Now, 18,000 workers will lose their jobs. It’s shameful.

NCL PRESS RELEASE: Withdrawal of Proposed Occupational Child Safety Rules for Agriculture Will Endanger Children Working on Farms

For immediate release: April 27, 2012
Contact: Reid Maki, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org

Those of us concerned with the safety and welfare of children and teens working in agriculture are deeply disappointed by the Department of Labor’s decision to pull back on its effort to protect kids on farms.  “The all-out campaign of misinformation and distortion about the Department of Labor’s long overdue and important proposal to protect children working on farms will have an impact for years to come,” said Sally Greenberg, NCL’s executive director and a co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition, 28 organizations committed to protecting children from exploitative or dangerous work. 

“Agriculture is by far the most dangerous industry that large numbers of teens are allowed to work in,” said Greenberg. “Nearly 100 kids are killed performing hazardous farm work each year. Many of those kids work for wages. The Department of Labor’s sensible recommendations–based on years of research indicating the jobs in which teen injuries and deaths occur–sought to protect them. Unfortunately, the proposed rules fell victim to misinformation and exaggeration from groups like the National Farm Bureau and others that should know better.”

The reality is that agricultural work for teens is extremely dangerous: 

• Between 1995 and 2002, an estimated 907 youths died on American farms, well over 100 per year. (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health)  

• Last year, 12 of the 16 children under age 16 who suffered fatal occupational injuries worked in crop production. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• Between 1992 and 2000, more than four in 10 work-related fatalities of young workers occurred on farms. 

• Half of the fatalities in agriculture involved youth under age 15.

• Just this past August, Oklahoma teens Tyler Zander and Bryce Gannon, both 17, each lost a leg in a grain auger accident. This accident would have been prevented by the proposed rules.

• For agricultural workers 15 to 17, the risk of fatal injury is four times the risk for young workers in other workplaces, according to DOL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics

In the U.S., children who work on their parent’s farms are exempt from child labor laws. They can perform any task at any age. Other exemptions allow children to work for wages on other farms at the age of 12—and sometimes even younger. DOL’s proposed rules would have restricted youth from working in only the most dangerous tasks, allowing them to perform a wide array of farm jobs. Teens working in 4H or other educational and training programs were exempted under the regulations as well.

“The Department of Labor made every effort to be reasonable and flexible in proposing these safety regulations,” said Reid Maki, NCL’s Director of Social Responsibility and Fair Labor Standards and the coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition. “The rules continued to exempt kids working on their family farms and DOL indicated that the final rules would be expanded to exempt kids working the farms of relatives.”

More than 150 groups supported the proposed child safety rules. A list of those organizations can be found at www.stopchildlabor.org.

“We waited four decades for these badly needed safety updates and now they have been blocked by an overheated and exaggerated campaign of misinformation that trivialized critically-needed safety protections,” added Maki. “We estimate that 50-100 children could lose their lives without the added protections these rules provided.”

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About the National Consumers League

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

CPSC database turns one

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director 

March 11, 2012 marks the first anniversary of the launch of the Consumer Product Safety Commission database, which can be found at http://www.SaferProducts.gov.

I recently gave the consumer perspective on the database at the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO) annual meeting in Florida. The creation of the safety database has been a longstanding interest of mine and of other consumer advocates. In 2007, while working at Consumers Union, I testified before the Senate asking that consumers have access to critical information about products that have caused injury or harm.

We said then that consumers need and want safety information when making an important purchase. Whether it be buying a car, lawn mower, or items for a baby, consumers want the benefit of information about a certain product’s safety record. The database was finally authorized by Congress and I believe it is one of the most important consumer tools to emerge from Washington in several years.  A lot of work goes towards ensuring the database is as accurate as possible. When consumers lodge a complaint, the CPSC gives the named manufacturer 10 days to respond before the incident is made public. Consumers also have to provide specific information about the product and the information is then screened by CPSC for accuracy.

How is the database working for consumers? Well, there have been 6,300 incidents posted in less than one year. That tells me that the database has been a great success, despite an effort by some manufacturers and their supporters in Congress to shut it down. For example, Representative Joann Emerson, a Republican of Missouri who sits on the House Appropriations committee, said about the database: “Funding should go for other priorities of the agency before being spent on a poor and inaccurate resource for consumers.”

With all due respect, I beg to differ with the Congresswoman. Let’s look at the data on inaccuracies- of the 1,600 reports now included in the database, only 194 were found to contain inaccurate information, most often because the consumer mistakenly named the wrong manufacturer or model number of the product and CPSC’s Communications Director, Scott Wolfson said that most of these mistakes are “easily corrected.” In fact, there’s been several analyses of the database. An analysis from the House Commerce Committee Democratic staff last June contained these findings:

• Only a few months after it was launched, the database had more than 1,600 incident reports from consumers, health care professionals, and public safety officials, 1/3 of those reports involved deaths or injuries.
• 11 incidents reports were of fatalities – infants dying in cribs and playpens, and teenagers and adults killed riding ATVs.
• The database contained 483 reports of incidents that resulted in injuries, including to children suffering amputations when their fingers got trapped in the hinges of strollers with the stroller make and model provided so other consumers can be aware of the problem.
• Many other reports were of product defects that could cause injury – a baby gate whose hinges broke and fell down the stairs, a hair dryer that sparked when a Mom was drying her daughter’s hair, front loading washing machine that burned the clothes, and electronics that began overheating and smoking with normal use.

Kids and Cars Analysis:

Another analysis from the nonprofit group Kids in Danger that has done so much excellent work on product safety and children also analyzed 2,433 entries on the database from April 1 to August 1, finding that:

• 20% of the reports involved injuries to children.
• 14% of the reports involved recalled products, telling us we need to do a better job of getting them out of the marketplace
• Product failures – like Pogo sticks coming apart or improperly constructed trampolines were very much in evidence.

Then the CPSC itself has its own analysis. As for the accuracy of the information in the database, the CPSC’s analysis shows that 84 percent of 6,300 reports include the model and serial numbers. Eighty-two percent of people who filed reports also allowed their contact information to be passed on to the manufacturing company, allowing the company to address their complaints.

I think these numbers demonstrate the overwhelming success of the website. Why? Because it is doing exactly what Congress intended it to do and doing so with a lot of specificity. And it is giving consumers who encounter dangerous products a place to go to help warn other consumers so they don’t get injured.

Let me add that what goes onto the website is very carefully screened by CPSC: consumers can’t just post any old piece of information. They need to provide a description of the product or substance, the name of the manufacturer, they must describe the death, injury or illness caused by the product, and they must provide a date when the incident occurred.  Then upon filing, the consumer must say who they are – consumer, a health care professional etc, provide their name and address, and verify that the report is accurate.

Consumers are offering very detailed and very helpful reports of their interactions with products, information that is useful to consumers and manufacturers alike. One mother found her son’s head wedged under a baby bumper – the manufacturer of the bumper refused her a refund since she hadn’t bought it from them directly. Another found a bottom tubular rail of a crib had collapsed. The manufacturer’s website was down so she couldn’t report it to them. One grandmother bought a crib and tried to put it together but it lacked an important part. When she called the manufacturer they said they knew there was a problem and would send her the part.

And I think the staff at the CPSC have done a marvelous job in designing the website – including 10 days to respond a posting, CSPC has provided more than due process to manufacturers and retailers who wish to comment, respond or defend their product.

Once again, consumer advocates believe the database has provided an invaluable tool for consumers and to consumers’ great  credit, they have more than risen to the occasion. There has long been a demand for this kind of place to share information and I’m proud of consumers for their many responses.

To the manufacturers who are seeing defunding of the database, and your supporters in Congress  – we ask you to resist the urge to shoot the messenger.  A far better approach would be to embrace the database, review it daily, and find out where the hazards are. A quick response and a fix of the hazard could prevent lawsuits and most importantly, you’ll be demonstrating that your first priority is to protect the health and safety of the customers that buy your products and keep you in business!

National Wear Red Day puts spotlight on important health issues

While the unseasonably warm weather we are experiencing in may parts of the country is bound to have many Americans checking their calendars to be sure what season we’re in, it bears mentioning that tomorrow, February 3^rd, is National Wear Red Day in support of women’s heart health!

National Wear Red Day, coordinated by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the Office on Women’s Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and others, is designed to draw attention to the fact that heart disease is the number one killer of women. Wear Red Day calls on heart health advocates and patients to wear a favorite red dress, red shirt, red tie, or Red Dress Pin to lend support to the cause and offer women “a personal and urgent wakeup” call about their risk of heart disease.

Wear Red Day is part of the Heart Truth campaign, which is this year celebrating its decade-long commitment to women’s heart health. The campaign reminds Americans that heart disease is preventable. Americans can lower their risk of heart disease by as much as 82 percent just by living a healthy lifestyle: eating right, staying physical active, maintaining a healthy weight, and not smoking.

We here at NCL are also very concerned about heart health and the many other chronic conditions facing Americans. To encourage the health of all Americans and to help patients have regular conversations with their health care practitioner and take all medications as directed, NCL launched a campaign of its own called Script Your Future. Script Your Future is designed to raise awareness among consumers and their family caregivers about the importance of taking medication as prescribed as a vital first step toward better health outcomes. The campaign website offers free tools such as free text message medication reminders, sample questions to ask health care professionals, lists and charts to keep track of medicines, fact sheets on targeted common conditions, and more.

So visit www.ScriptYourFutre.org for more information and don’t forget to show your support of women’s heart health by wearing your favorite red gear tomorrow!

Saying goodbye to Hull House

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

We learned to our great sadness at the National Consumers League that Hull House in Chicago is closing its doors, though thankfully the Museum will stay open. The historic settlement house founded by Jane Addams in 1889 in a rundown, largely immigrant Chicago neighborhood was inhabited for years by the first head of the NCL, Florence Kelley. Kelley did much of her earliest pioneering work from Hull House and was inspired and supported in that work by her dear friend Jane Addams and many other notable residents.

Hull House was the first of-its-kind settlement houses in America and was home to some of the most renown Progressive-era reformers in addition to Kelley – including Grace Abbot, Frances Perkins, Julia Lathrop, and Alice Hamilton, and of course Jane Addams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Addams bought the Hull House property and staffed it with a community of colleagues that helped thousands of immigrants adjust to life in America, providing classes in English, teaching about American customs, cooking, sewing, infant care, and conducting dance classes and other forms of recreation. Today Hull House provides equally critical services, including foster care, domestic violence counseling and prevention services, child development programs, and job training to about 60,000 children, families and community groups each year.

But now it appears that Hull House will be forced to close because of lack of funds. Stephen Saunders, Hull House’s chairman, issued a statement indicating that growing deficits have plagued the institution for several years.

In a nation with as much wealth as we enjoy here in the United States, it is indeed a sad commentary on our values that a historic institution like Hull House that has throughout its history provided basic services to the poor would be forced to close its doors.

We at the NCL, with our deep historical connections to Hull House and its mission, are greatly saddened at this news. We wish the institution well and we thank those members of the Hull House Board who worked so hard all these years to keep a historical icon working so long and so hard to provide assistance to those in greatest need.

Sugar contents in popular cereals not so sweet

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Hats off to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) for its unmasking of the atrocious amounts of sugar that cereal makers are putting into their products. EWG found that servings of three cereals—Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, Post Golden Crisp, and Wheaties Fuel—contain more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie! Another 44 contain more sugar than three Chips Ahoy cookies. Sugar is more than a third of cereal by weight in more than 36 types.

This is particularly galling since the industry came down like gangbusters on a mere voluntary series of guidelines proffered by four federal agencies (FTC, CDC, USDA, and FDA) in a report that suggested reducing levels of sugar in cereal would be a healthy move by the manufacturers. The guidelines are, in fact, pretty moderate. They would allow 13 grams of added sugar per 50 grams of cereal, amounting to one-quarter of the sugar by weight. Two in three of the cereals EWG tested exceed that level. The cereal industry hired lobbyists galore, and the authors of the report were forced to revise it.

Industry’s response to the EWG report? Once again, manufacturers cry that the report is unfair because only two of the 10 worst cereals are marketed to children. So their argument is that eight of the 10 are marketed to adults—2/3 of whom are overweight as it is? (Obesity rates have doubled for children age 2-11 and more than tripled for teens 12-19.) By industry reckoning, I guess its okay to throw the whole bowl of sugar into cereal as long as it’s being marketed to those of us who should know better. No, we Americans need to be weaned from our expectation that everything we eat needs to be extra sweet or extra salty (see NCL’s recent comments on FDA’s proposal for sodium reductions). Excessive amounts of sugar and salt contribute to obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke and industry clearly won’t reduce those levels on its own.

Thanks to EWG for its report, and shame on the cereal industry for pandering—indeed helping to create—the American sugar addiction. I hope this study serves as a further wake up call to an industry needs to reform its ways.

Give union-made this holiday

By Michell K. McIntyre, NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

As we’re all scrambling to finish our holiday shopping, we tend to grab things convenient and easy. However, we should put some thought into the companies that we buy from. Are they good to their employees? Are they using child labor in the production of their goods?

Our friends at American Rights at Work, along with the NFL Players Association, recently produced a holiday gift-giving guide for union-made products and services. The guide breaks down recipients into various categories: sports fans, do-it-yourselfers, holiday lovers, foodies, booklovers and word freaks, families with small children or the young at heart, bargain shoppers, jetsetters and entertainers. Once you locate your recipient’s proper category, you’ll find a helpful list of union-made gifts to fit their interests. Some of the unions highlighted in the guide include: USW, IAM, UFW, UFCW, ILWU and many others.

For the candy lovers in your life, be sure to check out the list of union-made sweets from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. Being a conscientious shopper never tasted so good.

And, if you’re in the market for a carpet or rug, please look for products with the GoodWeave label. GoodWeave, an organization dedicated to ending child labor in the carpet industry, certifies certain carpets and rugs as child labor-free. In an industry littered with child workers, GoodWeave takes a stand to stop child labor and give children in Nepal, India, and Afghanistan an opportunity to an education. So during this gift buying holiday season, please take the extra five or ten minutes to look into the companies you’re buying from.