Exploited Labor: News & Updates

"As influential public institutions, our universities have a responsibility to maintain a clear and unwavering moral standard in their business relationships. Wendy’s, as the sole fast-food company that has yet to join the Fair Food Program, has refused to meet that standard. Instead of cheap '4 for $4' meals, as students, we need to see human rights on the menu."

Globalization as a qualitatively new phase in the ongoing and open-ended evolution of world capitalism has been characterized above all by the rise of a globally integrated production, financial, and service system. In Central America, the transnational model of accumulation that took hold during the boom has involved a vast expansion of maquiladoras (assembly factories in Export Processing Zones, employing some 800,000), agro-industrial complexes, mining and raw material extraction, global banking, tourism, and the “retail revolution,” like the spread of Walmart...At the same time, the spread of transnational tourist complexes has turned Central America into a global playground. Local indigenous, Afro-descendant, and mestizo communities have fought displacement, environmental degradation, and the commodification of local cultures by tourist mega-projects such as the Ruta Maya throughout the regiona-projects Roatan in Honduras, San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua, Costa del Sol in El Salvador, or Guanacaste province in Costa Rica

"We have documented grave violations against human rights defenders, like targeted killings of social movement leaders fighting for the conservation of the environment, as well as of community leaders who organised protests," states Mario Roberto Chinchilla of the Coalition against Impunity in Honduras. At pro-democracy demonstrations, "military and police officers have been observed infiltrating...with the double purpose of stirring up violence and identifying human rights defenders and leaders," according to Andrea Bolaños of the International Platform against Impunity (Pi).