Letter from Shelby Yastrow to Simon Billenness

This letter is to confirm our agreement regarding the withdrawal of the proxy proposal Franklin Research and Development has co-filed on the humane treatment of animals

Luna Lovegood Actress Joins Fans and Labor Rights Advocates in Calling on Warner Bros. to Make all Harry Potter Chocolate Fair Trade

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.ILRF_HarryPotterChocolatePressRelease.pdf: 85 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Letter from Joseph Gordon to Amy Bowerman

This is to advise that the request for a no-action letter by McDonald\u27s Corporation, dated January 20, 1994, is now moot

Letter from Lisa Ivinjack Clota to Joseph H. Gordon

The statement on the humane treatment of animals which will appear in McDonald\u27s 1993 Annual Report will be as quoted in Shelby Yastrow\u27s letter dated February 16, 1994

Letter from Joseph Gordon to Amy Bowerman

This is to advise that the request for a no-action letter by McDonald\u27s Corporation, dated January 20, 1994, is now moot

Preemption & Human Rights: Local Options After \u3ci\u3eCrosby v. NFTC\u3c/i\u3e

In June 2000, the Supreme Court held in Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) that federal sanctions against Burma preempted the Massachusetts Burma law. With its Burma Law, Massachusetts sought to replicate the anti-Apartheid boycott, one of the most successful human rights campaigns in history. Massachusetts\u27 Burma law authorized state agencies to exercise a strong purchasing preference in favor of companies that do not conduct business in Burma unless the preference would impair essential purchases or result in inadequate competition. In Crosby, the Court held that Congress preempted the Massachusetts Burma law when it adopted federal sanctions on Burma. While the state law applied to purchasing by state agencies, the federal law imposed a limited range of sanctions, including a ban on future private investment, and gave the President discretion regarding the imposition of some of these sanctions. However, the Court declined to rule that the Massachusetts Burma law was unconstitutional under the federal foreign affairs power or the dormant Commerce Clause, as the First Circuit Court of Appeals had in National Foreign Trade Council v. Natsios. The Crosby decision provides no fuel for a constitutional claim, but neither does it blunt the impact of the First Circuit\u27s holding that the state law is unconstitutional. As the First Circuit acknowledged, there are volumes of analysis, pro and con, regarding the constitutional theories that the First Circuit used to invalidate Massachusetts\u27 Burma law in NFTC v. Natsios. Much of this scholarship argues that absent a clear conflict or statement of congressional intent to preempt state or local law, the federal foreign affairs power alone does not render a state or local law unconstitutional. With the extensive published work on each side of the anti-Apartheid boycotts as well as the Burma laws, there is little need to revisit such well-plowed fields. This article seeks to derive some guidance from the Crosby decision for state and local legislatures, as many of these bodies want to play more than the very limited role that the Court, during oral argument, suggested was appropriate

(Dis)Assembling Rights of Women Workers Along the Global Assembly Line: Human Rights and the Garment Industry Symposium: Political Lawyering: Conversations on Progressive Social Change

Some observers would like to explain away sweatshops as immigrants exploiting other immigrants, as cultural, or as the importation of a form of exploitation that normally does not happen here but occurs elsewhere, in the Third World. While the public was shocked by the discovery at El Monte, garment workers and garment worker advocates have for years been describing abuses in the garment industry and have ascribed responsibility for such abuses to manufacturers and retailers who control the industry. Sweatshops, like the one in El Monte, are a home-grown problem with peculiarly American roots. Since the inception of the garment industry, U.S. retailers and manufacturers have scoured the United States and the rest of the globe for the cheapest and most malleable labor-predominantly female, low-skilled, and disempowered-in order to squeeze out as much profit as possible for themselves. Along with this globalization, the process of subcontracting, whereby manufacturers contract out cutting and sewing to contractors to avoid being considered the employer of the workers, has made it extremely difficult for garment workers in the United States to assert their rights under domestic law. This Article examines the challenges garment workers in the United States face in asserting their rights in the global economy and investigates how transnational advocacy can be deployed to compensate for the inability of U.S. labor laws to respond to problems with international dimensions. Using a purely domestic U.S. legal framework, advocates can attack the problem of transnational corporations\u27 (TNCs) subcontracting in the United States. Such efforts, however, will have limited effect because of the global nature of the garment industry. Most efforts to change the structure of the garment industry have occurred within the limitations of U.S. law, even while there has been a predominant failure of the U.S. legal system effectively to utilize a human rights framework. While the nation-state has traditionally been viewed as the locus for the development and enforcement of rights-creating norms, it cannot adequately respond to all of the dynamics that now arise from markets that cut across borders. Violation of workers\u27 rights on the global assembly line calls for strategies that are transnational, and this Article highlights past successes and suggestions in this vein. Because of the difficulty of restraining TNCs in a global economy, no strategy used in isolation will be successful. We present here alternative strategies that can be used in multiple and flexible ways in the struggle for human rights