The Failure of Corporate Responsibility Campaigns: The Working People Weekly List

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s this week’s Working People Weekly List.

Why ‘Corporate Responsibility’ Campaigns Fail: “Oddly, in an age of global cosmopolitanism, ‘corporate social responsibility’ campaigns, and technocratic regulations, we haven’t evolved out of medieval labor practices like enslavement and child labor. But could technology hold the key to cleaning up the global supply chain?”

Restaurant Jobs Now Dominate the Workforce. That’s a Bad Thing: “Unemployment remains low, and job creation is up, according to the latest employment report. But a closer look reveals that it’s restaurant work — not the coal-mining or manufacturing Donald Trump likes to champion in speeches and on Twitter — that is bolstering the economy. A serious shift away ‘from making things to serving people’ is happening in America, reports the Atlantic.”

Graduate Students on These 7 Campuses Are Fighting for Their Labor Rights: “Over the past academic year, graduate students across the country were busy organizing for better working conditions. Currently, there are 33 officially recognized graduate-student unions; 23 are fighting for university recognition. With increasing tuition and plummeting wages, meager health-care benefits and overwhelming workloads, these graduate students are coming together to demand better treatment and recognition.”

School’s Out: Teachers Union Chief Randi Weingarten Says Trump Leads ‘Most Anti-public-education” Administration Ever: “A strong educational system is the bedrock of a healthy democracy. There is a corollary to this fact: A poorly educated public is more likely to be tempted by tyrants, more easily seduced into believing that avarice, greed and consumerism are virtues, and will more readily betray the common good. In many ways, an educational system that does not encourage critical thinking and speaking truth to power is doing the work of authoritarianism.”

Strong as Hell: In the States Roundup: “It’s time once again to take a look at the battles for the rights of working families in the states. Here is what the unions in the states are talking about this week. Click on any of the links to follow the state federations and labor councils on Twitter.”

In Missouri, a Race to the Bottom: “The NAACP took the unusual step this week to declare a travel advisory to African Americans for the state of Missouri. This bold action came in response to legislation passed by the Missouri Legislature limiting workers’ ability to sue over discrimination. ‘With the Missouri Human Rights Act gutted, employers who want to engage in illegal workplace discrimination will have no fear of being held accountable,’ Missouri House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty told Ebony magazine. ‘While S.B. 43 might not quite return us to the days when businesses were free to hang ‘minorities need not apply’ signs in the window, it certainly reinforces the sentiment.’ For that reason, the Missouri AFL-CIO opposed S.B. 43.”