G20 Leaders Talk While Workers Are
Injured, Maimed Cheated of their Wages and Killed
It Does Not Have to Be This Way! -
Demand that G20 Leaders Protect Workers not just Bankers
Please take a few minutes to review and-if you agree-sign onto this
letter to the G20 heads of state, demanding that our
world leaders do something positive and concrete to protect some of
the most vulnerable workers anywhere in the world.
In Bangladesh, 30,000 workers-many of them children just 10 to 13
years old-break apart huge decommissioned tanker ships, 650 to
1,000 feet long and 20 stories high, which are run up onto the
beaches of Bangladesh. The shipbreakers are forced to work 12
hours a day, seven days a week, for wages of just 22 to 32 cents an
hour, doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
Workers are injured and maimed every day, and on average a worker
is killed every three weeks. Worker lack even the most
minimal safety protections. Child workers use hammers to
break apart asbestos-there is an average of 15,000 pounds of
asbestos on each ship-which they carry out and dump on the
beach. On Saturday, September 5, two workers were burned to
death and three were critically injured when a gas tank on a South
Korean ship they were dismantling exploded.
[Update on Shipyard Fire]
The workers live in miserable hovels not fit for animals.
The shipbreaking workers told us: "We are
fighting with death always. This is not work. This is a
place of punishment and death." They also confirmed that
there has not been a single improvement in the shipbreaking yards
in the last 30 years!
This is not acceptable, and it is time to draw a line in the
sand. We must hold the G20 leaders and World Trade
Organization accountable to take concrete steps to end the torture
of these workers.
If we do not start speaking out to protect the rights of our
brothers and sisters in the developing world, our turn will come
soon enough.
Please sign this petition and send it to your friends and
contacts. There is nothing abstract about this. We can
clean up the global economy one campaign at a time.
Your email letter will be directed to this year's chair of the G20,
Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with a copy to U.S.
President Barack Obama.
Thanks for your solidarity!
*Act
Now: Sign Letter to G20
*See
Update on Sept. 5 Shipyard Fire
*See
full report, "Where Ships and Workers Go to Die: Shipbreaking in
Bangladesh and the Failure of Global Institutions to Protect Worker
Rights"
The new NLC video,
"Where Ships & Workers Go to Die"