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	Labor Rights - Behind the Seams by Oxfam Australia   It has been a busy year for the Oxfam labour rights team and our supporters who have contributed to supporting labour rights throughout the past 12 months. Thank you for all of your support!   We have been part of some great campaign achievements through this year. Here are a few:   Historic protocol seeks to protect workers’ rights in Indonesia   On the 7th of June this year a new and important Freedom of Association Protocol was signed by Nike, Adidas and Puma in Jakarta. This Protocol is the culmination of more than a decade of campaigning on Nike, Adidas and Puma to do more to respect workers’ rights in their supplier factories. The protocol sets out how suppliers and brands should support freedom of association and union rights for workers making garments and footwear. The protocol was negotiated over two years between Indonesian unions, supplier factories and sportswear companies and had the ongoing support from Oxfam and the Play Fair Alliance. Three more brands, New Balance, Pentland and Asics have now also signed on. Through 2012 we will be encouraging these brands and their suppliers to ensure that the Protocol is effectively supporting workers’ rights inside sportswear factories.   A ban on killer jeans   Sandblasting denim causes the fatal respiratory disease, silicosis and has been linked to over 45 deaths in Turkey alone! We have supported and worked with the Clean Clothes Campaign to call for an end to this dangerous practice. So far over 30 brands have signed up to the ban including Levi Strauss & Co., Lee and Wrangler.   Here in Australia, Oxfam first contacted The Just Group about sandblasting in February. Over the next 7 months following our initial contact with the company about sandblasting, Oxfam wrote letters and met with Just Group representatives to urge the company to ban the practice. Almost 800 people sent letters to Just Group. Finally on the 23rd September Just Group publicly announced a ban on the purchase of sandblasted jeans, committing to sell out all remaining stock and not place any further orders. This was a great outcome from sustained campaign pressure from our supporters. Well done to all of you who wrote letters!   Supporting fair uniforms   In February this year Buxwear uniforms began the accreditation process with Ethical Clothing Australia! This is a great example of the power of community campaigning; this campaign began in 2010 with a group of school children and Fair Wear campaigners delivering a FAIL report card to Buxwear for not respecting the rights of workers. Oxfam supporters had sent Buxwear letters of encouragement to become accredited to Ethical Clothing Australia. The accreditation process can take a while but this is a great step towards protecting the rights of Buxwear’s workers.   Numerous other brands have also signed up to ECA accreditation including CUE, Nobody, Metalicus and Gideon shoes to name but a few. Visit the ECA website to view the full list of accredited companies.   Recognition at last: A new ILO convention for domestic workers   It was an exciting moment when on the 16th June 2011 the ILO adopted the convention on Domestic Workers. Domestic Workers make up an estimated 100 million workers who are primarily female, working in poor conditions with little access to rights and entitlements. Oxfam supporters helped campaign for the convention an the Australian government was a strong advocate. The protocol guarantees domestic workers a written contract, regulated working hours, health and safety and social security entitlements.   Workers win their entitlements   On the 20th of June 2011 the first of many protests were held outside the Scanlan and Theodore store in Melbourne CBD. The protesters were demanding the $520,000 in unpaid entitlements from Australian supplier Blossom Road that had claimed bankruptcy only to reopen under a new trading name the next day. Some of the workers who lost their jobs at Blossom Road had been making Scanlan and Theodore garments for more than ten years. Oxfam supported the campaing by the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia for the workers to receive their full entitlements. After four months of protests, phone calls, petitions and negotiations workers finally received their due entitlements. This is a great campaign outcome.   Sneaky Business: Upholding workers rights in global footwear factories   In August we launched Sneaky Business, an online march to support workers’ rights and encourage footwear brands to take responsibility for workers rights in their global supply chain.   Sneaky business is an opportunity for sneaker wearers throughout the world to stand up for workers’ rights…. The march is travelling throughout the world highlighting the conditions for workers’ in the footwear industry. We will be sending the messages to each brand at the end of the march however, Nike has been in contact with Oxfam about our Sneaky Biz demands – so watch this space. Join the online march today or explore our toolkit for more ways to support this action. Visit the related web page
	Struggling to cope with ever rising prices by IRIN / Food Security   May 2011   Banu Bibi''s shopping basket is becoming emptier. When she goes shopping in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she spends more than a year ago, but that money buys less. In 2010, for 134 taka (US$1.80), she could afford lentils and laundry soap, and the family''s favourite fish. This year she has to spend 185 taka ($2.50) just for the basics: more rice to make up for the lack of other food, and cheaper vegetables.   Banu Bibi lives in one of eight communities picked by a research team from the Institute of Development Studies in the UK to track the effects of rising food and fuel prices. For three years, with the help of partner organizations in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Zambia and Kenya, they have been talking to people in selected rural and urban communities about how rising prices affect their lives.   Banu Bibi''s experience is fairly typical. Her family is not starving; they still have food, but it is not the food they like and is not as nutritious as it could be. They certainly ate more and ate better before the food price shock and financial crisis of 2008. And across the world, homemakers are having to work harder, spending more time shopping or looking for food, and planning more carefully to stretch their budgets to feed their families.   A woman in Lango Baya, Kenya, spoke for many when she told the researchers: "You go to a shop to buy something with the same amount as you paid the previous day, only to be told that prices have risen."   Although food and fuel prices did fall after the initial spike in 2008, they never went back to their previous levels, and this year they have jumped again. Only one of the four countries studied has experienced some respite this year - Zambia, where the price of maize, the staple food, has not increased.   While the two previous studies concentrated on the mechanisms people used to cope with the rising prices, this time the researchers decided to ask some more political questions - why did people think prices were so high? Who was to blame? And what should be done about it?   "It was an interesting time, with the Arab Spring and unrest around the world, and we wanted to ask how people felt about the food and fuel price rises," the research team leader, Naomi Hossain, told an audience at the University of Sussex, recently.   Her presentation coincided with the publication of a report into the global causes of rising prices by the British charity, Christian Aid. It analyzed recent movements on commodity markets, and concluded that much-vilified hedge funds were not the only culprits, instead highlighting pension funds. They have very large pots of money, and have been pulling out of volatile stocks and shares and investing in funds linked to a basket of commodity prices, forcing fund managers to protect their positions by buying commodity futures on such a scale that they move the market.   But although commodity price rises are now an international phenomenon, the people Hossain and her colleagues spoke to only looked for causes within their own country, citing hoarding and speculation, changing climate and environmental problems in their own area, and - overwhelmingly - their governments'' failure to care about the poor.   One interviewee in Bangladesh told them, "I don''t believe in this global market story at all. It is just an excuse for the government not to do anything."   Hossain describes "a real failure of global civil society to get people to see how their livelihoods are connected to the global economy. I am not surprised people prefer local causes. It gives people a sense of agency; if it''s a global problem, then what can they do?"   Those who believe the government should "do something", suggest banning exports, controlling prices, punishing hoarders and subsidizing basic foodstuffs. The researchers found a sense that it was the moral duty of a government to provide for its people, sometimes linked to notions of democracy. A woman in Kenya told them, "In the new constitution, we have the right to be provided with food by the government."   The moral sense also extended to the business community. A rural doctor in Bangladesh said, "The businessmen should get some moral teaching. If they were afraid of Allah and conducted business honestly, the situation would improve."   All in all, says Hossain, "There is a popular consensus about what is legitimate, about social norms and obligations. People set moral limits to the freedom of the markets."   March 2011   Vietnam"s inflation rate is among Southeast Asia"s highest and its population is struggling to keep up with sharp increases in food, fuel and electricity prices.   On 1 March the government increased electricity prices by a record 15 percent. The week before, petrol prices were raised by 18 percent.   In Vietnam, inflation has increased every month since August 2010, reaching 12.2 percent in January.   "Things are getting really uncertain," said Nguyen Bich Hanh, 25, a public school teacher who lives on the outskirts of the capital, Ho Chi Minh City. "We are struggling to pay for electricity, and food prices are getting extreme."   In the past two months, Nguyen said the price of high-quality rice, for example, had increased by almost one-third. She earns $150 a month and spends most of it on food and transportation for her family of five.   The World Bank ranks Vietnam as a lower middle-income country. Still, worries about poverty run deep in a country where 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas and most of the workforce is agricultural.   Half the population lives on less than $2 a day, and many could slide into poverty because of economic shocks and natural disasters.   Nguyen saves money by turning off the electricity at home at all times, and increasingly, by skipping meals.   "Fewer kids are coming to school because they need to help their families," she said.   Sudden price fluctuations are forcing Vietnam"s poorest to find quick and creative ways of coping, said Ben Kerkvliet, a Vietnam scholar at the Australian National University.   "Many rural households in Vietnam have small gardens, small fish ponds, chickens or ducks... that help to feed their families. In hard times, these sources of food become even more important".   "Youngsters in the household may go to school without school supplies. They may have to quit school altogether," he added.   So far, Vietnam has performed well in enrolling students in primary school and keeping them there.   In 2009, net enrolment in primary school was 97 percent and 88.5 percent of children who enter primary school complete at least five years, according to the UN office in Vietnam.   But should inflation increase beyond current levels, said Kerkvliet, general stability could slide.   "Should shortages of key commodities like rice and wheat become extreme, villagers are likely to protest in various parts of the country," he said. "At present levels of inflation, the likely political change will be policies aimed at addressing the problems."   This year, the government hopes to limit inflation to 7 percent, compared with 11.75 percent last year.   For Nguyen, poverty is more pressing than numbers on paper. "They say our country is becoming richer," she said, "but this does not matter if regular people cannot afford anything." 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